Registrar: Nick Dawson
Participants: 8
Weather: mid 60s, mostly clear, light winds
Bird species: 51
Barrier islands can experience magical days during migration season, and it’s a gift to birders that even slower days on Fire Island in early fall are excellent. For this year’s Watch Hill walk, led by the American Museum of Natural History’s Paul Sweet, the winds weren’t quite right to deliver anything exceptional or hugely unexpected; nevertheless, an excellent day of birding was had by all.
On the Watch Hill walk, arguably the two headline birds are usually the two Ammospiza sparrows, Saltmarsh and Seaside, as both species breed in the marsh just a few minutes from the ferry dock. This year, neither the Saltmarsh nor the Seaside was active and showy; however, everyone got at least brief looks at them. Though we didn’t find an abundance of warblers in the more wooded areas of Watch Hill, some handsome Baltimore Orioles picked up the slack with the sheer entertainment value of their posturing. As is usually the case in mid-September, a healthy number of migrating monarch butterflies were on the island, and we saw a smattering of Royal and Forster’s Terns foraging offshore, plus a (small) raft of Lesser Black-backed Gulls on the beach. There was also some nice raptor diversity, with 10-plus Ospreys, a Bald Eagle and a handful of Merlins and Northern Harriers (including a gray ghost) passing through.
Species Lists
Birds
Canada Goose
Mute Swan
Mallard
American Black Duck
Rock Pigeon
Mourning Dove
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Laughing Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
Great Black-backed Gull
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Forster’s Tern
Royal Tern
Double-crested Cormorant
Snowy Egret
Great Egret
Great Blue Heron
Osprey
Northern Harrier
Bald Eagle
Belted Kingfisher
Northern Flicker
Merlin
Eastern Wood-Pewee
Least Flycatcher
Eastern Phoebe
American Crow
Fish Crow
Black-capped Chickadee
European Starling
Gray Catbird
Brown Thrasher
Northern Mockingbird
Cedar Waxwing
House Sparrow
American Goldfinch
Seaside Sparrow
Saltmarsh Sparrow
Eastern Towhee
Baltimore Oriole
Red-winged Blackbird
Brown-headed Cowbird
Black-and-white Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
American Redstart
Cape May Warbler
Magnolia Warbler
Yellow Warbler
Palm Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
