{"id":8528,"date":"2014-04-14T07:34:57","date_gmt":"2014-04-14T14:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/?p=8528"},"modified":"2014-04-14T07:37:01","modified_gmt":"2014-04-14T14:37:01","slug":"brookdale-park-birding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/14\/brookdale-park-birding\/","title":{"rendered":"Brookdale Park Birding"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hairy<\/a><\/p>\n

A warm spring morning — at long last — in Brookdale Park, and Helen, Mollie, Gary, and I ran into a couple of arrivals during our leisurely walk around the edges of the park.<\/p>\n

Blue-gray Gnatcatchers\u00a0<\/strong>whined and buzzed here and there, and a\u00a0Ruby-crowned Kinglet<\/strong>, even tinier, was the first of what should soon be the regulid onslaught.<\/p>\n

The arrival of the kinglets usually coincides with the earliest warblers. Though I did have a couple of\u00a0Myrtle Warblers\u00a0<\/strong>early on, I was beginning to worry that that would be it for the morning. But no: a creeping sprite in the dead wood below the tennis courts turned into a glorious male Black-and-white Warbler<\/strong>, my first this spring in our area.<\/p>\n

We were just as excited to see the local Red-tailed Hawks\u00a0<\/strong>still in residence and acting decidedly broody. One bird slunk around quietly in a tall pine, as if hoping to get onto a nest without being seen, while the other soared overhead with a rat in its feet. I was impressed once again by what good hunters these birds are: I could look for rats all day and not find one. (Not complaining about that, of course.)<\/p>\n

Winter isn’t that far behind us, though.\u00a0White-throated Sparrows\u00a0<\/strong>were just as abundant and as conspicuous as\u00a0Chipping Sparrows<\/strong>, and a lone\u00a0Slate-colored Junco\u00a0<\/strong>was still lurking around the stream, perhaps taking her last bath before heading into the Adirondacks to breed.<\/p>\n

Best of all, perhaps, was a pair of\u00a0Hairy Woodpeckers\u00a0<\/strong>quietly feeding together on large snags on the west side of the park. Fingers crossed that these birds stick around and breed: a little bit of wilderness in Bloomfield.<\/p>\n

Join the Brookdale Conservancy and me for May bird walks in the park: schedule is here under “Upcoming Events<\/a>.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A warm spring morning — at long last — in Brookdale Park, and Helen, Mollie, Gary, and I ran into a couple of arrivals during our leisurely walk around the edges of the park. Blue-gray Gnatcatchers\u00a0whined and buzzed here and there, and a\u00a0Ruby-crowned Kinglet, even tinier, was the first of what should soon be the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Brookdale Park Birding”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,1,52,64,2],"tags":[138,136,139,140,137],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8528"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8528"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8533,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8528\/revisions\/8533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}