Marine Park--Southwest 5/29

Marine Park--Southwest. This is the 3rd name in a year for the same spot--this one the most geographically accurate. It is a lovely spot on a warm summery morning. Beach roses in bloom. In fact, it is so nice that someone has decided to move in.

Be it ever so humble...

The more I bird this huge, neglected city park, taking trails that lead off trails, the more crap I find.

Car Hood

This car hood was on a little trail off a little trail I took to avoid a guy on a dirt bike illegally running up down the   sandy roads. No one stops them, so why would they not do what they want? I stood there for a few moments trying to figure out just how it got back there--I'm always amazed at how much effort goes in to distributing garbage in this park. But then I was distracted by an empid I couldn't identify since it didn't sing (it was probably a Willow Flycatcher) and a mimid I could (Brown Thrasher).

I wasn't exactly sure where this path led--back to the beach or onto the main trail. Just as I saw that the path would go back to the beach I saw a body lying on the ground. Quicker than I can type this or you can read it I thought, "Great, I've found everything else in this park, why not a corpse?" Fortunately the body wasn't dead--it was an old guy (Old Guy, def: someone older than me) who had spread out his Sunday paper and was just dozing. We both scared the hell out of each other, though he claimed that "It's Memorial Day Weekend--nothing scares me."

Highlights today on the 2 mile walk from Avenue U to the Gerritsen Beach were 2 Monk Parakeets exploding from a bush just as I was realizing that the squawking I was hearing was worth investigating; My FOY Least Terns hovering above the creek; and a pair of Orchard Orioles that appeared atop some trees on the beach. My first reaction upon seeing the male was wow--that robin is really dark. When I saw the yellow female, the penny dropped.

The most interesting sight of the day came as I was exiting the park. All that is left of Gerritsen's Grist Mill from the 18th Century are lines of pilings that cormorants, gulls, terns like to sit on. Today, a Great Egret decided to roust a Common Tern from its place on one piling, despite there being other empty ones. The tern did not take kindly to this bullying and proceeded to dive bomb the egret. The egret snaked its neck to avoid the tern, grunting each time the tern approached. The tern couldn't dislodge the egret and, seemingly out of frustration, started to harass a Herring Gull one piling over. Anthropomorphically, the gull's reaction was "Huh, what'd I do?"

41 species for the day.
Brant    1
Canada Goose    19
Double-crested Cormorant    3
Great Egret    4
Snowy Egret    2
Osprey    1
American Oystercatcher    2
Laughing Gull    2
Herring Gull    25
Great Black-backed Gull    1
Least Tern    2
Common Tern    1
Forster's Tern    3
Rock Pigeon    4
Mourning Dove    9
Monk Parakeet    2
Chimney Swift    5
Northern Flicker    1
Willow Flycatcher    3
Empidonax sp.    1    Probably Willow
American Crow    2
Fish Crow    1
Northern Rough-winged Swallow    2
Tree Swallow    2
Barn Swallow    20
Marsh Wren    3
American Robin    7
Gray Catbird    8
Northern Mockingbird    1
Brown Thrasher    2
European Starling    25
Yellow Warbler    5
Common Yellowthroat    10
Eastern Towhee    2
Song Sparrow    3
Northern Cardinal    5
Red-winged Blackbird    75
Common Grackle    2
Boat-tailed Grackle    3
Orchard Oriole    2    At Gerritsen Beach
Baltimore Oriole    1    At Gerritsen Beach
House Sparrow    10

Mussel Machine

Let's end with a pleasant image