Late Summer Birds at The Battery

Migration season has started, bringing early-moving warblers to city parks - including American Redstarts, Common Yellowthroats and Northern Parulas. Hard to see but fun if you can find them. 

Sometimes they will perch in the open where they are easy to spot, like on the fence by the Battery farm, or in low branches nearby. 

The Redstarts don't sit still for long. Like most warblers, they are hunting for insects, and will fan out their tail feathers as they flit around in the trees, startling their prey out of the leaves, or sometimes just grabbing bugs out of the air. Occasionally they might investigate some berries.     

American Redstart female

Common Yellowthroats usually look for insects lower down in the bushes or on the ground. The females clearly have bright yellow on their throats but are otherwise mostly brownish, while the males have distinctive black bandit masks. 

Common Yellowthroat female

Common Yellowthroat male

Northern Parulas tend to forage on tree tops, hopping around in the leaves looking for bugs. Their varied blue, green and yellow coloring makes for good camouflage, as well as a charming appearance to humans. Males have a brown breast band but otherwise look similar to the females.

Northern Parula

You might also see somewhat larger birds like American Goldfinches munching on dried flower seeds in the bushes. The brilliant yellow and black ones are males in breeding plumage. The females and non-breeding males in winter plumage are beige colored. 

American Goldfinch male

Cedar Waxwings usually travel in groups, and are especially happy if they can find some berries. 

Cedar Waxwing

Red-tailed Hawks hunt in the park year-round and are large enough to spot without binoculars. This juvenile one seemed to be practicing its hunting skills, but was fooling around with something that didn't actually seem edible. 

Juvenile Red-tailed Hawk

There has also been an Osprey circling around the area, high overhead. They nest around the NYC beaches and almost exclusively eat fish -  scanning from above and making dramatic high dives into the water.  This osprey might have been a young one who wanted to check out the city before moving south for the winter. 

Osprey 

Meanwhile some regular Battery residents have been looking a bit raggedy. Many birds regularly replace their feathers, often in late summer and early fall. 

As old feathers fall out and new ones grow in, the birds can look pretty weird, especially when the head feathers come off all at once. 

   

Molting Blue Jay

This American Cardinal on the Battery farm fence looked pretty grumpy about his shaggy appearance, but much less embarrassed than the skinhead Blue Jay.  

Northern Cardinal male