Apartment Year List Through April 7, 2025: ADDENDUM 04/08/2025

Back in January with some severe cold weather predicted I expected we were going to have a good variety of waterfowl in Inwood Hill Park. I was not disappointed. Since January 1st, sixteen species of waterfowl have been reported in the park. I have seen fourteen species from my apartment (see list below). The only other species I have heard of were Northern Pintail on the main inlet and Long-tailed Duck on the Hudson. The variety of waterfowl inspired me to work on an apartment year list. My all time apartment list is 126 species (Here). As of April 7 my apartment 2025 year list is 61 species (below). I cannot take sole credit for the list. I have benefited from other local Inwood birders finding and reporting species which alerted me to their presence and I was then able to see them from my apartment. I particularly want to acknowledge Allen and Karina Greene, Danny Karlson, Hilary Russ, Diane Schenker, and Elizabeth White-Pultz.

ADDENDUM: On the morning of 04/08 I added Merlin. Apartment year list is now 62.

It is going to be interesting to see how high I can get the list over the course of the year.

Canada Goose

Mute Swan

Wood Duck

Gadwall

American Wigeon

Mallard

American Black Duck

Canvasback

Lesser Scaup

Bufflehead

Common Goldeneye

Hooded Merganser

Common Merganser

Red-breasted Merganser

Rock Pigeon

Mourning Dove

Greater Yellowlegs

Ring-billed Gull

American Herring Gull

Great Black-backed Gull

Pied-billed Grebe

Horned Grebe

Double-crested Cormorant

Black-crowned Night Heron

Great Egret

Great Blue Heron

Turkey Vulture

Osprey

Cooper's Hawk

Bald Eagle

Red-tailed Hawk

Belted Kingfisher

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Downy Woodpecker

Northern Flicker

American Kestrel Merlin

Peregrine Falcon

Eastern Phoebe

Blue Jay

American Crow

Fish Crow

Common Raven

Black-capped Chickadee

Tufted Titmouse

Carolina Wren

European Starling

Northern Mockingbird

American Robin

Cedar Waxwing

House Sparrow

House Finch

American Goldfinch

American Tree Sparrow

Dark-eyed Junco

White-throated Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Swamp Sparrow

Red-winged Blackbird

Brown-headed Cowbird

Common Grackle

Northern Cardinal

 

New mammal for my Inwood Hill Park list: Woodchuck

 On March 31, Diane Schenker texted she had a Woodchuck in Muscota. I was able to see it from my apartment window so I added to both my Inwood Hill Park list and apartment list. Yesterday, Danny Karlson and Junko Suzuki let me know it was in Muscota again. Below my window it was happily eating grass and other plants.

Woodchuck - April 6, 2025

It is not unusual to see Woodchucks in the outer boroughs or outside the city, but it is fairly rare to encounter one on the island of Manhattan.

Helen Hays: January 22, 1931 - February 5, 2025

I will post more about my friend and mentor in the future. For now I will post the following.

        How do you say goodbye to a person you have known for over fifty years. Especially when that person is someone like Helen. A person who was responsible for the life you have had. I know that Ann understands. Ann and I have been together for over forty years, but we would not have met if not for Helen. In fact, many of my closest friends were met because of Helen. To say that Helen was unique, and a force of nature is a cliché and certainly does not do her justice. Helen, through her own love of nature and birds in particular, literally helped change the world around her. Through her work on Great Gull Island and the students she inspired she left a legacy that cannot be measured and that will go on for generations. The day she died I started sending the sad news out. Within twelve hours tributes to her were being posted on multiple continents. Helen herself had visited every continent except Africa as well as islands in the Pacific. Like her beloved terns she was a traveler. I was lucky enough to travel with her to South America many times where we encountered some of the very same individual terns we had banded on Great Gull Island. As everywhere she went, she inspired people in South America to study and protect her terns. Of course, the Common and Roseate terns were not her only love. Before the terns she studied Ruddy Ducks in Manitoba and did ground-breaking work on the Spotted Sandpipers on Great Gull Island. She loved field work. When she wasn’t in the field she loved the theater, music and opera; all of which she enjoyed sharing with her friends.

        I still haven’t answered my original question about how to say goodbye to Helen. It is because I still don’t know how. There are too many memories. They give some comfort, and I take joy in looking back at the incredible and wonderful life she led and having some knowledge of the many other lives besides mine that she touched. So no, I don’t know how to say goodbye, other than to say: “Helen, I will miss you.”

March 10, 2025: A Book Recommendation - Taking Manhattan by Russell Shorto

This is a departure from natural history, but I want to highly recommend a just published book: Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America by Russell Shorto (W. W. Norton & Co.). It is a sequel to the same author’s classic book The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America (2004, Doubleday). Shorto’s earlier book recounted the history of New Amsterdam and how many of the American ideals of religious freedom and pluralism that are often attributed to the English colonies were actually passed on to the American colonies from the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. In his new book, Shorto recounts the events of the late summer of 1664 when England sent a flotilla under command of Richard Nicolls to take control of New Amsterdam away from the Netherlands and add it to the growing British Empire. Instead of the military confrontation that both sides expected Nicolls and the Dutch leader of New Amsterdam, Peter Stuyvesant, negotiated a peaceful transfer of power from the Dutch to the English. Nicolls renamed the town at the southern tip of Manhattan New York and became the colonies first English governor. Shorto describes the peaceful transition as a merger rather than a military takeover. He guaranteed the population the rights and freedoms they had been used to under the Dutch and gave rise to modern New York city and many of the freedoms of the future United States.

February 19, 2025: Common Goldeneye - new species for my Inwood Hill Park list and my apartment list.

This morning I spotted two female type Common Goldeneyes in the channel off Muscota. It was a freezing cold morning with temperatures in the upper teens. I knew it was a new species for my apartment list (my 122nd), but did not realize until I looked at my records that it was new for my Inwood Hill Park list (my 230th).

Common Goldeneyes - 2/19/2025 

ADDENDA: Around noon I added another species to my apartment list. I had been hearing from birders in the park since the morning that there were one to three Horned Grebes over by Spuyten Duyvil. I had been watching hoping the incoming tide might push them over towards Muscota. I took a break to make some lunch. I was in the kitchen when Karina and Allen Greene texted me that one of the Horned Grebes was in the channel by the big “C”. Running back to the window I searched for it for a long time before finally spotting it. The bird was doing a lot of diving which was why it was so hard to spot. But when I did it became my 123rd species for the apartment.

January 23, 2025: Day 4 of the freeze - Warmer, but still below freezing.

Fourth day of the big freeze: temperatures were warmer today, but never rose close to the freezing point. The channel in front of Muscota had a considerable amount of floating ice most of the day. The cold temperatures continue to drive a variety of waterfowl into Inwood Hill Park. There were at least four Hooded Mergansers present, perhaps more. The most I saw at one time were three males and a female, but since I saw lone males at other times of the day, these could possibly have been additional individuals.

Hooded Merganser - January 23, 2025    ©️ Joseph DiCostanzo

It turned into a two merganser day when a female Common Merganser flew west just ahead of one of the commercial cruise boats which I suspect flushed it off the water east of my view. This may have been the same individual I saw in the channel off Muscota a few days ago on January 20th.

Also present today were seven Buffleheads, up from the five I saw yesterday. When I first saw them I assumed they were the same five males I saw yesterday. The second time I saw the group they were accompanied by a female Bufflehead and then a sixth male.

Rounding out the waterfowl for the day were the usual Canada Geese and Mallards who are here every day.

Yesterday, Allen and Karina Greene sent me a photo of a Horned Grebe they found near the Henry Hudson Bridge, yet another uncommon waterbird presumably brought to the park by the freeze.

January 22, 2025: Frost heaves and Buffleheads in Muscota Marsh.

No, frost heaves are not what you get when you eat bad frost. (Sorry. I couldn’t resist.) Frost heave is the phenomenon you get in areas of water saturated ground and extreme cold temperatures. The last few days of very cold temperatures here in Inwood Hill Park have been perfect for causing frost heaves in the mud of the Muscota mudflats. Frost heave occurs when the water in the ground (in this case the mud of the Muscota flats) freezes, Water expands when it freezes into ice crystals. This causes the ground (or mud) to also expand and “heave” upward. Below are some photos of frost heaves this morning at Muscota. The temperature was 10 F at sun-up. 

While I was typing the above post, five male Buffleheads appeared around the Point, apparently pushed in by the ice on the incoming tide. These are almost undoubtedly the five Buffleheads that Allen Greene saw two days ago under the Henry Hudson Bridge.

Once again, I apologize for the poor image quality caused by shooting through dirty window glass and heat shimmer.

January 20, 2025: First day of the freeze.

It is always fun when a prediction comes true! After my post yesterday predicting an influx of waterfowl following last night’s freeze, I awoke this morning to three adult Mute Swans sleeping on the edge of the Muscota Marsh mudflats. The two Mute Swans photographed three days ago on the main inlet were immatures.

Mute Swans - January 20, 2025  ©️ Joseph DiCostanzo

Shortly after sun-up Allen Greene messaged there was a Gadwall about to disappear around the Point at Muscota. It was a nice looking male. Later in the morning another Gadwall dropped into the bay at Muscota. This was clearly a different individual. However, it did look like the Gadwall Danny Karlson photographed yesterday.

Gadwall - January 29, 2025.  ©️ Joseph DiCostanzo

The biggest surprise of the morning was a female Common Merganser swimming by Muscota.

Common Merganser - January 20, 2025  ©️ Joseph DiCostanzo

Adding to the less than regular waterfowl for the morning were the five Buffleheads Allen Greene spotted under the Henry Hudson Bridge. Elizabeth White-Pultz later texted she had a Bufflehead in the main inlet off the Nature Center dock. I have a very obscured view of that area from the apartment, but thanks to Elizabeth’s text I was able to glimpse a Bufflehead by the dock from the living room window.

Rounding out the waterfowl for the morning were the usual Canada Geese, Mallards, and a lone American Black Duck. Not a waterfowl, but an uncommon waterbird here in the winter were two Double-crested Cormorants.

It will be interesting to see if the continuing freeze predicted for the next two days produces any other interesting waterfowl.

My apologies for the quality of the photographs. I am shooting through a window that needs to be washed and given the outside air temperature I wasn’t going to open it. 

January 19, 2025: Deep Freeze next several days.

Back on January 5 I wrote that with the cold weather predicted in the week after that Inwood birders should keep their eyes open for uncommon waterfowl pushed into the area by the predicted cold weather freezing interior waterways. The cold was not quite as cold as initially predicted, but in the last two weeks the park has had Mute Swans, Hooded and Red-breasted mergansers and Common Loon. Tonight the predicted low is 18 F and it may drop into the single digits for the next three nights. Up the Hudson River some areas are expecting temperatures perhaps below zero F. Once again, I say watch for unusual waterfowl pushed into our local area. However, most of you don’t have the luxury that I have of a window overlooking Muscota Marsh, so PLEASE remember temperatures like those predicted are dangerous! I will do my best to keep watch and report anything unusual, but it is likely anything pushed south from the interior would take some time to get here any way so after the temperatures start going up again later in the week might be the best time to look for birds.

Red-breasted Merganser.-  January 12, 2025 ©️ Joseph DiCostanzo

ADDITIONAL NOTE: I posted last week about going upstate to see the Taiga Bean Goose in Greenwich, NY. Yesterday, a Tundra Bean Goose was found in Portsmouth, RI. I don’t expect anything of that level of rarity showing up, but we can always hope!

January 13, 2025: Taiga Bean Goose - A New York State Bird AND a Life Bird. [EDITED: 1/14/2025]

In a recent post going over some of the highlights of my 2024 New York State birding I mentioned that in recent years I hope to pick up at least one new bird for my New York State bird list each year. Last year I was lucky enough to see two - Lazuli Bunting and American Flamingo. The flamingo was also a life bird which is a very rare occurrence for me in New York. Today I picked up another new bird for my state list that was also a life bird - Taiga Bean Goose.

Taiga Bean Goose - January 13, 2025    ©️ Joseph DiCostanzo

The Taiga Bean Goose is an incredible rarity for New York. Not only is it a first record for the state, it is a first record for the eastern United States. The bird was first reported from Saratoga Lake about ten days ago. It disappeared from there and was then refound in some farm fields near Greenwich, Washington County. Over the last few days it was found in a number of farm fields with flocks of Canada Geese, but it was hard to perceive a set pattern to its wanderings. My friend, Sean Sime, and I discussed trying for it (a 3.5 hour drive from Inwood). Last night we decided it was still a bit too iffy in its appearances and so we decided not to go. I was starting to make breakfast a little before 8:00 this morning when Sean called and said: “Get ready. I am picking you up in an hour. The bird has been found in the same field it was seen in yesterday.” When we arrived around 12:30 pm there were about half a dozen cars on the side of the road by the farm field and birders were watching the bird. It was asleep in a large flock of Canada Geese. We were able to watch it for over an hour during which time it woke up and did some feeding on the corn stubble. We heard it was still in the same field at sunset.

Taiga Bean Goose is a species from Eurasia. If you look it up in many field guides you will not find it. You will find Bean Goose. It was only in recent years that Bean Goose was split into two species - Tundra Bean Goose and Taiga Bean Goose. They are extremely similar with the Taiga having a longer bill, usually with more yellow on it. The Taiga also has a longer neck and a paler head as well as other minor differences. Some authorities think the two species should not have been split and should probably be re-lumped. You can read an article about it here.

The goose was my 446th bird for NYS and my 1459 world life bird. My birding year is off to a great start.