Early fall birds at Jamaica Bay

Glossy Ibises are common at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge

With fall getting suddenly quite busy, C.Z. and I decided to sneak out to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge today before we looked up and it was January.  Yes, our priorities are in order--outdoor learning first!  (Well, maybe books first.  But sometimes it's close.)  The excuse may have been birds, but we mostly just wanted to get out in the open one more time before it got cold.  So off we went for a 2-hour commute on the A train to Broad Channel Island, near JFK airport.  

When we got to the refuge, we noticed right away that the place already looked quite different than it had in June and July when we'd been out there for several days to help researchers with nesting turtles. The vegetation was mostly thicker and overgrown, but already the honeysuckle had mostly disappeared and many of the plants sported berries.  I wish that I'd had my camera for one of the berry bushes, because its berries were in a lovely array of greens, blues and pale lavenders that reminded me of eggs raised on small farms.  The mature berries were deep red.  Some of the vines were starting to turn bright red, too, even though the leaves on the trees won't turn for another month. The weather had turned yesterday from muggy and summer hot to breezy and almost cool, and though I wore short sleeves, I occasionally felt a slight chill in the cloudy weather.  

The terrapin trail was now open, and I wondered what had happened to all the nesting turtles. We found a few protective nest cages, still marked.  Had many terrapins hatched safely and made it to overwintering spots on the island, or had raccoons eaten most of the eggs?  Were some turtles, for now, still crawling around in the underbrush?  (One thing that the Hofstra University researchers we worked have discovered through their work is that baby Diamondback Terrapins overwinter on land.  One usually thinks of baby saltwater turtles going back into the water.)  We felt nostalgic and even a bit proprietary walking down the trail, which we knew quite well from watching turtles and marking nests this summer.

 

A Snowy Egret, with those yellow feet

As for birds, we noticed right away that there were lots and lots of wading birds--Great Egrets, Snowy Egrets, Black-Crowned Night Herons, Yellow-Crowned Night Herons, Tricolor Herons, Glossy Ibises, and several other birds with stilty legs.  And not only was there a lot of variety, but for most species we saw lots and lots of each.  Greater Yellowlegs skirted around in great flocks, circling over the water and making their peeping sound.  Usually they're just wading when I see them. My favorite wading birds of the day, though, were the Snowy Egrets because they have black legs with yellow feet, which makes them look a little like Mickey Mouse!   

What we really didn't see that much of, surprisingly, were ducks.  Usually the West Pond is full of them, and happily some of them wear their breeding plumage in winter, so that gives one something fun to look for on fall and winter birding trips.  We did, however, see a Wood Duck (in breeding plumage) in the blind near the East Pond.  Since I've only seen one in the wild once before, that was a satisfying duck find.  

A Wood Duck in breeding plumage.  Almost looks fake, doesn't it?

We also enjoyed seeing a whole family of Mute Swans and a juvenile Laughing Gull begging for food from its mother.  There were even a couple of early-arriving Snow Geese.  No Black Skimmers this time, though.

We saw a good many songbirds, too, though we saw many for such a very short time that they were hard to identify.  Many of the warblers, in particular, go drab olive at this time of year.  Peterson's Field Guide has a page on "confusing fall warblers" which helps.  C.Z. and I have started calling them C.F.W.s for short.  (Not that saying "W" aloud is really that short.)  We had no trouble, however, identifying a Black-Throated Blue Warbler in the North Garden.  "Take a good look," I said of this favorite bird, "We may not see another one for a long time."  Some of the C.F.W.s or other non-breeding birds we saw today were a Common Yellowthroat, Redstarts (a misnomer, since they're yellow this time of year), and an American Goldfinch.  And I think a Pine Warbler.  

Now, I don't suppose that many of my readers are birders.  (I don't even suppose that there are many of you!)  So, maybe some of these species names are a little more detail than you ever wanted to know ;-).  But for me, the combination of being outside in a lovely marsh and getting to do a little sleuthing, all at once, is not a bad way to spend a day.  We had a very nice, quiet day, often quite alone and feeling safe enough (no small thing in NYC), and we saw about thirty species of birds, all told.  And since every time we've been to the park lately, mostly all the birds we've seen have been very raucous and aggressive robins, I thought it notable that we saw not one robin all afternoon!

May your outside days be enjoyable, however far you have to commute for them!

All images are from Wikipedia Commons or Creative Commons on Wikipedia.