The group at Greenwich Point

Today the Connecticut Young Birders Club had a brief meeting and trip to Greenwich Point and Grass Island. At the meeting, we appointed the president of the club, Alex Burdo and the online coordinator, myself. We also discussed future trips, and the possible logos we could have. We planned our next trip which will be sometime in March, to the Westport Tree Farm where we will look for displaying American Woodcocks.

After the meeting, we headed off to Greenwich Point. After searching the pines unsuccessfully for owls, we checked the beach and found a huge raft of Scaup, mostly Greater, along with some Brant and the usual gulls.

A large raft of predominantly Greater Scaup

Then, a small group of about 5 finches flew over. Brian O’Toole immediately identified them as Common Redpolls! Unfortunately, we could not relocate the redpolls despite our best efforts. We continued on to the feeders to see if we could find the redpolls there, but we didn’t see them. Instead we saw several birds at the feeders including Northern Cardinals, Red-winged Blackbirds, White-throated Sparrows, White-breasted Nuthatches, an American Tree Sparrow and a Hairy Woodpecker.

American Tree Sparrow

We then decided to head over to Grass Island to see if we could  find the recently reported Wood Duck that had been hanging out there. We missed the duck but we did find some Red-breasted Mergansers, Bufflehead, Lesser Scaup, and two Bonaparte’s Gulls. Soon it was time to head back to the Greenwich Audubon Center.

Bonaparte's Guls

On another note, we also saw a Great Horned Owl on a nest at a disclosed location. It was a great day to be out and some nice birds were found!

Great Horned Owl

James Purcell

CYBC Online Coordinator

(All photos copyright Alex Burdo)