| Perfect Weather at Montauk - November 21, 2009
Generally an oxymoron, well, if you you want to
successfully bird The End in winter.
Despite the title fact, Brent and Stella lead a
great trip to Montauk today. We began by scanning
the waters from the concession stand. The show
wasn't as spectacular as it could've been, with only
hundreds, not thousands, of eiders and scoters. But
seeing all flying together below you is never a bad
thing. After finding nothing of terrible interest
at the point, we tried Deep Hollow Ranch. I had seen
my first Pink-footed Goose in the pastures here in
2007, and was excited to see several hundred geese
milling about today. We scanned through them all and
found nothing to note. Just then Shai Mitra pulled
up and performed a magic trick. He pointed us to a
small cluster of geese hiding behind several layers
of fencing, and there stood a Richardson's Cackling
Goose. This was a lifer for many of our little
group, and more importantly we all learned how to
pick out a true Cackler! Before making our way
slowly west, we hit the point again. We then learned
that small gull identification is possible even at a
mile's distance, and used our new knowledge to
separate the microscopic Bonaparte's Gulls from
kittiwakes. In this way we were greatly rewarded for
optimizing the high power of our scopes. Brent
lead us to the next stop, the Lake Montauk inlet.
There we had fine views of flyover Laughing Gulls,
juxtaposed Great and Double-crested Cormorants, and
a male Common Eider that somehow ate an impossibly
large piece of seafood. Tons of large gulls were
visible offshore following fishing boats, but
nothing interesting could be picked out of the
frenzy. Our next stop, Culloden Point, fixed our
interesting Larus paucity with a creamy
first cycle Iceland Gull. We closed our East End
birding with a brief look at Fort and Hook Ponds.
Hook Pond was loaded with Canada Geese, but we were
fairly certain there were no Cacklers among them. We
did add Gadwall and Sanderling to the day list
there, however. As the group disseminated at
Stella's, an Eastern Screech-Owl whinnied "adieu."
In the dark northern sky, I laid my eyes on the last
flying object of the day: one brilliant white bird
with a red tail that streaked over the Long Island
sound for a few seconds before disintegrating in the
atmosphere. Brendan Fogarty Click thumbnails below
to view larger photos |
