Yesterday I took a six-hour Pelagic trip out of Bar Harbor on the Friendly V with the American Birding Association. This was my first East Coast Spring pelagic, and it paid off: eight life birds out of roughly 24 species total.
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Fulvous Whistling-duck was one of my target birds for the year. I’d planned to pick it up in Audubon Park in New Orleans, where they’re regular in the winter. However, a family of Fulvous Whistling-ducks showed up in the West Pond at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge last Sunday, and have been regularly seen there almost every day last week, so this morning bright and early I took the A-train to Broad Channel to see if I could add this bird to my life list.
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I hear on the radio that despite high gas prices the roads are going to be clogged and Americans are expected to drive 1% more than last year this holiday weekend, which gets me thinking: do we really need to do this? It’s a holiday. Why does every holiday inevitably involve getting in our cars and going somewhere? Why do we want to spend the holiday stuck in traffic? What if we stayed home for a change? What if we spent some time experimenting with where we can go without the almighty automobile? Perhaps in the spirit of Buy Nothing Day (the Friday after Thanksgiving) we should pick the Saturday before Memorial Day and declare it Drive Nowhere Day. The goal should be not merely to stay home, but to travel without personal automobile.
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Early Sunday I travelled up to the Bronx with the Brooklyn Bird Club (despite an exhausting day on Saturday) for some bird banding along the Bronx River. Chad Seewagen and Eric Slayton are in the third year of a study on feeding habits of migrants passing through urban parks. They’re concerned that the same factors that make urban parks so great for birders may make bad sites for birds: many birds in a small area full of lots of invasive and ornamental plants.
You may remember that at various times from January through march I spotted a Banded Goose H7H6 in Prospect Park. Originally I thought this goose was from Quebec. However, I’ve now received a different certificate for the same goose with the same band number that indicates it’s not from Canada at all but rather from Coming, Indiana.
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Wow. Yesterday was a quite a day in Prospect Park. 96 species total (reported by several different observers) including 10 year firsts. I personally picked up two life birds (Yellow-throated Vireo and Golden-winged Warbler). I spent two hours in the Vale of Cashmere near the start of my route because I just couldn’t get myself to leave. New birds kept showing up. I don’t know if today will be as good, but I’m going to try.
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