The New York State Young Birders Club visited Nickerson Beach this morning, with Mary Normandia, Pat Lindsay, and me there to help out. This was 13 years after the group's very first field trip, to Jamaica Bay:
http://nysyoungbirders.org/articles/tripreports/JamaicaBay2008_0816.htm This year's trip was also scheduled for Jamaica Bay, but we changed venue because recent rains had rendered the East Pond difficult for birding. Our backup choice of Nickerson Beach was richly reward by a great variety of birds; but the astonishing highlight was a North Atlantic Right Whale, swimming west to east offshore, slapping its pectoral fin and revealing one of its flukes, repeatedly, around 9:00. The Young Birders are highly skilled with their cameras and acquired excellent documentation (while I ogled the creature in disbelief, noting its ginkgo-leaf pectoral fins, fin-less dorsum, and bizarre callosities). Nickerson Beach monitors Brien and Paul alerted the marine mammal community, and theses experts would not have believed us were it not for the photos. These are courtesy of young birder Rio: https://flic.kr/p/2mk8vZn Shai Mitra Bay Shore -- 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/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/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/ --
