Birds of a Feather is back with our new blog, Birding and Bonding! Our previous objective remains the same. Our goal is to find all birds that live on Long Island year round. The only rule is that in order to add a bird to our list, we must see it when we are together. That's where the bonding comes in. Life can get so hectic that we sometimes fail to enjoy the more important things. This gives us a wonderful outlet to make sure we take the time.

Of course, Long Island has many migratory birds, as well. We certainly don't want to ignore them. We will blog about them as well. Armed with new cameras and renewed incentive, we look forward to getting back on the birding trail!

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Connetquot State Park

Not every birding foray yields the desired results.  This post could also be titled, "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" since we heard more of that than birds.  However, we were together once again, after a long period of not birding, and that was the important thing.

We started out our afternoon at the McDonald's in Bay Shore because the pond behind usually has the (for us) elusive Black Ducks.  Unfortunately, there were none to be seen, so we headed to Connetquot State Park.  After living our whole lives on Long Island, neither of us had ever been to this park.  So we had great anticipation. 

Our first stop was the pond.  There we saw the usual Canada Geese, Mute Swans, Mallards and a Great Blue Heron.  There were also winter visitors such as Hooded Mergansers and Ring-Necked Ducks.

Hooded Merganser
It was the pond that yielded all the rewards.  Once we began our trek around the pond and through the woods, there was not a bird to be seen and only one to be heard, a Black-Capped Chickadee.  And aside from a few Crows and one lone unidentifiable hawk, flying at a very high altitude and very fast, this was the only bird I was able to snap a picture of.........

Southwest Jet
We certainly had time to bond since we weren't doing much birding.  It took us longer to get to the other side of the pond than expected, the trail being about 3.5 miles.  Since the sun was beginning to set, we were happy when we finally rounded the bend to head back.  It was at that point that one of us, I won't mention who, (not Ar), realized that she lost her sunglasses!  Now we had to back track about a quarter mile, but successfully recovered them.  Now our fear of being in the park after dark set in and we had to greatly pick up the pace.

Ar heading into the sunset.
We were hoping to see or hear an owl since dusk was quickly approaching.  No owls, but many deer.  We saw about 12.  Here's one........

Our legs carried us to the entrance just before dark.  Though the birds were few, the bonding was great.  We returned home, tired and happy.
at 1 comment:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)