{"id":1000564,"date":"2007-04-21T19:28:39","date_gmt":"2007-04-22T00:28:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/birding\/2007\/04\/21\/breeding-bird-survey-at-ridgewood-reservoir\/"},"modified":"2008-09-03T09:55:19","modified_gmt":"2008-09-03T14:55:19","slug":"breeding-bird-survey-at-ridgewood-reservoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/birding\/2007\/04\/21\/breeding-bird-survey-at-ridgewood-reservoir\/","title":{"rendered":"Breeding Bird Survey at Ridgewood Reservoir"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today I joined Heidi Steiner-Nanz, Steve Nanz, Rob Jett, Janet Schumacher, and Jerry Layton for the first of six planned breeding bird surveys at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forgotten-ny.com\/NEIGHBORHOODS\/ridgewood\/ridgewood.html\">Ridgewood Reservoir<\/a>. The reservoir served Brooklyn and Queens for about a century, and then relegated to backup status in the 1950s, and eventually decommissioned in the 1970s.  Recently the Parks Dept. took the site over, and we&#8217;re trying to figure out what&#8217;s there before they turn it all into parking lots and ball fields. <\/p>\n<p>The reservoir sits on what may be the highest point in Queens. It used to be a local birding hot spot, but birders pretty much stopped going after the Bushwick riots in the 70s, and nobody&#8217;s paid much attention to it in years. I&#8217;ve been maybe three times before.  Everyone else in our group had been once or twice. A couple of locals who hang out there told us it was unusual to see this many people on any given day. They blamed the &#8220;crowds&#8221; (about 20 people over three hours) on the nice weather. There&#8217;s also considerable evidence of dirt biking and paintballing.<\/p>\n<p><img src='http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/04\/stevenanz.JPG' alt='Steve Nanz carrying large camera on tripod through birch forest' width='640' height='480'\/><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>We got to the reservoir about 7:30 and split into two groups. My group counted forty species:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Double-crested Cormorant 1 flyover<\/li>\n<li>Canada Goose 13<\/li>\n<li>Wood Duck 1<\/li>\n<li>Mallard 4<\/li>\n<li>Ring-necked Duck 1<\/li>\n<li>Hooded Merganser 1<\/li>\n<li>Ruddy Duck 2<\/li>\n<li>Red-tailed Hawk 1<\/li>\n<li>American Kestrel 1<\/li>\n<li>Laughing Gull 2-3 flyover<\/li>\n<li>Rock Pigeon 3<\/li>\n<li>Mourning Dove 5 1S<\/li>\n<li>Red-bellied Woodpecker 1<\/li>\n<li>Downy Woodpecker 1<\/li>\n<li>Northern Flicker 10<\/li>\n<li>Blue Jay 3<\/li>\n<li>American Crow 3<\/li>\n<li>Tree Swallow 3<\/li>\n<li>Tufted Titmouse 1 S<\/li>\n<li>Golden-crowned Kinglet 1<\/li>\n<li>Ruby-crowned Kinglet 5 S D<\/li>\n<li>American Robin 25 UN<\/li>\n<li>Northern Mockingbird 1<\/li>\n<li>European Starling 4<\/li>\n<li>Cedar Waxwing 6<\/li>\n<li>Yellow-rumped Warbler 10 1 S<\/li>\n<li>Pine Warbler 7<\/li>\n<li>Palm Warbler 12<\/li>\n<li>Eastern Towhee 2 S<\/li>\n<li>Field Sparrow 1<\/li>\n<li>Song Sparrow 8 S<\/li>\n<li>White-throated Sparrow 4<\/li>\n<li>Dark-eyed Junco 1<\/li>\n<li>Northern Cardinal 9 1P<\/li>\n<li>Red-winged Blackbird 20<\/li>\n<li>Rusty Blackbird 50% certainty<\/li>\n<li>Common Grackle 39  1 carrying nesting material<\/li>\n<li>American Goldfinch 4 S<\/li>\n<li>House Sparrow 1<\/li>\n<li>Horned Grebe 1<\/li>\n<li>Sharp-shinned Hawk 1<\/li>\n<li>Brown-headed Cowbird 11 S P D<\/li>\n<li>Baltimore Oriole 0 UN<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The other group added Gray Catbird and Great Blue Heron. The Horned Grebe was the biggest surprise. It&#8217;s quite late for them here, and this one was going into breeding plumage, which we almost never see. <\/p>\n<p><img src='http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/04\/hornedgrebe.JPG' alt='Horned Grebe' width='597' height='381'\/><\/p>\n<p>The most numerous species were Common Grackle, Red-winged Blackbird, American Robin, and Brown-headed Cowbird (bad). We probably way undercounted all of these.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I joined Heidi Steiner-Nanz, Steve Nanz, Rob Jett, Janet Schumacher, and Jerry Layton for the first of six planned breeding bird surveys at Ridgewood Reservoir. The reservoir served Brooklyn and Queens for about a century, and then relegated to backup status in the 1950s, and eventually decommissioned in the 1970s. Recently the Parks Dept. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[410],"class_list":["post-1000564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birding","tag-flash"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1000564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000564\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1000564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1000564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1000564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}