Calverton in the fall

A good-sized feeding flock in the drizzle yesterday morning consisting of chickadees, titmice, many Golden-crowned Warblers, a Downy Woodpecker or two and a White-breasted Nuthatch; White-throated Sparrow, a pair of N Cardinals and Carolina Wrens also joined in. At one point, the birds seemed to coalesce around a predator of some sort and set up a raucous racket -- strong enough to attract Blue Jays to the site. The object of concern was in a extremely dense area of vegetation with a thick understory of bushes and vines surrounding some small trees. This is an area where there is often an uproar but it is impossible to see what is causing it. Since the birds were fairly low and the vegetation very dense, it is unlikely that a hawk or large owl is responsible and I can never see into the thicket well enough to pick out a small owl. A prowling cat is a possibility and, as I recently came to realize, so is a snake.

This morning was cloudy but as the northwest wind picked up , the sky cleared and it turned into a warm Indian summer day. I tagged along with a small group of new birdwatchers visiting Calverton (ex-Grumman or EPCAL) as I have rarely had a look at this magical site in the fall. There was a major dog-training operation in progress at Line Road, opposite the Grumman south fence, so we couldn't walk there but we managed to get inside the fence in a couple of spots -- both on foot and in vehicles.

The entire area is quite beautiful at this time of the year, largely because of the Peconic River wetlands;  our best fall colors come from wetlands trees, shrubs and vines. It was also notable how many of the grassland breeding species were still present.

The only raptors seen were Red-tailed Hawk and American Kestrel. The Kestrel was seen catching insects right on one of the runways (the unused one it should be quickly added). There were, in fact, insects calling everywhere on this beautiful sunny fall day.

Other insect catchers were Eastern Phoebe and Eastern Bluebirds, both of which were working the southern fence leaping down from their fence perches to catch a bug flying by or on some of the ground. Flocks of Cedar Waxings and Yellow-rumped Warblers -- all in non-breeding plumage -- were eating the berries on the numerous Red Cedars sprouting up on open areas near the end of the unused runway. In the grassland proper, or at the edge of the runway, there were fair numbers of sparrows (Savannahs and Vesper were identifiable), a pair of Horned Larks and a few Eastern Meadowlarks flying up.

The Horned Larks were quite well-marked birds with a lot of yellow on the face which should make them the northern race (alpestris?) and therefore a different subspecies from the breeding race (the 'Prairie' Horned Warbler or praticola) which has much less yellow on the face and which is the breeding bird on Eastern LI (including these very same grasslands). A nice touch was the occasional bit of lark song that came from these birds.

Eric Salzman