#505 Hudsonian Godwit
Sunday morning Janet Schumacher and I drove out to Cupsogue Beach County Park on the south shore of Long Island to look for the Hudsonian Godwit that had been reported there since the previous weekend. I first saw it at low tide around 9:15 AM on the first sandbar in the bay, visible from just past the trailer parking area. However the bill looked a little off and I wasn’t sure before the bird took off. Could have been a Dowitcher in intermediate plumage. Then, after walking a mile out to the point and back again, we relocated it at exactly the same spot and got much better looks at it, including a few (bad) photographs.
At least I hope that’s the bird. (Lower right foreground) It was easier to see through the scope which gives you much several times more magnification than my 400mm lens (roughly equivalent to a pair of binoculars). To get this much I had to scan along the sandbar snapping away and then blow up the photos later at home.
If anyone wants to try for it:
- Check the tide tables. Aim for low tide.
- Drive to the far west end of the parking lot.
- From there, walk down the unpaved sand road till just past the trailer camp.
- Scope the sandbar in the middle of the bay (right hand side of the road) until you spot a Dowitcher sized bird with a noticeably ruddy breast.
Also, if it’s a weekend get there early. Although there were few folks around when we arrived, by the time we left at 11:30 the parking lot was completely full, and the police were turning away a long line of cars.
The bird may be associating with some Dowitchers, or it may just be a coincidence. At one point we saw the Dowitchers appear to get annoyed with the Godwit and chase it off. However the color and patterns are clearly distinct from the Dowitchers. I would have been less confident in the ID if we hadn’t had both species standing right there for easy comparison. By itself, the Godwit is easy to mistake for a Dowitcher at this distance. interestingly, we could see that the feeding pattern was also distinct. The Dowitchers probe the mud much faster than the Godwit does.
Other birds seen included:
- Double-crested Cormorant
- Great Egret
- Osprey
- Black-bellied Plover
- American Oystercatcher
- Spotted Sandpiper
- Greater Yellowlegs
- Willet
- Hudsonian Godwit
- Ruddy Turnstone
- Red Knot
- Sanderling
- Ring-billed Gull
- Herring Gull
- Great Black-backed Gull
- Least Tern
- Common Tern
- Forster’s Tern
- Tree Swallow
- Barn Swallow
- Northern Mockingbird
- Song Sparrow
- Red-winged Blackbird
- House Finch
- House Sparrow
