Monday was a day for catching up on nests, and this included visiting St. John the Divine’s Common Raven nest. Despite the name “common”, they are rare breeders in Manhattan. The are using an abandoned Red-tailed Hawk nest. There are two nestlings.

I was able to watch the Wild Turkey at its Saint Bartholomew Church Ginkgo Tree roost on Thursday evening. I looked for it on Friday morning, but was unable to relocate it. Hopefully, it has moved on to a safer location than Park Avenue.

Update: A Turkey was reported on eBird. Check out this checklist from May 17th. It may very well be the bird from midtown.

A Wild Turkey first seen on Tuesday is spending its night roosting in a tree on the Park Avenue median at 49th Street on Wednesday night. It was seen on the sidewalks of 49th Street today, and evaded capture.

I went out to Governors Island on Saturday morning to see watch the Red-tailed Hawk nest. On the ferry ride over I ran into Annie Barry. She was leading two walks for NYC Audubon, as part of the inaugural opening of their house on Governors Island which has a new home, 405 Colonels Road, a few houses north of the Pizza Yard.

I said to Annie that there were reports of an American White Pelican in the harbor, and put up my bins and there was the bird! I was able to follow it as it moved further south for about 45 minutes until it was out of sight.

The bird was originally found by Wes Thompson on Thursday with many birders seeing it on Friday. It appears to be using a large amount of the harbor, often being off of Staten Island. Sightings near Governors Island may be correlated with high tide, but it’s hard to know. Hopefully it says a few more days, so more people can see it.

The southern section of Strawberry fields had a Clay-colored Sparrow on Thursday during the day, just in time for the inaugural “Birds & Brews” series of walks by the Linnaean Society of New York. The series starts after work hours at 5:30 pm and ends up with a drink at an Amsterdam Avenue bar. What a wonderful way to start a new series of walks by having a very rare bird be the first bird seen! There are two more trips planned for this spring. See The Linnaean Society of New York’s website for more details.

Carolina Wrens are small birds with an incredibly loud call and song. On Thursday, a pair was foraging for insects around the wood piles of the Compost Heap. Seeing or hearing one of these birds always brings a smile to my face!