A black-necked stilt (Himantopus mexicanus) visited Nassau County in 2019. This shorebird is unusual for this region, and this bird was first spotted at Nickerson Beach, then moved across the road to the Lido Beach Passive Nature Preserve, a marvelous protected marsh, where it has been feeding on aquatic invertebrates with glossy ibises, yellowlegs, least sandpipers, great egrets, and other shorebirds for a while. I made it out to Long Beach on May 2 to film the bird, and was fortunate enough to get a few good looks as the bird preened and dined.
Black-necked stilt, Lido Beach Passive Nature Preserve, Nassau County, NY, May 2, 2019
I went to the nature preserve twice on May 2, and squeezed a visit to Nickerson Beach in between. My morning visit yielded no sighting of the stilt, but I did see the bird in the late afternoon, and chased it around enough to get video for a short Filming the Feathers offering, set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach (a gavotte from Orchestral Suite no. 3 in D major, BWV 1068, arranged for recorders and performed by Papalin).
Most of the photographs were taken from such a distance that they are a bit grainy. All of the photos below were taken on May 2, 2019, at the nature preserve.
