SoFo Field Trip on Dune Road

This morning's SoFo field trip on Dune Road, Shinnecock Bay, started at 8 am at the Shinnecock Inlet in heavy, overcast weather and ended at the Quogue Boardwalk some time shortly after noon and shortly before the rain hit. The weather and the weather forecast ('scattered thunderstorms') held down the number of participants but there were advantages as well: cooler weather, diffused light, light beach traffic, few dog walkers chasing up the birds, a very manageable group jumping in and out of a few cars.

We had good looks at a variety of birds, both locals and migrants passing through: Osprey, gulls of the usual flavors (Herring, Great Black-backed and one or two Ring-billed), Great and Snowy Egrets, Double-crested Cormorant, Common and Least Terns, Piping Plover, Am Oystercatcher, Willets, Great Blue Heron, Royal Terns, Black-bellied and Semipalmated Plovers, Killdeer, Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs Semipalmated and Least Sandpipers, Ruddy Turnstone, Short-billed Dowitcher and Sandlering. Migrating swallows were everywhere with Tree Swallows dominant and Barn and a few Bank mixed in; except for a few local Barn Swallows, they were almost all heading south (or, more precisely, northeast to southwest). Clapper Rails were calling in the high Spartina but remained invisible. Some numbers of Red-winged Blackbirds and Boat-tailed Grackles -- including young and females -- were in evidence; very few Common Grackles.

Easily the best bird of the day was a small, flat-headed Ammodramus sparrow perched on some reeds that was (understandably) called as a Saltmarsh Sparrow but, on closer examination, lacked the usual strong orange tints on its face (only a very light buffy color) and had no visible breast streaking (there was only a small central spot on the breast). It almost certainly was a GRASSHOPPER SPARROW, the only Ammodramus with a clear breast (the breast spot being probably irrelevant as a field mark). Grasshoppers are known to start to move in August and Spartina marshes are a form of grassland so it was not so far-fetched to find this bird on Dune Road in mid-August.

Eric Salzman