Birds of Dutchess County, NY
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The Birds of Dutchess County New York Today and Yesterday A survey of current status with historical changes since 1870 by Stan DeOrsey and Barbara A. Butler Published on behalf of The Ralph T. Waterman Bird Club, Inc. Poughkeepsie, New York 2019 Copyright © 2006, 2019 by Stan DeOrsey and Barbara A. Butler Photographs in Photo Gallery copyright by respective photographers. All rights reserved First printing August 2006. Revised printing August 2019. First digital edition December 2010 with minor corrections. Additional digital updates September 2012, August 2014, and February 2016 each with some new sightings and AOS (formerly AOU) name and sequence changes. Photo Gallery added August 2017. Financial support was provided through a grant from the New York State Biodiversity Research Institute, primarily used to provide printed copies to all libraries, high schools, and colleges in Dutchess County plus appropriate entities outside of the county. ISBN 978-0-9635190-2-3 (first edition) Cover images: Front: male Scarlet Tanager photographed June 19, 2019, at Ludlow Woods, Stanfordville, by Deborah Tracy-Kral. Back Top: Eastern Screech-Owl bookmark painting by Helen Manson (Andrews) from a Ralph T. Waterman Bird Club dinner meeting favor. For many years Helen regularly created eighty favors per year in a variety of mediums. Courtesy Joan DeOrsey Back Bottom: Eastern Bluebirds by Louis Agassiz Fuertes from Birds of New York, part 2, 1914. Fuertes spoke to the Rhinebeck Bird Club on the evening of June 6, 1916. Overleaf: The small bird symbol was created by Ralph Waterman to use on personal notes and to mark pottery fired as a hobby. It is traditionally used by the Waterman Bird Club. To Joan, for introducing me to birding and for total support on this and other projects. L.S.D. To Helen Manson Andrews, my mentor and birding companion for many years. To Wayne, for his patience and support during this project. B.A.B. Revised Edition This is not a true second edition which would update “Status since 1990” to “Status since 2010.” Rather it is an updated first edition, a collection of important changes over the 14 years since it was first published. Nevertheless more than 60 pages have been added to include: all new sightings of casual and accidental species, breeding and other status changes, listed on page 249, updated bar graphs to match those in the Reference Guide, species names and sequence from the latest American Ornithological Society Checklist, over 35 historically important photos in a color Photo Gallery, early sightings of nearly 50 species which were rare or unknown in the county in 1900 but are now regularly seen, an up-to-date Bibliography, plus minor changes and corrections throughout. What has generally not been updated are the earliest or latest sightings and the largest flocks reported. The Foreword, Preface, and introductory chapters are mostly unchanged. We hope you enjoy our local birds and find this book worth referencing frequently. CONTENTS FOREWORD by Otis Waterman............................... 9 PREFACE............................................... 11 TABLE OF MAJOR SOURCES OF RECORDS ....................... 12 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS..................................... 13 SUPPLEMENTAL DATA ..................................... 14 HISTORY OF ORNITHOLOGY IN DUTCHESS COUNTY........... 15 THE NATURE AND USE OF THE LAND...................... 28 BIRDS LOST AND GAINED IN DUTCHESS COUNTY............ 39 TABLES OF CHANGING NESTING STATUS ....................... 43 ANNOTATED LIST OF THE BIRDS OF DUTCHESS COUNTY INTRODUCTION.......................................... 51 SPECIES ACCOUNTS...................................... 55 MISCELLANEOUS REPORTS ................................ 240 GENERAL SUMMARY OF CURRENT STATUS ..................... 248 PHOTO GALLERY PHOTOGRAPHS OF BIRDS SEEN INFREQUENTLY IN DUTCHESS COUNTY . 251 SPECIMENS OF BIRDS SEEN INFREQUENTLY IN DUTCHESS COUNTY .... 277 PEOPLE NAMED........................................ 279 PLACES NAMED........................................ 283 APPENDIX LIST OF BIRDS IN VICINITY OF FISHKILL-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. by Winfrid A. Stearns (1880).......................... 288 FROM INFREQUENTLY SEEN TO REGULARLY SEEN ................ 304 NO LONGER REGULARLY SEEN............................. 319 BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................... 322 DUTCHESS COUNTY, NEW YORK 9 FOREWORD It is my pleasure to write this brief Foreword, or possibly more correctly called “backward glance” to Barbara’s and Stan’s excellent treatise on this new Birds of Dutchess County. To both the new and old birders, they give a fine synopsis of the birds of Dutchess County both past and present. Their 4-5 years of research and writing is unparalleled in my humble opinion and rightly deserves our highest acclaims as Dutchess County birders. Maunsell S. Crosby (1887-1931) of Grasmere in Rhinebeck, New York, should properly be regarded as the Dean of Dutchess birders. From his many and precise records, Ludlow Griscom wrote the original Birds of Dutchess County, published by the Linnean Society of New York in 1933. Eleanor Pink and I updated this in 1964 and 1979 as part of the Club’s newsletter. In the ’30s and ’40s there were less than a dozen serious birders in the county, led by Allen Frost and Ray Guernsey who had birded and studied with Maunsell Crosby. Meg Guernsey, Ray’s great-niece, later became the R.T. Waterman Bird Club president in Otis Waterman and his father, Ralph Waterman, fishing on Sprout Creek near Stringham Rd., LaGrange in April 1946. Courtesy Otis Waterman 10 1980. By the mid-1940s my father, Ralph, and I became students of Frost, Guernsey, and Ralph Palmer of Vassar College. Thru the 1940s and 1950s, my father and I participated in the annual May Census Day, which Crosby had started in 1919, with the above handful of birders. Strangely, my father was an avid fly fisherman and pheasant hunter prior to becoming a diligent birder. He even carried me in his bird hunting vest at age two. Ralph began teaching bird identification classes in the Arlington adult education program in 1948 and continued to 1958, when he and my mother were killed in an auto accident in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Some of his students, Jean Beck, Jane Geisler, Eleanor Pink, and Kay Sisson are still active Club members. From that nucleus of students, the Dutchess County Bird Club was formed in 1958 with Raymond Connelly as the first president. With my father’s death the name was changed to the Ralph T. Waterman Bird Club in late 1959. In 1959, following in my father’s footsteps, I continued teaching the adult education classes from 1958 thru 1972. Eleanor Pink and I initiated the submission of monthly records by Club members in 1958, and it continues today. These records, kept by Eleanor from 1958-1989 and Barbara Butler since 1990, are the basis for this current book. Additionally, the Christmas Census summaries, which Florence Germond and I started in 1958, and the Club’s May Census Day accounts add to the records available on the website. Though the Club’s records of the May Census cover the entire county, my own group continues to follow the original route conceived by Crosby in 1919. With major loss of habitat and huge increase in population (120,000 – 1940 and 280,000 – 2005), I notice a large decrease in warbler counts for just my group. For example, resident type warbler counts for the day dropped from an average of 150 in the ’60s and ’70s to below 100 in the last 10 years. Migrant warbler counts of 50 to 100 are down to 10 or under. Even the species totals for the day for the one route dropped from 120 or more to 90-100 in the last 10 years! I should list all the fine and excellent birders I’ve known over some sixty years of birding, but Stan and Barbara just can’t allot the space. Probably the most well-known was Roger Tory Peterson, who used to call my father “Mr. Cerulean Warbler” and who kindly drove 200 miles to come and name our son Roger Tory at his Christening in 1962. Next on the list are my compatriots for my route on the May Census: Marion Van Wagner, the sharpest birder I ever knew; Eleanor Pink, my closest friend; and our son Fritz Waterman and daughter Krista Morris. I also have to list Florence Germond, the most vivacious, who originated the county’s Bluebird Trail and did the Christmas Census and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Breeding Bird Survey with me for over 30 years. Actually, “number one” on my list is really my wife Ginny, who has put up with all my bird activities for 53 years, when I should have been home working! I also cannot fail to mention Thelma Haight and Elting Arnold, who, as part of the Thompson Pond Committee of the Nature Conservancy, almost single-handedly raised the money to purchase the Thompson Pond Preserve in the 60s and 70s. This area was a favorite birding spot for Crosby and Frost and remains a favorite for present day birders. My Dutchess County “Life List” of species now stands at 276 and was started at age 7 in 1937 with a handful of Blue Jays at my Grandmother’s feeder in Poughkeepsie. My first real “birder” birds were a Chipping Sparrow and a Rose-breasted Grosbeak in 1944 at our home, seen with my father’s 1930 vintage Zeiss binoculars given to him by Ray Guernsey. My daughter Krista and son Fritz still use them occasionally! Good birding. OTIS WATERMAN (JULY 2006) 11 PREFACE Dutchess County is fortunate to have its avian history well documented. Over 70 years ago, Ludlow Griscom published the first book, and 25 years ago the last update appeared. It is time for a new comprehensive work using the extensive records of the Waterman Bird Club. This book describes the status and history of 318 bird species found in Dutchess County, New York. Its purpose is to consolidate, summarize, and preserve all known data on Dutchess County birds, and to establish a foundation for future comparison.