Birding the Grounds of SIUH

We had to be on Staten Island for 4 days for Shari's ablation. Most of the time we had time to kill, so after hitting PetSmart, Trader Joe's, Shop-Rite, and Costco on Monday, we spent some time on Tuesday at Clove Lake Park, where we saw the expected species, and yesterday at the Salt Marsh Nature Center of Marine Park, where I hadn't been since they finished the restoration. In our brief time there we saw our 2nd Yellow-crowned Night-Heron of the year (and the first adult) along with a few Greater Yellowlegs, some Semipalmated Sandpipers and a Spotted Sandpiper. A Black Skimmer glided along the creek or whatever that body of water is. It was good to be back there--I miss a few spots in Brooklyn that I regularly birded. I don't miss the traffic. I couldn't believe how jangled my nerves were after a few hours driving around Brooklyn until I realized that when we lived there, we never drove around Brooklyn on a Wednesday afternoon. We only drove the car on weekends.

Yesterday, when we parked the car at Staten Island University Hospital, we found two turkeys on the sidewalk across the street. One juvenile and one adult. What amused me most was that they were competing with the typical city birds--starlings, pigeons, sparrows--for whatever they were eating off the sidewalk. The smaller birds did not yield to their ungainly cousins. Still, the turkeys seem very comfortable in the urban environment.
 This morning, while Shari was having an hour-long scan done, I left the waiting room with its TV tuned to Good Morning America, and took a walk through the parking lot to an undeveloped, overgrown lot on the edge of the hospital grounds. Standing near a puddle, in the space of 10 minutes, I saw a Killdeer, some Least Sandpipers, and a surprise--my first Solitary Sandpiper since May in Ohio. Here's what I found in a  half hour on the grounds of Staten Island University Hospital.
13 species
Canada Goose  1    Heard
Great Egret  1    f/o
Glossy Ibis  1    f/o
Killdeer  1
Solitary Sandpiper  1
Least Sandpiper  4
Herring Gull  1    f/o
Rock Pigeon  2    f/o
Mourning Dove  4
American Crow  1    Heard
American Robin  1
European Starling  1
Song Sparrow  4
And everything with Shari's treatment went fine.  SIUH is an interesting place to bird, but I'll be happy to never go there again.