The Birdy Site: Christmas Break Birding: Part 2, Searching for Nemesis Birds

Christmas Break Birding

Episode #2

Jones Beach State Park, Nassau, NY

Last year, as most of you probably know, there was a massive irruption of Snowy Owls. Unfortunately, I figured I could always see the bird later and waited until February, when it was Too Late, at which point the Snowy Owl became a nemesis bird, one that everyone else sees but I always miss.

And so I chose to set this next episode of Christmas Break Birding at Jones Beach, an Atlantic Ocean beach on the South Shore of Long Island, where the Snowy Owl turns up every year. I was also looking to pick up some other nemesis birds, such as Purple Sandpiper and Horned Lark.

Upon arriving at the beach, I found some gulls in the parking lot, including some that were a Black-backed Gull sp., though I was unable to put them to a single species. I briefly scanned the dunes with binoculars, but instead of an owl, I found guys with a gun. I hopped in the car and my dad drove rapidly to the Theodore Roosevelt Nature Center, where we reported the men with the gun to the park police.

I took a brief walk in the dunes behind the nature center, but found only a rude photographer walking over the protected habitat where he was expressly forbidden not to, flushing up huge numbers of Canada Geese and duck sp.. However, there were good sized flocks of Snow Bunting in the air, their wing patches flashing in the blue sky. A Northern Harrier skimmed the grass and pounced and twirled.

As there was nothing else to see in the dunes, I headed over to the Coast Guard Station and surveyed the water. Here, some other birders had already found five Long-tailed Ducks, a bunch of Brant, and four Great Black-backed Gull. Three Double-crested Cormorant dried their wings.

After the Coast Guard Station, I headed back to the dunes in the hopes that something had changed and there were now birds all over. There weren't. The flock of a hundred Snow Buntings was still there, but that was it.

Earlier in the morning, my mother had called the nature center to ask if there were any owls there at the time. The man who worked there said that there weren't, but that some other good birds sometimes hung out in the median and the scrub between the road and parking lot. I went in there, and stumbled upon a flock of House Finch and Yellow-rumped Warblers, which I enjoyed in the fading light.

At this point, it was too dark to bird any more, so I got in the car and headed home, the gulls circling and a Peregrine Falcon sitting on a light post on a bridge, silhouetted in the sunset.

Enjoy the photos from the day and look out for the next episode of Christmas Break Birding!