I WAS going to go bird watching this morning but...

Odd Ducks in Prospect Park

There are "countable" birds and " not countable" birds. Birders pretty much focus on "countable" birds and let the domestic ducks go by without really looking at them. Still, they're there, and some of them are great looking. This is a Cayuga Duck, which has been bred from Black Ducks. It is supposed to be good eating. No one knows how it got in the lake, but it probably didn't fly there. It was likely someone's pet. Or rejected dinner. It's been in Prospect Park lake going on two years now and I think it's been breeding with either the Mallards or the Black Ducks. I couldn't find a hybrid example today, but they're there.

Now these guys, I don't know what they are, they look like sepia prints of Mallards. The more I look around the park the  more I find. I suppose they're Mallard/domestic hybrids, but for all I know, they could be back-crosses from Mallard/Black Duck hybrids. I think the ones with the dark heads and green bills are males and the one that look more completely monotone, females.

Peculiar as these birds look, they are nothing compared to the ducks at Clove Lake Park on Staten Island. Those ducks look like the mutant survivors of a nuclear holocaust--mottled, tufted, bumpy--some are repulsive, some weirdly beautiful.

Article in Brooklyn Paper about Swans (Yeesh!)

In which I am quoted. I cleverly recycled the Hatfield/McCoy|Capulet/Montague analogies into my quote.
http://tinyurl.com/ppswans

Waterfowl Count

Did the Prospect Park portion of the NYSOA waterfowl count this morning. The picture shows the boathouse pond--mostly Mallards, a couple of Black Ducks, and if you look real hard, there is the lonely little Wood Duck, our "save" as Peter (Kings County organizer) calls it, because it will probably be the only one in the county. (If you click on the image, you'll get a larger, albeit somewhat blurrier view.)

I counted with another birder whom I'd seen around the park but was never formally introduced to until today. She is quite intimate with the swans in the parks, knows the sagas of the 2 families--sort of an avian Hatfield-McCoy feud in which a truce has apparently been called--and surprised me with her count of 8 swans, since all winter I'd only been coming up with 6. She told me that 2 more swans had flown in very recently. How they'll mix in with the other 6 remains to be seen, but, judging from swan behavior I've observed, it will not be pretty. Especially now that most of the lake and the boathouse pond and all of the Lullwater are frozen, there is not a lot of room for these big birds to stake out their territory. But that might not be a problem until nesting season begins. Who knows, maybe the cygnets from each family will find each other and we'll have a Capulet-Montague story instead.

Our "official" count for the day:

Time: 8:45 to 10:15  1/17/10

Canada Goose     235

Mute Swan     8

Wood Duck     1

American Black Duck     10

American Black Duck x Mallard (hybrid)     1

Mallard     312

Northern Shoveler     13

Bufflehead     1

Ruddy Duck     18

American Coot     13

One Canada Goose had a yellow neckband of NA08.

Other ducks we can’t count: 1 Cayuga Duck, 1 “chocolate duck” hybrid, 11 caramel colored ducks that look like domestic/mallard crosses.

Owl

As you know, if you're following this blog closely, there is a Northern Saw-whet Owl in Prospect Park. You also don't know where it is, because if I told you I'd have to kill you, although you are apparently the only person who doesn't know where it is, since every birder I talk to in the park is aware of its location.

I was in the park Monday and sought out the bird with no luck. Maybe it had moved on, I thought. But then, checking eBird, I saw that it had been reported that day. So today, I went back to the location, peered into the trees and found nothing. Okay, so now, maybe it was gone, but no, I ran into the guy who originally showed me the bird and he said that it was still there, same tree, same branch.

Now I was starting to take this as a personal failing. Am I such a lousy birder that I can't find an 8" owl 80 feet up in deep green pine needles? If I didn't find that stinking owl again, I don't know if my pride could have withstood the blow.

So I trudged back to the--oops, almost told you where it is--found the owl poop on the ground, stood back a few feet and scanned the branches. Right next to a bunch of dead leaves that had gotten caught in the pine tree was another, round, brown shape--the owl.

I guess I forgot that the first time I saw the owl I mistook the dead leaves for the owl, then when I finally found the owl, figured I'd never really seen brown leaves at all--after all, why would dead leaves be in an evergreen? But they are and the owl is roosting on its branch; if I showed it to you, you'd have a hard time believing it's the owl, you'd just think it was more dead leaves. However, dead leaves hardly ever look back at you.

I also added Rusty Blackbird to my Kings County, New York State, and United States lists. The only time, I'd seen them before was in Canada. They were easy to identify today, because it is in the winter that the blackbirds are RUSTY.

I was also scouting today for waterfowl, since I've volunteered to do the annual NYSOA waterfowl count on Sunday in the park. The Wood Duck is still on the Boathouse Pond, out in the open, which is really unusual for that species. The lake has all the expected species. Happily they don't care about gulls in this count because there are anywhere from 700 to 2000 gulls on the lake ice and counting them accurately is extremely difficult since they tend to suddenly swirl up and fly around before landing on a different part of the ice. The ducks, geese, swans and coots are relatively placid.

Prospect Park

Number of species:     33

Canada Goose     204

Mute Swan     6

Wood Duck     1     Boathouse Pond

American Black Duck     6

Mallard     245     Boathouse Pond: 49, balance on Lake

Northern Shoveler     36

Ruddy Duck     11

Red-tailed Hawk     1     Peninsula

American Coot     16

Ring-billed Gull     700

Herring Gull     2

Great Black-backed Gull     1

Rock Pigeon     X

Mourning Dove     22     Feeders

Northern Saw-whet Owl     1     Ravine

Red-bellied Woodpecker     2     Lily Pond

Downy Woodpecker     7     Feeders, Lily Pond

Hairy Woodpecker     1     Breeze Hill

Blue Jay     10

American Crow     27     In peninsula trees and on the ice on the lake

Black-capped Chickadee     3     Feeders and near Lily Pond

Tufted Titmouse     4     One @ Feeders, 2 near Lily Pond, 1 near Nethermead bridge.

Red-breasted Nuthatch     1     Feeders

White-breasted Nuthatch     3     Feeder, Lily Pond, Nethermead Bridge

Brown Creeper     1     Breeze Hill

European Starling     25

White-throated Sparrow     50

Dark-eyed Junco     5     Feeders

Northern Cardinal     10

Red-winged Blackbird     1     Female at Feeders

Rusty Blackbird     2     Near bridge by Lily Pond

House Finch     3     Feeders

American Goldfinch     7     One of the males in full breeding plumage!

Perspective

When I stretch my arms above my head
My fingers splayed
I touch the grasshopper’s sky.

Possible States of Being

Oh, I could be ecstatic.

Or I could be aesthetic.

Or I could be ascetic.

Or I could be acidic.

Or I could be Hassidic.