Birding On The East End

Birdwatching became a newfound hobby for many during the pandemic. For birders who have been at it for years, or even decades, the thrill and the joy that comes from observing interesting and beautiful birds at backyard bird feeders or in the wild has long been familiar to them.

The East End of Long Island is host to scores of bird species, some that stay year round, some that only visit in winter, some that come to breed and rear young in spring and summer, and others that only stay briefly before moving on to the next stop of their seasonal migration.

There are songbirds, shorebirds, birds of prey and more. Learning the behaviors and patterns of the various species that can be found here is one of the ways that serious birders learn to attract or locate the birds that they wish to see, hear and maybe photograph.

Though there is plenty to learn about birds and birdwatching, it doesn’t take any special knowledge to get started. All birdwatching, or birding, requires is the desire and will to spend time outdoors and some patience.

Three veteran East End birders shared their advice for successful birding and the reasons why they love it.

A Rockville Center and East Hampton resident, Joe Giunta has been a birder for about three decades. “In those 30 years, I’ve seen about 2,200 different species, and I’ve traveled a lot,” he says.

He leads birding classes and walks on the East End and in New York City, and through his business, Happy Warblers, he offers birding trips around the country and internationally.

He’s traveled to Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Argentina, Papua New Guinea, Australia and Ecuador, and, domestically, he’s visited Florida, California, Washington, Texas and more states specifically to go birdwatching.

Giunta says he named his birding travel company Happy Warblers because the warbler family is his favorite group of birds. “They’re the most beautiful birds around, and they have great songs. And there are eight different species of warblers that breed right here on the East End of Long Island in Hither Hills State Park. So it’s a great spot — one of my favorite spots,” he says.

There are about 35 warbler species that can be found in the New York City area, he says, and the eight that breed here are the common yellowthroat, yellow, pine, blue-winged, prairie, American redstart, ovenbird and black-and-white.

The blue-winged and prairie warblers prefer fields, the ovenbird is a ground-loving warbler, and the American redstart is the most common, Giunta says.

“It’s very interesting how the redstart got its name, too,” he adds, explaining that “start” means “tail” in Old English, and “red” comes from the orange-red tails of the adult males.

In June, warblers are very active, establishing territories and building nests, Giunta notes. “As the season progresses, and when the nestlings fledge, they just hang around, fatten up a little bit and get ready for their fall migration, which starts the end of August, beginning of September.”

Though warblers are his favorite birds, Giunta is also the bluebird coordinator for the South Fork Natural History Society.

“We have a good number of bluebirds that are nesting on the East End of Long Island,” he points out. “As a matter of fact, the East Hampton Airport is one of the best spots for bluebirds in all of southern New York State.”

The South Fork Natural History Society and East Hampton Town’s Natural Resources Department first installed nesting boxes at the airport in the late 1980s to aid the diminished bluebird population. In mid-June this year, there were 12 pairs of bluebirds using the nesting boxes there, and 20 fledglings, Giunta reports.

“Years and years ago, they would nest in a snag,” he says. “That’s a dead tree that had a lot of cavities in it. But people cut down their trees for safety reasons and so forth like that.”

Now, thanks to conservation-minded efforts to provide nesting boxes in appropriate habitats, he reports that the bluebird population is doing very well.

Bluebirds are found on the East End from March through October, breeding twice over the course of spring and summer. When they migrate, they don’t go that far. They only go as far south as Virginia and the Carolinas, Giunta says.

Giunta uses Zeiss 8x40 binoculars and keeps an extensive journal of the birds he sees, with about 150,000 entries. He doesn’t use a camera. “My friends do the photography,” he says. “I just find the birds for them.”

Sometimes, he doesn’t see a bird, he hears it, and he can recognize it based on its birdsong — a skill that took him many years to develop. For instance, the blue-winged warbler sounds like a big insect, and the Blackburnian warbler has a last note that is “so high it goes up to heaven,” he says.

His interest in birding started one Sunday when he picked up a bag of birdseed at the supermarket on a whim. When he got home, he threw the seed out on a picnic table in his backyard.

“Right away, I got a cardinal and a bluejay, and I said, ‘Wow, this is really great,’” he recalls.

For beginning birders, he recommends joining an organized bird walk, like those he offers through the South Fork Natural History Museum & Nature Center and the National Audubon Society. The busiest times are spring and fall, coinciding with the breeding season and migrations.

During July and August, birding on the East End slows down. Giunta says that because the breeding season is over and birds don’t have to defend a territory, they stop singing — “all they’re going to do is just fatten up.”

Fall migration runs from mid-August through December, when the East End’s summer visitors head to the southern United States, Central America and South America. It’s also when birds who summered in northern reaches return here.

Compared to spring migration, fall migration is leisurely. Guinta explains that the birds are not in a rush in fall to get to their breeding territory, establish their areas, build a nest and attract a female. They can hang out and wait for favorable weather conditions that aid their migration.

December and January are the best time to see owls, simply because there’s not that much foliage on the trees, Giunta says. “Owls start to become a little bit more active at that time, because they’re early nesters, and they actually start to get their nest in order by, I would say, February.”

Rodger Hubbard Jr. is an avid birder, though he sticks to a 25-mile radius around his hometown of Hampton Bays. On the western end of that radius is his workplace, where he photographs birds during his lunch break.

“I work at Brookhaven [National] Lab, which is a beautiful place to work if you’re into nature,” Hubbard says. “So I take my half hour safari at lunchtime, and I get to see some pretty interesting things that I might not necessarily see in Hampton Bays or even on the East End. We’re in the middle of the island there. It’s very thick, a lot of woods, freshwater. Hampton Bays, we have a lot of salt marsh. So it’s amazing how much things change just by going 20 minutes away.”

He is a surveyor at the laboratory, responsible for accelerator alignment for the National Synchrotron Light Source II.

“When you stare at a computer a lot of the time all day — I don’t want to be doing that at lunchtime,” he says.

He’s been practicing bird photography for six or seven years, though he’s had a lifelong interest in wildlife and always had birdfeeders. Last year, within the relatively small range that he stays in, he photographed 140 different species.

“This was the first year that I’ve actually kept count,” he says. “But there are definitely some unique things that happen on Long Island.”

He calls it a special place and points out that it is right on the edge of the range of a number of migratory species, with southern birds that only come as far north as Long Island, and northern birds that only come as far south as Long Island.

He adds that the way Long Island sticks out means it is also a stop for birds that cross the Long Island Sound on their journeys south.

This time of year, migratory shorebirds that come back in summer can be seen nesting up in the dunes, he says. “Of course, everybody knows about the piping plover, but we have oystercatchers and terns and black-back gulls and all kinds of unique birds.”

He says Dune Road from East Quogue to Hampton Bays has some of the best dunes on Long Island, because it’s untouched.

One reason he shifts focus to shorebirds during the summer is all the ticks in wooded areas. But when temperatures dip and the ticks go dormant, the woods are safe again.

Inland, he’s seen a number of rare birds, and others that aren’t as rare as they once were but are still exciting to see in person.

The indigo bunting is a songbird in the cardinal family that is on the East End during the summer. The males are bright blue with black wings.

Another unusual bird, Hubbard says, is the snow bunting, which visits in winter from high in the arctic. He’s watched a pair of bald eagles raising young and seen a multitude of warblers that either pass through or stick around and nest. He looks out for oystercatchers when they come back in spring, and in winter, there are eiders, which are large seaducks.

“You really have to just poke around, and you’ll find some pretty interesting things that we have here,” Hubbard says.

One tool he uses is the Merlin Bird ID app, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which tells users, based on their geographic location, the birds they are likely to see.

Hubbard doesn’t restrict himself to birds when it comes to his wildlife photographing, but they certainly keep his interest piqued. “I really consider myself more of like a wildlife photographer,” he says. “But sometimes I get wrapped up in birds, especially when there’s something new around.”

He usually tries to discover things on his own, though a few times he’s gone out to see a bird that other photographers or birders have called attention to, such as snowy owls.

“I’ve gotten great, great shots of a snowy owl as early as late October and all the way till April,” he says.

His camera is a Panasonic Lumix Fz2500.

“It’s only about $1,000. I don’t have one of these big long lenses,” he says. “... It’s very affordable. It’s on the front seat of my truck next to me at all times, so I always have it with me. I rarely use a tripod. It goes down to about 475 millimeters, and I can even shoot macro insects with it with no lens change. It’s a handy thing to have. Maybe when I retire I’ll get some big stuff, but this is great.”

He takes many of his shots on the way to and from work, and when he does take a trip specifically to get photos, he prefers to go alone. “That way I can spend as much time sitting in one spot waiting,” he says. “You know, you don’t have to worry about somebody else being impatient or even me being impatient.”

The easiest way to get into photography and birding is to set up a birdfeeder, Hubbard advises.

“Start with backyard birds,” he says. Try to see what you can lure in, and then get onto social media, see what kind of groups there are that can point you in some direction or alert you to when a new bird is in town.”

To lure the greatest variety of birds, it takes more than birdseed.

“You can attract a lot of these migrating birds to your bird feeders, especially if you add some sort of freeze-dried bugs, because some birds don’t eat seeds,” Hubbard says. “Some birds are strictly carnivores, like warblers. They’ll eat seeds, but they prefer spiders and bugs and things like that. So you can buy some pretty nifty suets and things to add to your feeder, aside from the regular hardware store bag of birdseed. You can get pretty exotic with some things that you can put in your bird feeder to attract things.”

Hubbard’s noticed greater interest in birding and wildlife in the past couple of years.

“It’s really became popular for a lot of people during the pandemic, that’s for sure. ... A lot of people had a lot of downtime — or supposedly working at home, but not quite,” he says with a laugh.

East Quogue birder Eileen Schwinn has three seed feeders full of black oil sunflower feed and one suet feeder.

Black oil sunflower seed is considered a premium birdseed, attracting a wide variety of birds and providing ample nutritional value.

“There’s no junk filler that sometimes goes into the seed packs that you buy in a variety of stores,” Schwinn says.

Suet cakes are made with animal fat and can attract birds that seed alone will not. Schwinn uses suet for the benefit of birds raising young: “They need that protein, that fat that’s in the suet,” she says.

Thistle and nyjer feeders will attract still more birds, and planting sunflowers, cosmos and other flowers will draw in birds as well.

Occasionally, there will be an environmental alert from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the National Audubon Society or the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca that encourage residents to remove their bird feeders to reduce the spread of disease.

“Last spring, there was somewhat of a threat to bird feeder birds,” Eileen recalls. “But that seemed to stay more in the Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia area, and it never really spread.”

Generally, she keeps bird feeders out year-round. “It’s not the total source for bird food for any of the birds, but especially in the springtime and early summer, when they’re nesting and raising their young, it provides maybe a little balance, a little ease for them. Plus, I get a lot of enjoyment watching birds come to the feeders.”

She birds beyond her yard as a trip leader with the Eastern Long Island Audubon Society. “We do trips monthly, except during the month of May, when we do about seven field trips,” Schwinn says.

The group visits local parks, Elizabeth A. Morton National Wildlife Refuge in Noyac, Wertheim National Wildlife Refuge in Shirley, and DEC properties between Patchogue and Montauk.

To see birds leading into August and September, she says it’s important to go to where the southern migration is starting, including the north shore of the North Fork, to places such as Hallock State Park Preserve and North Fork Preserve County Park in Northville.

“The birds you’re looking for are going to be hummingbirds — they start traveling south in late August and September — plus most of the migrating insect-eating birds,” she says. “And that can be everything from the warblers returning that have nested way up north. And then we get into the ducks.”

Terrell River County Park in Center Moriches, Hunter’s Garden in Northampton and EPCAL in Calverton are a few other late-summer birding spots Schwinn recommends.

“EPCAL is a wonderful, wonderful place to birdwatch, and our hope as a birdwatching society is that is maintained as best it can as a resource for all of us to enjoy — not only birdwatchers but bike riders and hikers. It’s the home of several kinds of rare species, such as eastern meadowlark, as well as grasshopper sparrow, and both of those species are incredibly difficult to find in other places on Long Island.”

She says people who are new to the hobby should come out for an event hosted by the Eastern Long Island Audubon Society or the North Fork Audubon Society.

“It’s either not your cup of tea or it becomes very addictive,” she says. “I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years. I started really late in life. I kind of started after I retired. But I got hit by a bug that’s taken me to Iceland to Cuba to Trinidad and Tobago to Costa Rica, all over the United States just to look at birds. So be careful if you get started with this hobby.”

What she enjoys about birding is that it enables her to disconnect.

“It allows you to kind of disconnect yourself from all the hubbub that’s going around you, whether it’s personal hubbub, or world hubbub,” she says. And what I mean by that is you can get out into the woods, you can get out into the field, you can drive along the beach, you can walk along the beach, and you can forget about all the other things that are kind of picking away at your brain. You can enjoy the outdoors, you get exercise, you get a lot of fresh air. You see some really cool behaviors by birds, and you can sometimes get to meet some people. And what you have in common with those people is just the appreciation of what a great resource this part of Long Island really is.”

Though she takes the occasional photo with her little Canon camera, her birding tools of choice are binoculars and a birdscope, or spotting scope.

A good pair of binoculars can run from $200 to $3,500, according to Schwinn. When investing in a pair, she says to consider if they will be used in hot weather, cold weather and if they need to be sturdy enough to withstand being dropped.

Schwinn notes that Long Island has fewer than 400 species of birds and says that makes it easy to learn about the local birds without becoming overwhelmed.

“It’s pretty easy, if you do one bird at a time, to learn about 400 things,” she says. “You’re not overwhelmed like you would be with insects or — I don’t know — stargazing or something like that. It’s a finite number of things that you can really focus on.”

Since the 1st of January this year, she’s seen 205 birds in Suffolk County alone, she says. She records her observations with the Cornell Lab’s website eBird.org.

“It’s a marvelous tool that has been around for about 10 years now,” she says. “You sign up free. You set up an account for yourself. You enter every bird you saw, when you saw it, what time you saw it. And I usually put down weather conditions as well as people that I may have birded with while there. You can also look up on site if there’s a particular bird you want to see.”

Recording information with eBird is an example of “community science.”

“Every observation over a long period of time kind of shows the scientific community the trends in what’s hot and what’s not, what’s good and what’s bad, what’s healthy and what’s not. It points out declining populations in bird species, as well as increases in bird species. And the more folks that are out there, the more validity that data has.”

Birders’ contributions have helped to confirm that turkey vultures and eagles, which hadn’t been nesting on Long Island 15 years ago, are now here and with growing populations.

Many birding groups require members to keep the locations of the birds they have seen to themselves, so the area doesn’t become overrun with other birders and photographers who also want a look.

In the birdwatching community, people who won’t say where they saw a bird are called “suppressors,” Giunta says. Personally, he says he likes to share birds with people.

“It’s not a big deal anymore, because as soon as somebody sees it they put it on the internet and everybody goes and sees the bird,” he says.

But Giunta agrees that sometimes photographers can get too aggressive, including pruning trees and shrubs to get a better look at a bird.

Hubbard has also observed that many wildlife photographers and birders don’t like to share the location of an animal, especially something unique, because it can get crowded quickly and become disruptive for the animal.

“It can get a little political when it comes to certain animals, but I just try to stick to my own ethics,” he says.

The National Audubon Society offers “Audubon’s Guide to Ethical Bird Photography and Videography,” and other groups have similar advice for birding ethics and decorum.

Guinta says that, generally speaking, it’s better to be quiet when birdwatching, and he advises against bringing a dog, but his No. 1 rule is to enjoy oneself.

Schwinn says a mistake to avoid is walking too fast.

“We stroll, we stop, we listen,” she says, and when birders rush, the birds get nervous and hide out. “So just take your time. It’s not a contest. It’s supposed to be fun and it’s supposed to be relaxing.”

She also recommends carrying a field guide.

“You can have an app on your phone, but having that book in your back pocket is easier to compare species in case you’re not too sure what you’re looking at. Don’t rely on the phone all the time.”

She asks herself a number of questions to get a better idea of what bird she’s found.

“Use your brain and verbally say a description of what you’re looking at: What color is the bill? What size is the bird? Where are you seeing it? Does it have a different color on the back than it does on the belly? Is the tail flicking while it’s sitting there? What’s it eating? Things like that,” Schwinn says. “… Then you look it up in your book, and it helps you decide what species you’re looking at.

“Why do you want to ID the species? Well, you want to feel confident that maybe you’re seeing something for the first time and it’s kind of a nice feeling to say, ‘Boy, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that bird before.’”