I spent a full day out east on Long Island today doing mostly scouting for some upstate friends who will be visiting to bird in the area. While I did not pull out anything other than the expected species for this time of the year, I did thoroughly enjoy searching.
Starting at Cupsogue this AM, where a Seawatch was mostly uneventful - Richard Kaskan, reported the lone highlight was a Northern Gannet which showed up before I arrived. The prospect of doing a "death" watch with North winds was not appealing and so I found myself on the flats with Richard in tow. Highlights were: A stonking looking adult BLACK TERN which Richard and I had with another birder (whose name I did not get), just before a Peregrine Falcon strafed the flats and put everything up. Other notables on the flats were a couple of banded Piping Plovers, including "MOO" and a few second summer Forster's Terns. On the rising tide, the adult Black Tern returned to the flats and provided very nice views while preening and loafing with the other terns. Around 2:30 p.m. I began birding Pikes Beach and spent just under 4 hours working the area. The number of shorebirds were way down from last week and the diversity was poor. In the end, all I managed was to pick out 2 flagged birds from the shorebirds that were present. Leaving Pikes, I began a seawatch at Shinnecock around 6:45 p.m. which lasted to 8:00 p.m. Highlights were 5 Sooty Shearwaters and 1 Cory's Shearwater. I'll have photos of some of the Terns online for viewing in the next few days for those who might be interested. Cheers, Andrew Baksh www.birdingdude.blogspot.com A seawatch at Shinnecock Inlet from 7 to 8:15 pm produced 1 Manx Shearwater heading east, 35 Wilson's Storm-Petrels, and a Parasitic Jaeger harassing Common Terns, plus the other usual suspects. Tom Burke and Gail Benson -- 風 Swift as the wind 林 Quiet as the forest 火 Conquer like the fire 山 Steady as the mountain Sun Tzu <http://refspace.com/quotes/Sun_Tzu> *The Art of War* <http://refspace.com/quotes/The_Art_of_War> (\__/) (= '.'=) (") _ (") Andrew Baksh www.birdingdude.blogspot.com -- 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/ --
