Mokka mit Schlag » Birding

The four banded Canada Geese I first spotted back on October 30, and that have continued in Prospect Park ever since, have been identified. Turns out they’re locals. They were banded at the Pennsylvania Ave. Landfill in Queens on June 26, this year. NA07, NA23, and NA 27 are adult males, NA26 is an adult female.

Nathan’s, Coney Island, 2006-11-19
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Last night I got an e-mail from Rob Jett alerting me to a belated report from William Murdoch, a west coast birder, of a possible Eurasian Green Woodpecker in the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, just across the street from me. Local reaction was skeptical to say the least, for several reasons:

1. The reporter only saw it with the naked eye. He did not have binoculars or a camera.
2. There are no previous reports of this species in North America, ever.
3. The bird is apparently not a long distance migrant, even in its normal range. Consequently it seems very unlikely that it could have made the trip across the Atlantic, even ship assisted.
4. If it is present, it’s likely an escapee from a zoo aviary or private collection. Hmm, I should check if the Prospect Park Zoo has lost a woodpecker recently.
5. It could be mistaken for a Lewis’s Woodpecker. That would still be a great sighting, but at least it’s not a state record. That species has shown up in New York four times previously, the closest record being in Westchester.

To top matters off, we didn’t get the report until eight days after the sighting on November 12th, so the first anybody could look for it was this morning. Thus I would conservatively rate the odds of finding this bird at about 1 in 100,000 (maybe slightly better if you allow for possible escapees); but it would be a really spectacular find if it were there, and it was a nice day anyway, so this morning at 7:00 A.M. I headed out to scan the edges of the garden and see what I could see.
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It’s sometimes easy to forget that New York is a coastal city, but it is; and yesterday Peter Dorosh led the Brooklyn Bird Club on an excursion to three of our local coastal sites.

We started the day at Calvert Vaux Park (nee Dreier-Offerman Park), one of the most underbirded sites in the borough. This park is nestled between Coney Island and the Verazzano Narrows Bridge on Gravesend Bay where Coney Island Creek enters. It’s mostly built on rock excavated during the construction of the Verazzano Narrows Bridge. It’s small, about 70 acres, but very productive, especially in Fall. We arrived their about 7:30 and spent 3 and a half hours there racking up almost 60 species, including two new ones for my Kings County list: Northern Pintail and Eastern Bluebird. That last one is particularly hard to find in the city limits. I’ve only seen it once before in New York City, and that was on Staten Island. Pintails are rare here everywhere except Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.

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I spent a couple of hours in Prospect Park early this afternoon on a really nice, chilly Fall day. The lawns and leaf litter were practically covered in sparrows, and many other species were evident too. Overall I saw 36 total species including the first Hooded Mergansers of the season (about 10 on the lake). There are now over 120 Northern Shovelers on the lake, with more arriving on every north wind. I also managed to relocate all four banded geese I first spotted on Monday. They may stick around through the winter as well.

It was a nice day, so I took a quick spin around Prospect Park at lunch time. I picked up 34 total species including two American Wigeons, a Belted Kingfisher, and a record high 40+ American Coots. However, the highlight of the day was not one, not two, not three, but four banded geese:

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