Migration is picking up!

New York, NY

Monday 29 April 2019 53 °F

Today after a successful voice jury, I treated myself to an afternoon of birding Manhattan, chasing rare bird notifications from the Manhattan Bird Alert twitter page.

My first stop of the day would be at Clinton Community Garden, a tiny pocket park in Midtown Manhattan along 48th St near 10th Avenue. I had heard a report of a very cooperative male Summer Tanager that had been spotted there this morning, and hoped I would have some chances to photograph this uncommon species. It took a lot of sifting through HOUSE SPARROWS & FERAL PIGEONS to find the more interesting species, including this gorgeous male YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER:

Then, I saw a flash of red in the tallest tree of the park. Could it be my hoped-for, all-red, tanager?

Indeed it was, a beautifully-plumaged adult male SUMMER TANAGER! Score — and in Midtown Manhattan of all places!

Then, it was off to the North Woods area of Central Park where a few nice things had been reported earlier today, including a Prairie & a Worm-eating Warbler. Their cousin, the BLACK-AND-WHITE WARBLER, was present in numbers:

GREAT EGRET:

BROWN CREEPER:

This BLUE-WINGED WARBLER was great to see, but even more fun to point out to other birders:

RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET:

Male AMERICAN GOLDFINCH:

WHITE-THROATED SPARROW:

HERMIT THRUSH:

YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER:

I was delighted to see my first OVENBIRD of spring:

A flyover AMERICAN KESTREL was also a nice bonus bird:

Perhaps, best of all though, was when I spotted a tiny warbler flitting around in the treetops above a stream called the Loch. Upon seeing its characteristic stripes on its head, I had found one of my target birds, the WORM-EATING WARBLER! Only the third time I have ever seen this bird, how very cool!