Spent the morning and all afternoon traversing the Brooklyn shoreline, accessing as many spots as possible to view Upper and Lower New York Bay (also known as Gravesend) and Gowanus Bay. It rained hard at times but the wind was mercifully light and I was able to stay fairly dry with the use of an umbrella.
Highlights were few with the birds in the subject line being most notable. The BLACK-HEADED GULL was sitting on the railing of Veteran's Memorial Pier and there were 2 RED-NECKED GREBE off the Coney Island boardwalk at around 37th street. This is the 3rd time I have seen RN Grebe in this location in the last couple of weeks. The personal highlight for me was a 1st winter GLAUCOUS GULL sitting on the beach at Coney Island about 150 yards east of the fishing pier. This was Kings county lifer #300! A poor digiscoped photo (light was fading and with point and shoot had to use 800 ISO so grainy) is here: http://tinyurl.com/799rktf Funny that at the beginning of 2011 I was at 289 in Brooklyn and thought it would take 2-3 years or more to get to 300 but Hurricane Irene provided me with 7 county lifers in 2 days! There were also 4 CANVASBACKS and 36 BONAPARTE'S GULLS off the 58th Street NY Water Taxi parking pier. Regards, Shane Blodgett Brooklyn NY -- 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/ --
