Needing to drop my son off at the Orient Point Ferry for his trip back to college, we took advantage of the beautiful weather to bird the Arshamomaque Preserve, located just west of Greenport, on LI's North Fork.
Yellow-rumped warblers were common everywhere. At the intersection of the main trail and the trail to the observation tower, in front of the large stand of winterberry, we hit an active patch of foraging migrants which commanded our attention for half an hour. Species seen included a parula and black-throated blue warbler (females in both cases), an eastern towhee, a downy woodpecker, a lone brown creeper living up to its name, affording great close up views, and numerous golden-crowned and ruby-crowned kinglets. If we didn't have a ferry to catch we probably would have seen more. It was also nice to see several specimens of swamp white oak (Quercus bicolor), growing along the tower trail; swamp white oak is an uncommon oak species on Long Island. It was a wonderful day at one of the Island's wonderful, but lesser known preserves. John Turner -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
