May 24, 2022
Breezy Point Beach has all the components for a perfect day of day birdwatching: sunshine, lots of birds, and an acai bowl store nearby.
A train ride to Rockaway Beach in Queens brought me to the vicinity, where I then commuted to the edge of the peninsula half by bus, half by foot. I found two very focused American Oystercatchers foraging by the water when I made it to the sand. The pair was as photogenic as they come, so narrowing down the photos to three or four from 200 was tough.
I can think of worse problems to have.
In general, Black Oystercatchers are in the western US and American Oystercatchers are in the eastern US. Hybrids also occur though, with folks using the Jehl Scale to characterize them. I’m always impressed with how complicated identifying hybrids can get and the attention to detail the discussions require.
In the elegant words of blogger Seagull Steve, “On much of the continent, ID of oystercatchers is a carefree and stressless task. You either have Black or American, or none at all. Simple. Enter Southern California, which has moderate numbers of Black Oystercatchers, and occasionally American Oystercatchers, which allegedly occur so often that they aren’t even a review species anymore. The two species hybridize frequently, primarily in Baja California, but those birds regularly move north into California…giving us Black, American and hybrid oystercatchers to find.” Yikes!
A team of biologists and volunteers with the NYC Plover Project were working further down the beach. They’d been observing Piping Plovers from afar all season, waiting for each clutch size to reach three eggs so that they could install exclosements to detract predators. The exclosements looked like huge metal igloos that were designed to keep predators away from the nest, while still allowing the plovers to enter and exit as they please. To this group making impactful strides in shorebird conservation, thank you.
I sat on a jetty while the plover team did their thing. Hand to God, the bird of the hour came darting right toward me and came within a meter from where I was sitting. The ladybug near his foot in the photograph above really puts his small stature into perspective.
To my fellow birders— do you ever hope to find a bird, see a bird that looks similar to the bird you wanted to find, then talk yourself into thinking that was “the bird” when deep down you know it probably wasn’t?
I saw reports for Purple Sandpipers at Breezy Point Beach and was kind of, sort of hoping I would stumble across one. I ran into a flock of Sanderlings with the richest coloration I’d ever seen and convinced myself they were Purple Sandpipers, only to learn they were Sanderlings in breeding plumage. They may not have been Purple Sandpipers, but they sure were beautiful.
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Gone Birdin' 