I had a nice look at a Great Horned Owl today in upper Manhattan. I arrived to the sound of American Crows calling, and they led me to the correct spot. There were a few birders already there and they pointed out the tree the bird was in. I had hoped to stay for fly out, but as the sun went down I started to get too cold, even with long johns on.
Thanks to a report from Alice Deutsch this morning, I saw the American Woodcock in Union Square this afternoon.
The woodcock rested in some ivy for about 90 minutes before being harassed by a Brown Rat. Eventually, it needed to fly from a fairly protected area to a fenced off plaza. Luckily, it was dark enough that the local Cooper’s Hawk didn’t see it.
I had a wonderful year birding in New York County this year. I ended up with 180 species.
Thank you to the Discord Manhattan-RBA and Manhattan-Chat admins, GroupMe Manhattan *RARE* Bird Alert and Manhattan Common Bird Alert admins, and the eBird reviewers for the county.
Thanks also go to my fellow birders, who reported birds, answered questions, etc. I learned a lot this year from so many different people.
I recently found out I could summarize in one PDF all of the images I had submitted to eBird, which are usually pictures needed to support a rare bird sighting. It’s a great collection of images that shows the rich diversity of avian life. You can view it my clicking on the image below. Clicking on any of the images will bring up information about the bird and the image on eBird.
Thank again and Happy New Year,
Bruce
This week Horned Larks have been on both Randall’s Island and Governors Island. Today, I caught up with the ones on Governors Island. They were eating grass seeds on the ballfields.
Four Horned Larks have stuck around Randalls Island out of two larger groups that had been seen both on Randall’s Island and Governors Island a few days earlier.
It had snowed and they were eating grass seeds in the bare patches of the snow along the eastern edge of the ballfields in the northeast end of the island. They were a bit skittish, and I got my best pictures digiscoping and staying 100 feet from them.
A Dickcissel that was first seen in a birder’s backyard on a BirdCam feeder Harlem and now in Riverside Park was very cooperative today. It was on the ground and sometimes on a small bird feeder about 50 feet south of the Tennis Center bathrooms.
It was a great bird to watch on a cold fall day. The winds from the Hudson made it even colder!
