ML646413530

Observation details

**Very rare, second record for the coastal region of NY. Overwintering at this location but only identified today; broadcast to the local birding community this morning prompting a mad dash to the location by myself and many others. When I arrived, a few folks were watching the grassy strip where the bird had just been seen flying into. It skulked in and out of view a couple times, providing brief unobscured looks as it walked along orange fencing material and perched on the rocks. Several times it kicked up and flew back and forth along the grassy shoreline. Eventually it flew over the water, over the foot path, and into the construction field where it perched on a pile of concrete blocks, providing nearly unobscured close-range views for the assembled birders. It didn’t move when a bald eagle flew over, nor two brawling Cooper’s hawks, but eventually disappeared from view, apparently skulking down among the broken pieces of concrete. Originally reported as eastern/western, but it seems based on other reports that a consensus of western meadowlark has been reached. While this extremely pale bird showed none of the textbook high yellow malar mark of bright adults, others got diagnostic spread-tail shots showing sparsely barred inner rectrices instead of the bold, blobby bars on eastern meadowlark. I have seen it written that western meadowlark has a straighter, less stuttering flight than eastern meadowlark, and while I am not familiar enough with either species to pick it out in the field myself, it certainly flew with a straight, steady path, without any of the spotted sandpiper-like stuttering of the eastern meadowlarks I’ve seen, appearing almost like a very pale starling. A truly fantastical vagrant anywhere on the east coast, though certainly under-detected; it seems inevitable that more of these will be discovered as more people take photos of birds and post them on the internet for the online birding hivemind to scrutinize; in recent years a few western meadowlarks have been found in the east this way, including a different individual in New York earlier this winter. Seems that most historic records have been singing males within historically larger eastern meadowlark colonies upstate. First seen all around this grassy strip and the water’s edge, apparently its usual haunts - (40.6537171, -74.0189427) - then relocated to here (40.6539468, -74.0176791). How cool is a meadowlark??? Life bird.