This morning there was a Laughing Gull foraging well to the south in Gravesend Bay, viewed from the middle parking area along the Belt Parkway. Later on in the morning, another or the same Laughing Gull was standing on a derelict barge in Coney Island Creek.
In between, I was at the western end of the Coney Island boardwalk, and got to watch the annual Long-tailed Duck spectacle, which starts building around mid-winter, and generally peaks around mid-March. I counted/estimated 3,600 Long-tailed Ducks, mostly concentrated to the west, SW of the tip of Sea Gate. I saw over a thousand earlier in the morning from the parking area under the Verrazano Bridge, but these were almost certainly part of the big flock I saw later (That area is viewable from several publicly accessible vantages, but the closest is the Coney Island/Sea Gate area). One nice thing about today's viewing was that they were closer than they often are, and so I was able to enjoy the variety of plumages (which included many males in their dark summer garb), rather than just a swarm of very distant Long-tailed Duck-shaped things. There were also some really distant individuals out towards Breezy Point, and there is probably a decent-sized contingent out there off the Point as well, though impossible to quantify from Brooklyn. Good Birding -Doug Gochfeld. 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/ --
