Red-necked Grebe

This adult Red-necked Grebe was on Westchester Lagoon in Anchorage, and not terribly phased by people.  The trickier part of it was getting a decent approach while the sun was actually out, since sunshine was somewhat at a premium in the last few days of my AK trip while I was in Anchorage.  But for about a minute everything came together.

Least Sandpiper

After a little hiatus for the summer, which featured trips to the FL Keys and more adventurously to Alaska, time to resume with some season-relevant birds.  This one's a Least Sandpiper shot at Jamaica Bay back in early fall 2008, basically at Least Sandpiper eye level.  It's a juvenile so in very fresh plumage - the adults are still in worn alternate/breeding plumage at that date - with some rather nice warm colors from a very early start to my day.  Least Sandpipers favor feeding in more grassy environments than Semipalmated Sandpipers so they're often foraging amongst the emergent mud grasses that grow quickly on the exposed mud at that time of the year.

Leucistic White-throated Sparrow

White-throated Sparrows (Zonotrichia albicollis) are anything but exotic in New York City, with large numbers overwintering in a typical year and still quite a few in the exceptionally mild winter of 2011/2012. This individual, however manages to be quite a striking example of leucism with most of the feathers on the head turned white. The yellow lores are made even more striking, and the residual crown stripes are especially dark, suggesting that these things are partially masked by the brown and gray coloration that usually manifests on the head.

This bird was seen on the morning of April 15th in Central Park, spotted by Morgan Tingley, but undoubtedly the same individual that I saw briefly the previous morning in the same general area. Hard to miss, this bird, with such a white head.

Razorbill

My usual view of a Razorbill is moving in a small flock at high speed about a mile out in the Atlantic. Even on a Pelagic (e.g. a March 2011 pelagic off NJ) I saw lots of Razorbills, all of which were flying away from the boat from some distance out. So this particular bird was quite literally amazing. It was feeding parallel to the rocks on the south side of Manasquan Inlet (Point Pleasant), sometimes surfacing right below me. I was on the rock wall along the south side, and I just basically watched it work its way back and forth along the inlet. It could not care less about me. Which, despite some pretty poor lighting, is how I came up with basically full-frame Razorbill shots. While on dry land.

Judging from head and bill coloration this appears to be a first year bird, which may or may not be correlated with tameness.

Dickcissel

Common in the south, Dickcissel is very much a rarity in the north east and can usually be found hanging out with House Sparrows, with whom they are superficially related. This individual was hanging out with a large flock of House Sparrows - 30 or so, at the edge of ball fields at Inwood Hill Park. It was a very skittish flock - perhaps the fence line they were at is a favorite hunting spot for Accipiters, because they rarely spent more than 30 seconds on the ground feeding at any one time.

This bird is a first winter male, aged by the narrow dark streaking on the breast (immature), tapered primaries that don't show in this photo (immature) and the quite extensive yellow on the breast (male). Immatures tend to be the ones to wander - adults much less frequently.

Rufous Hummingbird in NYC

Every few years a Rufous Hummingbird turns up in/around NYC, and this year is one of them. There have been a lot of Rufous in the general region this late fall, and this is certainly an unusually late one.


It was feeding on a remaining patch of flowers outside the American Museum of Natural History Planetarium entrance on the north side of the building with no direct sun. There's no flash used in this image - this is actually from sunlight reflected off a nearby building on the north side of W81st Street. It's an immature female - various tail-spread shots (see the one I added below) are pretty definitive for both age and species and allow separation from the very similar Allen's Hummingbird (yet to be placed on the NY State bird list despite a Central Park example of Allen's in 2002).


Sadly the prospects for this bird are not good - it's lacking in energy and often clings to plants while feeding. It's doubtful it has the ability to migrate south far enough to find more flowering plants, so this will likely be its final stop. Proving me at least partially wrong, it's a tough bird in a mild winter, and it's still there as of Feb 7th 2012, apparently currently in retrix molt.

Unusual Ruddy Turnstone

In the lower image the typical appearance of winter-plumaged Ruddy Turnstone is in the lower left-hand corner. A Purple Sandpiper is in the middle, and this rather atypical Ruddy is at the top right. The top image shows what it looks when it's walking around feeding - demonstrably a Ruddy Turnstone but with no paler rufous fringing and a very extensive breast mark. Although Ruddy Turnstone and Black Turnstone overlap in breeding range in Alaska there's actually nothing in this bird to indicate a Black Turnstone hybrid - it's just a very dark Ruddy and one that really stuck out from all the other 40+ Ruddies that were roosting on the side of Barnegat Inlet jetty. I've considered melanism (or some other color defect) as a possible explanation - it's interesting that at least in the "group" photo the legs are noticeably a darker shade than the other Turnstone.