Field Trip to West End Jones Beach Recap
Twenty members and friends joined our club outing on Feb 12. The date was rescheduled from the near ZERO temperatures the weekend before and we were rewarding with temperatures around 50 degrees!
Among the avian highlights were large numbers of Razorbills. These northern hemisphere “penguins” normally are scarce here and viewing them usually means braving the icy winds at Montauk. But on this day we had great looks at them drifting along on the glassy smooth waters of the inlet. Over at Point Lookout, there were two Purple Sandpipers sleeping on the rocks, and a couple of us had very distant looks at a pair of Harlequin Ducks. A handful of us wrapped up the day at the TR Sanctuary, where a pair of Horned Larks were singing in preparation for their early nesting season.
Overall, we found 43 species of birds, and we also saw many Harbor Seals feeding close in to the jetty.
With the birdsong and balmy temperatures, we could almost convince ourselves that spring was right around the corner.
Letter to an Enviromental Assassin
I have lived in my house in Bay Shore for 39 years. My house is 112 years old and the trees surrounding my neighborhood filled the sky with color and life.
Annie & Audubon
Annie McIntyre retired on December 14, 2022, from the New York State Parks Long Island Regional Environmental Office after over 20 years of service.
Feeder Survey NOV/DEC 2022
The Yellow-shafted Flicker, a large member of the woodpecker family is one of my favorite birds and it made January 1, 2023 a great start to my new year when I had a rare (for me) sight of one scarfing down the suet at my feeder.
