Mokka mit Schlag » Birding

Today I joined Heidi Steiner-Nanz, Steve Nanz, Rob Jett, Janet Schumacher, and Jerry Layton for the first of six planned breeding bird surveys at Ridgewood Reservoir. The reservoir served Brooklyn and Queens for about a century, and then relegated to backup status in the 1950s, and eventually decommissioned in the 1970s. Recently the Parks Dept. took the site over, and we’re trying to figure out what’s there before they turn it all into parking lots and ball fields.

The reservoir sits on what may be the highest point in Queens. It used to be a local birding hot spot, but birders pretty much stopped going after the Bushwick riots in the 70s, and nobody’s paid much attention to it in years. I’ve been maybe three times before. Everyone else in our group had been once or twice. A couple of locals who hang out there told us it was unusual to see this many people on any given day. They blamed the “crowds” (about 20 people over three hours) on the nice weather. There’s also considerable evidence of dirt biking and paintballing.

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Ridgewood Reservoir, 2007-04-21

Prospect Park, Peninsula forest, 2006-04-18

Migration’s getting weird. Normally Fall is when the rarities show up, but we’ve hit a triple this week. First there was the Blue Grosbeak Rafael Campos found in the Vale of Cashmere on Tuesday. Then Alex Wilson found a Yellow-throated Warbler on Three Sisters Island yesterday. Then last night John Ascher found the rarest bird yet, a Sora:

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I was in Prospect Park today to look for yesterday’s Blue Grosbeak (found it) and generally see what else might have been chased in by the storms. Although chilly, quite a few birds were active and it was a quite good day. About 1:00 I ran into Starr Saphir for the second time on the Peninsula Meadow. She’d come out to see the Blue Grosbeak with Lenore Swenson, Anne Lazarus, and some other Manhattan birders. (They found it too, though not everyone looking for it did. It seemed to disappear for up to an hour at a time before popping back up at the same location in the Vale of Cashmere.) Anyway, she told me that Pete Shen had told her that Alex Wilson had spotted a Yellow-throated Warbler on Three Sisters Island. So we all trotted off to Three Sisters as fast we could manage. I got their first, but did not find the bird. Starr arrived, pished a little, and damned if the bird didn’t fly right over to her. Then it flew back into the phragmites and hopped around, gleaning insects off the reeds.

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Yesterday Rafael Campos found this Blue Grosbeak in Prospect Park at the Vale of Cashmere. It’s not the best picture, but you can make out the blue on the face:

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