{"id":11580,"date":"2022-03-20T15:46:10","date_gmt":"2022-03-20T19:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/?p=11580"},"modified":"2022-03-20T15:46:10","modified_gmt":"2022-03-20T19:46:10","slug":"orange-county-tundra-swans-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/?p=11580","title":{"rendered":"Orange County Tundra Swans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yesterday afternoon I located 4 TUNDRA SWANS in a field on Celery Avenue in New Hampton. They were far and away the highlight of the weekend. I spotted the birds as I was driving, and I was immediately excited, as I was sure they had to be either Tundra or Trumpeter Swans. When I got the birds in the scope, I could see a yellow spot at the base of the bill on both birds, indicative of Tundra. The birds appeared to be a family unit, with 2 adults and 2 younger birds. While I was looking at the swans, I heard a distant, familiar call. I looked straight up and 3 Sandhill Cranes were flying high overhead; they flew northeast until they were out of sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This afternoon the birds were still in the area, but had moved to the fields on Onion Avenue. I’m assuming it was the same group of birds; they were quite distant, so I wasn’t really able to make out the field marks as well as I would have liked, but with 2 adults and 2 young birds about a 1\/4 mile away from where I had them the day before, I think this is a safe assumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
~Two Tundra Swans getting down and dirty on Celery Avenue, 03\/19\/22.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
~The same two adults, pre-mud so you can see the yellow spot at the base of the bills.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The rest of my birding weekend was relatively unremarkable. I hit many of my usual spots – the black dirt, Wickham Lake, Greenwood Lake (totally fogged in), the Liberty Loop, Reservoir 3 in Port Jervis, and some places here and there in between. I was curious as to which birds and how many I’d observed over the weekend – I had a total of 65 species, and I’ve included a complete list at the bottom of this post. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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~Young Tundra Swan on Celery Avenue, 03\/19\/22.~ <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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~Red-shouldered Hawk near Reservoir 3 in Port Jervis, 03\/20\/22.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Yard Birds 2022: (33) Species. This week I added Eastern Phoebe, Eastern Bluebird, and Great Blue Heron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
~These birds were way up there – this was taken with my 500mm lens and 1.4x extender. Then cropped. Sandhill Cranes on the move over Celery Avenue, 03\/19\/22.~ <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
~Killdeer are plentiful right now. Black dirt 03\/20\/22.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
~I coincidentally took a Mute Swan shot this weekend, at the Liberty Loop 03\/19\/22.~<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

WEEKEND BIRDS, 03\/18\/22 – 03\/20\/22<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Snow Goose<\/li>
  2. Canada Goose<\/li>
  3. Mute Swan<\/li>
  4. Tundra Swan<\/li>
  5. Wood Duck<\/li>
  6. Northern Shoveler<\/li>
  7. Gadwall<\/li>
  8. American Wigeon<\/li>
  9. Mallard<\/li>
  10. Am. Black Duck<\/li>
  11. Northern Pintail<\/li>
  12. Green-winged Teal<\/li>
  13. Ring-necked Duck<\/li>
  14. Common Merganser<\/li>
  15. Wild Turkey<\/li>
  16. Pied-billed Grebe<\/li>
  17. Rock Pigeon<\/li>
  18. Mourning Dove<\/li>
  19. Killdeer<\/li>
  20. Ring-billed Gull<\/li>
  21. Herring Gull<\/li>
  22. Great Black-backed Gull<\/li>
  23. Great Blue Heron<\/li>
  24. Black Vulture<\/li>
  25. Turkey Vulture<\/li>
  26. Northern Harrier<\/li>
  27. Sharp-shinned Hawk<\/li>
  28. Cooper’s Hawk<\/li>
  29. Bald Eagle<\/li>
  30. Red-shouldered Hawk<\/li>
  31. Red-tailed Hawk<\/li>
  32. Red-bellied Woodpecker<\/li>
  33. Hairy Woodpecker<\/li>
  34. Northern Flicker<\/li>
  35. Pileated Woodpecker<\/li>
  36. American Kestrel<\/li>
  37. Merlin<\/li>
  38. Eastern Phoebe<\/li>
  39. Blue Jay<\/li>
  40. Am. Crow<\/li>
  41. Fish Crow<\/li>
  42. Common Raven<\/li>
  43. Horned Lark<\/li>
  44. Black-capped Chickadee<\/li>
  45. Tufted Titmouse<\/li>
  46. White-breasted Nuthatch<\/li>
  47. Brown Creeper<\/li>
  48. Carolina Wren<\/li>
  49. Eastern Bluebird<\/li>
  50. Hermit Thrush<\/li>
  51. Am. Robin<\/li>
  52. Northern Mockingbird<\/li>
  53. European Starling<\/li>
  54. House Sparrow<\/li>
  55. House Finch<\/li>
  56. Am. Goldfinch<\/li>
  57. Am. Tree Sparrow<\/li>
  58. Field Sparrow<\/li>
  59. Dark-eyed Junco<\/li>
  60. Savannah Sparrow<\/li>
  61. Song Sparrow<\/li>
  62. Red-winged Blackbird<\/li>
  63. Brown-headed Cowbird<\/li>
  64. Common Grackle<\/li>
  65. Northern Cardinal<\/li><\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Yesterday afternoon I located 4 TUNDRA SWANS in a field on Celery Avenue in New Hampton. They were far and away the highlight of the weekend. I spotted the birds as I was driving, and I was immediately excited, as I was sure they had to be either Tundra or Trumpeter Swans. When I got … Continue reading “Orange County Tundra Swans”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orangecounty","category-photos"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5i3kT-30M","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11580"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11590,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11580\/revisions\/11590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orangebirding.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}