Gravesend Bay / Jones Beach 11/26

Cold gray November day; the kind of day where it seems like the sun is ready to set all day. Rain in the morning kept us in until about 10 when decided to go to Jones Beach, an easy ride with no tolls to pay.

Serendipity: While driving on the Belt, Shari saw what looked like a crack in the windshield. We pulled into a rest stop and it all the crack turned out to be was some kind of thread-like plant material. This rest stop happened to be near the place we saw the Mew Gull early this year, and as there were lots of gulls (and Brant, pigeons, and starlings on the grass), we decided to take a quick look around for anything unusual. In the car next to us the driver was looking out at the water with binoculars. He turned out to be a birder I know, in fact, the guy who originally reported the Mew Gull last year. He lives nearby and regularly checks the area for unusual gulls. Immediately he saw Bonaparte's Gulls flying over the bay, so I put our scope together and joined him at the railing. I didn't need the scope, or my binoculars, to see the gulls--some were floating right in front of us. He was looking through his scope and counting the fly bys off shore--he got up to 200, but I satisfied myself with the easy looks. He & Shari also saw gannets off in the distance, but I was never able to locate them in the gray haze. Shari was able to get some good photos of the Bonnies. Here's a good comparison with a Ring-billed Gull.

Photo: Shari Zirlin

I've never seen Bonaparte's Gulls in New York State, so I was able to add them to my state and Kings County lists. There were also a couple of Common Loon diving in the bay. I was surprised to find out later that I had never seen Common Loons in Kings County, so that added another species to that list.

(Nomenclature aside. Brooklyn has some pretty gruesome names for its bays: Gravesend, Sheepshead, Dead Horse...I'm just saying.)

Jones Beach was really windy, making viewing any body of water, ocean or bay, very unpleasant. But we did spot some goodies. On the beach by Field 6 there was gigantic mixed flock of Black-bellied Plovers, Dunlins, and Sanderlings. At first I saw a small group of maybe 100 plovers and 15 Sanderlings. I lost them when I went back to the car to get Shari, but she soon found a huge flock down the beach. The flock kept swirling around sometimes farther away from us, sometimes coming back to us, but by a conservative estimate there had to be a 1000 plovers there and hundreds of Dunlins and Sanderlings. Gannets were also very close in and easy to see and 3 White-winged Scoters landed in the surf near the shore.

The Boat Basin had the hen White-winged Scoter we saw on Sunday, along with some Red-breasted Mergansers, a Bufflehead and Long-tailed Duck. Plus our favorite: American Oystercatcher, 55 or so on the sandbar.

Standing in the wind by this point was getting to be wearing (and tomorrow the gusts are supposed to be 30 to 40 MPH!) so we thought that birding on the median might get us out of the wind. It did, a little, but aside from a sweet Red-breasted Nuthatch in a pine tree and some goldfinches and Tree Swallows, there wasn't much to be found. A nice sighting in the parking lot of West End 2 was 6 Tundra Swans flying overhead, going in the direction of Jersey. Black, knobless beaks, a different proportion of body to neck and a less ponderous wing beat made us confident in our identification.

I had been hoping to find Snow Buntings and when Shari thought she saw a flock of birds at the other end of the lot, behind a flock of Tree Swallows sitting on the asphalt, they turned out to be the buntings. Winter plumage. I guess we'll have to go to northern Canada or Alaska in the summer to see them in breeding plumage.

Photo by Shari Zirlin

Jones Beach
Number of species:    26
Brant    75
Canada Goose    50
Tundra Swan    6    F/O WE 2
White-winged Scoter    4    Hen @ West End Boat Basin
Long-tailed Duck    1    WEBB
Bufflehead    1    WEBB
Red-breasted Merganser    4    WEBB
Northern Gannet    10
Turkey Vulture    1    Near toll booths
Northern Harrier    3
Black-bellied Plover    1000    Beach at Field 6 and sand bar at WEBB
American Oystercatcher    55    Sandbar WEBB
Sanderling    100    Mixed in with BBPL at Field 6
Dunlin    150    Mixed in with BBPL and SAND @ Field 6
Bonaparte's Gull    2    WEBB
Ring-billed Gull    200
Herring Gull    10
Great Black-backed Gull    100
Rock Pigeon    150
Mourning Dove    1    WE 2
American Crow    2    Median of Meadowbrook Pkwy
Tree Swallow    35    Parking lot of WE 2
Red-breasted Nuthatch    1    Median
Snow Bunting    50    Parking lot of WE 2
American Goldfinch    14    Median
House Sparrow    10    WEBB

Finally, out of curiosity, we stopped off at the Norman J. Levy preserve which is a park off the Meadowbrook Parkway that was once a landfill. To get to it  you have to drive through the Hempstead Sanitation Department gates. Not much in the way of birds there today except for a lot of Helmeted Guineafowls which unfortunately, we can't count. But we can be amused by them.

Can't Count It!
Photo by Shari Zirlin