September 10 - Orange County "Black Dirt Region"

Today I traveled north to the farm fields of Orange County in search of shorebirds. This area has been extensively flooded after the recent hurricanes and has produced some great rarities as a result.

 
While I did not see any of those great ones today, I did find some rarities for this inland location.

At Turtle Bay, I saw the immature Blue Grosbeaks plus sandpipers of Spotted, Stilt, Least, Semi-Palmated, White-Rumped along with Killdeer and Semi-Palmated Plover.

On Onion Avenue, I had another Stilt Sandpiper, plus Short-Billed Dowitcher and Pectoral Sandpipers along with both species of Yellowlegs

Later on Missionland Road I observed a pair of Golden Plovers, Sanderling, and also this (rare for Orange County) Western Sandpiper.

click images to enlarge

September 7 - Northern Wheatear

I took a very long lunch and headed north to Croton Point and it's train station.  On Tuesday someone had found a Northern Wheatear here.  Since I had only seen this species once before back in 2007 at NJ's Garret Mountain I took this chance to see it again & add it to my NY list !

While the drive up took longer than expected due to more closed roads from all the rain, I made it there and ran into Chris T from NJ.  It was with him that I saw my last Wheater too!

After a 20-minute wait we got on the bird again and enjoyed nice views of this super-rarity !

September 4 - Connecticut rarities

With Andy and Jen today, we went to Milford Point and saw the Black-Necked Stilt and American Avocet rarities that had been reported.