My only birding on Saturday was a 45-minute evening walk at Gardiner County Park, sw Suffolk Co.; the highlight was a Yellow-breasted Chat.
Patricia Lindsay and I built on this theme on Sunday morning, when Pat re-found one of two chats we saw last Sunday in the thickets east of Mecox Bay Inlet; found another at Peters Pond, Bridgehampton (and managed the near-miraculous feat of showing it to me a few minutes later); and I found a third along Town Line Rd., between Bridgehampton and Wainscot. We also found an Orange-crowned Warbler at Hook Pond and Common Yellowthroats at Peters Pond and in Wainscot. The annual build-up of chats during early winter in the coastal Northeast, well north of the species' regular breeding range, is one of the marvels of regional ornithology. Among other thicket birds, Gray Catbirds were much more numerous yesterday than one week earlier. Given similar amounts of effort on both days, at many of the same sites, we detected a robust tally of 19 catbirds yesterday, vs. just three birds on 27 Nov. The increase in abundance of catbirds and other half-hardies here at this time of year during some years adds interest to the CBC season: http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/NAB/v055n04/p00499-p00503.pdf There was a large Canada Goose flock on Hook Pond around mid-day, which harbored one Richardson's and two Greater White-fronted Geese. Zero geese were present at Further Lane a few minutes later, but a flock there at dusk looked suspiciously similar to the one seen earlier at Hook Pond, and included single Richardson's and GWF Geese. A short visit to Culloden Pt later in the afternoon yielded two Red-necked Grebes and no fewer than 20 Razorbills, all on the water or feeding--unusually many this far from the ocean. A beautiful Snowy Owl was present again on Hicks Island, in Napeague. To our knowledge, Sunday's sighting was the first there since we found the bird on 20 Nov. I was the only photographer we observed harassing this owl: from about a kilometer away, it turned its head when I tried conversing with some nearby Oldsquaw: https://picasaweb.google.com/109808209543611018404/LongIslandMiscellany2011#5682650727455085186 Shai Mitra Bay Shore ________________________________ Change is in the Air - Smoking in Designated Areas Only in effect.<http://www.csi.cuny.edu/tobaccofree> Tobacco-Free Campus as of July 1, 2012. -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
