Winter 2020 Brooklyn Bird Club’s The Clapper Rail Winter 2020 Inside This Issue 37 Visitors 38 Prospect Park 24 Happenings 3 A Brooklyn Hawk Breaking Through Watch the Fog: the 2019 17 Christmas Bird Count Why I Went 39 Birdwatching at a BBC Financial Report Particle Physics Lab 27 10 Breezy Point in The Field Guide to December Adventurous Birding 22 40 Sparks! Upcoming BBC 28 Programs Prairie Pothole Winter 41 BBC Christmas Bird The Brooklyn Bird Club 34 Count Appendix President: Dennis Hrehowsik From Rembrandt to http://www.brooklynbirdclub.org Sibley: Five Centuries The Clapper Rail of Bird Art Editor: Ryan Goldberg Deputy Editor: Janet Schumacher Art & Design: Tina Alleva, Angie Co Cover: American Robin in Fort Greene Park. Photo by August Davidson-Onsgard. 2 The Clapper Rail Winter 2020 Breaking Through the Fog: the 2019 Christmas Bird Count By Ryan Goldberg and Mike Yuan Dawn fog at the Belt Parkway. Photo by Tripper Paul. 3 The Clapper Rail Winter 2020 isibility was low but the number of birders Rightfully so, DeMarco and Aldinger drew the was high on Brooklyn’s 111th Christmas Bird largest applause at the annual compilation dinner that V Count on December 14. It speaks to the growth night at Prospect Park’s boathouse. And so too did other of the Brooklyn Bird Club, and birding in general in the milestones for the Brooklyn Bird Club. Rick Cech borough, that on a misty, foggy morning, 108 people handed the reins to Mike Yuan and Chris Laskowski spread across the 15-mile count radius to report back after running the show for 27 years; that two people on this winter’s birdlife. would replace Cech speaks to the stamp he’s left on the It was a mild day, as the whole winter has been— Brooklyn CBC, which includes proprietary software soon to be one of the warmest on record. The fog meant he developed to manage the compilation and display that a near record-low of 26,835 individual birds were real-time stats throughout the night. seen, but there were pleasant surprises among the Paul Keim, ex-club president, also announced expected shortfalls, with an above-average species that this would be his final compilation as emcee. count of 130, the highest since Brooklyn’s all-time Meanwhile, the club’s current head, Dennis Hrehowsik, high of 134 in 2012. began proceedings by noting that this was the first That total was helped by one intrepid duo. In dinner to eliminate single-use plastic. And it was an addition to the 11 long-standing count sectors, Louis opportunity to also recognize member Molly Adams, DeMarco and Bonnie Aldinger resurrected one that NYC Audubon’s advocacy and outreach director, for had been dormant for 17 years, the Jamaica Bay Boat. her and her organization’s dogged pursuit of newly- They kayaked to islands in the bay, scanning habitat passed city legislation that requires bird-friendly not visible from land, and pulled out two count “saves” glass on most new construction. It’s a significant step in the process: American Oystercatcher and Dunlin. forward. Above: A foggy morning at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. Photo by Doug Gochfeld. 4 The Clapper Rail Winter 2020 Above: Hermit Thrush at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Photo by Janet Zinn. The story of the day unfolded as the night wore Below: Iceland Gull at Cross Bay Boulevard Bridge. Photo by Shane on. Steve Nanz, the leader of the Spring Creek team, Blodgett. was quick to remind the audience of the poor visibility. The waterfowl numbers bore that out. White-winged Scoters, for instance, nearly equaled the tally of Black Scoters, because as one coastal participant noted, “They were the easiest ones to identify in the fog.” Not surprisingly, all-time lows were set for waterfowl and gulls, with 14 American Wigeon, 367 Mallard, 509 Greater Scaup, 28 Horned Grebe, 989 Herring Gull, and 14 Great Cormorant. Rare sightings (seen three or fewer times in the last 10 years) included a Redhead and Northern Goshawk at Jamaica Bay’s West Pond, five American Oystercatcher and eight Dunlin on the bay islands, a pair of Ring-Necked Duck at Prospect Park, Laughing Gulls at Spring Creek and Jacob Riis Park (with an Iceland Gull), a Lapland Longspur at Riis and another at Breezy Point, an all-time high of four Eastern Phoebe, House Wren, Lincoln’s and Vesper Sparrows, Baltimore Oriole, and four warblers—Ovenbird, Black-and-white, Nashville, and Wilson’s. Greater Yellowlegs and Tufted Titmouse were the big misses, both for the first time on the count. 5 The Clapper Rail Winter 2020 Bonaparte’s Gull and Red-breasted Nuthatch were also absent. High counts centered around the terrestrial, with all-time highs set with 11 American Woodcock, 240 Northern Cardinal, 93 Carolina Wren (more than double the previous high), 20 Chipping Sparrow, and four Common Raven. The ravens continue to establish themselves as likely breeding regulars in Kings County. Count week species consisted of Wilson’s Snipe, Bald Eagle, Black Skimmer, and White-crowned Sparrow. It was also the second year in which Fort Greene Park was included in the North Shore sector, thanks to August Davidson-Onsgard. Their finds included a significant gathering of Mourning Doves and the only Brown Thrasher of the count. August’s younger brother Clay was eager to announce that save, but he had to take a do-over after the emcee backtracked. Such is the joy of a save bird that on the second go-round, Clay proclaimed it again with the same enthusiasm. Right: Orange-crowned Warbler at JBWR. Photo by Doug Gochfeld. Below: Pine Warbler at Spring Creek. Photo by Mike Yuan. 6 The Clapper Rail Winter 2020 Top: White-throated Sparrow at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Photo by Janet Zinn. Bottom: Brown Thrasher at Fort Greene Park. Photo by August Davidson-Onsgard. 7 The Clapper Rail Winter 2020 Clockwise from top: Chipping Sparrow at Bergen Beach (Tripper Paul). Ovenbird at Spring Creek (Steve Nanz). Lesser Black-backed Gull at Jacob Riis (Shane Blodgett). Common Raven at Marine Park (Heydi Lopes). Redhead at JBWR (Eleanor Ray). 8 The Clapper Rail Winter 2020 9 CBC map by Tina Alleva. The Clapper Rail Winter 2020 The Field Guide to Adventurous Birding By Linda Ewing 10 The Clapper Rail Winter 2020 ird lust and wanderlust tend to feed one another. Invest in field guides and other Birding locally is wonderful, of course. print resources B There’s something particularly satisfying, almost intimate, about developing deep knowledge of Print still rules for birders. Finding a field guide a local patch—learning the precise corner of a weedy (or guides) specific to the destination is, by consensus, field favored by Savannah Sparrows, visiting specific the first step to a successful birding trip. That can be puddles where migrating warblers come down from as easy as picking up the western volume of one’s the canopy to bathe, knowing which bushy clumps favorite guide to the birds of North America—or as should be checked for American Woodcock. But the complicated as ordering expensive field guides from call of exotic species is powerful, and so is the lure outside the U.S., sight unseen, guided by reviews and of travel. Of the more than 10,000 species of birds in word-of-mouth…then waiting impatiently for delivery. the world, fewer than 300 reside in or pass through Ed Crowne has birded widely in Central and South Brooklyn in any given year, making travel the only America as well as the western U.S., contributing his way to see entire families of birds in the wild. And trip reports to the Clapper Rail (most recently about so Brooklyn birders travel. Some trips are spurred by Oaxaca for the Spring 2019 issue). Where possible, a desire to see a specific bird, like Whooping Cranes Crowne supplements his extensive collection of field in Texas. Sometimes the motivation is a more general guides with books devoted to finding birds within desire to immerse oneself in a region rich in endemic a state, region, or country. The American Birding species. Other times, it’s to bird a coastal or border Association is one good source for bird-finding zone that’s a magnet for ABA-area rarities. guides for destinations within the U.S., while the Whatever the motivation, birding in unfamiliar titles available from Buteo Books span the globe. places poses challenges. There’s the need to negotiate Then there’s Crowne’s favorite example of a hyper- destinations with non-birding travel partners (“You local, hyper-specific guide: “Freeway Birding, San seriously want to fly across the country to go to…a Francisco to Seattle” (written by a birder who had landfill?”). There’s the question of how to fit a scope frequent occasion to drive—you guessed it—between and tripod within a paltry luggage allowance. There’s San Francisco and Seattle). If you want to know where the conflict between typical tourist activities—visiting to see White-faced Ibis a short detour off I-5 at Exit museums and historic sites, wandering picturesque 586, this is your book. markets, dining in fine restaurants, staying out late— Stocking up on destination-specific guides can be and the imperative to get up well before sunrise to be a non-trivial expense, especially when piled on top of in the field at first light. There’s knowing where the airfare, accommodations and other travel costs. But local birding hotspots are, then figuring out how to get Brooklyn birders are as generous with their possessions to them—which may involve driving on treacherous, as they are with their advice, and the community rocky and rutted roads—and, once there, where to supports an informal lending library of sorts.