![\"Northern](\"http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Northern-Shrike.jpg\" "\\"Northern")
<\/p>\nNorthern Shrike has been on my target list for a little over a year. It’s not a common bird around New York City, but it does show up regularly in early winter; and when it does it often sticks around one spot for a week or more at a time. However I’ve never before made the effort to chase it, so it doesn’t qualify as a nemesis bird. Nonetheless it was a bit galling when Steve Nanz and the Brooklyn Bird Club found one last week at Jones Beach State Park on a trip I skipped to go to the PDN Photo Expo. Fortunately the bird hung around, probably feeding on Yellow-rumped Warblers and other small birds, and was still near the Theodore Roosevelt Nature Center yesterday where Peter Dorosh, Mary Jo Eyster and myself relocated it yesterday:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We also tried for the Western Kingbird and Common Ground Dove that have been at the eastern end of the island at Captree State Park all week. However we whiffed on those, even though both birds were seen by other people at various times throughout the day. Still I’ve seen both of those in California, so just a minor loss for my state list. Overall, it was a very good day. Our total species count was around 56:<\/p>\n
There was also an American Bittern I missed. <\/p>\n
The Shrike was the only life bird, but I did get two new birds for Suffolk County (Boat-tailed Grackle and Peregrine Falcon) and 12 new species for Nassau County. That moves Nassau up to sixth place on my county list, just ahead of Orleans Parish. Orange County, California, is still comfortably in front with 242 species.<\/p>\n
There seems to be a developing consensus that this individual is not a Northern Shrike after all, but the much rarer (in New York, at least) Loggerhead Shrike. According to David Sibley, “The pale tips on some greater coverts are a sure sign of immaturity – adults of both species have uniform glossy black wings. Therefore the extensive and solid black mask makes it a Loggerhead, since all immature Northerns have narrow and incomplete masks and the only Northerns with a mask approaching this are adults.”<\/p>\n
Loggerhead Shrike is not especially rare in California, and when I lived in Irvine I could usually find a Loggerhead on a not especially long bike ride, so I have to take this one back, and Nassau and Orleans are now tied. I think this now officially qualifies Northern Shrike as my new Nemesis Bird.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Northern Shrike has been on my target list for a little over a year. It’s not a common bird around New York City, but it does show up regularly in early winter; and when it does it often sticks around one spot for a week or more at a time. However I’ve never before made […]<\/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":[338,196,339],"class_list":["post-1003555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birding","tag-jones-beach","tag-life-birds","tag-northern-shrike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003555","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=1003555"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1003591,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003555\/revisions\/1003591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1003555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1003555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1003555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}