{"id":1003344,"date":"2010-07-22T06:55:02","date_gmt":"2010-07-22T11:55:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/?p=1003344"},"modified":"2010-08-19T04:49:57","modified_gmt":"2010-08-19T09:49:57","slug":"505-hudsonian-godwit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/birding\/2010\/07\/22\/505-hudsonian-godwit\/","title":{"rendered":"#505 Hudsonian Godwit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday morning Janet Schumacher and I drove out to Cupsogue Beach County Park on the south shore of Long Island to look for the Hudsonian Godwit that had been reported there since the previous weekend. I first saw it at low tide around 9:15 AM on the first sandbar in the bay, visible from just past the trailer parking area. However the bill looked a little off and I wasn&#8217;t sure before the bird took off. Could have been a Dowitcher in intermediate plumage.  Then, after walking a mile out to the point and back again, we relocated it at exactly the same spot and got much better looks at it, including a few (bad) photographs.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Hudsonian-Godwit-at-Cupsogue1.jpg\" alt=\"Hudsonian Godwit on sandbar with Gulls, Dowitchers and other shorebirds\" title=\"\" width=\"402\" height=\"268\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1003347\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Hudsonian-Godwit-at-Cupsogue1.jpg 402w, https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Hudsonian-Godwit-at-Cupsogue1-150x100.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 402px) 100vw, 402px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>At least I hope that&#8217;s the bird. (Lower right foreground) It was easier to see through the scope which gives you much several times more magnification than my 400mm lens (roughly equivalent to a pair of binoculars). To get this much I had to scan along the sandbar snapping away and then blow up the photos later at home. <\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n If anyone wants to try for it:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li> Check the tide tables. Aim for low tide.<\/li>\n<li> Drive to the far west end of the parking lot.<\/li>\n<li> From there, walk down the unpaved sand road till just past the trailer camp.<\/li>\n<li> Scope the sandbar in the middle of the bay (right hand side of the road) until you spot a Dowitcher sized bird with a noticeably ruddy breast.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Also, if it&#8217;s a weekend get there early. Although there were few folks around when we arrived, by the time we left at 11:30 the parking lot was completely full, and the police were turning away a long line of cars.<\/p>\n<p>The bird may be associating with some Dowitchers, or it may just be a coincidence. At one point we saw the Dowitchers appear to get annoyed with the Godwit and chase it off. However the color and patterns are clearly distinct from the Dowitchers. I would have been less confident in the ID if we hadn&#8217;t had both species standing right there for easy comparison.  By itself, the Godwit is easy to mistake for a Dowitcher at this distance. interestingly, we could see that the feeding pattern was also distinct. The Dowitchers probe the mud much faster than the Godwit does.<\/p>\n<p>Other birds seen included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> \tDouble-crested Cormorant<\/li>\n<li> \tGreat Egret<\/li>\n<li> \tOsprey<\/li>\n<li> \tBlack-bellied Plover<\/li>\n<li> \tAmerican Oystercatcher<\/li>\n<li> \tSpotted Sandpiper<\/li>\n<li> \tGreater Yellowlegs<\/li>\n<li> \tWillet<\/li>\n<li> \tHudsonian Godwit<\/li>\n<li> \tRuddy Turnstone<\/li>\n<li> \tRed Knot<\/li>\n<li> \tSanderling<\/li>\n<li> \tRing-billed Gull<\/li>\n<li> \tHerring Gull<\/li>\n<li> \tGreat Black-backed Gull<\/li>\n<li> \tLeast Tern<\/li>\n<li> \tCommon Tern<\/li>\n<li> \tForster&#8217;s Tern<\/li>\n<li> \tTree Swallow<\/li>\n<li> \tBarn Swallow<\/li>\n<li> \tNorthern Mockingbird<\/li>\n<li> \tSong Sparrow<\/li>\n<li> \tRed-winged Blackbird<\/li>\n<li> \tHouse Finch<\/li>\n<li> \tHouse Sparrow<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday morning Janet Schumacher and I drove out to Cupsogue Beach County Park on the south shore of Long Island to look for the Hudsonian Godwit that had been reported there since the previous weekend. I first saw it at low tide around 9:15 AM on the first sandbar in the bay, visible from just [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[318,316,196,319,317],"class_list":["post-1003344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birding","tag-cupsogue-beach-county-park","tag-hudsonian-godwith","tag-life-birds","tag-shorebirds","tag-west-hampton-dunes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003344","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=1003344"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1003392,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003344\/revisions\/1003392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1003344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1003344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1003344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}