Prospect Park 10/3--A Rapid Walk

When I have a doctor's appt in NYC, I also go birding because otherwise it seems like a waste of time & money; I want to be in the city at least as long as it takes me to get there & back. Usually I go to Central Park which is convenient but I have never felt truly comfortable there; for one, the place is too big, I always feel like I should be somewhere else and for another, there are too many tourists in the way, although I guess nowadays, I also qualify as a tourist.

Today, instead, I went back to my beloved Prospect Park, hoping to find the Sora that has been reported in a little marsh on the peninsula. I didn't have a lot of time, so I was really walking fast, picking up only the most obvious birds, not stopping and pishing, not stopping and staring into leaves. Ticking them off: enter at 9th street--grackles, starlings, sparrows. At the Upper Pool, White-throated Sparrows, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Magnolia Warbler, Northern Waterthrush, a Black-throated Blue Warbler, naked eye. On the Nethermead, Palm Warblers, Yellow-rumps, phoebe. Only when I reached the peninsula did I stop and stake out the marsh. This certainly is not my favorite way to bird--first rushing, then waiting. I hung around the marsh for as long as I could, about 20 minutes, and the Sora didn't appear, though it was seen both before and after I was there. While I was standing there I did see a couple of Belted Kingfishers rattling over the lake and my first Ruddy Ducks of the season, along with a few Common Yellowthroats that kept throwing me off as they hopped around the reeds in the marsh. Then I had to make my way over to Grand Army Plaza.

Walking through the wooded section of the peninsula I came across more warblers but I was in a hurry and probably didn't catch a lot of what was flitting around higher than eye-level. I was getting very nostalgic for the days I used to bird the park regularly. The birding around here is great, but the Pine Barrens don't get the kind of diversity in one spot that the park attracts. I really have to work to find 9 species of warblers around here. There, they were all over the place. And I don't think today was even a particularly big "fall out" day at all. And 9 species of warblers there is an embarrassingly small number, mitigated only by the fact that I was birding as fast as I was walking.

So, in 1 hour and 25 minutes, hitting (and running by) only a few of the park's hot spots, I managed 30 species, presented herewith:
Canada Goose  20
Mute Swan  1
Mallard  20
Northern Shoveler  7
Ruddy Duck  6
Double-crested Cormorant  1
Rock Pigeon  3
Mourning Dove  1
Belted Kingfisher  2
Red-bellied Woodpecker  2    Heard
Eastern Phoebe  2
Blue Jay  5    Heard
Carolina Wren  2    Heard
Ruby-crowned Kinglet  5
American Robin  1
Gray Catbird  2    Heard
European Starling  2
Northern Waterthrush  1
Black-and-white Warbler  1
Common Yellowthroat  3
American Redstart  1
Magnolia Warbler  1
Blackpoll Warbler  2
Black-throated Blue Warbler  1    
Palm Warbler  3
Yellow-rumped Warbler  3
Chipping Sparrow  1
White-throated Sparrow  2
Common Grackle  5
House Sparrow  10