Puddle Birding

     Who knew puddles could be such great places to bird. For two days at the end of August I birded the puddles at Floyd Bennett Field, hoping to find a Baird's Sandpiper (I didn't) but found an array of other birds. While disappointed that I did not see the Baird's, the ones that I did see were still pretty great. In living now so close to FBF, I will need to start doing this more and learning that area better. While I attempted to walk the North 40, the mosquitoes kept me out. So for now, it's fields and puddles.

One morning all I found was a solo lesser yellowlegs, or better known as the bester yellowlegs. Against the great yellowlegs, this one wins, for the cuteness factor alone. 

D'awww!

This is a puddle in front of Aviator Sports. Busses towered over this puddle from dropping of football teams taking practice on the fields. While I cannot imagine these puddles have the cleanest of water (from the car oil, debris, and who knows what). I bet they are full of larvae because a standing pool of water is high value for insects. And larvae are high value to wading birds.

A check of the same puddle after work, on the same day brought a different crowd, mainly a group of killdeer- who were clearly having a crazy kegger.

Killdeer always have a look of worry in their eyes- mostly due to that white eyebrow-- but it serves them well, because if you do so much as make eye contact with a killdeer it takes flight making it loud call, screaming to let the world know how it narrowly escaped its death.

But on this 90+ degree day, I watched from my car, which oddly makes for a good blind-- and oddly, is more likely to kill a killdeer than me standing with binoculars around my neck.

I visited a second (shrinking) puddle across from the community gardens where I could not use a car for a blind and made eye contact with a killdeer.

This puddle had mostly semipalmated sandpipers that I wanted to so badly to be something else.

A least sandpiper, also scampered through the grasses and along the puddle edge, with the semipalms.

And a savannah sparrow even joined the crew.

Two days later, the puddles were empty and nearly gone, but I had a great time watching this house wren fledgling.

How cute is this little nugget?! Still growing in those feathers! 

This little one made a heck of a racket, which makes for a stereotypical nosey Brooklyn Neighbor scene- the whole wren family came out to take a look but so did the common yellowthroats, which this bird proceeded to chase out of "its shrub."

And scream.

I love wrens, they have bravery as big as their voice, packaged up in that little birdie body.