Mokka mit Schlag » Birding

A little treat for Gurnenthar’s Ascendance. Here’s a non-avian I spotted Saturday on the New Orleans Christmas Bird Count:

Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, 2006-12-23

On yesterday’s New Orleans Christmas Bird Count, Glenn Ousset found a Mangrove Cuckoo in Chalmette. Word spread by cell phone, and I think all the teams abandoned their official area to catch this rarity, before returning to scout their assigned locations for more prosaic birds like Mottled Ducks and White-winged Doves.

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Peter Dorosh just sent me the final tally for Saturday’s Brooklyn Bird Count. This includes all of Kings County as well as Breezy Point, Jacob Riis Park, Fort Tilden, and the West Pond of Jamaica Bay (which aren’t offically in Brooklyn but make for a more circular area):
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Yesterday was the annual Kings County/Queens County Christmas Bird Count. I did the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens with Nancy Tim and Liz White. We found 30 species total, a surprisingly large number. I’ve been in the gardens a lot lately and haven’t seen nearly this much. It just goes to show that if you go out early, look carefully, and walk slowly, there’s more out there than you think.
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After you’ve been birding for a few years, you begin to notice certain patterns in when birds arrive where. For instance, the Ruddy Ducks and American Coots pretty reliably show up on Prospect Lake every fall, and leave in the Spring. Some species are irruptive: some years they show up everywhere. Some years you’re lucky to see one.

One such species is the Red-breasted Nuthatch. It’s been pretty common in New York in winter for the last few years, but almost totally absent this season. Peter Dorosh just found our first one since May in Prospect Park yesterday at one of the feeders. They’re probably staying north due to a good cone crop this year.