Prospect Park--May Day

If there is such a thing as a partial flying start, that's what we got off to today with our birding.

Normally, on a beautiful spring Sunday, Prospect Park, with its Park Slope dogs and dog owners, its toddlers  and teenagers, its cyclists, baseball players, and soccer game that seemingly encompasses the entire acreage of the park, and especially with its large chattering groups of bird watchers swarming what are usually quiet spots where birds are known to gather, is one of the last places I want to be. But, we dropped off the car in Jersey yesterday in preparation for our California trip and since Central Park is even less enticing than Prospect for all of the above reasons and more, we went to the Slope and started poking around.

And we didn't do badly, considering that we didn't get to the park until after 9. From 9th St. we headed across the Long Meadow, past the Upper Pool, across the Nethermead, to the Lullwater Cove where I hoped we'd be able to sit down at the observation platform and check out the birds flitting in the brush and the trees. There was one other birder there when we arrive, a very pleasant woman, and almost immediately I saw my first Green Heron of the year. Catbirds were mewing, blackbirds were calling, some yellow-rumps were around, a red-tail swung by, and it looked like it would be a good spot until another birder showed up. I made the mistake of pointing out the heron to him--it turned out he was an "advance scout" for a large bird walk sponsored by the Botanic Gardens and he warned us that soon the platform would be swamped with his group. Shari, the woman, and I high-tailed it out of there so fast that I left my backpack on a bench, not discovering it was missing until we were half-way down the Lullwater trail, after having seen a Blackburnian Warbler. After I luckily retrieved my backpack (nothing really important in it except Shari's thermos of coffee), I ran into the scout again and he repaid me for the heron with a Scarlet Tanager in an oak tree.

We walked beneath the Terrace Bridge, past the huge mastiff off the leash barking and growling at a buoy in the water (I like dogs, it's the morons that own them I can't stand) and on over to the peninsula. Where, at the pink concrete "beach" we ran into another large, amorphous group of birders who were doing more talking than birding. At one point, someone called out Tennessee Warbler so we all hurried to find it but couldn't. Turned out that the bird she thought she might have seen might have been a Nashville Warbler. Which got me to thinking that someday I would like to see a Nashville and a Tennessee (actually, I'd love to see a Tennessee) in a tree together. (Later on, we actually did see a Nashville Warbler along the Lullwater.)

They went right and we went left and about fifty feet in I found the best bird of the day, a Chestnut-side Warbler, which allowed us long, superior looks. We showed it to a couple of birders (including the woman from the Lullwater platform) and tit-for-tat, the 2nd birder pointed out a Spotted Sandpiper to us. Obviously, I don't dislike other birders--I dislike the large groups they form which take over all the birders who are individually wonderful (for the most part).

From there we doubled back and crossed over the Terrace Bridge then down the path on the south side of Breeze Hill and walked along the Lullwater, picking up a few warblers here and there. A stop at the Boathouse found a lingering American Coot (I wonder if it will stay all summer?). At the back of the Lily Pond was a Northern Waterthrush tottering and our 3rd Common Yellowthroat. 

A walk through the ravine yielded little we hadn't already seen and after threading our way through a massive game of soccer and crossing Nelly's Lawn, we arrived at the Vale where we found Peter and another waterthrush.

By this time it was long past lunch so we left the park with "only" 38 species to start the month, though some of them were "cherce."

Canada Goose    5
Mute Swan    2
Mallard    20
Green Heron    2    Lullwater Cove & Duck Island
Black-crowned Night-Heron    1    Lullwater Cove
Red-tailed Hawk    2
American Coot    1    Boathouse Pond
Spotted Sandpiper    1    Lullwater South
Rock Pigeon    4
Mourning Dove    3
Chimney Swift    1    Nethermead
Red-bellied Woodpecker    4
Downy Woodpecker    1    Peninsula
Blue Jay    2
American Crow    1
Tree Swallow    1    Lake
Barn Swallow    12    Lake & Boathouse Pond
Black-capped Chickadee    4
American Robin    75
Gray Catbird    9
European Starling    50
Nashville Warbler    1    Lullwater South
Northern Parula    2    Peninsula & 9th St Entrance
Chestnut-sided Warbler    1    Peninsula
Yellow-rumped Warbler    35
Blackburnian Warbler    1    Lullwater North
Palm Warbler    1    Lullwater South
Black-and-white Warbler    1    Peninsula
Northern Waterthrush    2    Back of Lily Pond & Vale
Common Yellowthroat    3    Lullwater (2), back of Lily Pond
Eastern Towhee    1    Peninsula
Song Sparrow    4
White-throated Sparrow    10
Scarlet Tanager    1    Lullwater North
Northern Cardinal    12
Red-winged Blackbird    25
Common Grackle    10
House Sparrow    30