The Dipping Curse Continues ....

A good weekend on Long Island and Another Dip in the West of New York

Saturday, September 24th - Long Island

Birding today with Corey Finger and Carlos Sanchez who was visiting from Florida.  Started out at Jamaica Bay, and while things started slow, it ended up being a pretty solid day.

Started late and caught up with Carlos and Corey a fair way up the East Pond.  They hadn't seen much of note and were generally belly-aching about the lack of decent birds.  There were a group of CASPIAN TERNS on the Pond (a bird I'd only added to my Queens list a few weeks before) but not much in the way of good shorebirds.

Caspian Tern

Turning around though, we started to add a few good birds on the way back South, including a couple of close STILT SANDPIPERS, and few WESTERN SANDPIPERS and then a really interesting BARID'S SANDPIPER.  This last bird was an ABA bird for Carlos (he'd seen them before only in Ecuador) so his mood was transformed.  The bird also seemed to be injured and only has one eye, making us wonder how it was going to make it down to Argentina.  Out concerns were well founded it turns out as we heard later that the bird was caught at eaten by a pair of hunting Peregrines not long after we left.

Stilt Sandpiper (above) / Western Sandpiper (below)

The unfortunate, one-eyed, Baird's Sandpiper during the last couple of
hours of it's life.

After Jamaica Bay, we hit Jones Beach then rushed out to Riverhead, hoping to catch up on all the grassland shorebirds that had been seen regularly the week or so before.  Unfortunately, they all seemed to have left the area for points South so we gave in, parted ways and Carlos and I headed out to East Hampton to join friends if mine for an amazing dinner in Sag Harbor (who doesn't like Portuguese Seafood Stew?).

Highlight of my weekend ...

Sunday, September 25th - Suffolk County

A very pleasant morning birding some of the hotspots in The Hamptons.  Late Least Terns, lots of Royal Terns, Saltmarsh Sparrow, and Clapper Rails all made for a good morning.  Bird of the day however was a migrant SORA, Suffolk County Bird number 315 for me (and day you get a County Bird in your home county is a good day!).  Then back to the City to pack Carlos off to warmer climes for the Winter.

Friday, September 30th - Cayuga / Tomkins Counties

While we were on Long Island, as inevitably happens, a good bird was found (or in this case re-found) upstate.  A BROWN BOOBY was pinned down on Cayuga Lake and, anyone who knows me knows that this species if fast becoming my New York State Bogey/Nemesis Bird.  So, with a quiet calendar, and daily sightings of the bird, I took a day off on Friday and drove 5 hours to Cayuga Lake to try to get it.  I was so confident of getting this bird - which had been sitting on a particular favorite buoy ever day - that I made plans to do some county birding on the way back, hoping to fill in some white spaces on my eBird profile.  Needless to say though, that twitches to Upstate New York are not really my fiends and, after spending the whole day scanning buoys on the lake, I dipped and had another 5 hour drive to savor my failure and shame.

p.s. the bird was of course seen the next day at a new location further down the lake and has been seen sporadically since.  Of course ....

Second Chances

Another attempt at the Garganey in Western New York

Well after promising that I wasn't going to do another drive to Western New York after two 10-hour round trip dips (!) of course the Garganey at Montezuma stuck around and was seen Tuesday, Wednesday, but not on Thursday.  I'd been chatting with Corey Finger who wanted to go try for the bird on Saturday and finally, and against my better judgement, agreed that if the bird was seen on Friday, we would do the drive again on Saturday in hopes of un-dipping this bird.

Sure enough, the bird was seen in Friday, and after reassuring Corey that there was no rush to leave early as the bird was only ever seen in the afternoons we left Manhattan at 6am Saturday morning and pushed across New Jersey, Pennsylvania and up into Western New York, again.  All the way, I kept telling myself that, if I didn't see this bird, I was never chasing a bird in Western New York ever again, but at around 8:30am we got word that the bird was being seen.  Sounded promising.

By the time we got to Montezuma NWR at around 11:15am though, the people who'd seen the bird earlier had all left, and the bird was no-where to be seen!  Not again!

Nothing to do but try though, so we set up to scope and spent the next three hours carefully scanning the area where the bird had been seen earlier that morning.  Slowly the number of birders built up as more people joined the vigil, so that by 2:30pm there were maybe 25 or so birders spread out along the road.  The bird however refused to show, and losing heart, Corey and others decided to make a side trip to look for the local Prothonotary Warblers while I opted to stay and keep scanning.

Just as the Warbler crew started to drive away, I got a glimpse of pink and white, a tiny, but promising hint of the right colors, hidden behind some cattails at great distance at the other side of a body of open water.  With the car leaving, I opted to shout out, and folks quickly gathered, only for a Wood Duck to emerge from behind the cattails.  Duh!  How could I possibly have done that?  I shouted "Never Mind, My Bad" and people dispersed and got back into the car .... and then the GARGANEY (279) emerged from cover just behind the Wood Duck!

I think this is what they call a "record shot" but it is a Garganey
Photo: Corey Finger, used with permission.

What followed was a mad scramble and I juggled getting taller people looks through my scope, and running to other people, who were not on the bird, and focussing their scopes on the spot.  Shai Mitra took charge of giving directions, but the bird was distant, partially hidden in the cattails and drifted in and out of view.  After a manic five minutes though we were able to get everyone on the bird which slowly drifted out into the open, giving the whole crew distant but clear scope views.  Talk about an adrenaline rush ...

So that felt good!  And even if the drive back to Manhattan was very, very long, we were both still happy that we came for the bird.  I'm sure there'll be debates about the provenance of this bird (like any rare duck) but date and location seem good and video I've seen of the bird doesn't seem to show bands (rings) or any odd plumage wear, etc.  Not sure you can ever be 100% sure with any bird that is kept in collections, but for me I decided to add this bird to my ABA and New York State lists unless someone coms up with a good reason not to.

June Birding on (and off) Long Island

A few random birding thoughts from the early Summer

I don't really do a lot of birding in the Summer.  Instead of standing in mud looking at shorebirds and being bitten by nasty bloodthirsty flies, I tend to prefer floating around in my pool drinking Caipirinhas.   Can you blame me?  Plus June tends to be a bit of a travel month, with inevitable trips to Europe (London, Copenhagen and Paris planned this year) so I tend to miss a lot of stuff in June.

Saturday, June 4 - Long Island

A state bird was on offer!  A Black-necked Stilt, a bird I needed for my New York State list, was found on Thursday at Shirley Marina Park in Suffolk County.  Would it stick until Saturday?  Yes, it did, and I rushed out to see it on Saturday morning.

Arriving at the "Marina" (which is really just a parking lot and a boat ramp), I drove around trying to get a view of the ponds to the East of the lot where the bird had been reported.  No luck there, so I parked and tried to walk back to a sand dike that might offer a view, only to find a bunch of birders on top of it, no way up, and directions to walk back all the way to the other end of the lot and come around by a different path.  But at least the bird was still there and Gail Benson was kind enough to let me have a look at it in her scope ... Black-necked Stilt (269) and New York State Bird number 386!

After hanging around at that spot, enjoying some Seaside Sparrows, Little Blue Herons, Purple Martins and other coastal birds (plus catching up with Tom Burke, Garry Chapin and other birders who had come for the Stilt).  I headed over to EPCAL in Calverton in the hope of catching up with a Blue Grosbeak for the year.

Blue Grosbeak is one of three species (along with Yellow-throated Warbler and Summer Tanager) that I think of as "Southern" birds that Climate Change has brought to Long Island.  When I first came to New York in the early 90s, these were species I saw only in Southern New Jersey, but now all three breed in small (but presumably expanding) numbers on Long Island.  I had good directions to a pair at the airstrip (an old jet-fighter manufacturing plant) at EPCAL and so pulled up, walked along the trail, passed a close and incredibly photogenic Grasshopper Sparrow (always bring your camera!) and got close-up views of a beautiful singing male Blue Grosbeak (270).  Nice.

Back to the road where I passed a couple of Long Island birders I recognized.  They had just tried for the grosbeak and not seen it (oops), and had been looking for a Summer Tanager that Shai Mitra (probably the most prolific and diligent Long Island birder) had seen a week or so ago, but again had drawn a blank.  So I gave them fresh directions to the grosbeak, and wished them good luck, then crossed the road and started hearing a singing male Summer Tanager!  That bird at least stuck around, and I saw it, a female, and perhaps a third (immature male?) bird, and was able to get several other birders good looks at the male.  I guess I just had good karma today.

So, with no real plan, I drifted back towards the City and sat in traffic a lot as I got closer in.  On a whim I decided to go to Jamaica Bay to look for Clapper Rail and Tricolored Heron for the year list, but as I was crawling along the Belt Parkway, quite close to the exit for the preserve, I picked up an email from Karen Fung noting a "phalarope" (later identified as a Red-necked Phalarope) at the East Pond in Jamaica Bay ... perfect timing!  Not 20 minutes later, I emerged from the reeds at the South end of the pond and joined Andrew Baksh and Adrian Burke (later joined by Corey Finger, Tristan Lowery, and other Albany birders) for good looks at a close, male Red-necked Phalarope (271) (always bring your camera!).

Then to the West Pond, where I did add the planned Tricolored Heron (272) and Clapper Rail (273) before fighting traffic back to the City.  Nice day (although when I got home I found out that I'd driven right past a singing Prothonotary Warbler ... oops).

Snapping Turtle laying eggs at Connetquot River SP

Sunday, June 5 - Connetquot River SP

Well if Saturday was charmed, Sunday was cursed.  I was supposed to be going on an offshore, overnight, pelagic trip on Sunday night with dreams of South Polar Skua and Yellow-nosed Albatross (hey, it could happen), so I didn't want to do too much birding on Sunday, figuring I'd need a nap before an overnight run out to the Hudson Canyon a hundred miles offshore.  On Saturday though, Ken and Suzy Feustel had found a Prothonotary Warbler and a Least Bittern at Connetquot State Park (the two species I said I'm missed for the Spring in the last post, and both potential Suffolk County birds for me) so I figured I'd run out there quickly, mop up those two species, then head back to the City for a pre-pelagic nap.  Great plan, right?  But things did not go as planned.

For a start, we could find neither of the target birds, and even though we thought we heard the Prothonotary at one point, it turned out to be a vocally talented Common Yellowthroat instead.  Then while we were there, we got word that Jay McGowan had found New York State's first ever Garganey, a mere 6.5 hour drive away at Montezuma NWR (so not enough time to get there and back in time for the pelagic).  And then the pelagic was cancelled due to weather .... ho hum.  Oh, and there were an awful lot of ticks, and terrible traffic back to the City.  Good days and bad days balance out I guess .... I went home and had a cocktail.

Black Terns are common breeders in Upstate New York

Monday, June 6th - Montezuma NWR

Well from cursed to heartbreaking.  I just could not resist chasing the Garganey and so got up at 4am and drove five hours to Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge (New York is a very large state).  When I arrived at around 9:30am, I met a whole gaggle of New York birders but no-one had seen the bird.  So we scanned, and we scanned, but drew a blank.  Even after taking a break to get some local year birds - Trumpeter Swan (274), Blue-winged Teal (275), Black Tern (276), Prothonotary Warbler (277) which improbably breeds up that far North, and Sandhill Crane (278), I kept coming back to scan the area where the Garganey had been seen.

Prothonotary Warbler (habitat), there's one singing in there, trust me ....

A straggling Snow Goose at Montezuma

But it simply wasn't going to happen that day and, despite hours of scanning, I came up empty and had to leave at 3pm to make the five hour drive back to the City for a dinner appointment.

The drive back was long, and I got pulled over by a local cop again (and again got let off with a warning - thank you polite cops of upstate New York).  So after four hours of driving, when finally stuck in traffic and feeling safe to check my emails .... I learned that the Garganey had just showed up again .... I decided to give up and find another hobby.

A bit of a cursed weekend.  I guess that's birding .... maybe fly-fishing would be a better hobby ...

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.

Rochester all is forgiven ...

So I haven't written in a while.  It's not as though I haven't been birding - I've been out every day - it's more that I haven't been *seeing* anything.  Sure, there are Pine Siskins and Red-breasted Nuthatches at my feeder (and I've already had fly-over Evening Grosbeaks and expect them to join soon too) but simply no year birds.

Pine Siskin on the feeder on the deck (I have a lot of feeders)

Hit one of those rough patches recently where I didn't seem to be able to do anything right.  Was mostly out in East Hampton and birding Long Island every day but didn't seem to have any luck finding, or chasing, anything.  On Sunday I dipped Brown Pelican (again) on Staten Island, and on Monday I dipped Say's Phoebe at Robert Moses S.P.  I even contrived to jigger last week's scheduled to drive back from a board meeting in Boston so as to get 3 hours at the Wood Sandpiper site in Rhode Island.  I was there from 12pm to 3pm but the bird wasn't seen between 9:20am and 4:15pm.  One helpful birder even called me as I was on the New London (Connecticut) to Orient Point (NY) car ferry at 5pm to let me know that the bird was back (!).  I believe the young people use the term "FML".

So when I saw Monday's reports of a huge (77 birds) CAVE SWALLOW flight at Hamlin Beach State Park near Rochester, I figured it was time to head North to break the routine.  Checking with Greg Lawrence, who assured me that 'this was the week' I headed North on Tuesday morning for the 10-hour drive from East Hampton to Hamlin.  By the time I got to Syracuse though, the weather was starting to look pretty iffy and texting Greg, he helpfully suggested that maybe Thursday or Friday might be better days to come up.  By that time though I was committed but, by the time I got the the Marriott in Rochester it was pretty clear that it wasn't exactly swallow weather.

Wednesday was bit of a bust.  Nasty North winds and rain showers made for tough birding but I slogged away all day alternating between bouts of Seawatching, sorry I mean Lakewatching, and checking local ponds, creeks and marshes for swallows.  No Cave Swallows but I did find a few White-winged Crossbills, some Snow Buntings, a couple of Lesser Black-backed Gulls, and a decent selection of birds given bad weather (I even had a swallow, albeit a Barn Swallow).  At about mid-day I made the decision to stay another day and so called the Marriott to extend my stay and also relaxed, knowing I'd have another chance in better weather tomorrow.

Then at 4pm I checked my email - Jay McGowan had reported 5 ROSS'S GEESE from Montezuma.  I jumped in the car and headed South, wondering if I had enough time to get there in good light.  As I drove, both Greg Lawrence and Benjamin Van Doren texted me with the same news (thank you) and so I was really excited when I pulled up on East Road and jumped out to scan Knox-Marsellus at around 5:40pm.  The only problem was that white geese really stand out, and there were no white geese in the marsh!  Suppressing a moment of panic I started to scan the Canada Geese and, as I was about half way across the marsh, Snow Geese flew through my scope.  I tracked them until they landed; a group of about 30, with 3 'Blue Geese' among them, but when I scanned them it was obvious that none were Ross's.  Then, not a minute later, a group of five more white geese dropped into the Snow Geese and it was immediately apparent that they were much smaller.  Cranking the scope up to 60x I could also see the facial structure, and breathed a huge sigh of relief.  ROSS'S GOOSE (NYS 2012 #345).

So back to Rochester, and after room service, a movie, and a decent night's sleep, up again and back to Hamlin Beach SP at dawn.  The weather didn't look too promising but as I watched the sea, I mean lake, it started to improve.  There were some shady looking characters in the parking lot so I stayed well clear of them until I realized (bins are wonderful things) that it was Andy Guthrie, Dave Tetlow and (later) Kurt Fox.  Andy was kind enough to come and retrieve me from the beach, and reposition me in the parking lot where I stood a better chance of actually seeing the swallows I'd come for (local knowledge is also a wonderful thing).  And then, CAVE SWALLOWS (NYS 2012 #346) started flying over, at first in pairs, but later in large groups.   I saw 102 of them in total before I had to leave.

Cave Swallow

It turned out to be a great morning of birding (what a difference from the day before) with lots of Cave Swallows, Pine Siskins, and even a Parasitic Jaeger thrown in for good measure.  Plus it was great to connect with so many people I knew only as eBird posts before.  There was even a fly-over Lapland Longspur (NYS 2012 #347) for good measure, although I missed all the Evening Grosbeaks that came through earlier.  By 10:30am though I had to leave if I was going to make dinner in New York City (NYS is big!) and so I drove for 7 hours back to the city.  As I was almost home Corey Finger called with a possible Pink-footed Goose in Queens, but I persevered and went back to the apartment.  Suspect that's a wild goose chase story for another day ...

Playing Whack-a-Mole ...

Chasing rarities in New York is like playing Whack-a-Mole; a good bird pops up on Long Island then quickly vanishes, then one pops up 600 miles to the NorthWest, and promptly vanishes, and so on ....

Given the distances, and the time required to cover them, I have to be a bit selective about what I chase.  Running to Buffalo to a bird means that I'm going to miss anything that shows up on Long Island for a day, perhaps two.  Conversely, bashing the bushes on Long Island might not yield anything while a good bird in the NorthWest might stick for a day and, in retrospect, have been possible to see.  Given that many birds stay for short periods during the October migration, the calculus can drive one insane.  Is this bird going to stick?  Should I do a 1,000-mile round-trip for that bird?  What does the weather look like tomorrow, and am I going to miss a wave-day by going?  In October, I find myself asking these questions almost daily.  I'm also a little gun-shy to be honest - two long range dips recently (Franklin's Gull and Sharp-tailed Sandpiper) have made me reluctant to run North.  On the other hand though, Long Island has just not been performing this Fall so far.  What to do?

On Thursday I committed to Long Island for the weekend and moved Out East for a four day stay.  Was hoping for Western Kingbird, Northern Wheatear, and who knows what else.  On Friday afternoon, a Western Kingbird was reported at Montezuma NWR!  That's a 9-hour drive from East Hampton on a sunny weekend day, so there was no way I could get there while it was still light.  So I decided to skip that bird, and as luck would have it, it stuck for only a couple of hours in any case.  So had I gone, I would have missed it.

Swamp Sparrow (juv.)

So I stayed out East and kicked bushes on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and saw .... well not all that much really.  I did see lots of sparrows including another Clay-colored Sparrow, a bird that, while no doubt still over-reported, is definitely getting more abundant in New York as it expands its breeding range East.  But still, no rarities on Long Island.

Clay-colored Sparrow

Then on Sunday night Richard Fried posted a sighting of a LeConte's Sparrow at Floyd Bennet Field in Brooklyn.  Rob Jett had found the bird earlier in the day and had posted it on a Brooklyn Text Alert system but the posting hadn't made the jump to broader distribution until the evening.  Too late to go then, but a 4am start on Monday morning put me in Brooklyn by 7am where I heard from Andrew Baksh that the bird had been seen that morning.  Well, to cut a long story short, turns out that the bird had not been seen.  Looking at photos in better light, Andrew decided he couldn't be sure he'd seen the LeConte's and quickly put that word out (a stand-up thing to do). While many of us flogged the area for hours that morning, there were no further sightings of the LeConte's.  And so another bird, slipped by me.

After birding Floyd Bennet for a while (which was crawling in huge numbers of common migrants) the rain finally drove me in to the City.  Just as I got home I got a text from Benjamin Van Doren saying that a Franklin's Gull had been found at Montezuma NWR.  Now here was a dilemma.  On the one hand, if I left right then, I could (just) make it to Montezuma while it was still light.  On the other hand, both the previous 2012 Franklin's Gull records had stayed in one place for only a couple of hours.  To play Whack-a-Mole or not?  In the end I decided that if the bird stayed until the evening, then I would go the next day.  Sure enough, the bird was reported at 5:40pm (meaning of course that I could have seen it if I'd gone straight up that day) so I set the alarm for 3:30am.

By 8:30am on Monday I was passing Syracuse on I-90 when Benjamin texted again to say that Jay McGowan had just seen the gull.  So by 9:30am I pulled up on Towpath Road, got some positive news from a passing British birder, parked, grabbed the scope, scanned the roosting gulls, then scanned out further on the mud, and .... FRANKLIN'S GULL (NYS 2012 #343)!

Franklin's Gull - an iPhone shot of the bird about a mile away!

So success, a finally a break in the run of consecutive dips (which I really needed to be honest).  Showed the bird to a few people, some of who were looking for it, and some of who had no idea it was there.  Then spent a very pleasant morning birding Montezuma, adding an American Avocet, some Long-billed Dowitchers, and just generally enjoying seeing Bald Eagles, Sandhill Cranes and the like.  Then 6-hours back to NYC for dinner, and on to the next species ...

Just nipping up to Buffalo to look for a gull, back soon ...

3am Saturday morning and I'm awake and trudging through darkness and rain to get the car.  I'd originally planned to go out to Long Island again, but after three trips out there during the week, I've talked myself into running the 5+ hours up to Montezuma NWR instead, mostly for a change of scenery.  By 8am I'm getting close to Montezuma but a new plan has been slowly taking over as I slog along the long miles of I-87 and I-90.  On Friday Willie D'Anna had a FRANKLIN's GULL at Niagara and, while I know it's a really stupid idea to chase a gull that hasn't been pinned down yet, I'm a big fan of gulls.  So when the Montezuma exit comes up at 8:30am, I speed past and drive the extra three hours to the village of Wilson on the Lake Ontario shore East of Niagara.

Well turns out I was right .... it as a dumb idea to chase a gull that hasn't been pinned down.  Willie has gone off to chase a Sandwich Tern and, while Betsy D'Anna does head out a couple of time to check for the bird (and e-mails me some suggestions on where to look), I'm pretty much searching on my own.  Lake Ontario is awfully big it turns out, and after 4 hours of searching I realize I'm going to have to head back if I plan to get back by midnight (as promised).  Franklin's Gull will have to wait for another day ...

Caspian Terns on Lake Ontario (2 shots)

So turning around with a nearly 9 hour drive ahead of me, I make the fatal mistake of checking bird alerts.  The folks of Long Island are seeing lots of American Golden Plovers and a Buff-breasted Sandpiper.  So are the folks at Montezuma so this time, when the Montezuma exit comes up, I pull off and head over to East Road, arriving around 6:00pm.

Montezuma NWR is a really neat place and today it is very birdy.  There are Bald Eagles and Sandhill Cranes, lots of ducks and herons and quite a few shorebirds.   Joining a group of birders, we quickly pick up 4 AMERICAN GOLDEN PLOVERS (NYS 2012 # 334) and then a BUFF-BREASTED SANDPIPER (#335), one of my all-time favorite species.  I spend a lot of time looking for the previously reported Baird's Sandpiper, hoping for the 'Grasspiper Slam' but come up empty.   Still, the thorough search adds 2 Wilson's Phalaropes, a Red-necked Phalarope, 5 Common Gallinules and a Virginia Rail.  By the time I look at my watch, prompted by a dusk-calling Eastern Screech-Owl, its 7:45pm and I know I'm in for a long night of driving.

Home at 2am, and back to bed.  23 hours on the road, 1,000+ miles of driving, and no Franklin's Gull.  That's just how it goes some times and, as a believer in birding karma, I'm hoping I stored up a good balance today to be cashed in at a later date.

Ruffing it at Montezuma NWR

So there are days, where I honestly hope that no-one finds a rare bird.  Furthermore, if someone really, really, has to find a rare bird on those days, I'm always hoping that they find it at a location close to where I am at the time.  Sometimes I get my wish, but today was not one of those days.

Mid-morning and a second hand report of a Ruff at Montezuma popped up on the Cayuga Birds list-serve.  There were photos, so no doubt about the ID, but no-one seemed to know if the bird was still there.  I joined in the throng of birders looking for confirmation; the prospect of a six-hour drive mid-day (and a late night return) was not an appealing one, unless I knew for sure that the bird was being seen.  For a while it looked like the bird was not going to be re-found, but then, at 12:30pm, word came in that the bird was in sight and I grabbed my birding bag, jumped in the car, and started the all-too-familiar run up I-87 to I-90.

As I got close to Montezuma, I realized that I had no idea where I was going, but a quick call to Greg Lawrence produced a thorough set of e-mail directions and I was able to pull in to the site at around 6pm.  Luckily the bird was still there, and I was able to get some nice scope views (and terrible iPhone photos) of the bird.

Only my second ever Ruff in New York State, and only my 5th in the ABA.  A nice molting male and a great, and unexpected add to the year-list (#322).  The bird apparently left that night and was not seen again the next morning.  Glad I made the drive.