Henslow's Sparrow, Chuck-wills-widow, and Yellow-throated Warbler ... a Big Memorial Day of Birding

Some Aggressive Year-Listing in New York State

Saturday, May 27 - Cupsogue and Dune Road, Suffolk County

I had three free mornings over Memorial Day this year, the afternoons and evening were chock-a-block with social commitments but the morning were mine, and I was determined to use them.  So up at 5am on Saturday and off to Cupsogue County Park for a morning of coastal birding and hopefully a pile of year birds.

First order of business was a sea-watch.  I am pretty rusty these days as I don't sea-watch nearly as much as I used to, but it didn't take long to get my 'eye in' and there really wasn't all that much happening out there to be honest.  Best seabird by far was a single Sooty Shearwater that whipped by heading East, otherwise the view was just Common Terns, Northern Gannets and Common Loons.  A Black Tern did make a quick appearance, but my hopes of Arctic Tern drew up blank, both here and at the tern roost later.

Dunlins are amazingly cute in breeding plumage

So there are two options to get out to the Shorebird/tern roost at Cupsogue - a short walk through knee-deep muck that sticks to your feet, smells for days, and is full of sharp fragments of clams - or - a slightly longer walk along sandy beaches that involves fording several slightly deeper channels.  I chose the latter and was glad I did because I got to spend some intimate time with some very tame shorebirds.

White-rumped Sandpiper and Ruddy Turnstone

Beyond the common shorebirds and a whole lot of Common Terns and Black Skimmers, there really wasn't a whole lot to see.  I did get a Little Blue Heron (always good in Suffolk County),  Clapper Rail, and a singing Seaside Sparrow.  Not bad in total though, 48 species and a very pleasant start to the weekend.

Barn Swallow and Short-billed Dowitcher

Next stop was Dune Road where I saw a lot of the same things but added a few goodies at Triton Lane where Saltmarsh Sparrow finally surrendered to the year list (after several previous attempts) and I saw another two Clapper Rails (three seen Clapper Rails in a day is never bad).  So by the time I had to head back for a lunch appointment I'd seen 60 species, 7 year birds, and was pretty happy with how this plan was working out.

Common Tern and Red Knot

Sunday, May 28 - Quogue, Suffolk County and Shawangunk, Ulster County

So I thought up this plan, while drunk, on Saturday night.  I got up at 3am (!) and drove over to Quogue to 'do' nightbirds.  First stop was the Dwarf Pines Preserve in West Hampton and in perhaps one of the most shameless pieces of year-listing I've ever done, I pulled into the parking lot, lowered the windows, heard some Eastern Whip-poor-wills, closed the windows, and drove off.

For the next stop in Quogue, I at least gave my target bird the respect of getting out of the car.  Chuck-will's-widows are much scarcer than Eastern Whip-poor-wills in New York State, with perhaps only a hand-full of breeding pairs on Long Island.  The site I stopped at was a traditional site and a 'chuck' had been heard here earlier in the month - I'd also heard this species here on my big year in 2012 - so I was pretty optimistic.  Sure enough, as soon as I got out of the car I heard the "widdle-widdle" call of a Chuck (well that's how they sound to me anyway, I guess the 'chuck' bit doesn't carry as far as the widdles).  All going according to plan ... so back in the car before 5am and a three-hour drive North to Ulster County .... did I mention I was drunk when I though up this plan?

Henslow's Sparrow 

OK, so the Henslow's Sparrow found at Shawangunk earlier this week was bothering me and I really, really, wanted to see this bird ... not sure why, but I did, birding is funny that way.  Perhaps because I'd been there last Saturday and not found it (it was found a few days later on a trail we didn't bird), and perhaps just because they are awesomely cool and I've only ever seen a couple before in 25+ years in New York.  Whatever the reason, I really wanted to see this bird, so off to Shawangunk National Grassland I went, for the second time in two weeks, but this time starting before dawn and a few hours drive further away to the East.

Given that I'd promised to be back for brunch, and had a 4-hour return drive, this trip had to be surgical; I literally had a 30-minute window to get the bird and get back in the car ... and ... it worked out perfectly.

Another shot of Henslow's Sparrow

I got to Shawangunk, and started to hike out to the area that the bird had been seen, but before I even got to the site I could hear the bird singing, and when I got there, a line of giant camera lenses pointed directly to the bird.  Easy!  Plus ... I got bonus Dickcissel and Upland Sandpiper year birds and was back in the car for the drive home after 30 minutes.  Ruthless ... the perfect twitch.

Henslow's Sparrow is a very cool bird though .. they are ...  well .... 'complicated'.  They have a wide range but are nowhere common.  They have ultra specific habitat requirements, which seems to be grassland burned 4 years ago, nothing else will do ... mow the grass every year, no Henslow's.  Then they also have this adorable little song, the bird throws every ounce of it's energy and contorts it's whole body into this song, and what comes out is ... well sort of "twislik" ... how could you not love this species ....

Dickcissel

Monday, May 29 - East Hampton and Great River, Suffolk County

Raining, a lot at 5am, so I really should have gone back to bed, but of course I didn't and ended up getting cold and wet checking three local shorebird spots and seeing ... well not a lot.

Horned Lark

Had time for one last stop on the way in though so, after battling epic Hamptons traffic (Memorial Day and the rain made it perhaps the worst I've ever seen), I nipped in to Bayard Cutting Arboretum in the hopes of getting New York State's only singing Yellow-throated Warbler.

As soon as I got out of the car I could hear a Yellow-throated Warbler singing so I walked across the road and (this so often happens unfortunately) ran into a photographer and his son, who were playing a recording of the bird.
"The bird is right here" he said, and it was, right above them in the tree.
"So why are you playing tape to a breeding bird?" I replied.  "In fact to New York's only pair of breeding Yellow-throated Warblers?".
He sort of mumbled, said he though it was a migrant and that he would stop ... but by the time I got back to the car I could hear him playing again.  This guy with his (hobbyist) mid-price camera gear, was obviously totally focussed on getting a decent shot of this bird, no matter what the cost .... for what end?  A Facebook shot?   Not like this was his livelihood ... but cameras do strange things to people.   A sad way to end a great weekend of birding.  But it was a great weekend of birding.

NYS 2012 Big Year Summary (Part 2)

APRIL
And the Spring migration that I've been waiting for finally gets underway.  This isn't a time for rarities so much, but rather a 'mopping up' operation.  Over the next six weeks I can get most of New York's migrant breeding birds without going too far from home, but each one that I miss requires a trip to look for them in their breeding habitat.  Too many misses and I'll be running around like crazy chasing breeding birds through June instead of focussing on the rare ones.  So through April and May I find myself doing a lot of migrant watching.

I end up getting 56 year-birds in April almost all from New York City parks and the State Parks on the South Shore of Long Island.  Barn Swallow is my 200th species of the year on April 6th and other 'good birds' include a Yellow-throated Warbler at Riverside Park, a Prothonatory Warbler in Bryant Park, several Kentucky Warblers in Central Park and a Golden-winged Warbler in Crocheron Park in Queens.  That bird turns out to be my last add of the month but things are looking pretty good as I head into May with few misses to worry about so far.

Golden-winged Warbler in Queens.  Photo - Corey Finger (used with permission).

Misses are an odd thing to think about as almost anything that I'd missed up until now could feasibly be found later in the year in the 'second winter'.  Come April though a new class of 'permanent' misses appear with Spring overshoot migrants that might not show again and aren't going to give me a second chance.  Fortunately there aren't too many of these this April; a Bullock's Oriole upstate is a one day bird and not chaseable while being lucky enough to see one of the Swallow-tailed Kites that showed up in just that ... luck.  Those two were the worst of my April misses so I actually considered myself to have done pretty well.

MAY
Is my absolute favorite month of the year in Eastern North America (and large chunks of the Palearctic too for that matter).  Migration is at full force and life seems to be flooding back to every habitat in our area.  It's a month that I could happily be outdoors in Nature every single day, and this year I think I might just well have been.

May started with a good vagrant bird for my 250th bird of the year - a breeding plumage male Yellow-headed Blackbird which had set up territory near Binghamton.  It also included my 300th bird when I managed to levy my local network Out East to track down a calling Northern Bobwhite on the North Fork of Long Island.  In total I added 57 new year birds in May, ending up at 306 and feeling really positive about breaking the record.

On the record front, by now I was pretty much openly acknowledging that I planned to try to break the New York State big year record and had even given an interview to Corey Finger at 10,000 Birds that said as much.  Things seemed to be going well and once again I missed very few birds - a Swainson's Hawk and a possible Swainson's Warbler being the most notable misses.  It was also a lot of fun racking up such big numbers of year birds day-after-day.  You get  a lot of endorphins from checking things off a list.

The almost mythical Henslow's Sparrow - crappy shot, great bird.

Other May highlights included a lot of time out at night on Long Island failing to find Black Rails but hearing lots of Eastern Whip-poor-wills and successfully tracking down one of New York State's few breeding Chuck-wills-widows.  I also chased down Upland Sandpipers at Blue Chips Farm, Bicknell's Thrush at Whiteface Mountain,  Henslow's Sparrow at Perch River, and Arctic Tern at Cupsogue Flats. On the vagrant front I finally caught up with a White-faced Ibis at Jamaica Bay after many, many hours of searching, only to have Shai Mitra then find another one about 400 yards from my house in Northwest Harbor (!).  I also got Mississippi Kites, a bird I was fretting about bumping into, when a pair showed up and started to build a nest at Sterling Forest.

Coming out of May I was in pretty good shape with a very defined list of breeding birds still to hunt down and a fair amount of time to do it before shorebird season kicked off in July.

JUNE
Involved a lot of miles as I slogged back and for across the North Country trying to track down those scarce, or even semi-mythical, breeders that are often the envy of many a New York Birder.

Spruce Grouse (a small and declining relict population hang on in the Adirondacks) became something of an obsession and 'Hunting the Snark' as I came to call it took me to these mountain bogs, and fed a lot of mosquitos, three times this month.  I had good intel from local birders and research scientists, including the location of a breeding pair, but it still took me six long days of searching before I finally bumped into a mother and young at Spring Pond Bog.

The Snark!  Or Spruce Grouse.  A lot of hours went into this bird.

Other long-haul trips netted me breeding King Rail in Western New York and Northern Goshawk near Potsdam, but I failed miserably in my attempt to track down a Gray Partridge that Chris Wood had seen in Amish Country near Perch River.  Shorebirds also started a bit early with a Curlew Sandpiper at Pike's Beach and a Ruff at Montezuma.  I felt really good about this last bird having raced up there as soon as I heard about it and got the bird late in the day.  Sure, it was a 14-hour round trip but surely this would be the only Ruff seen in New York this year .... and then Andrew Baksh found 4 or 5 this Summer at Jamaica Bay (details of several Ruffs here at Birding Dude - Andrew Baksh's most excellent blog).

Curlew Sandpiper at Pike's Beach.  This was my first digi-phone shot and I was quite encouraged
but I haven't been able to get much in terms of results since.

Perhaps the best bird of the month though, and certainly the best bird that I found myself this year, was a total and complete surprise.  I'd been debating how to get offshore to look for Pelagic Birds.  Richard Fried in his record breaking year, had been taken offshore several times by Angus Wilson and John Shemilt and had managed several really good birds.  I was pretty sure this was not going to happen for me when I finally worked out who John Shemilt was and realized the he was the guy I yelled at for driving his truck all over the shorebird flats at Mecox.  So I was pretty much on my own.  While June was early for seabirds, in past years I had seen a lot of jaegers and shearwaters South of Montauk while fly-fishing for Mako Sharks (all catch-and-release).  So, chartering a shark-boat and captain, I headed off and spent a day chumming in and around the shark fleet about 30-miles South of Eastern Long Island.  And we had quite simply the most amazing day of sea-birding that I've ever had in New York waters.

Cory's Shearwater looking very imposing and close to the boat.

To cut a long story short we had all three Jaeger Species and hundreds of shearwaters often up close to the boat.  By the time we had to head back to Montauk I couldn't imagine a better day of birding and then .... a Fea's Petrel flew close by the boat!  Luckily the captain was able to pursue the petrel and I was able to get some shots because no-one would have believed me had I not got photos.  A first record for New York State and a truly awesome bird.  With Fea's Petrel, Spruce Grouse and Curlew Sandpiper in New York in the same week this truly was a 'purple patch' and perhaps the highlight of the year.  The Summer, and almost all the sea-birding I did after that were certainly a bit of an anticlimax.

The Fea's Petrel, a first for New York State.

Do Henslow's Sparrows really exist in New York?

I saw my life Henslow's Sparrow in Pennsylvania in 1992.  Relatively newly arrived in the US, my friend Jim Shoemaker invited me out to get a my life bird at a breeding site that he knew near his childhood home near Wilkes-Barre.  We went out, arrived at the site at dawn, and quickly had great scope views of the birds singing while sitting up in the grass.  I saw a few more birds a little later that Spring.  Not so tough really, not sure what the big deal is .....

Fast forward 20-years and come the Spring of 2012, I hadn't seen another one since.  So I knew I'd have to do some work if I wanted one for my New York year list.   To cut a long story short, I put in some miles and some hours and I've had 5 Henslow's "experiences" so far this year.  Today I officially declared victory and stopped trying to get better views.  Henslow's turns out to be the most mercurial and frustrating of birds.  Perhaps that first day was a fluke after all.

May 22nd - Triangle Road: late in the day with Joan Collins and Richard Fried.  Joan can hear Henslow's Sparrows and now Richard can hear them too.  I can't hear them.  Or can I?  What does a grasshopper fart sound like?  Are they similar?  Eventually I get on what the others are hearing and it does sound good, but I'd really like a look at a bird.  We spend a fair amount of time there but we don't see any birds, and even though I'm more comfortable with the calls, I pronounce the whole thing a most unsatisfying experience and head back to the mountains to get back to the serious business of not seeing Spruce Grouse.

June 2nd - Dog Hill Road: with Benjamin Van Doren.   We get to the Perch River site mid-morning and we don't hear any Henslow's Sparrows, despite others having reported them recently.  I know that Benjamin has been skeptical about the Triangle Road site but agree to run up there anyway.  We get there mid day and we don't hear any Henslow's Sparrows there either.  Benjamin says the habitat looks wrong and can barely contain his skepticism.  Henslow's Sparrow would be a life bird for him.  I think they're punishing his lack of faith and sitting tight-lipped just out of view.

June 12th - Dog Hill Road: an impromptu side-trip on the way from Rochester to NYC (it's only an hour or two out of the way, each way) inspired by Chris Wood's recent Gray Partridge sighting.  It has been raining all morning and by the time I get to Perch River it really doesn't look like its going to be letting up any time soon.  When I pull into the Gray Partridge site (which is also the Henslow's site) I have low expectations, but even though its raining, there's a Henslow's Sparrow singing in the field.  I listen for a while, get out of the car, get soaked, get back in the car, and decide to call it a day and head South.  The rain is now torrential and the six-hour drive South is miserable.

July 10th - Dog Hill Road: it's dusk and I'm cruising slowly along the road hoping for Chris Wood's famous Gray Partridge (famous in my imagination at least).  As I pull into the small parking lot I'm surprised to hear a Henslow's Sparrow calling loudly and close to the road.  I get out and listen, perhaps a second one calling too, and then flight views and a brief perched view.  How very cooperative!  With the light fading though, the camera stays in the car and I resign myself to a 4am alarm call, hoping that they'll be sitting up and singing early in the morning.

July 11th - Dog Hill Road:  fortified by Ramada Inn instant coffee, I head out early and get to Perch River at around 5am.  As I pull up to the site with the windows open, I can hear Henslow's Sparrows singing from the car.  I jump out, walk over the edge of the grass closest to the nearest of two singing birds, and turn on the camera.  After a lot of squinting, many mosquito bites, and a few position changes, I spot the bird, point the camera, and take about 100 completely out-of-focus shots!  In the low light my auto-focus just can't distinguish the small brown streaky sparrow from the large brown streaky field of grass.  But as the light improves, the camera gets a bit smarter and I manage to get the all important "proof" shot (below).

Henslow's Sparrow

So the last two days, the birds were positively easy - sitting out in the open (ish), singing loudly, and hanging out close to the road.  On other visits to the same site, there was not even a hint of the birds.  Perhaps the low light (dusk, dawn, heavy rain) helps a lot, or perhaps the bird is just mercurial.  Either way, I'm sure they're under-recorded, and that there are more out there to be found.  I do have to admit though that I've actually grown quite fond of them during this whole process.