Barely visible swarm of northern gannets

I reached a milestone this week: I can finally claim to have birded in all five boroughs of New York City. My maiden foray into the wilds of Richmond County didn’t yield any new birds, but I enjoyed Great Kills Park (so much so that I spent the entire morning there instead of running farther south to check out a few more spots, as planned).

In the process, I learned that S79 Select Bus Service from Bay Ridge is pretty zippy, and that while Staten Island is big (and Hylan Avenue singularly charmless), it’s still possible for a carless runner to get around a pretty wide swathe of it. Continue reading →