Benedict Farm Park

Wallkill River at Benedict Farm Park, Montgomery, NY

After several years of contentious negotiation regarding the most appropriate use of the property known as Benedict Farm Park, much of the area has remained grasslands. Although several ball fields now occupy some of the original habitat, the remaining wild area has proven to be suitable for a number of grassland species. The area occupied by the ballfields was formerly quite conducive to Bobolinks and Eastern meadowlarks but recent eBird records show limited sightings of the Bobolinks and no meadowlarks. I found neither today during a brief visit to the park.

What the park does offer now is an area for a community garden which can attract songbirds like House sparrows and House wrens which I observed today. The wrens were very loquacious but remained hidden in the heavy thickets near the gardens. Bluebird boxes were occupied, but each box where I saw birds using the boxes were housing House sparrows. While being a very common “yard bird” and usually not one I’m really interested in photographing, I did find one worthy of capture in that it was seen performing a behavior that I’ve always found fascinating. When certain birds occupy cavities or nest boxes such as these, they manage to keep the nest clean in spite of their little ones defecating. Some species, like the Barn swallow, actually teach their young to hang their rear quarters over the edge of the nest and jettison their fecal matter “overboard” to keep the nest clean.

Other birds, like these House sparrows, have a built in mechanism to handle the latrine duty. These birds produce “fecal sacs” which basically are like infant bird diapers. Their poop is surrounded by a mucous membrane, usually white in color with a dark end. Once deposited in the nest, it is a simple manner for the parent bird to carry the fecal sac and its contents out of the nest, thus keeping the area a bit more sanitary. The image below shows a parent House sparrow removing one of these fecal sacs. I just happened to be trying to photograph a sparrow entering and'/or exiting the nest box when I realized that I had captured this “house cleaning” activity.

House sparrow carrying fecal sac from Nest Box

The other main attraction of the afternoon was the activity of American goldfinches feeding on the thistle seeds in the fields adjacent to the Wallkill River. This species is known as “Creeping thistle” and is native to Northern Asia and throughout Europe, but has been introduced in this country and is widespread in North America. Wherever you find thistle, there is a good chance you’ll find American goldfinches during the spring and early summer. Such was the case today as my attention was drawn to the activity of these brilliant yellow birds flitting from plant to plant in a bed of thistle. With the thistle having a deep purple flower, the two complimented one another nicely and made for some great photo-ops.

American goldfinch shot with the Nikon Z8 and Z1000-400mm zoom 1/1250 sec, f/11, ISO 1250

My last shot of today’s post returns us to the Barn swallow which has been featured in previous blog posts this year. As I checked out the old dilapidated barns in the park, I noticed one male Barn swallow framed nicely within the vacant space once occupied by one of the barn’s windows. The texture and gray tones of old wood found in these barns has a beauty all its own and made for a perfect contextual setting for this bird.

Tech Tip - I am a big proponent of trying to include context in photographs of the natural world. Rather than simply cropping in to just get the shot of the goldfinches, I expanded the area around them to include the habitat in which I found them….. the creeping thistle. Likewise, there were ample shots of Barn swallows perched on the metal roofs of the buildings, but I think this bird perched within the frame of an old window conveys much more than the bird sitting on a plain gray background. Sometimes you have to work at getting the bird in the right context, but sometimes, they pose right where they should to give you the desired results.