More horrible birds

Some more dull and uninteresting birds from New York guaranteed to bore your socks off. If you're in the market for something more interesting, have a quick peek at the Common Sandpiper I took at the weekend here in Wanstead, but I cannot be held responsible for any repercussions like heart attacks and so on brought on by sheer and uncontrollable excitement.

Birding in New York is a piece of [cheese]cake. You walk around; there are birds everywhere. Amazing ones, and many of them are only a few feet away. If like me you have not done a great deal of birding in America, you will be staggered. Even if you have done a stack of birding in America, I suggest that you should still be staggered, for the variety of colour on offer is mind-blowing.

Whilst New York is an immense concrete jungle, the city has a green heart - Central Park. The key area is the ramble, a relatively small area of oak-dominated woodland that acts like a magnet for migrating birds. A myriad of paths wind through, and the basic idea is that you wander around them with your head held vertically upwards looking for movement. You see movement, you raise your bins, and are astonished by a ridiculously colourful bird that looks like it should be in a tropical rainforest. It is entirely bright yellow, and so you pull out your field guide and scroll through. There it is! A Yellow Warbler! Wow! Then there is another. This one is entirely black and white - a quick thumb and you have it - Black and White Warbler! Superb! What about this one? It is basically blue with a black throat patch. Let's see....Ah-hah! Black-throated Blue Warbler! My tip for birding in America is when you see a bird you don't recognise, just pretend you are about five years old and give it the most obvious name imaginable. More than likely you will be right, and that's what the founding fathers called it too.

Anyway, enough exciting text. Here are some boring photos. In order (and this is mainly because Blogger has a horrible tendency to utterly stuff up pictures and text when in close proximity and jumble the entire blog post up) Cardinal, Tree Swallow, Red-eyed Vireo, White-throated Sparrow, Common Grackle.