Last two warblers from David Speiser

Chestnut sided Warbler

Blackpoll Warbler - female
Photos by DAVID SPEISER

Note: Something has been amiss with the uploading capability of this page for the last four days. That's why I had to delay posting David's final warbler shots.Now a friend [another great photographer, Cal Vornberger] has fixed my problems, enabling me to post two of David's final shots of the season. He writes:

It was a pretty good migration and an okay photo migration for me.

More pictures of breeding area birds at www.lilibirds.com

All the best,

David

PS from Marie

Blackpoll females are usually a sign that the migration is winding down, and there are quite a few of them in Central Park these days. Nesting season comes next. Stay tuned.

About my June 17th talk at the Natural History Museum

In case you called for tickets and were told it is sold out, please do try again. There ARE still tickets available. The phone for reservations is 212-769-5200

The gap under the cradle: response to my request

[unable to upload photos again today]

On Saturday, May 31, I posted a letter from John Blakeman responding to my question about the gap under the "cradle " at the Fifth Avenue Red-tail nest. As I promised in my posting, I forwarded the correspondence to Glenn Phillips, executive director of NYC Audubon, and wrote in the subject line: Can we do this simple thing? I prefaced the forwarded material with a note:

Glenn, The issue of the gap under the cradle keeps coming up, again and again and again. Now that you have the opportunity, [ to retrieve the eggs] why not do what Blakeman recommends in his note below [posted here on Saturday]. It certainly is cheap, and it fulfills the Hippocratic injunction Primum non nocere. Marie

Today he responded:

Red-Tail Hawks, as you know, nest on all sorts of structures, including bare fire escapes. Our expert panel discarded that issue as unlikely to be a contributing factor. Although the materials suggested may indeed be inexpensive, the permits, review by an architect, and the scaffolding (any modification to the cradle would require an inspector and a separate contract with the scaffolding company) would not be. Given that we’re still working to get the permits and agreement from the scaffolding company just to collect the eggs…I’m not sure it’s really simple. I’m afraid, much as it pains me to admit it, that we may not be able to expect further offspring from this pair of red-tails.

Glenn Phillips

Executive Director New York City Audubon

71 West 23rd Street, Room 1523

New York, NY 10010 Phone:

(212) 691-7483 Fax: (212) 924-3870

gphillips@nycaudubon.org

www.nycaudubon.org

Checklist for Central Park's Birds

Quite a few years ago Rebekah Creshkoff and I, with the help of Central Park's best birders, put together a checklist entitled The Birds of Central Park. It contained a lot of useful information about the park's bird population and was published by the Central Park Conservancy. They do not keep their publications in print for long and, indeed, the checklist has been out of print for a long time. I had a link to it on my LINKS page but recently someone wrote me that the link no longer works. Since [alas] I have no access to the various pages of my site apart from this one, I can't change that link right away. BUT HERE'S ONE THAT WORKS:

http://www.centralparknyc.org/site/DocServer?docID=155