Greetings,

With my good birding buddy Ryan Butryn in town for the
night last night, we decided to get up early and head
out for some birding along the Hudson River in Greene
County this morning before his trip back home to the
Cayuga Basin today. Unfortunately-as we expected- the
weather was not the best we could have asked for on
our short birding adventure, but as always we did see
a decent few birds out and about despite the high
winds.

-In Castkill, a single male RING-NECKED DUCK was
present at Dutchman's Landing close to shore, while
several flocks of Common Mergansers hugged distant
shorelines. There was a possible Red-breasted
Merganser in one of the distant merganser flocks, but
due to the distance, and high winds it was hard to
synch the ID.

-At 4-mile Point Preserve off of Rte. 385, a single,
flyover-calling KILLDEER made the effort of getting
out of the car worth it. This is perhaps one of the
earliest dates I can think up for myself detecting
this species in NY. Surprisingly, no other birds of
any kind were detected at the park, even for the short
time we were there.

-At 10-10:30am, the Coxsackie Boat Launch had only a
small flock of gulls comprised of all Ring-billeds
(~15) and a single Great Black-Backed with no sign of
any white-winged species.

The flats around Coxsackie and Athens
(10:30am-12pm)produced several raptors for the day
including 2 Northern Harriers, and at least 6-8
Red-tailed Hawks including 2 that were nearly perched
on top of each other looking like Harris's Hawks
cooperatively hunting. There was 1 unidentified
raptor.

Other than the raptors and killdeer, there were no
other birds of note for the day. Several small flocks
of American Robins in Coxsackie yielded no vagrants
(Bohemian Waxwing, Varied Thrush etc.) and the river
itself was fairly quiet with little in the way of
waterfowl, gulls, or eagles (0).

Best,
Chad Witko
Claverack, NY
cjtrapper(at)yahoo(dot)com

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