Presidents' Day is an excuse for New York schools to take a bit of a breather, so we get a couple of extra days off. I chose to catch up with what was going on at Jones' Beach. The early snow made life a little tricky, but it stopped about mid-morning. Best birds were a fast flyby
Northern Goshawk which has been hanging around all winter. A flock of sparrows at the west end included 1
Field Sparrow, plenty of
American Tree Sparrow, Savannah Sparrow (including 1
'Ipswich' Sparrow),
Song Sparrow and
Dark-eyed Junco. Lots of
Yellow-rumped Warblers here too.
The coast guard station had a large flock of mixed
Snow Bunting, Horned Lark and
Lapland Longspur.
At about noon I headed towards Captree State Park. Along the road I had several
Northern Harrier and 1 dark phase
Rough-legged Hawk. At Captree I connected with the resident flock of
Boat-tailed Grackles.
Boat-tailed Grackle. A small population along the south coast of Long Island. These birds were at Captree State Park
Rough-legged Hawk, dark phase, juvenile.
This large pale
Savannah Sparrow is of the subspecies
Passerculus sandwichensis princeps. Known as
'Ipswich' Sparrow, they come from an isolated population on Sable Island of the coast of Nova Scotia.
Similar in most respects to the nominate
P. s. sandwichensis, they are noticeably larger (up to 50% heavier), and paler.
Field Sparrow
The resident flock of mixed
Horned Lark, Snow Bunting and
Lapland Longspur has moved to the coast guard station. The proportion of Longspurs has also increased, with at least 8 birds present today.
Juvenile
Great Black-backed Gull. Nasty looking beast...
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