Birding notes

I've haven't been paying too much attention to fall migration, but yesterday morning in Seward Park in the Inner Borough, on a post-coconut cream donut high, I saw four warblers: black and white, American redstart, and two I could not ID because of my case of "confusing fall warblers" syndrome. Seward Park, no less. I'd heard reports of 21 species of warbler in Prospect the other day. Quite a fall-out this cool weather has brought us, the wind from the north east. Later, reading in Rob's City Birder blog of a lark sparrow at Floyd Bennett Field, I went out there. This is a grassland species more commonly found in the middle of the country, although its numbers, like other grassland species, have plummeted in recent years. Success! With a little help from someone already on the scene, I got a pretty good view of it in a bare tree and on the ground. It was a life bird, and species 175 of the year.