Great Kills Park / Mount Loretto 8/12

 Great Kills Mud Flats

We had to be on Staten Island today so we snuck in some birding after we ran our errand.

The mud flats at Great Kills always seem to have out-of-season ducks in the summer and are always reliable for one of our favorite herons, the Little Blue. Today didn't disappoint--there were 3 Greater Scaup, 2 hens and a drake, sitting on the beach. It was hard to figure what they were at first--we're not used to seeing them out of breeding plumage, but those blue bills and the facial pattern on the hens were pretty good clues. I'd seen reports of Great Scaups there in the last couple of weeks, so I guess these birds are here for the summer. There were also at least 2, possibly 3 (don't know if the flyover bird was one we'd already seen) Little Blue Herons out on the flats, along with Ruddy Turnstones, both semis, and Shari's faves, a couple of oystercatchers.
Great Kills Park
18 species
Mallard  22
Greater Scaup  3    Sitting on beach, non-breeding plumage.
Double-crested Cormorant  11
Great Egret  1
Snowy Egret  1
Little Blue Heron  2
Semipalmated Plover  6
American Oystercatcher  2
Ruddy Turnstone  3
Semipalmated Sandpiper  2
Laughing Gull  10
Herring Gull  20
Great Black-backed Gull  1
Common Tern  1
Bank Swallow  3
European Starling  25
Boat-tailed Grackle  2
American Goldfinch  2
After lunch we took a walk around the southern grasslands loop of Mount Loretto. Usually, I don't have the scope when I'm there and I was curious to see if I could pick out anything I wouldn't normally see on the ponds. Yes and no. We found a few birds far back in bushes or camouflaged in the trees, but nothing to get excited about. Highlights there were the couple of Green Herons on the ponds, a Spotted Sandpiper in alternate plumage bobbing along the edge of a pond, and 3 Wood Ducks in eclipse. Once again, the little invisible bugs were biting our ankles. Nothing like the blistering day I was there in July, but still pretty annoying. We tallied 30 species for the 2 locations, not bad for a hot summer mid-day birding expedition. 
Mount Loretto Unique Area
18 species (+1 other taxa)
Wood Duck  3
Mallard  4
Double-crested Cormorant  5
Great Egret  1
Green Heron  2
Turkey Vulture  1
Spotted Sandpiper  1
Herring Gull  3
Great Black-backed Gull  1
Eastern Kingbird  5
Warbling Vireo  1
Barn Swallow  9
swallow sp.  2
American Robin  4
Gray Catbird  5
Northern Mockingbird  1
Northern Cardinal  1
Red-winged Blackbird  1
American Goldfinch  3