Date: 5/21/25 12:05 pm From: Beverly Propen via CTBirds <ctbirds...> Subject: [CT Birds] Coastal Center
5/21 10am-1PM -Milford, Connecticut Audubon Coastal Center. high tide-receding, 57F, windy, overcast with beautiful clouds before the storm. A brief walk at 9:30am on the sandbar up to marker 13- 4 Dunlin, 10 Semi-palmated sandpipers and 12 semi-palmated plovers, 5 Ruddy turnstones, 4 Least sandpipers and 2 Piping plovers- 1 on nest, and Ring billed & Herring gulls. The center was very busy today with actively engaged 5th graders, as well as other visitors (one from Utah). Plus as the tide receded the marsh was hopping with shorebirds and waterfowl. Our Ospreys have their first chick! Most likely hatched yesterday. The male brought in a fish which the female was feeding to the chick, she ate some and then the male took the rest to eat. He also chased off 2 stray ospreys. Our Purple Martins (about 35) were flying around and some in gourds, with a few carrying nesting material. One House sparrow in one of the gourds. On a tree branch adjacent to the marsh, 10 female Purple Martins were lined up. On the marsh : About 50 Brant, 3 Yellow crowned night herons foraging, 2 Mute swans, and as the tide receded 5 Snowy Egrets, 4 Great egrets, 2 American Black ducks, 4 D.C. Cormorants, 10 Semipalmated plovers, and some Semipalmated Sandpipers. On the grounds & feeders: 3 Song sparrows, 10 Mourning doves, 10 House finches (the female with the infected right eye, seems to be healing), 4 Common grackles-one exhibiting "Piebaldism", 2 Catbirds, Redwinged blackbirds, 2 Cardinals, 1 Northern Mockingbird, 6 House sparrows, 6 Tree swallows flying over the marsh, 1 American Crow and 4 Starlings. Bev Propen, Orange
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