Holiday birds

Right around the winter holidays is a good time to go birding. The work pressures are low, the people are more friendly, traffic is manageable, the weather is still (relatively) warm, but the winter birds are already present!

Brant geese in an oil tanker fly-by at Breezy Point:


Flock of Purple Sandpipers at Barnegat Light:


Red-Tailed Hawk flies over at Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx:


Another Barnegat Light winter special: Ruddy Turnstone:




One of these things is not like the other! A Snow Goose hiding amongst the Canadas in Assupink Wildlife Management area, NJ:


Brigantine Wildlife refuge housed hundreds upon hundreds of Northern Pintail ducks:




Another Red-Tailed Hawk playing hard to get, at Brignatine:


Staten Island's Great Kills park hosts a flock of hard-to-find Horned Larks in the winter. Normally skittish, one individual was cooperative enough to let me take a few passable shots:




Decidedly not hard-to-find, this European Starling posed in the morning light near the Outerboro Bridge in Staten Island:


Not quite a holiday bird, but still a really good shot: this is a late Common Yellowthroat that I found in September at Jacob Riis Park, Queens: