Mokka mit Schlag

Bumble, Prospect Park’s Famous White Squirrel

A belated announcement of a milestone in my home county. On July 20, 2024 at Plumb Beach, Brown Pelican was my 300th species for Kings County. I saw this pair on a Brooklyn Bird Club field trip led by Peter Dorosh.

The count does not included escapees and hybrids. It does include introduced and established species like Monk Parakeet, Mute Swan, and the ubiquitous Rock Pigeon.

I initially thought this was #299, but I didn’t realize I was not counting a Thick-Billed Murre I had seen in Dead Horse Bay back in 2005 before I started keeping regular eBird lists.
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I’ve had a little more time for local birding this year. I actually managed to get my sixth (and final expected) woodpecker for Brooklyn on February 8, a Red-headed Woodpecker that has set up housekeeping in Greenwood Cemetery:

This is months earlier than I’ve traditionally done it, but thanks to global heating and the fossil fuel industry, Northern Flickers and Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers are now spending the winter here. Red-bellied Woodpecker is another traditionally southern species, especially in the winter, that moved northward with rising temperatures decades ago. Downy and Hairy are the only two that should be around right now. I even heard a repeated double tap in Prospect Park today and looked around because, well, you never know.
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I’m trialing On1 PhotoRaw 2025 as a possible non-subscription Lightroom replacement, but it’s not looking good. PhotoRaw isn’t as hideously clunky as Canon Digital Photo Professional, but it’s still far behind the state of the art. It has security issues, has much worse file and album management compared to Lightroom, and makes a lot of UI mistakes we should have put aside 40 years ago. Medium gray text on dark gray background? Seems On1 really doesn’t want people to read the labels, do they?
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My life list for Jefferson Parish is embarrassingly low given that it’s where I grew up. Part of that is that the East Bank where I lived doesn’t have a lot of good habitat, even compared to adjacent Orleans Parish. If I ever get down to Grand Isle, I should pick up a bunch of species, but for now it’s been a slog of chasing one or two species at a time. Last week there were maybe three I could have gotten without crossing the river. I tried for two and found one after a couple of tries: Savannah Sparrow.

I found this one on the last morning of my trip at the Bucktown Marina, which is rapidly developing into a really nice hot spot with some good habitat. It is a shame that most of the rest of the Jefferson Parish lakefront has been mowed into oblivion. It had far more interesting brushy habitat when I was living there last century. Who else remembers Mr. Walter’s Park? I never did find out who Mr. Walters was. Now I wish I had met him.