Mokka mit Schlag » Birding

The weatherfolk are saying that today starts a three-day Nor’easter, so I decided that I better get any birding I planned to do done yesterday. Thus I joined Starr Saphir’s Saturday walk in the Central Park North woods. We met at 103rd and Central Park West, and almost immediately got Downy Woodpecker and Red-bellied Woodpecker, as well as four great Blue Herons flying over and an Eastern Towhee that was singing up a storm, but really didn’t want to be seen.

Before we left the Great Hill area, we’d tallied all the other regular local woodpeckers including Northern Flicker, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, and Hairy Woodpecker. Northern Flicker and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker are usually only seen during migration and Hairy Woodpecker can be hard to find unless you know where one is hiding or you can distinguish the call from the Downys (Starr can. I can’t.)

Any day you get all five woodpeckers is a good day, but usually that’s it. Even that’s good. The rampant European Starling population do their best to drive out any hardy urban woodpeckers so they can steal their holes. Most woodpeckers can’t even think about breeding here until the starlings have finished for the season. There just aren’t any other woodpeckers that are remotely likely to be seen in New York City, even during migration; but not yesterday.
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Yesterday I took the B41 out to Marine Park to look for the European Common Gull that had been spotted there on Sunday and Monday. There were hundreds of Ring-billed Gulls, at least a couple of Herring Gulls, one or two Great Black-backed Gulls, but the Common Gull was not found; or if it was found nobody recognized it. It looks a lot like this much more common Ring-billed Gull:

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As you may recall I found another banded goose, RE08, back in January at Jones Beach, RE08:

Well, it’s now been identified. According to Tiffany Pinheiro at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation,

These geese are part of a movement study and are collared in order to be individually identified from a distance. This goose were originally collared at Lido Beach Golf course on June 30, 2005. RE08 is an adult male.

Damn, I promised myself I was going to finish the first draft of Refactoring HTML today come hell or high water, and I’m on track to do it; but a European gull I don’t have on my life list has showed up at the Soccer field in Gerritsen Beach, just a short bus ride away. What to do? What to do?
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Besides the two lifers, one of the most interesting birds I saw at the Santa Cruz Municipal Pier this past Tuesday (March 20) was a banded Western Gull, #2406.

What’s especially interesting is that this is a very old style leg band. Four digit bands like this one haven’t been used for over 25 years. That makes this a very old bird. I’ll have to get the original banding data back, but it seems to be at the outer limits of what’s been recorded for this species’ longevity in the wild.
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Alum Rock Park, 2007-03-19