Fwd: BBC field trip to Arverne on Oct. 3

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."
— George Eliot

--














   

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Ryan Goldberg <ryan.goldberg@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 5, 2026, 12:04 PM
Subject: BBC field trip to Arverne on Oct. 3
To: Peter Dorosh <prosbird@gmail.com>

Hi Peter,

Here's a report from the trip I led to Arverne East Nature Preserve on Saturday, with afternoon stops at Sunset Cove Park and Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.

It was a long day but we were carried forward by the excellent birds and the beautiful fall weather. It was a good night of migration, with newly-arrived sparrows at Arverne and waterfowl at Jamaica Bay. 

A few highlights at Arverne were two Yellow-billed Cuckoos, a group of about 125 American Oystercatchers loafing on the beach, presumably staging for migration, and large numbers of Savannah Sparrows, Eastern Phoebes, and Yellow-rumped Warblers and Common Yellowthroats. We had a nice variety of shorebirds on the beach and raptors passing overhead. 

We recorded 55 species, a good total for a small but well-located preserve: https://ebird.org/checklist/S398830463.

At Sunset Cove Park and JBWR the highlights were a Western Sandpiper, an Eared Grebe, our second White-crowned Sparrow of the day, and a large flock of Snowy Egrets in the West Pond's trees also getting ready to head south.

Here are those checklists: https://ebird.org/checklist/S398830805 (Sunset Cove) and https://ebird.org/checklist/S398831117 (JBWR's West Pond).

We had 16 people to start the day at 8am, and almost half that many finished around 4:30pm at JB! Thanks to all those who joined and especially to Don Riepe who met us at Arverne and shared a lot of great information on the habitat management he and the Littoral Society are doing there.

Ryan