Monday, August 17, 2009

A Few Notes From Here & There

Sunrise at the Reed's Beach jetty this morning produced a number of shorebirds along the beach during a high tide, including over two dozen Semipalmated Plovers... otherwise, it was fairly quiet. A Peregrine made an appearance here last night.

A brief stop at the Stone Harbor Bird Sanctuary failed to produce any obvious passerine migrants, aside from a handful of Eastern Kingbirds. A Willow Flycatcher was singing its heart out in the marshy area in the front of the sanctuary. The new trails into the sanctuary offer some great opportunities to check out this really cool piece of property, and should provide some excellent birding as songbird migration continues to pick up. Afterward, a stop on Nummy Island produced a single Tricolored Heron among a few dozen Great and Snowy Egrets feeding together.

A brief loop through the first two fields at Higbee turned up a couple dozen more Kingbirds, several fly-over flocks of Bobolinks, five Gnatcatchers, four Redstarts and a Northern Waterthrush. It should be noted that mosquitoes far outnumbered the total number of all birds seen.

Lastly, some time spent atop the Hawk Watch platform at the State Park revealed both Caspian and Gull-billed Terns, a distant Cooper's Hawk (probably the same seen on the Meadows walk), five juvenile Lesser Yellowlegs and a couple of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds.

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