Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
Fall Migration is in full swing and Central Park is full of warblers, thrushes, and fly-catchers. One of the fun migrants is the Ruby-thoated Hummingbird, that loves the necter of the Jewelweed plants in the park.
Category: Other Birds
Red Crossbills, Day 2
On Saturday, I was able to study the Red Crossbills more closely. The flock made a circuit about every half hour that included trees in the upper lawn area of Shakespeare Garden and a small mud flat in the Upper Lobe.
The Crossbills had a wonderful way of extracting the seeds from the cones. It was pluck a cone and then, work the cone from the bottom, extract one seed, husk the seed, spin the cone, and repeat until you need to fetch another cone. It reminded me of how humans eat artichokes!
Red Crossbill
Today, thanks to the excellent birding skills of Jacob Drucker which were followed up on by Anders Peltomaa, many NYC birders got to enjoy a flock of Red Crossbills in Central Park. The light made photographing them tough, but it was enjoyable to watch them. The Red Crossbills are a new bird for my life list.
The video has regular and slow motion clips of the Red Crossbills extracting seeds for cones. The Red Crossbills were identified as the Type 3 subspecies using recordings made by Anders Peltomaa, by Matthew Young and Andrew Farnsworth, the flight-call-wizards of Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This subspecies specializes in smaller and softer cones from trees such as Spruce, Fir and Hemlock.
Réserve Naturelle des Sept-Iles, Bretagne, France
On vacation in Brittany, France, I discovered a wonderful two hour cruise to a nature preserve, off of Pleumeur-Bodou. The cuise visits a set of islands that host breeding puffins and gannets, that this year is celebrating its centenial as a nature preserve.
The puffins had already left for the season, but hundreds of Northern Gannets were still raising young on one of the islands. Other birds and mammals seen on the trip were European Oystercatchers, Herring Gulls, Gray Seals, European Shags and a single Peregrine Falcon.
Singing Sparrow
Over the weekend, I relaxed an hour outside of New York City as a guest of friends with a house on Long Island Sound. They had a wonderfully vocal sparrow that reminded me how the simplest of birds can be fascinating if you take the time to study them.
Kentucky Warbler
Kentucky Warblers are rare in New York City, and their skulking habits make them that much harder to find. The excellent birders of Central Park have been keeping track of one for three days near the Swedish Cottage.
I was fortunate to see the Kentucky Warbler twice today. I didn’t get any great photographs, but was able to capture enough detail to prove I had seen it! It was a life bird for me.
