A Chilly Day at Floyd Bennett
Wednesday, September 6th, 2006All my recent trips to Jamaica Bay for shorebirds added quite a few species to my semi-official Queens County list at eBird. For the first time, my Queens list actually passed my Brooklyn list, so I decided to head out to Floyd Bennett Field Thursday to see if I could even up the score. (I suspect my real Brooklyn life list is actually quite a few species beyond Queens, but since I’ve only been reporting to eBird for about a year, the lists there aren’t complete.)
I hopped off the Q35 at the base of the Marine Parkway bridge and made the circle along the beach around Dead Horse Bay. The Jamaica Bay side wasn’t very birdy–just a few gulls, starlings, and the like–but I did pick up both Common and Forster’s Tern as well as a couple of Least Sandpipers. However, once I rounded the point and started walking along Dead Horse Bay itself into the marina, the shore birds picked up. I got almost all the common ones for this time of year including Semipalmated Sandpiper, Black-bellied Plover, Semipalmated Plover, Ruddy Turnstone, a likely Long-billed Dowitcher (not 100% certain about that one), two American Oystercatchers, a half dozen or so Sanderlings, and a few Greater Yellowlegs.
I had one brief moment of excitement when I thought I might have a European Golden Plover, but closer inspection turned it into just another Black-bellied Plover in weird light seen from an unusual angle.
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