10,000 Birds

Jones Beach, Long Island, New York USA
11 March 2007

Considering how many times I’ve been to New York over the last seventeen years - thirty? forty perhaps? - I’ve actually been to remarkably few birding sites other than Central Park or Jamaica Bay. I like both places very much in fact, but - well, sometimes a change is as good as a rest etc. So, when bird blog innovator and darn good friend Mike (of this very blog of course) suggested that we head out to Jones Beach on Long Island to look for a long-staying non-breeding plumaged Smith’s Longspur Calcarius pictus - just the second record in the State - it didn’t take much longer than a mili-second to say “Wow, a lifer, let’s go matey!” (For an interesting account of the first record, incidentally, check out The City Birder blog)

Long Island - which juts out some 118 miles (190 km) from New York Harbour - has an area of 1,377 square miles (3567 km²) and a population of 7.536 million, making it the largest island in the 48 contiguous U.S. states and the most populated in any U.S. state or territory (and apparently the 17th most populous island in the world, ahead of Ireland, Jamaica and the Japanese island of Hokkaido - you get the facts here folks!). Considering how much of it has been buried under highways and luxury housing, LI (as us regulars call it) still manages to turn up some cracking birds. In fact the last time I went to Long Island was way back in 1991 when I went on a twitch to birding hot-spot Montauk Point (with two birders I’ve never seen subsequently now I think about it), who were in a racing hurry to twitch another State rarity: a Black-billed Magpie Pica pica. A Black-billed Magpie! Hmm, a species that I’ve been seeing since I was old enough to register light hitting my retinas, one of the few birds I could actually see from my bedroom window at home, one of the most distinctive birds on the planet what with its long tail, short wings and black-and-white all-overness. Oh well, when in Rome…and they were driving after all…

Imagine the excitement as we drove round and round in ever-diminishing circles - ignoring the bobbing rafts of sea-ducks that the Point is famed for and that I desperately wanted to look at - waiting for a blinking Magpie to show itself. We looked in every bush and under every stone, and it took almost an hour to track the darn thing down. When it finally flew over the car and I casually remarked, “There it goes” before turning my attention back to looking at Song Sparrows the relief from the front seats was almost tangible. My colleagues seemed astounded by my feat of avian prestidigitation: how did you recognise it so quickly, they asked? Aside from the fact that if it looks like a magpie, flies like a magpie, and is coloured like a magpie - then it’s a magpie? Who knows, who knows, I muttered…and is that a King Eider out there?

Anyway, that was then - and today was likely to be very different. Firstly Smith’s Longspurs are way more interesting than a Magpie (IMHO), and secondly in non-breeding plumage they’re not quite so distinct in flight as a Magpie, and - considering that it was spending its time hunched out of the wind in any one of a series of troughs in some very well-vegetated sand-dunes - the chances of it flying over the car giving tickable views seemed a tad remote. We were going to have look long and hard to find this one - or, as any twitcher will admit to having done at some point, follow the crowds once someone else had found it…

Okay, having hinted at the none too surprising ending of this tale I’ll cut a fairly long story short and jump past the bit where Mike and I, having hung out with the crowd for a while, decided to put our best feet forward and strike off on our own and saw a few Cardinals, a crisp male Downy Woodpecker, some Song Sparrows, and I dipped a Field Sparrow that Mike saw, and we both saw a few Pale-bellied Brents in the water and some more grazing with some comparatively massive Canada Geese and go to straight to when we were walking with as much dignity as we could muster back to the boardwalk by the Jones Beach Nature Centre (where we should have stayed in the first place, truth be told) and then on to the point where we were standing with a bunch of other twitchy males trying desperately to pick up any trace of detail as in the far distance some small brown birds - one of which we were told authoritatively by a chap with a wild look in his eye was the Smith’s - shuffled about in the remarkably small-brown-bird coloured grasses.

Aside from the Smith’s, those small brown dots were also made up of Snow Buntings in various transition plumage stages, small groups of Lapland Buntings/Longspurs, and plenty of very pale Horned/Shore Larks. Excellent birding then, but a little difficult to pick out what was from what wasn’t as they all looked pretty much the same from where we were standing, neither of us had a scope, and the small crowd of birders on the boardwalk seemed a little reluctant to give up their’s before they’d managed to find the Smith’s (which I have to say was a perfectly reasonable attitude to take all things considered)…

Finally, after getting plenty of views of indistinct and unidentifiable shapes skittering between clumps of vegetation a kindly soul suddenly shouted “I’ve got it - anyone want a look through my scope?”

It’s a good test of friendship when you’re faced with both a lifer and a friend who also hasn’t seen the bird before…and, well, you know, anywhere within a sniff of New York is really sort of Mike’s patch and he had driven us there of course, so I waved him in (I’m not sure he noticed, but that’s what happened). To his credit he took just long enough a look to register the Longspur before stepping aside and letting me take his place at the eyepiece. And there it was - a dull, mustardy-yellow-bellied Little Brown Job with several other dull brown LBJs without mustardy-yellow bellies that…that suddenly wasn’t there anymore…HUH!

And that was it. I didn’t see it again (or, as far as I know, hear it: I don’t know what they sound like to be honest, but even had it called the wind was by now whipping any sounds away from us and out to sea ). So not the best view I’ve ever had of a new bird, but - at a pinch - countable I guess (ie it wouldn’t hurt to see another one before I work out the final tally and lay my binoculars down for the last time ). The photos below sort of sum up my feelings…

You know, all that probably sounds a little ungrateful, but it’s not meant to be. The fact is that Jones Beach is a very beautiful place and a Smith’s Longspur can be a darn hard bird to see under most circumstances let alone a breezy stretch of undulating coastline in March. Looking at some other blogs I read (you know, apart from 10000birds.com) not everyone who went to LI saw it at all, and all kudos to the photographers who’ve been posting some great shots of what is in reality a rather nicely marked bird that I’d loved to have seen well. To see what I mean have a look at the excellent photos here: http://keenbirding.com/NE07/smiths170207.html. Pretty impressive.

I did get a few okay photos of my own though (including the image of the rather chuffed NY blogger giving the ‘thumbs-up’ in response to seeing his first Smith’s Longspur) and I’ve posted a few here…

Non-adult Northern Harrier Circus cyaneus

 

Pale-bellied Brent Goose Branta bernicla hrota

 

Horned/Shore Lark Eremophila alpestris

 

Snow Bunting Plectrophenax nivalis

 

Many thanks to Mike for his enjoyable company and for ferrying me around. It was fun - and I really ought to mention the large flocks of White-winged Scoters moving along the coast and that we saw the first Tree Swallows of the year just before we left, which even for a UK-based birder like me signifies that things are at last on the move again. Roll on the spring, my friends, roll on the spring!

Day List - Highlights:
Red-throated Diver Gavia stellata 1; Great Northern Diver Gavia immer 1; Slavonian/Horned Grebe Podiceps auritus 1; Double-crested Cormorant Phalacrocorax auritus 1-2; Black Brant Branta bernicla c)30; Canada Goose Branta canadensis 3-4; Mallard Anas platyrhynchos 3-4; American Black Duck Anas rubripes 3; White-winged Scoter Melanitta fusca 600+; Turkey Vulture Cathartes aura 3; Mourning Dove Zenaida macroura 10-15; Black-bellied Plover Pluvialis squatarola c)30; Ring-billed Gull Larus delawarensis 10+; Bonaparte’s Gull Larus philadelphia 3; Downy Woodpecker Picoides pubescens 2-3; Horned Lark Eremophila alpestris c)10; Tree Swallow Tachycineta bicolor 3; American Robin Turdus migratorius c)20; American Goldfinch Carduelis tristis c)10; Yellow-rumped Warbler Dendroica coronata 4-5; Savannah Sparrow Passerculus sandwichensis 4-5; Song Sparrow Melospiza melodia c)10; White-throated Sparrow Zonotrichia albicollis 3; Lapland Bunting Calcarius lapponicus 5-10; Smith’s Longspur Calcarius pictus 1; Snow Bunting Plectrophenax nivalis c)30; Northern Cardinal Cardinalis cardinalis 2-3; Red-winged Blackbird Agelaius phoeniceus c)10; Common Grackle Quiscalus quiscula 1; Brown-headed Cowbird Molothrus ater 10+