The Queens County Christmas Bird County was held on Sunday 12/17/17. Forty-six
participants found 43,235 individuals of 123 species, one off our all
time high of 124, which has been done twice. (Our report to Audubon will
have 124 species but we're not counting introduced bobwhites as a
"good" bird.) Highlights included: Hooded Warbler, first ever on the count, an adult male at the wastewater treatment plant in Atlantic Beach Western Tanager, 3rd occurrence (and 2nd year in a row!), long-staying bird at Crocheron Park Yellow-breasted Chat, 3rd occurrence, long-staying bird at Crocheron Park Blue-winged Teal, 7th occurrence on the count, at Jamaica Bay American Bittern, 2, at Edgemere and Jamaica Bay Yellow-crowned Night-Heron, 3rd occurrence on the count, in the far southeastern Rockaways Bald Eagle, 2, 7th occurrence, though almost all have been in last ten years Razorbill, 1, 6th occurrence, Atlantic Beach Lesser Black-backed Gull, 6th occurrence, Edgemere Eastern Screech-Owl, 5th occurrence Eastern Phoebe, Greentree, 11th occurrence Indigo Bunting, Greentree, 2nd occurrence Vesper Sparrow, dunes at Atlantic Beach, tough in recent decades High
Counts were set for quite a few species, a function of more eyes
looking and of a very smooth ocean with virtually no wind all day, which
helped in seeing and identifying even distant birds on the water: Redhead, 62, all but 2 at Baisley Pond Park Ring-necked Duck, 49, all at Baisley Pond Park Long-tailed Duck, 227 Red-throated Loon, 192 (previous high was 46) Great Blue Heron, 66 (tied our high) Cooper's Hawk, 20 Great Horned Owl, 6 (doubled our high count) Snowy Owl, 5 (tied our high set 4 years ago) Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, 19 Hairy Woodpecker, 20 Blue Jay, 445 Fish Crow, 110, (more than doubled high count) Common Raven, 4 (7th occurrence) American Robin, 759 Chipping Sparrow, 9 Northern Cardinal, 254 Common Grackle, 4626 Great Saves Included: Cedar Waxwing, 3 by the Douglaston crew Common Merganser, 5, also by Douglaston Winter Wren, 4, by the Valley Stream squad Great Cormorant, 1, by the Rockaways set Ring-necked Pheasant, also by the Rockaways Misses Included: Common Eider Bonaparte's Gull Red-breasted Nuthatch Snow Bunting Pine Warbler all owls except for Great Horned, Screech, and Snowy all winter finches White-eyed Vireo, seen up to the day before at Charles Memorial Park, count week bird Lesser Yellowlegs, seen repeatedly up until late last week, count week bird Snowy Egret, seen Saturday in southeastern Rockaways, count week bird Wilson's Warbler seen regularly up until late last week at Crocheron Park, count week bird There
is still not a definitive identification on the Orange-crowned Warbler /
Macgillvary's Warbler that was seen at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. It
seems expert opinion is now slanting heavily towards possibly the
brightest Orange-crowned Warbler ever and the bird was not found today.
For counting purposes, it's one species either way because we somehow
missed all the Orange-crowneds that had been around. If it's a
Macgillvary's it would be new to the count and we'd have Orange-crowned
as a count week bird. Good (Christmas Bird Count) Birding, Corey Finger |
QCBC CBC >
