Coastal Brooklyn Birding

     After being mostly cooped up during the Nor'easter yesterday I spent my morning and afternoon hitting up the coastal areas from Bush Terminal Park, to Gravesend Bay, to Coney Island Creek, and to Jamaica Bay, by ay of Floyd Bennett Field. I was hoping that the windy condition that persisted into today would blow stuff in or cause congregations of water-loving things closer to shore.

     The adventure began at Bush Terminal Piers Park...

The waves at the park were coming up and onto the path in the park. High tide with strong, constant wind will do that! The way the park's waterway is shaped, there are corners that results in calmer waters. In those corners were some ducks-- and I was very happy to see this female redhead with 2 American wigeons and a mallard in a corner together.

She is my first Kings County Redhead, and from one female redhead to another- it was absolutely wonderful to see her as she braved the waves to find food.

In another corner I found 2 male gadwall.

From afar, gadwall looks like brown ducks that you can ID  easily by their dark bill and butt, and white patch back towards their wings and back end. But up close, they reveal some intricate zigs, zags, spots, and linework on those feathers from head to tail. What a gorgeous duck!

      The adventure continued as I made my way to the middle parking lot on Gravesend Bay, just off the Belt Parkway...

There were hundreds of gulls parked on the grass, but one was really special- a black-headed gull.

A bird that normally breeds in Europe naturally sought refuge among familiar chaps- it truly had an affinity for joining the European Starling flocks and would even fly over to join them as they foraged over the lawn.

Why is this gull so different from the hundreds of ring-billed gulls that surrounded it? It's smaller (and ring-billed gulls are one of our smaller gulls), has orange feet AND a small orange bill, tipped with black. They also have that "leftover" look on their heads of where the black feathers once were or will grow in.

This is an immature black-headed gull, as its wings are not a uniform grey.
I have had no white-winged gulls (Iceland/Glacous) all winter, so this was a plesant add to the year list.

     I continued to BJ's, but not to shop (I'm not a member) but to bird along the loittle park behind their parking garage. Some good birds had been reported back there in the last week- none of which I saw...

...But there were a bunch of greater scaup back there and even better, a female common goldeneye.

     Scooting a bit more east, next stop was Calvert Vaux Park...

Was happy to see a different gull among the other- and two of them, at that: Bonaparte's Gulls!

They look most similar to the black-headed gull seen eariler- like them they are smaller than the ring-billed gulls around them, but their bill is black. Feet in the winter are pink to orange. I noticed these two had orange feet. These birds are a North American species, unlike the black-headed. During breeding both the Bonaparte and Black-headed gull have black heads.
Also nice to see in the park, I saw my first two Tree Sparrows in Brooklyn. Signs of spring!

     Last stop-- Floyd Bennett Field...

Lots of American Kestrels hunting over the fields.

One of my favorite birds to always see. Little badass falcons.