Catching up: Wednesday, Thursday & Friday

Wednesday, May 4. Heavy overcast but dry. A strange little waterfowl swimming in the pond turned to be a Greater Yellowlegs paddling around like a mini-duck. The Purple Martins, mostly hanging around the martin houses, and the Willets, mostly on the far side of the creek (but occasionally over on this side), are both settling their domestic business with a maximum of noise -- the Martins with continual chippering rounds of their video-game calls and the willets with the endless repetitions and variations on their name. The first Common Yellowthroat of the season, calling and chipping, turned up in the shrubbery at the far end of the old right-of-way but the calling warblers high in the tree tops all turned out to be Yellow-rumps. Great Crested Flycatcher marked his movements with loud, croaking, laughing calls but an Eastern Phoebe barely emitted only an unfamiliar little buzz; I might not have recognized it a Phoebe at all if it weren't for its persistent tail-wagging. Not all the newly arrived birds were welcome; add two squeaky male Brown-headed Cowbirds to the list. The plethora of singing House Wrens all over the territory all week may in fact only be a single bird which tirelessly tries out its bubbling song from every conceivable corner. Accounting for the calling Baltimare Orioles does, however, require the presence of more than one male; in fact, there have been three or four different birds working the burgeoning oaks. Hope the cowbirds don't dupe any of these with their nefarious egg-laying

Thursday, May 5. A trial run to Maple Swamp (in preparation for Sunday's walk). Strong winds from the north appear to have held down potential migration but many -- not all! -- of the local breeding birds were in. The only long-distance migrant was a Palm Warbler although a small, skulking, greenish bird that got away into the dense shrubbery at the edge of Maple Swamp Pond might have been something good (probably a female Tennessee Warbler foraging low down instead of high up because that's where the food was this morning).

Friday, May 6. Beautiful, blue-sky morning after a cool overnight (frost on the edge of the marsh). Two Lesser Yellowlegs flying in formation made a couple of passes across the mouth of the pond; other yellowlegs -- presumably Greater -- were flying in the distance. As the day warmed up, a screeping, laughing Great Crested Flycatcher turned up and a trilling Pine Warbler as well, the latter for the first time this season (the only other warbler seen was a Yellow-rump). But the bird of the morning was a COMMON MERGANSER in the water at the mouth of the pond and the first of its species that I have seen here. It was initially seen in silhouette against the rising sun but eventually it swam out into the creek and moved far enough over into good light to show most of its markings. This was a big duck with a smooth, rounded head, riding high on the water and showing generous areas of white side and breast with only a thin dark line extending from the dark back into the white; it had an all-dark head, a sharp division between the dark head and the white lower neck and breast, and a merganser bill that was thick at the base. All these features were distinct from those of the Red-breasted Merganser which is the merganser that one expects to see on the creek in winter and migration. Our total is now 236 species.

As a reminder, Sunday's ELIAS walk in Maple Swamp begins at 8 am from the pull-out on the eastern side of Pleasure Drive in Flanders (about 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile south of Rt. 24). I will actually be there at 7:30 (a time that was also announced) and we will spend the first 1/2 hour birding the area between the old horse pasture and the road. At a few minutes after 8, we'll depart for the pasture and the woods beyond. Ticks were almost absent on Thursday walk but I would still come prepared to deal with the buggers.

Saturday's SOFO walk in the East Hampton Grace Estate begins at 8 am from the pull-out on Northwest Road just short of where it meets Alewife Brook Road in the Northwest section of East Hampton. From the west the directions are as follows: take Swamp Road east/northeast from Rt. 114 just southeast of Sag Harbor. Turn right on Northwest Landing Road, right again on Old Northwest Road and almost immediately left on Northwest Road which you follow almost to the junction of Alewife Brook Road; you will see a pull-out area on the right opposite one of the main entrances to the Grace Estate. The focus of this walk will be "Birding by Ear"; we expect to catch most of the local breeders and perhaps some migrants.

Eric Salzman

P.O. Box 775 (14 Randall Lane)
East Quogue NY 11942
631 653-5236
es@ericsalzman.com
www.ericsalzman.com