{"id":1000754,"date":"2007-07-15T11:44:21","date_gmt":"2007-07-15T16:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/birding\/2007\/07\/15\/whiffed-again\/"},"modified":"2008-09-03T10:25:15","modified_gmt":"2008-09-03T15:25:15","slug":"whiffed-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/birding\/2007\/07\/15\/whiffed-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Whiffed Again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You&#8217;d think a Yellow-headed Blackbird, which is at least a native American species, if not a common New York species, would be easier to find around here than a Western Reef Heron; but if you were me you&#8217;d be wrong. I struck out again this morning at Jones Beach looking for the Yellow-headed Blackbird. If it&#8217;s still around next weekend, maybe I&#8217;ll try in the afternoon when it&#8217;s been a tad more regular.<\/p>\n<p>On the positive side, I did get a chance to take my new scope out for a spin. It&#8217;s a Kowa TSN-601 with a 20-60 zoom eyepiece. It gave absolutely gorgeous views of Least Sandpipers, American Oystercatchers, Least Terns, Willets, and various gulls. I just wish I could have tried it out on a  Yellow-headed Blackbird too. One note: after carrying it around for only about an hour, I&#8217;m really glad I sprang for the carbon-fiber legs and paid attention to the total weight when choosing the scope. The 80mm Swarovski&#8217;s are gorgeous, but they weigh almost twice as much. By the end of the day, every ounce counts.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Total species count was 39:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Canada Goose<\/li>\n<li>Double-crested Cormorant<\/li>\n<li>Great Egret<\/li>\n<li>Snowy Egret<\/li>\n<li>Glossy Ibis<\/li>\n<li>Osprey<\/li>\n<li>Semipalmated Plover<\/li>\n<li>Killdeer<\/li>\n<li>American Oystercatcher<\/li>\n<li>Willet<\/li>\n<li>Least Sandpiper<\/li>\n<li>Laughing Gull<\/li>\n<li>Ring-billed Gull<\/li>\n<li>Herring Gull<\/li>\n<li>Great Black-backed Gull<\/li>\n<li>Common Tern<\/li>\n<li>Forster&#8217;s Tern<\/li>\n<li>Least Tern<\/li>\n<li>Rock Pigeon<\/li>\n<li>Mourning Dove<\/li>\n<li>American Crow<\/li>\n<li>Fish Crow<\/li>\n<li>Horned Lark<\/li>\n<li>Tree Swallow<\/li>\n<li>Barn Swallow<\/li>\n<li>American Robin<\/li>\n<li>Gray Catbird<\/li>\n<li>Northern Mockingbird<\/li>\n<li>Brown Thrasher<\/li>\n<li>European Starling<\/li>\n<li>Common Yellowthroat<\/li>\n<li>Eastern Towhee<\/li>\n<li>Song Sparrow<\/li>\n<li>Northern Cardinal<\/li>\n<li>Red-winged Blackbird<\/li>\n<li>Brown-headed Cowbird<\/li>\n<li>House Finch<\/li>\n<li>American Goldfinch<\/li>\n<li>House Sparrow<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Also present were a couple of Dowitcher sp. but I didn&#8217;t try to distinguish Long-billed or Short-billed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You&#8217;d think a Yellow-headed Blackbird, which is at least a native American species, if not a common New York species, would be easier to find around here than a Western Reef Heron; but if you were me you&#8217;d be wrong. I struck out again this morning at Jones Beach looking for the Yellow-headed Blackbird. If [&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-1000754","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\/1000754","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=1000754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1000754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1000754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1000754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}