During this week’s cold snap and snow, a Pine Warbler has been consistently showing up at the feeders in the Evodia field in Central Park. It’s a nice bright bird and very cooperative, eating mostly at either of the two suet feeders.

There were three American Herring Gulls with bands on the Central Park Reservoir this afternoon. All the auxiliary makers, colored leg bands, appeared to be orange with black lettering, on the left leg, “below the knee”.

Update: Over the last few days, I’ve seen more banded gulls, both Ring-billed and American Herring species. Here are the ones I’ve seen so far. As I get responses back, I’ll update where and when they were banded. What has been interesting is that none of the bands have repeated, which means we’re getting lots of different gulls cycling through the reservoir on each day.

Bird 1 – C71

Bird 2 – 100

Bird 3 – Numbers are unclear, possibly V67

Central Park’s Reservoir has had a Black-headed Gull for the last few days. Originally found by Leo Wexler-Mann on Friday and relocated by Julius on Saturday. It is a small gull with red legs and a red to black bill. During the winter, especially as lakes and rivers freeze upstate, the reservoir has rare visitors. We should have more as the temperatures drop this week.

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.