We went to Central Park with the Linnaean Society of NY on a birding trip on Sunday 3/12/2023. It has been a long time since I’ve been to the park. It was lovely seeing my old friends. Richard Z led the trip and did an excellent job finding us birds. I will post some of the highlights here and in the next several posts.
The Octagon is just before Lighthouse Park at the northern tip of Roosevelt Island. The second picture is a view inside looking up at the dome. I enhanced the skies in some of these.
There is a lovely new environmental Center at Liberty SP in NJ NJDEP | Liberty State Park | New Jersey State Park Service. I saw many winter ducks at the park.
We went on a winter birding trip with The Linnaean Society of New York – The Linnaean Society of New York (linnaeannewyork.org) led by Richard ZainEldeen to several locations on Staten Island, New York. It was a lovely trip and it was so nice seeing many of my birding friends. I wasn’t able to photograph many of the birds. Here are a few of the larger ones that I managed to snap. I replaced the skies on most with one of mine and moved the turkey from the road at Silver Lake’s Park to into a landscape at Wolfe’s Pond.
On Sunday we did a 1.5 hour drive from New York City up to Shawangunk Grasslands National Wildlife Refuge | U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (fws.gov) in Wallkill, New York. It was very cold and not very productive bird-wise. The refuge was full of expectant birders. Here’s a list of some of the birds one might see there Shawangunk Grasslands | Audubon Important Bird Areas
Our second trip to Hosmer Grove was in better weather. Some of the pictures are better and I added several new life birds to my list (see list below). The Hawaii ʻAmakihi and Maui ʻAlauahio or Maui Creeper were having a territorial squabble.
The scarcity of native Hawaiian birds in due to human impact. For instance, people brought in other birds, cats, and mosquitoes.
After Hosmer we drove up to the summit and I made some great photographs of the Haleakala Crater.
Here is my list of birds that I saw in Maui. I saw 38 species in total, 22 of those were ‘life’ birds, and 8 of the life birds were native to Hawaii (yellow highlights).
A mixed collection photographed in Kihei at and near where we stayed a the Maui Schooner Resort.
On our first trip to Hosmer Grove in Haleakala NP to look for endemic birds. It was rainy, foggy and freezing cold. I did see one bird – the Iʻiwi or scarlet honeycreeper (Drepanis coccinea). See ʻIʻiwi – Wikipedia and also see ʻIʻiwi – American Bird Conservancy (abcbirds.org). It feeds on the endangered Metrosideros polymorpha – Wikipedia. These photographs aren’t clear because of the weather.
Sherry Felix - port4u 