It's that time of year when the great flock descends upon my neighborhood in Queens. When I was driving back to the house, the Common Grackle flock was conveniently around the 76th Ave. parking lot in Alley Pond Park. So why not look them over just in case there might be something with a yellow head mixed in? No such look of course, but I did come across a leucistic one at the edge of the flock, where I could get pictures. I can't help but wonder if it's the same one that I saw while doing the local CBC a few years ago. I never did photograph that one, as the weather was darker that day than today, so I hadn't even taken a camera out. But now I do have pictures of a leucistic Common Grackle. If you're interested in seeing what that looks like (leucistic birds are interesting to some - there's even an article in the last Birding magazine), I posted a picture at my web site http://stevewalternature.com/ (click the Birds tab, then Recent Work).
Since it's not a count day, I didn't make an effort to do that. 3000 is often the estimate I go with. And believe it or not, they're not an automatic for the count. They roam around, usually all together, and not necessarily in covered habitats. But for today, they were quite a sight spread across the relatively undisturbed ball fields. In the process of taking that in, I came across a group of 7 American Pipits. Pipits here are not unprecedented, but it's still cool to see grassland birds touching down in a suburban neighborhood. Also present were about 25 Chipping Sparrows. They do nest here. Since I don't often bird on the ball fields, I don't know if these are migrants or they have been here all along. I bring this up because it's been such a terrible sparrow migration so far. A big question in my mind is whether it's been the wind patterns affecting the visible migration or they are just late this year. Steve Walter Bayside, NY -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm 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://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
