Snowy Owl: Nemesis No More!

As many of you readers know, in the winter of 2013-14, there was a massive irruption of Snowy Owls. However, try as I might, I did not get to see one; therefore, the Snowy Owl went on my nemesis bird list.

However, the winter of 2014-15 had arrived, and I had high hopes of getting the bird this year. Of course, finding decent numbers of Snowies was harder without an irruption. Nonetheless, I had been alerted to a Snowy present on New Year's Day.  On January second, I rushed out there to see it.

Before getting to the spot, I made a stop at Floyd Bennett Field, an old airport that was being well trafficked by birders due to a Cassin's Kingbird that had shown up there in November 2014. It was the second state record of this western flycatcher in New York State and seemingly the entire New York birding community had run down to see it.

I found the Community Gardens, where the bird had been hanging around, by asking directions from a very rude park ranger. (Actually, my parents did the asking, since I would have been to scared to approach this guy.) I hopped out of the car at the gardens and asked some other birders if it was still around. They said yes. I walked over, put up my binoculars in the direction some photographers were shooting, and saw it.

Cassin's Kingbird!

Having seen the second state record of Cassin's Kingbird, I headed down to a beach on Floyd Bennett Field. There, Brant, Canada Geese and of course the ubiquitous Herring and Ring-billed Gulls hung around near shore, but further out sixty Red-breasted Mergansers bobbed in the waves. One Song Sparrow in the parking lot seemed content to eat out of a dish left out for a feral cat, even though the cat was right there. A Bufflehead kept out to the water.

I headed back to the community gardens to look for Horned Larks, but first had to count the guys with giant lenses waiting for the kingbird. While they and their equipment searched the garden, the kingbird flew right in front of my car, causing my parents to exclaim loudly. It then sat obligingly in a tree ten feet from my window, allowing for great photos.

It was now time for my nemesis, the Snowy Owl. I headed to the place where the owls were reported to be and there met a kind ranger who informed me of the location of the owl--right behind a post on the beach.

Upon arriving at the beach, I realized that maybe finding this bird wasn't going to be as easy as finding a post and then looking behind it. There were at least twenty posts up and down the beach. So I just started checking every post.

The eight or ninth post had a lump behind it.

I have seen lots of pictures of these arctic owls, but seeing a SNOWY OWL in person is very different. The bird swiveled his head back and forth, looking around with calm but alert eyes. I moved back, in case I was scaring him, and he hopped up on top of the post, then flew a short distance and sat on the sand and preened. Some birders who said they were from Canada happened along and we all enjoyed views of the beautiful owl; the bird that was a Nemesis No More.





To avoid stressing the owl, we left soon. On the way home, I made a brief stop at Fort Tilden, a beach along the Rockaway Peninsula. Two Red-throated Loons bobbed in the waves there, another Red-breasted Merganser hung out by the shore, and a Long-tailed Duck dove under every few minutes. Other than that, nothing really happened, but there was a beautiful sunset to look at and I had fun photographing the waves as they pounded against the jetties along the shoreline. The last bird of the day was a Double-crested Cormorant flying north against the setting sun.