Bird Costumes

Which mascot should I get of myself?


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Scott's Oriole in Union Sq. Pt. 2

I got up early for once and went into Union Sq. before work this morning to check out the scott's oriole that had been sighted. A small crowd of birders were there, and they told me the bird had just flown off a few minutes before, but it came back a few minutes later. It was high up in a tree right across from Coffee Shop, so it wasn't in a great viewing or photographing location.

For me, the best part was when a well dressed girl around my age on her way to work stopped and asked what we were looking. One of the men explained it was a rare bird and pointed it out in the tree. I offered her my binoculars, and she got a look at it, and said "well, now I have something great to tell my boss why I was late today!"

Here's my best two photos:

Scott's Oriole

I got an email from the Metro Birding Briefs that a Scott's Oriole has been around Union Square park all month, but only a few people have noticed and it wasn't reported until today. This is a southwestern US bird, and its range is Utah down to into Mexico; this could possibly be a first for NY state!

The report came from Ardith Bondi, who posted some beautiful photos on her website.

Ardith's photo:


I hope to be able to get there to check it out tomorrow!

Long Billed Murrlet in PA

On Friday, there was a rare bird alert that a long billed murrelet, a bird with a typical range in northern Asia, was seen in the Lake Nockamixon state park outside Allentown, PA. Eric and I drove out there Saturday afternoon, but when we got there, it was no where to be seen. We chatted with a guy who had drove there from Baltimore, and he said that a long of people had been there looking, but it hadn't been seen all day. This guy wrote about seeing it in his blog - The Birdchaser.

The best part of the story is that apparently on Saturday morning, someone told the state park ranger that some hunter had shot the bird. So the ranger had to check to check every hunter that had come through that day to make sure they didn't have the murrelet tucked away in their loot. It seemed to be a false alarm, although no one had seen the bird alive all day. I think it's a goner. Someone's having murrelet soup for dinner tonight.

Long billed murelet in happier times:

Digiscoping

My brother and I saw a great blue heron at Claypit Pond in Belmont, MA. I'm pretty pleased with my digi-scoping (putting your camera up to a regular scope eyepiece) results.

Great blue heron:

Northern Saw (part IV) whet owl sighting

My dear friend Jodi Hildebrand had put me in touch with some screenwriters, Luke Matheny and Rob Meyer, who she knew from her work and were looking to do research on a script they were writing about teeange birdwatchers. We met up in Central Park the other day, and we had a very sucessfull birding day. Luke and Rob had never been birdwatching before, which made it way more fun and exciting to see and identify birds. Plus, I got to feel extra knowledgeble. Like the time my mom, my brother and I were candlepin bowling, and we felt really confident about how the league team playing at the same time was hardly better than we were (then we realized it was a league for mentally handicapped people).

I thought the highlight for me had come early with a good sighting of a pair of male and female eastern towhees, but just like bowling with retarded people, it only got better. We spotted several middle aged women and a young boy huddled around the bushes between the bike path and the lake. We asked them what they were looking at, and they pointed to an owl sitting in the bush, only about 6ft away from us. We identified it as a Northern Saw-Whet Owl, which is a bird I've never seen. In fact, I've never seen an owl in the wild period. So this was very exciting. Later that night, I checked the NYC Bird Report website, and found that this bird had not been reported all year.

Rob got some excellent pictures:

Northern saw-whet owl


Yellow-bellied sapsucker


Black capped chicadee

American Goldfinches

I saw my first American goldfinch of the year on Martha's Vineyard last week. I was so charmed by this little fellow's attitude that I did a painting: