new bird

Yesterday, while walking down to the pond, I put up a good-sized hawk with a heavily striped tail, a lot of white on the wings, and a lot of reddish below. Although it was a striking bird, I had only a momentary view of it in flight; I decided it had to be a big female Cooper's Hawk and put it out of my mind. This morning I flushed it again -- clearly the same bird -- and was able to catch a glimpse of it perched before it took off again. Not a Cooper's Hawk! It had to be...but it couldn't be... A fearful racket from the local crows by the woods north of the house told me that they had found my bird. As I stood just by the path into the woods, I could see the hawk flying in from the edge trying to escape its crow tormentors. Amazingly, it perched on a branch just below the canopy giving me picture-perfect views of a RED-SHOULDERED HAWK! I could see the reddish nape and shoulders, the heavily striped orange breast, the square-cut head, the extensive white spotting on the wings. And then, just to make sure there was no mistake, the bird called twice: keee-yearrrr, keee-yearrrr! This species, like the Barred Owl and Pileated Woodpecker, is extremely rare on Long Island and there are just a handful of records. I saw it once on one of the Calverton Ponds where I believe it tried to breed many years ago. This was, I don't need to add, a new bird for these whereabouts.

Although the sun is coming up at a conveniently late hour, it's been quite a few days since I've seen the sunrise. We've had densely foggy mornings alternating with heavy overcast; this morning was a bit of both. Not ideal migrant weather one would think but the birds have nonetheless been moving through. Early in the morning, there were little chips and chirps all around the pine and cedar grove by the pond and I actually saw a warbler flying in. But it was impossible to get a good look at any of 'em. As the day brightened a bit, I saw several warblers with wing bars and immediately assumed that they belonged to the Blackpoll and Yellow-rumped Warblers that had moved in a couple of days ago. But this was an entirely new set of warblers: notably Bay-breasted, Pine, several Parula Warblers, Northern Waterthrush, American Redstart and Black-and-white. Also a female-type Rose-breasted Grosbeak, the first Blue-headed Vireo of the season, a handsome Baltimore Oriole, Eastern Towhees (male and female) and several Northern Flickers.

Eric Salzman