![\"Black-throated](\"http:\/\/static.flickr.com\/29\/63321460_8f521052f5_o.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIt’s getting harder to find life birds in my home territory, but not yet impossible. Today I picked up #326, a Black-Throated Gray Warbler in Forest Park, Queens. The bird was first reported almost a week ago by Seth Ausubel while I was in California. Fortunately it stuck around a while, and I was able to locate it today with the help of several other birders. Sean Sime took this photo of it a couple of days ago:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This bird was a rare accidental. It’s basically a western species that occasionally shows up on the East coast at this time of year. I don’t know if they’re any other records in New York City. Seeing it was a real treat. However, they’re still a few birds that breed here I’ve managed to miss, mostly the really secretive birds. These include Seaside Sparrow, Nelson’s Sharptailed Sparrow, Saltmarsh Sharptailed Sparrow, and Clapper Rail. If I spend some time at Marine Park, Four Sparrow Marsh, and Big Egg Marsh, I should be able to add these species in 2006. <\/p>\n
The other bird I should be able to get locally is Purple Sandpiper, which overwinters here. I looked for it a few times last winter, but kept missing it. This winter I’ll start looking for it sooner. I should also be able to find the screech owls in Central Park, though there’s argument as to whether those are really “countable.”<\/p>\n
Of course, there are also several birds that pass through once or twice a year on migration that I don’t have yet: several owls, the less common warblers (Connecticut, Mourning, Swainson’s, Kentucky, and Golden-winged), Golden Eagle, Blue Grosbeak, Common Nighthawk, and Yellow-billed Cuckoo. All these birds are reported somewhere in New York City every year, but there’s nowhere you can hang out with a reasonable chance of spotting one. You just have to spend a lot of time in the field during Spring and Fall migration until you get lucky. I chased Yellow-billed Cuckoo and Common Nighthawk a couple of times in Prospect and Central Parks this year, but without any luck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s getting harder to find life birds in my home territory, but not yet impossible. Today I picked up #326, a Black-Throated Gray Warbler in Forest Park, Queens. The bird was first reported almost a week ago by Seth Ausubel while I was in California. Fortunately it stuck around a while, and I was able […]<\/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-8","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\/8","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=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}