Captree State Park, here in NY is situated at the eastern end of the Jones Beach barrier island. It often attracts rare birds this time of year. On Sunday, Halloween day, Shai Mitra and Pat Lindsay found a Common Ground-Dove, a first NYS record. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get there until the following morning. Upon my arrival, I was told the bird hadn’t been seen for an hour but instead there was a Western Kingbird. A few show up each Fall but still a really good bird for this area. Kiddingly, I said “I didn’t drive an hour to see a Western Kingbird” and then proceeded to take 100 photos or so. People were getting a little anxious that the dove wasn’t going to reappear. I started walking down the hedgerow away from the crowd and all of a sudden the bird appeared out of the foliage. As I called out to everybody the mood quickly changed and I was fortunate to get several images. The following day I received an email from Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, wanting to use my photo for an article. It ran on Nov. 3rd and shortly after I received a call from our local Fox news channel. That evening I was interviewed by phone, while the photo was being shown on the 10 o’clock news. Here is the image and also one of the kingbird.

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