Happy New Year

My New Year’s resolution is to do a little more birding and a little less photography during the non-nesting/fledgling period for hawks. (Basically the months outside of April, May, June and July.)

So today, I just went for a long walk around Central Park today with my scope and took an occasional digiscoping picture.  My bird count 39 species.  The highlight was seeing two Baltimore Orioles.

Count Species 
81Canada Goose
2Wood Duck
41Mallard
1American Black Duck x Mallard (hybrid)
37Northern Shoveler
1Ring-necked Duck
8Bufflehead
9Hooded Merganser
10Ruddy Duck
4Pied-billed Grebe
1Sharp-shinned Hawk
1Cooper’s Hawk
3Red-tailed Hawk
5American Coot
18Ring-billed Gull
6Great Black-backed Gull
23Rock Pigeon
1Mourning Dove
1Red-bellied Woodpecker
2Downy Woodpecker
1Hairy Woodpecker
11Blue Jay
1American Crow
2Black-capped Chickadee
2White-breasted Nuthatch
1Brown Creeper
1Carolina Wren
2American Robin
1Northern Mockingbird
4European Starling
1Song Sparrow
28White-throated Sparrow
8Dark-eyed Junco
2Northern Cardinal
1Red-winged Blackbird
6

Common Grackle

2Baltimore Oriole
11House Finch
8American Goldfinch
23House Sparrow
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NJ 30 in Battery Park

I finally caught up with NJ 30, the banded hawk which may have been one of the juveniles from the Washington Square nest, in Battery Park today.  It was great to see the hawk.

After loosing track of it, but finding the park’s Wild Turkey and an American Kestrel, I saw two Red-tailed hawks high in the sky.   It was hard to tell if they were friend or foe and I couldn’t tell if one of the hawks was NJ30.  But it was good to see that the area had more than just one Red-tail.

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Randalls Island

On the Northeast light post of the soccer field north of Icahn Stadium is the 2013 Randalls Island Red-tailed Hawk nest.  The female of the nest was sitting on the eggs.  She sat low on the nest and when she settled in after getting in did the back and forth wiggle a brooding mother does.

So, I don’t thing we’ve had a hatch yet out on Randalls Island.

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