Common Nighthawks in Flight
Tonight four Common Nighthawks flew over the Ramble and Turtle Pond. It was nice to see them eating insects after watching two of them perched on Tuesday.
Category: Other Birds
CPW Chimney Swift Roost
After watching two Common Nighthawks at Belvedere Castle on Tuesday evening, I went over to watch the 230 Central Park West Chimney Swift roost. I detailed where and how to watch them two years ago in this post.
I didn’t have the patience to count them all going in, but I suspect there were somewhere between 500 and 1,000.
I’m posting three videos, one at normal speed, one at 50 times speed and one in 1/4 speed in case you want to count them!
Common Nighthawks
This morning two Common Nighthawks were perched between the southern path of Turtle Pond and the 79th Street Transverse. The first was discovered by a participant of Paul Sweet’s American Museum of Natural History walk, and the second was found about about 75 yards east of the first.
While I’ve been seeing Common Nighthawks flying in the park after sunset, it was great to see to perched during the day.
White-eyed Vireo
First seen on Saturday, I finally got to see the White-eyed Vireo that’s been seen at the Butterfly Meadow at the north end of Central Park on Monday afternoon. What a wonderful bird.
North End
I had a great time on Sunday in the north end of Central Park.
The Pool had two unusual ducks for this time of year, a female Hooded Merganser and a female Wood Duck. The Hooded Merganser was unusual as we usually see them later in the fall on the Reservoir.
The Black Locusts at the Compost Heap, had both a Prairie Warbler and a Blackburnian Warbler.
Bryant Park
Bryant Park is a small park by the New York Public Library. It is a green space near the brightly lit buildings of Times Square and ends up attracting many migrating birds who end up making a stop in the park. Rarely, a few of these birds stay the summer, as did two Mourning Warblers this year.
Over the last few days, the park has had two rare visitors, a Marsh Wren and a Yellow-breasted Chat.
While difficult to see with binoculars, if you have a spotting scope, from the western side of the park, you can see the Peregrine Falcon nest box at the top of the MetLife Building at 200 Park Avenue. On the three days, I visited the park, a Peregrine Falcon was perched on the nest box each day.
