World Trip Reports

Trip Report; N. Eastern USA, 7th- 21st April 2008.

WARNING: This first post is long, and possibly somewhat uninteresting ( . . . zzzzz) for those not wanting to replicate the same kind of trip, or read exactly how we went about things. Although maybe it will include some helpful hints in how not to organise such a trip . . . A bit of stuff about the birds will eventually follow I guess. Ciao

Trip Report

N. Eastern USA, 7th- 21st April 2008.

First off, this wasn’t really and exclusively a birding trip. I had promised my girlfriend I’d accompany her on a trip to the US when she visited a friend from her schooldays who’d moved out there. Initially this was going to be last year to Seattle; but that fell through and so we went to the alternative location in April (due to time off having to be taken in the school hols due to work commitments). Too early for the main migration, a kind of inbetween time really. Suzi hadn’t been to the States before, so we wanted to travel about a bit and try and see some stuff, but not necessarily the ‘usual’ tourist stuff. And I managed to convince her that nature reserves (‘birdy’ places) would be cool . . . .

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(PREPARATION;- good in some respects, a bit woeful in others. It came about that we had about a month to prepare. Should have been plenty . . )


General Preparation: Bought ‘The Rough Guide to the USA’. Borrowed various books from the library. They weren’t that useful for our trip eg a guide ‘To The National Parks of Western USA’. Looked up stuff on the web and contacted people. More details later. Watched lots of old american sitcoms and informative modern programs like the 'X-files' and 'Desperate Housewives'.

Flights: used web comparism sites and techniques, best deal was Zoom airlines, about £250 each for the round trip from Gatwick. Flew to JFK, New York as this was cheapest, and a springboard to explore slightly further north and hopefully catch some lingering winterers (and Suzi wanted to see Boston.)

Car Hire: seemed a car is almost a necessary if you want to get to places without hitching (not an option on this occasion), lots of walking, taking your time, or lugging bags etc across cities, or even not getting to places. America is designed for car users!! Booked via the internet again. Booked a hire car but had to cancel at the last minute and find another as they wouldn’t accept a ‘Debit’ card for the deposit (as opposed to a 'credit' card), despite accepting it for the actual hire. Duh! Found very few do, eventually found one in NY city which would (but it wasn’t such a good price, with the damage waiver extras came to about £370 for the 2 weeks (As opposed to the £250 we were apparently going to get initially)). Aamcar was the name, located over by Central Park, conveniently enough in some respects.

Accomodation: Struggled at first on the web, searching motels etc. Found website ‘Hotels and Discounts’ had some motels on and able to search an area and find some motels in the area. Looked at some of the chains themselves from this (eg Best Western etc), sometimes the price was actually cheaper, so booked some online through both techniques. Used ‘Freetrip’ (google it ) to find places on our route – very useful at times. Found the places, but didn’t book through free trip directly as too pricey. For the second week, based in Cape May, the CPMO website had a list of recommended accomodation on Cape May itself. Had to phone up to book these. (And got some discounts as listed on the CMBO website)

Travel: Didn’t buy a road atlas or take up the offer of GPS from the hire car company ($25 per week, pricey? But probably would have saved us getting lost a few times, hours of stress etc, possibly time saved by NOT taking the slow way between destinations, and resulted in more energy for birding and other things), did however pick up free bus and subway maps of NY city from the airport and bought McNally Rand maps of New England and New Jersey at the car hire. So we were almost covered, with Philadelphia kind of covered in the NJ one, our free NY ones covering the middle ground and a printed itinerary or two from ‘FreeTrip’ (which turned out a bit vague (ok, downright wrong) at times) for a couple of specific routes.

Money: Suzi had a small sum of dollars as a gift, but we drew money out once we were there, as I had a Nationwide account, and Nationwide are about the only UK card to give FREE currency withdrawals abroad. (Some ATM’s may charge though, as in the uk- just have to check them at the time. Most banks don’t though. Walmart one said it didn’t, but still charged $1) Paid for fuel, accommodation etc with the card (VISA), hopefully with VISA’s good exchange rate rather than money exchange bureaus bad ones. . .

Phone: found a cheap call rate to book the acomodation etc via website ‘money saving expert’ (good for lots of other stuff too). Didn’t use the phone much whilst abroad, bought a phone card once).

Toll, Fuel etc: $7 dollar average price to cross a bridge in NY city, but only occasional tolls on the Garden State Parkway NJ only 15 up to a maximum of 75 cents a time!! Fuel half the price of in the uk so even though prices are going up, still felt like a bargain. Different States put different taxes on though, so New Jersey a dollar cheaper per gallon than New York City.

On the birding side of things:

Posted here on BF in the relevant info wanted sections to try and get some basic info ideas, confirm if this was indeed a good time to go. From a suggestion given contacted ‘BirdingPals’ to try and meet up with someone on Long Island NY as we were going there. As it panned out did not meet up as they suggested that LI was not necessarily the best place to be if we had other options (which we did). Regretted not contacting others, eg in New Jersey where we spent the second week. (But it wasn’t meant to be a birding holiday anyway). Bit short of time to arrange anything once we definately knew were we'd be going.

Other suggestions led to sites and reserves on the internet which were followed up (Audobon soc, birding lists, specific reserves etc) CMBO (Cape May Bird Observatory) site also useful, for birds and accomodation etc etc Might try and put a list of websites etc I found useful in an appendix . . .

Birding equipment etc: Bought a new 2GB memory card for the mobile phone for saving all the hundreds of pictures I would be taking. . .

Bought a couple of field guides (Stokes Eastern US birds, Sibleys Eastern US birds) to complement the National Geographic one I already had, and a bird songs CD (Stokes again) from Amazon.com. (not co.uk) (All a lot cheaper than the UK), the bird songs I hoped to download to the mobile. Then became a bit worried as the possible range of delivery dates ranged from a few weeks time till after we would have returned from the entire trip! Fortunately they arrived with about a week to go.

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Once we were there;

Since it was the off season (and maybe the case at most times anyway) found most places were nothing like fully booked so wasn’t necessary to go to all the trouble beforehand to book places we went to. (Although in Cape May this was good as a Jazz festival was on at the same time, and places were booking up fast). Changed our plans a couple of times, not too much trouble in cancelling places we’d already booked/ paid for. Will add more things if I rememeber them later on, it mostly went ok, it's part of the fun I guess if things don't work out exactly as expected . . .

Visited and attempted to visit some of the places suggested, see below for more details . .

THE TRIP . . .

Visited some of the reserves suggested and did general birding as we went, no early morning starts though, or that many intense single person birding trips. Total about 130 species, maybe 50 US ticks (Gadwall - wow!!), and less than half of them 'World' Lifers. Some good birds, but not much in the way of really exciting ones or landbird lifers, eg 5 Wood Warblers seen and identified, no new species, but then I knew it was a little too early for the main migration. Also not exactly the Shorebird spectacle I was hoping for. Ducks were better, although some of the species I was hoping for were (seemingly) non existent (I'm not saying the duck hunters had done away with them altogether )or a bit thin on the ground (well water then). However, did manage to find a major US rarity (subspecies that is) on the last day (bit of serendipity there – shouldn’t have even been birding as we should (!) have been on our way to get to our flight!).

A brief summary of our intentions: Spend the first couple of days around New York area, then up to Massachusettes for a few days, back down to Philadelphia for a long weekend, and then on to Cape May for most of the last week, before a final drive back up to NY again for the last night and our flight out.

Day 1 Monday 7th April. Getting to Gatwick, Bermuda and then JFK - The USA!

Up by 6am, taxi at the door by 7.05, £3.40 to Swanley Station. Some snow still on the ground. Didn’t note down any birds from the train, but 6 Skylark and 1 Carrion Crow from the plane as we took off the excitement from the uk end . . . and on to . . .

. . . Bermuda!! (World country tick)

Crow sp. (presumably American), first bird on foreign territory from the plane as we landed, then a few Starlings and 3 Whimbrel flushed by the plane. (The american hudsonicus subspecies – a world tick!) As we had an hour in transit before flying on to New York was hoping to get more goodies- found a window looking onto the ground level car park with tantalising views of blue sea beyond. House Sparrows about, and a second year Laughing Gull flew past. A mystery bird flew past the window, browny grey above, creamy yellow below. Maybe a short tail?? Would have been interesting, but, Oh well . .

Carried on 'gen'ing up with the bird books on the plane for the last leg.

Seatbelt signs on, descent, and then we can see the coastline of Long Island below us as we come in for the final approach. Definitely in American airspace. From the plane as we come in I see some large gulls shining whitely above Jamaica Bay, presumably American Herring Gull (embarrassingly a lifer, although not really tickable at this stage). From JFK and onto the hotel a mile or so away, Feral Pigeons and Starlings hanging about the terminal. We left the UK for this??!!

Anyway, we've arrived . . .

Day 2 Tuesday 8th April Central Park, NY and getting the Hire Car.

Suzi had a poor nights sleep, but I was up (relatively) early enough and raring to go. Couldn’t get out early though due to toilet flooding troubles. Blocked (silly little US pipe sizes!), and then the flush just wouldn’t stop! Via public transport eventually got to Central Park about noon. The plan was to walk through Central Park, birding as we went, then visit a few places nearby Suzi wanted to see before picking up the rental car before returning back to the hotel (Our flight yesterday had been just too late to do this then). Naturally with photogenic Great Egret on the edge of the first water feature, White-throated and Song Sparrows and various other goodies to see, identify, and attempt to photograph, getting through the park took a while. Literally hundreds of American Robins were quite a spectacle. ‘The Ramble’ provided 4 Woodpecker species, 3 of which we didn’t see again on the trip including Hairy Woodpecker and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, an Eastern Phoebe and the male Red-tailed Hawk of the regular pair. Other birds included the only American Kestrel and Hooded Merganser of the trip (the latter a female asleep on the side of the Great Reservoir, so not that exciting . . ). Only met a few female birders (no males of the species), and 33 species for the day, but many of them new or otherwise fairly exciting. Suzi’s ‘Murder Ink’ (Speciality bookstore) had closed down, and we lacked the time to visit downtown Manhattan, being a bit knackered after all that slow walking and birding (and maybe the flight as well).

Getting the hire car (ok, rental car) was successful enough, if costing more than we thought, then onto the streets of New York in an automatic, on the wrong side of the car, and the road, and rush hour traffic. Thought we were getting a compact (ie in England something like a mini or a fiesta), but it was a Ford Focus SE, so reasonably nippy pulling away from red lights etc, which is always fun. Got back ok and in one piece, those bus maps doing the trick. Found they’d tried to dry the carpet out with limited success, and fixed the cistern by the simple expedient of turning the water supply off!

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