This Was July (the non-plover part)

     July has been a lot. I have devoted much of my week to chick-sitting for NYC Plover Project but I have been able to do a tiny bit of birding when it was not triple digit temperatures out there. 

    The heat put a damper on any urge I had to go birding, especially in sitting on the beach most of the week. And of course some wonderful birds have been starting to migrate through, including some that would be lifers. I just hoped that they would stick out the week so I could see them without having to torture myself in the heat. And with luck on my side, they did!

Summer can be slow, so I sat around watching this great egret capture fish at high tide between the marsh grasses at Marine Park earlier this month.

It ate a lot of these, I wonder how many it needs in order to be satisfied.

I also tried capturing the Forster's terns as they hunted and dove into the waters.
Post dive you have to shake off all that excess water.

One of the resident osprey. Both nests have chicks this year, it's very exciting.

No luck on this dunk, fishless.

An Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on what I am fairly sure is beebalm. 
When it's summer the butterfly and moth show is always there to impress.

I also got the chance to visit Jamaica Bay's East Pond. Happily thanks to the work of a committed volunteer, I was able with friends to traverse all the way to its northern most points and got to see a life bird, two Hudsonian Godwits, Of which I got no pictures of, they were at a distance, but I was very happy to see them.
What did put on a spectacular and very entertaining show were the Forster Terns (pictured) with their fledglings who were whining to their parents, begging for food, and all too familiar to myself.

This female boat-tailed grackle was destroying this very big grapevine beetle. I thought at first it was a crab, as it was decently large enough.

The fledgling terns practicing their diving. Over, and over, and over, and over again. Comically dipping themselves just as soon as they came back up, father than hovering to determine their next target. It was pretty fun to watch.

And then, after watching their parents, they'd fly after them to beg for the fish they came up with.
I really loved the adult tern that came up with a fish with their whining fledgling in tow.... and just guiltlessly gulped down the fish for themselves. I was happy for them, because I know that feeling and that desire to eat that last delicious bite from your plate rather than selflessly sharing it to your offspring who has already eaten the majority of your dinner over their own.
Been there.

One of the major contributors to the soundtrack of yesterday's adventure were the short-billed dowitchers. There were lots of them and I was very excited to be able to pick out a long billed among them. It helped that it was so super red and chonky, it really stood out as different from the short-billeds.

At first was very confused by what seemed to be fully yellow legs, but the black on it's front of legs and the yellow face makes this a juvenile snowy egret.

In addition to the dowitcher section of the symphony, the other major contributor to the soundtrack of yesterday were the lesser-yellowlegs. Don't let that name fool you, they are very great, indeed.
Felt pretty fortunate to bird from 8am till nearly 12:30pm with some friends on a delightfully breezy day where the bugs were kept at bay, it wasn't 100 degrees, the pond was VERY walkable, and we got a bunch of the things we all secretly hoped for: Hudsonian Godwit, Bonaparte's Gull, Black-headed Gull, and Long-billed Dowitcher.

If you do plan to traverse the East Pond at Jamaica Bay WR, I highly suggest understanding how/where/names of the place. This map from Birding Dude, Andrew Baksh will be of great help to you.