More Mew

I thought coming down to see the Mew Gull from upstate was silly? There's a post on JerseyBirds from a guy in Dowingtown, Pennsylvania who came up to Brooklyn today to find the gull. At least he did, a little earlier than when we there.

Plus...he photographed a Purple Sandpiper on the rocks below the promenade. The tide was lower in the morning. Very, very frustrating.

Mew Gull

OK, so we saw the MEW GULL, a life bird for both of us. That makes 511 for me, 523 for Shari. Shari is ahead, and will probably stay ahead, because she is brave and has the fortitude [alternative: she is nuts] to withstand pelagic outings to find birds that rarely come close to shore, including winter pelagic trips where she has to dress up like a commercial fisherperson out to capture cod in the mid-Atlantic, while I refuse to subject myself to the freezing winds and the sickening smell of diesel fuel. I was seasick on the Block Island Ferry which is about a 45 minute ride--7 or 8 hours on the open sea sounds like hell to me.

We went to the same spot on Gravesend Bay as last week, timing our arrival a little before high tide (why the gull prefers to hang out around high tide I don't understand) and found 4 or 5 birders already in place. Someone had the gull in his scope so it was an easy "get." We latched onto the bird with our own scope and binoculars, got very satisfying looks at what is rather a nondescript gull (a completely yellow bill and dark eye is about all that distinguishes it from a Ring-bill Gull), it flew away a few minutes after we arrived and we went on our way.

Yes, it seems silly. But then we only went across Brooklyn to see it. We didn't travel from upstate as some birders were planning to do.

A quick look at the bay around the Owl's Head Water Pollution Control Plant yielded no Purple Sandpipers on the rocks.  Seems like a good habitat for them. I'd like to find them this year some place other than the slippery jetty at Barnegat Light. There were plenty of gulls in the water. Whatever the plant doesn't control they get to eat.

Prospect Park 1/7

After doing my house-husbandly duties this morning, I took a quick jaunt around the Park. I went looking for a Northern Saw-whet Owl that I knew was there and saw it only because I ran into a birder who was looking at it with his scope. Not a life bird for me, but still a lot of fun to see.

However, I can't tell you where it is. It's bad enough I've told you the owl is in the park. Owl roosts, by general agreement among birders are not disseminated widely. It's like a club that you have to know someone who knows someone to get in. I knew this owl was there through some clever detective work on eBird and the Prospect Park sightings blog, but the chances of me actually finding it if the other birder hadn't been there were nil. The bird was very high up in a pine tree, obscured by branches. If you got just the right angle you could see the whole bird, but when I first scanned the area where I was told the bird was, I thought I was seeing a bunch of dead leaves. (Of course, had I thought about it for a few seconds, I would have realized that there are no dead leaves in a pine tree.)

So, you didn't hear it from me.

Prospect Park

Number of species:     31

Canada Goose     25

Mute Swan     5

American Black Duck     10

Mallard     125

Northern Shoveler     50

Ruddy Duck     4

Red-tailed Hawk     1

American Coot     6

Ring-billed Gull     1000

Herring Gull     10

Great Black-backed Gull     4

Rock Pigeon     15

Mourning Dove     2

Northern Saw-whet Owl     1

Red-bellied Woodpecker     1

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker     1

Downy Woodpecker     2

Blue Jay     3

American Crow     1

Black-capped Chickadee     4

Tufted Titmouse     2

Red-breasted Nuthatch     1

White-breasted Nuthatch     2

American Robin     3

Northern Mockingbird     2

European Starling     35

Song Sparrow     1

White-throated Sparrow     8

Northern Cardinal     5

American Goldfinch     5

House Sparrow     2

1960

1960 is now 50 years ago.

A half a century.

And I was there.

I don’t know exactly why that astounds me, 
but it does.

Juxtapositions.

When we were in Florida, eating lunch on our last day there, we had the happy misfortune of sitting next to a retired teacher from Kalamazoo, MI. Extolling (or complaining about, it was hard to tell) the ethnic diversity of his native city (caused, apparently by the willingness of Pfizer, which had a huge operation there, to hire anybody that was qualified) he said, "There are six Christian churches including a Catholic, Baptist, and protestant; there’s a Hindu temple, a Moslem Synagogue and a Buddhist whatever they call it…all within five or six blocks."

                                               (as transcribed by Shari Zirlin)

As I said to Shari, I’m almost 59 years old, I’ve heard millions of words in my life, but I have never heard the word “synagogue” come right after the word “Moslem.”

Today, driving back from Bensonhurst we passed Lutheran Hospital on 2nd Avenue. A block or so later, I saw a sign over a restaurant door that read

LUTHERAN HALAL.

Two more words, that, I imagine have never appeared next to each other in the English language. 

Slow Start

Getting off to a slow start this year in terms of birds found. However, with Harlequin Duck yesterday and goldeneyes today we make up with quality what we lose in quantity.

We went to Gravesend Bay this morning despite the bitter, windy conditions to try to find the Mew Gull that's been hanging around for the last week or so. It was a long shot, I knew. When we arrived we met one other birder bundled up to the point where only his nose stuck out of his winter gear...he'd been there 2 hours with no luck and told us others had been there earlier with the same non-result, so I wasn't surprised when we struck out. But the very close looks of the handsome male goldeneyes I took as the consolation prize.

Gravesend Bay

Number of species:     8

Brant     100

American Black Duck     1

Bufflehead     2

Common Goldeneye     4

Red-breasted Merganser     1

Ring-billed Gull     50

Herring Gull     1

Rock Pigeon     9

A New Year of Birding

We started the year off in Nassau County, birding with a good friend who has moved out there. He took us to 2 places, Willow Pond where we saw wigeons, which was a surprise, and Point Lookout, where we were exceedingly happy to find Harlequin Ducks. First because they're great looking ducks--probably in North America they only 2 birds more spectacular, in terms of coloration and pattern are the Painted Bunting and the Wood Duck, and secondly because that means we won't have to venture down to Barnegat Light (see two posts down) and "walk" (you actually hop and jump from rock to rock) on the slippery jetty to see these improbable ducks. Now, if the 69th Street Pier in Bay Ridge can yield Purple Sandpipers, there really won't be any reason to torture ourselves at Barnegat.

Willow Pond

Number of species:     8

Canada Goose     5

American Wigeon     2

American Black Duck     50

Mallard     20

Northern Shoveler     1

Black-crowned Night-Heron     4

Ring-billed Gull     3

Black-capped Chickadee     1

Point Lookout

Number of species:     11

Brant     25

Common Eider     100

Harlequin Duck     8

Surf Scoter     1

Long-tailed Duck     15

Common Loon     2

Horned Grebe     3

Sanderling     3

Ring-billed Gull     X

Herring Gull     3

Great Black-backed Gull     3