An American Bittern has been on Turtle Pond since Wednesday.  It was a life bird for me, so I was glad it stuck around.

Up by Green’s Bench in the North Woods on Saturday, there was a delightful Red-Breasted Nuthatch.  I usually see them lower down in the park and later in the year, so this little bird was a pleasent surprise.

Fall migration has started and here are some random images from last Saturday…

Fall Migration is in full swing and Central Park is full of warblers, thrushes, and fly-catchers.  One of the fun migrants is the Ruby-thoated Hummingbird, that loves the necter of the Jewelweed plants in the park.

On Saturday, I was able to study the Red Crossbills more closely.  The flock made a circuit about every half hour that included trees in the upper lawn area of Shakespeare Garden and a small mud flat in the Upper Lobe.

The Crossbills had a wonderful way of extracting the seeds from the cones.  It was pluck a cone and then, work the cone from the bottom, extract one seed, husk the seed, spin the cone, and repeat until you need to fetch another cone.  It reminded me of how humans eat artichokes!

Today, thanks to the excellent birding skills of Jacob Drucker which were followed up on by Anders Peltomaa, many NYC birders got to enjoy a flock of Red Crossbills in Central Park.  The light made photographing them tough, but it was enjoyable to watch them.  The Red Crossbills are a new bird for my life list.

The video has regular and slow motion clips of the Red Crossbills extracting seeds for cones. The Red Crossbills were identified as the Type 3 subspecies using recordings made by Anders Peltomaa, by Matthew Young and Andrew Farnsworth, the flight-call-wizards of Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  This subspecies specializes in smaller and softer cones from trees such as Spruce, Fir and Hemlock.