January 08, 1987 - Owl Sightings Highlight Annual Bird CountThe Suffolk Times /January 8,1987 /Page 1A
S CON S CTION
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THE SUFFOLK TIMES
Owl Sightings Highlight Annual Bird Count
By PAUL STOUTENBURGH
All 1500 Christmas Bird Counts
were taken from Guam and Hawaii
to Labrador, and from Alaska to Ven-
ezuela, during the period from Dec.
18, 1986, through Jan. 4, 1987. Here
on the East End we had three counts,
the Montauk, Central Suffolk and
Orient.
Montauk Count
Our first count of the year was the
Montauk Count covering a 15 -mile
diameter circle that includes Gardin-
ers Island. I've been doing this count
on Gardiners Island for over 20 years
and each time I go, whether it's by
boat or plane, I get a thrill out of
being there. Nowhere in the realm of
Long Island can you get that wonder-
ful feeling of being away from it all
as you can on that majestic island.
You can walk all day and not see a
soul. You walk with the feeling of '
yesterday when the land was free
from man's trappings.
This year, like many of the years
before, our party covered the Great
Pond area to the south. Here dune
grass, salt spray rose and high tide
bush rules the land. During the sum-
mer, thousands of gulls nested here
but today there are just a handful of
roving gulls working the beaches.
We counted these along with black
ducks, pintail, widgeon, bufflehead,
scoters, goldeneyes and a host of
others including a few cormorants. If
it flew, we counted it. Sparrows, jun-
cos and yellow - rumped warblers we
picked up in the low stubble along
the beach.
We couldn't help lifting up big
pieces of wood that had washed up
through the years to see whose living
quarters lie beneath. Under one was
a young family of deer mice. Their
big beady eyes blinked at the light
as their noses tried to sense the sud-
den intrusion. Under a piece of old
plywood there was a maze of tunnels
and nests where a big grey short -
tailed shrew scurried nervously
about. We put the boards back and
left them to their isolation.
Our area was charged with finding
shore birds along the south end.
These would make good additions to
our species count. We headed for the
south end where the islands of Car -
tright once used to be. They now
seemed attached to the land by a long
and narrow peninsula that resem-
bled a huge tail of a kite as it swept
toward Napeague on the south shore.
Luck was with us and we spotted a
nice flock of sanderlings along with
a small group of purple sandpipers.
The latter are our only wintering
sandpipers, but the sanderlings
should have headed south long ago.
Our big find was four snowy
owls. Never in all the years I've been
birding have I seen such a sight.
These grand daylight hunters from
the north have apparently moved
into our area because of poor hunting
Focus on
Nature
conditions up north. We trudged the
rest of the day riding on the high of
that most extraordinary sighting.
You can imagine that evening how
heads turned when we added our four
snowy owls to the day's tally.
Central Suffolk Count
The Central Suffolk Count fell on
Dec. 27 and our area was along the
-south shore from Speonk to Center
Moriches, mostly along the bays and
creeks. Here again, anything that
flew was counted. Our highlight was
a blue -grey gnatcatcher, the first to
be recorded in over 30 years of
Christmas Count records in the area.
We also had a phoebe. Both of these
rely on live insects for survival,
meaning they knew of some place
where it was warm enough that in-
sects were still about. I'm afraid by
now winter has done them in. These
were real finds and would prove to
be top contenders of the count.
Of course, one never tires of look-
ing at canvasbacks, redhead ducks,
black ducks, ring -neck ducks, wood
ducks, hooded mergansers, scaup,
widgeon, pintail; the list goes on and
on. On the south side they have a lot
of freshwater ponds -- ideal habitat
for these handsome ducks. We do
much better with bay and ocean
ducks than they and so it's nice to
have a chance to observe both.
We had 17 great blue herons in one
location and 70 swans had collected
in another spot. Food must have been
good there. We even had a great
horned owl fly out of the woods where
we were walking. It was sad to see
how this area had changed through
the years. I remember it as farmland
and duck farms. Today most of the
farms are gone and in their place,
where once clapper rails could be
flushed and snipe always found, con-
dominiums are lining the shoreline.
What a loss of habitat, what a loss to
the community and what problems
lie ahead.
Orient Count
The third count was our Orient
Count on Jan. 3. Had it not been just
after the big storm that swept up the
coast, perhaps we would have done
better. Some consideration was given
to calling it off and going the next
day, but at 4 a.m. people from the
west end had already left home so we
went with light snow falling.
We had -some good sightings. One
party on Shelter Island found a
northern shrike or butcher bird, as it
is sometimes called. It gets that
name from hanging its prey (usually
small birds or mice) on the thorn of a
tree or shrub, much like a butcher
hangs a quarter of meat on his racks.
Photo by Paul Stoutenburgh
SNOWY OWL - -Four of these daylight marauders from the north were
found on Gardiners Island during the Montauk Bird Count. We missed
this white owl on our Orient Count this year.
It will eat its fill and leave the rest
for later.
We did well with owls, getting
the screech, long- eared, barn, and
great horned, but no snowy owls.
These daytime stalkers outperform
cats by a large margin when it comes
to ridding an area of mice, voles and
rats.
Our parties were able to find some
northern visitors like pine siskins
and repdolls. These rugged little
sparrow -like birds were found feed-
ing on seeds of plants which stood
above the snow with winds swirling
about them. The highlight was prob-
ably the chat I found at the site of
the old Orient Point Inn. It is only
the second time in my life I have seen
this large warbler.
The cold wind hampered us and
made our eyes water all day, but the
reward back at home where we had
hot mulled cider, fish chowder and
other goodies made the effort all
worth while.
A tally of the 98 species seen on
the Orient Count follows:
Common Loon 21, Red - throated Loon 2,
Horned Grebe 55, Great Cormorant 4, Dou-
ble- crested Cormorant 39, Great Blue
Heron 44, Mute Swan 113, Canada Goose
804, Mallard 488, Black Duck 2,997, Gad -
wall 51, Pintail 5, Green - winged Teal 4,
Canvasback 8, Greater Scaup 346, Lesser
Scaup 1, Common Goldeneye 839,
Bufflehead 518, Oldsquaw 393, White -
winged Scoter 242, Surf Scoter 64, Black
Scoter 6, Hooded Merganser 1, Red - breasted
Merganser 255, Sharp - shinned Hawk 12.
Cooper's Hawk 2, Red- tailed Hawk 31,
Rough - legged Hawk 2, Marsh Hawk 22,
American Kestrel 22, Bobwhite 24, Ring -
necked Pheasant 9, American Coot 1,
Killdeer 1, Ruddy Turnstone 50, American
Woodcock 1, Common Snipe 1, Dunlin 4,
Sanderling 39, Great Black- backed Gull
206, Herring Gull 1,996, Ring - billed Gull
557, Bonaparte's Gull 22, Rock Dove 52,
See Focus, page 8A
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