Mokka mit Schlag » Birding

Today I woke up at 5:30 AM, grabbed my binoculars, walked upstairs, and ticked off 11 life birds (or 12 if you count a heard only birds) with my morning coffee. The first was a Golden Hooded Tanager. I didn’t get a picture of this one, so how about this shot of number four, a somewhat less impressive but more cooperative Palm Tanager:

Needless to say this wasn’t in the United States. Rather I’m down in Central America at Panama’s Canopy Tower for the next seven days or so.
(more…)

Yesterday morning Doug Gochfeld, the eBird moderator for Kings County, alerted us that an apparent Gray-hooded Gull had been found and photographed on Monday in Coney Island. Apparently it was initially misidentified as a Black-headed Gull–a rare but not mega-rare species around here–so no one paid much attention. It wasn’t until some experts got a look at the photographs to confirm the Black-headed Gull ID that someone realized that this in fact was not a a Black-headed Gull at all at all but instead the Southern Hemisphere species Gray-hooded Gull! A few hardy souls traipsed out to Coney Island yesterday, and around 5:00 PM Shane Blodgett relocated the bird. I heard this around 6:30 PM and decided there wasn’t quite enough light left to make the trek out to Coney Island, which was fortunate because, as I later learned, the bird took off before I could have even left, and only a handful of folks spotted it. The rest were left searching in the rain.

This morning I hear there were upwards of seventy birders scanning the beaches early in the AM. However since the bird had flown off the previous night, and was more likely to be found nearer the second high tide, I decided to hang out in my air conditioned apartment and take the chance that if it was seen again I could get out there fast enough before it took off again.

Around noon, word went out that the bird had just flown in to the same location, so I hopped the S to the Q to Coney Island. I got off at 8th Street/New York Aquarium and walked west down the boardwalk. Somehow I managed to miss the gaggle of birders, and got all the way to 23rd street before I got a phone call telling me to head back east to the Wonder Wheel. And when I arrived, there the bird was, perched on a volleyball pole. Or was it? I swear I couldn’t tell if I was looking at a Laughing Gull or a Gray-hooded Gull. But then the bird took off and flew right past me, and at close range in flight it was a lot more obvious. Bingo! #542. A little later the bird returned and posed for photos:

(more…)

Surely I’ve seen a Common Moorhen before now? Well, yes I have. Many times and on more than one continent. However, the American Ornithological Union has just split the species into 2, Common Gallinule (Gallinula cachinnans) in North America and Common Moorhen, (Gallinula chloropus) in Europe. When I heard this I had to check to see if I’d had the bird in Europe and indeed I had, at least four times on my trip to Munich back in March. In fact. I even managed a bad photo of one at Schloss Nymphenburg:

I didn’t think much of it then, but now it counts as a new life bird.

I just signed up for the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival in November. I picked the five most intense day trips they had, and I still may not see half the sites I want to visit:
(more…)

Lately my life birds have been getting further and further from home: Connecticut, Iceland, Texas, Munich, and Florida. That’s the natural state of things as you gradually fill out the local species, and even local accidentals. My Brooklyn list is over 200 out of 328 total species, and my New York list is around 275 out of a possible 400 or so. However, many of the species I don’t have in New York, I have seen elsewhere so I haven’t felt the need to chase them locally. But surprisingly there are still a few local birds left for me to tick, and one I found today in my home territory of Prospect Park.

I was up on Lookout Hill today with about nine other birders, all enjoying spring migration and the warblers that come with it, when one of them asked me to look at a strange bird he had spotted and didn’t recognize. However, I was having trouble finding it and before I could put my binoculars on it, it took off and flew across our field of view. It was dark and vaguely gull shaped, but no gull. That could mean only one thing: nightjar! But which one?

It was large, seemed almost Ring-billed Gull sized. And it didn’t show any white wingbars in flight. That ruled out the most likely suspect, Common Nighthawk, and left two possibilities: Whip-poor-will and Chuck-will’s-widow. Whip-poor-will is sadly uncommon on Long Island these days, though it used to be more prevalent. Chuck-will’s-widow is relatively easy to find on Staten Island at certain locations, though I’ve never bothered to trek out there at night to listen for it.

The bird returned two more times, each time flying in front of us quickly and then vanishing into a tree. These are incredibly well camouflaged birds in daytime. They are very hard to spot, and we were not able to relocate it even when we saw exactly which tree it flew into. After much fruitless searching, we thought the bird might have sneaked out down the hill away from our view. However the consensus of birders there was that by size alone this was a Chuck-will’s-widow, #540.
(more…)

Today I arrived in Florida for a long weekend at the Alligator Farm. (No Accountemps jokes please.) I was mainly there for a photo workshop, and you can see some of those photos in my Picasa album. However I’d be lying if I said one of the attractions of the site wasn’t a really easy life bird:

(more…)