New York Trip Report - Day 9 (Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge)

Day 9 -  Friday 29th May 2015

With our final full day in America dawning, we had planned to visit Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, a fantastic series of coastal and lagoon pools that offer prime habitat for a variety of water birds, many of which would be new to the trip. With reports of herons, egrets and a wealth of shore birds, this was a location that we were really looking forward to exploring.  With coastal marshes and lagoons, the habitat at Jamaica was completely different to what we had experienced so far, and we were aiming to bring our trip total of new birds up to 100 as a result.

The view of Manhattan from Jamaica Bay

Arriving at the visitor centre mid-morning, the lady at the desk promptly banned us from taking any food on to the reserve, so we quickly tucked in to everything we had brought with us at the picnic tables outside. This proved to be a good move, as several large crows flying overhead identified themselves by a series of low grunts – diagnostic of Fish Crows and our first new species of the day.

Having finished our snacks, we headed in to the reserve, following the trail between Black Wall Marsh and West Pond to see what we could find. Several egrets on the coastal marsh were Snowy Egrets, the American equivalent of our Little Egrets and another new species for us both. 

Snowy Egret

Much smaller than the scattering of Great Egrets interspersed along the marsh and extremely similar to our more familiar Littles, Snowy Egrets can be separated by the yellow lores underneath the eye (grey in those of the Little). 

Snowy Egret and Great Egret displaying the size difference between the two!

The yellow lores clearly visible

Now we’re aware of the differences, we’ll definitely be checking each Little Egret in the UK a little more thoroughly for any Snowies hiding amongst them unnoticed!

Tree Swallows were in abundance at Jamaica Bay, and several zipped over our heads before landing in the nearby trees, giving fantastic views of their shimmering turquoise feathers. 

Tree Swallow

The most attractive swallows we saw during our trip, it was amazing to come across several nest boxes in use at the side of the path where the adults could be seen regularly peeking out of the holes and perching on the top.