The week in Review part 2

So on Sunday I had a fairly unusual opportunity - I was able to meet up with a friend who I have shown around Kakadu and Cape York (and met in Broome), to finally give them a chance to show me around their own stomping ground. I took a train out to Scarsdale and we drove from their into Connecticut to a place called Greenwich Point Park. It turns out my friend had organised our outing to conicide with a local Audubon group's field trip. I had a blast. It was great to catch up with Livia, but it was also an amazing opportunity to learn identification of the local birds, particularly gulls and sparrows. The morning had several highlights - the feeders in the park produced a number of woodland birds including a few new ones for me - Black-capped Chickadee and Hairy Woodpecker. As I said before, I'm really enjoying seeing the woodpeckers, and it was great to get a chance to see Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers side-by-side to see the subtle but definite differences in the two species. We had a few kinds of sparrows in the area too. I saw Song Sparrow and White-throated Sparrow well enough to identify, and saw a Savannah Sparrow duck into rocks but couldn't see the ID features (my companions identified the bird on features I couldn't see in time). The chickadee was a thrill for a whole different reason. Those of you who know me well enough might remember a t-shirt I wear occasionally that has a pair of birds on the front. Those birds are Black-capped Chickadees, and it was special to finally see some in real life. Of course I joke that they look like Great Tits (a bird found in England), so it looks like....eh, I'm sure you get it. Bird jokes, yeah...




Moving on. After our trip to the feeders (cut short by a dog illegally off its leash in the bird sanctuary) we headed out to the coastline. This is where things started to get very interesting. A Great Cormorant caused a bit of excitement among our hosts, so I gather it must be unusual for the area, or at least for the time of year. Horned Grebe were mucking around in the ocean nearby, and way out to sea we saw Red-fronted Mergansers and a single Common Loon. Further around the beach we started seeing a lot of gulls - mostly Herring Gull initially, but then many Ring-billed Gulls as well. Probably the most exciting bird of the day was a brief fly-by from a Bonaparte's Gull. I didn't get long to see it, but I clearly saw the white panels in the wings that are apparently diagnostic. Add in the Greater Black-Backed Gull and we had four gulls in a day, a feat which is nearly impossible in Australia, but evidently not too difficult over here. In amongst the gulls were around 30 Ruddy Turnstones, something which surprised me - I thought the waders would all be gone by now, but I'm assured some Turnstones and Purple Sandpipers (which we didn't see) overwinter in the area. Hooded and Common Merganser, Long-tailed Duck and Buffleheads rounded out our sea-going waterfowl for the morning, all of w hich were new bird for me. I missed a Belted Kingfisher that passed by (I saw a silhouette in flight so I can't really count it), but did see a Great Blue Heron and a Great Egret which really shouldn't have been there anymore but obviously hadn't yet migrated.



We rounded out the day chasing a vagrant Yellow-throated Warbler that was allegedly visiting someone's feeder nearby. I say allegedly because although the bird was seen at 7am the day we were there, by the afternoon it was nowhere to be found. We did have a nice chat with the owner of the house whose feeder it was, but eventually cold and the realisation that a Cooper's Hawk was hanging around the area drove us away.

Livia and I finished the day out having lunch in a hole-in-the-wall place in Scarsdale that was so busy people were standing waiting for tables for over half an hour. We sat at the counter and the food was definitely worth the inconvenience. All in all it was a great day.

For those interested, I saw the following birds in Connecticut on this trip:
Canada Goose
Brant Goose
Mallard
American Black Duck
Ruddy Duck
Long-tailed Duck
Bufflehead
Common Goldeneye
Hooded Merganser
Red-breasted Merganser
Common Merganser
Common Loon
Horned Grebe
Double-crested Cormorant
Great Cormorant
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Cooper's Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk
Ruddy Turnstone
Bonaparte's Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
Greater Black-Backed Gull
Town Pigeon
Mourning Dove
Monk Parakeet
Belted Kingfisher (silhouette only)
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
American Crow
Black-capped Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
White-breasted Nuthatch
American Robin
Northern Mockingbird
Common Starling
Savannah Sparrow (too fast to ID)
Song Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Northern Cardinal
House Finch
American Goldfinch
House Sparrow