A Thought About Compiling and Reporting Water Quality Data

A fellow who signed in as jerryjjar left a worthwhile comment to my previous post, about water quality testing. The power was out in Pound Ridge and when I sent to click "publish comment" using my tiny Iphone screen, I clicked delete instead and it vanished, except for the version that showed up in my email notifications. My apologies.

So instead of a comment jerryjjar now gets a post to himself. Here's what he said:

... it would be great if sound-wide volunteers could collect water quality readings from local harbors and submit it to a long island sound database. As I learned, however, while attending the HW/RW Water Quality Monitoring Workshop taught by Dick Harris and Pete Fraboni (who are both dedicated, patient scientists) it is not simple or easy to collect good data. We would need guidelines and procedures in place to make the data meaningful.

We Need a Simple, Understandable Way to Compile and Report Water Quality Info from the Sound's Harbors

Someone should determine how many local water quality testing programs there are in harbors and bays around Long Island Sound, and devise a process to collect the data and report them online quickly and understandably.

Adrienne Esposito, of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, talked about the need for this at yesterday’s Long Island Sound Citizens Summit, in Bridgeport.

Coincidentally in today’s Norwalk Hour there was a story about Harbor Watch, which, under the direction of Dick Harris, has been collecting data in Norwalk and Westport, since the mid 1980s. I thought it was a good idea when Adrienne said it yesterday, and when I read the Hour story and started searching for more information, I thought it was an even better idea.

I also think it’s a great idea for grant funding, maybe from the Long Island Sound Futures Fund, for a grad student or a smart intern at the environmental organization. Here’s why I think that:

After reading the Hour story, I Googled Dick Harris and Harbor Watch and learned that Harbor Watch is a program of Earthplace, a great-sounding nature center-environmental education organization in Westport (which I was only vaguely aware of). The Harbor Watch page on the Earthplace website explains the water quality testing program beautifully.

But as I was noting to myself that the explanation was perfectly clear, I was also thinking: where’s the data? One paragraph says they send the data to the Connecticut DEEP, which is good, although given the reality of staff cuts at the DEEP, who knows what they do with it. Then about three-quarters of the way down the page, I found this paragraph:

Each month HW/RW compiles a water quality report on data collected at 10 established water-sampling sites. Thanks to the Norwalk River Watershed Association (NRWA), these reports are available at www.norwalkriver.org/waterreadings.htm. The reports contain information on indicator bacteria levels, dissolved oxygen conditions, and conductivity. and also says it provides its data to the Norwalk River Watershed Association.

Beautiful. Exactly what I wanted. So I clicked. And I found this at the top of the page:

New: View water quality readings for the months of May 2008 through Sept. 2008
The Norwalk River Watershed Project Water Quality Report for the April-May 2004 monitoring period …

Which is not quite as up-to-date as I had hoped.

I’m not criticizing Dick Harris, Earthplace or the Norwalk River Watershed Association even slightly. They just happened to be in the news on a morning I was thinking about this. Logically, I could no more expect them to take on a consistent, easy-to-understand public reporting project than they could expect me to take on a 25-year data collection program in Norwalk Harbor.

And yet their data is being collected, as is data collected elsewhere (by Friends of the Bay, on Long Island, for example).

It would be really useful if it were compiled, made understandable, and put online.

Fox News Promotes the Myth that Pesticides are Killing the Sound's Lobsters

I never watch Fox News and I don't know who the people are on this news piece about the lobster die-off in Long Island Sound, but I do know that the piece is irrational to the point of being idiotic.

It gives prominent play to lobstermen who think pesticides are responsible for the Sound's lobster die-off. The piece starts with the lobstermen and ends with the lobstermen.

And then in the middle it manages to squeeze in the opinion of someone else. Who? An actual scientist who has studied the problem and is familiar with the actual scientist. Her reality-based scientific opinion gets about one-tenth the space as the lobstermen who blame pesticides and whose reasoning is really nothing than more than, "It is because I say it is."

Silly. Although in truth I think it's harmless except perhaps to the lobstermen who continue to have their delusions enabled by news people who are misinterpreting the situation on purpose.

EcoWatch: a New National Information Site for Conservation Organizations

This seems like a good idea: EcoWatch, which for the last six years has been promoting information from Ohio's conservation groups, is expanding to a national model, in partnership with Waterkeeper Alliance. Their official launch is today. I'll follow them on Twitter (@ecowatchorg).

King Tide

I'll be at Stratford Point right around the time of this morning king tide, although since I've never been to Stratford Point before it will be hard to tell the difference. Jim Dwyer writes about the king tide in the About New York column in today's Times:

A king tide will be running Wednesday and Thursday because gravitational forces of the sun, the moon and the earth will be lined up in a cue shot of fleeting geometry and rare power. It will raise the water level between one and two feet above normal high tides for many areas on the Atlantic coast. It’s an entirely natural phenomenon. This year, a network of scientists is asking members of the public to take pictures of the tides at their peak, and then again in a week, at their ordinary heights.

An extreme tide can give a telescopic view of a future with rising seas, when tides might routinely reach levels that they now get to only twice a year, said Kate Boicourt, an ecologist with the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program.

“What we’re seeing Wednesday and Thursday is probably what we normally will be seeing by 2080,” Ms. Boicourt said.

The Long Island Sound Study is looking for before and after photos. Here's how Larissa Graham of New York Sea Grant described it:

The Long Island Sound Study is participating in the Climate Ready Estuary's King Tide Program and looking for photos of this month's King Tide. More details below and at: http://longislandsoundstudy.net/2011/09/capture-the-king-tide/

Here’s how you can “Capture the King Tide”:

1. Pick a site! Choose a site around Long Island Sound that is easy to access during high tide. (Please remember to exercise caution and do not go to areas where dangerous conditions exist!)

2. Know the tides! Determine when the high tide will be for the daylight hours of Oct. 19 or 20 (for comparison) and the daylight hours of Oct. 26 or 27 (the King Tide!). You can do this by using the tide charts on the following Web sites:
Connecticut tides: http://www.ct.gov/dep/cwp/view.asp?A=2686&Q=322298
New York tides: http://www.saltwatertides.com/dynamic.dir/newyorksites.html

3. Capture the King! Take photos of your site during HIGH TIDE and daylight hours of Oct. 19 or 20 (for comparison) and Oct. 26 or 27 (the King Tide!). IMPORTANT: Make sure the photos are taken from the same spot (or as close as possible) so we can be compare the water levels among the dates!!

4. Show us your stuff! Submit your photos, along with the location, time, and date each photo was taken, to info@longislandsoundstudy.net or post them to our Facebook page by Nov. 4. Selected photographs will be posted to the Long Island Sound Study’s Web site in early December!

My Schedule of Talks, Including a New Long Island Sound Quadricentennial Talk

I’ve got a new schedule of appearances in the works, including a new talk I’m working on about the 400th anniversary of the European discovery of Long Island Sound and the Connecticut River. Here's where I'll be (some of these organizations REALLY plan ahead):

Wednesday, November 16, 7 p.m., in the Stamford Government Center. Stamford Land Conservation Trust annual meeting. I’ll be talking about the environmental history of Long Island Sound and whether we have reasons to be optimistic about where the Sound is headed.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 6 p.m., New Haven Museum. Adriaen Block and the Long Island Sound Quadricentennial.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012, 7 p.m, Essex (Ct.) Town Hall. Adriaen Block and the Long Island Sound Quadricentennial.

I’ll also be talking about the Sound on Chris Bosak’s Birdcalls Radio

My quadricentennial talk, by the way, is a good one. Block's story is an adventure tale of mutiny, gun battles, fierce economic competition, burning ships, and explorations of uncharted harbors and bays.

Very few people know the full story of Adriaen Block and the other Dutch sailors who first ventured into the Sound and the Connecticut River. And even while the quadricentennial of Henry Hudson’s first voyage up the Hudson was widely celebrated, little attention is being paid to the quadricentennial of the Sound and the Connecticut River.

In fact, we're not even sure when exactly Block made his voyage of discovery. It might have been in 1612, or in 1613, although it seems certain that it was not in 1614, as many books and websites claim.

I wrote about Block’s voyage in This Fine Piece of Water: An Environmental History of Long Island Sound and am expanding and adapting that chapter of the book into the new presentation.

Let me know if you are interested in having me talk to your organization.

Long Island Sound Citizens Summit

I published this post a week or so ago, but it's worth doing so again:

This year’s Long Island Sound Citizens Summit, which Connecticut Fund for the Environment/Save the Sound is organizing, will be as much a work session as a conference and will be a chance for those who attend to shape the future of Long Island Sound activism.

The goal is to come out of the event with a two-year work plan, based on the Long Island SoundVision agenda, for restoring and protecting the Sound, and so anyone who attends will have a say in that work plan.

I see this as a rare, if not unique, opportunity. In my previous job, I organized eight conferences in 10 years, and I’ve attended plenty of others, and I don’t remember any in which the people who attended the event helped devise such a broad, potentially important document -- that is, the two-year work plan.

The format is simple and conventional -- four morning work sessions, each one facilitated by an expert in some facet of the Sound's restoration and protection. The topics of the sessions are:

A Clean and Healthy Sound: Water Quality
The Sound People Love: Business, Tourism and Recreation
The Sound Environment: Habitat and Wildlife
Getting it Together: The Bi-State Working Group

Participants in each session will use the SoundVision agenda as a guide. Over an hour and 45 minutes, each group will come up with three priorities, hurdles to overcome, strategies to achieve what they want to achieve, key points to make to the public, and target audiences and partners.

Then everyone will re-assemble in the main conference room for a panel discussion among the leaders of the work groups and the audience. I’ll be moderating that discussion and the question and answer session that is part of it.

We’re thinking of trying to employ Twitter as a communications tool during the session I moderate. The plan is to have a laptop project a Twitter page onto a screen. People in the audience can then tweet their thoughts and questions, using the #LiSoundVision hashtag. The panelists and I will keep our eyes on it and react accordingly. We think it might be a good way of hearing from people without having to force them to stand up, wait for the microphone, and then ask their question (which we’ll also do as well).

In addition to all this, Senator Richard Blumenthal and Bridgeport Mayor William Finch will speak.

The Citizens Summit is scheduled 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday, October 28, at Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport.

Click here to register. And if you’re a Twitter user, include your Twitter user name as well.

Is Hypoxia in Long Island Sound Improving? It's Hard to Say

Everyone concerned about Long Island Sound wants to know if things are getting better or worse. The answer, of course, is yes.

Except where hypoxia is concerned. Then the answer is: who knows?

Hypoxia is defined as dissolved oxygen concentrations below 3.0 milligrams per liter. The Connecticut DEEP sent out its end-of-the-season hypoxia review the other day and it put 2011 in the context of the last 21 years, since 1991.

Average number of days hypoxia has lasted since 1991 -- 55.
In 2011 -- 54 days
in 2010 -- 40 days
in 2009 -- 45 days

So 2011 was average after a couple of better-than-average years.

Average number of square miles affected by hypoxia since 1991 -- 178
In 2011 -- 130 square miles
in 2010 -- 101 square miles
in 2009 -- 169 square miles

So for three years in a row it’s been better-than-average.

But I’m skeptical of averages because they can be skewed by the extremes. So I looked at the median.

Median number of days hypoxia has lasted since 1991 -- 55 (coincidentally, the same as the average).
in 2011 -- 54
in 2010 -- 40
in 2009 -- 45

Median number of square miles hypoxia has affected since 1991 -- 169.
in 2011 -- 130
in 2010 -- 101
in 2009 -- 169

So two of the last three years were below the median in both categories; and one year was just about at the median.

So it’s possible that things are getting slightly better. But it’s hard to know definitively. The DEEP says the full end-of-season report will be going up on their website. I couldn’t find it but will link to it when it’s up.

Westchester and Rye Town Shut Off Access to Long Island Sound

I've said this before: Those of us who live in New York or Connecticut own Long Island Sound, literally, not figuratively. The waters of Long Island Sound below the mean high tide line belong to the people of New York and Connecticut, and are held in trust by the government for everyone to use.

But in Rye, the Westchester County government and the Rye Town government have locked two Long Island Sound beaches because it's too expensive to keep them open for the winter, or so they say. So even though the people of Westchester and Rye own those beaches (Playland and Rye Town Beach), they can't use them to get to the Sound, which they also own.

Years and years ago (probably the late 1980s), Bobby Kennedy Jr. told me that Riverkeeper or the Pace Law School environmental litigation clinic (or both) was hoping that budget cuts would prompt Westchester County to close the Edith G. Read nature preserve, which is on the Sound in Rye, for the winter, because Riverkeeper/Pace was looking for a public trust doctrine case to litigate.

In essence the public trust doctrine says that the waters and the shores of the sea (among other things) are held by the government in trust for use by the public. I'm not in a position to opine as to whether Rye Town and Westchester County are violating the public trust doctrine, but it'd be nice to hear from some lawyers about it.

Low Impact Development in the Connecticut Mirror

The Connecticut Mirror has a beautifully comprehensive story about how so-called low impact development is and is not being used in Connecticut, and why. It's an excellent primer on the issue of LID (although I would have liked a couple of sentences about the difference it can make to water quality).

I've only recently become aware of the Connecticut Mirror, which is a non-profit public affairs news source staffed by experienced pros, some of whom, I think, were probably downsized by the Hartford Courant. The low impact development story was written by Jan Ellen Spiegel, who isn't listed as a staff writer but is freelancing stories for them, mainly about the environment. That's good news.

Studies of Indian Point by Opposing Sides Reach Opposing Conclusions

The people who want the Indian Point nuclear power plants to be shut down and the people who want them to stay open both released reports that "prove" their case. So who are you going to believe?

My guess is that if you are inclined to believe the plant should be shut down, you'll believe the study that says it should be shut down. And if not, then not.

Here's the Times story about the two studies.

The firm that did the study for the Indian Point opponents (Riverkeeper and NRDC) is Synapse Energy, a consultant based in Cambridge, Mass. About six years ago, when Connecticut Fund for the Environment/Save the Sound was a leading opponent of the Broadwater natural gas plant proposed for Long Island Sound, CFE hired Synapse to study the need for that facility. Synapse concluded that the demand for natural gas in the region wouldn't justify construction of the plant. A couple of years later New York State rejected the proposed plant for more reasons than I have time to enumerate, although you can find them here if you're interested.

Long Island Sound Talk at Stamford Land Conservation Trust's Annual Meeting

The Stamford Land Conservation Trust has invited me to give the keynote talk at its annual meeting, on Wednesday, November 16, at 7 p.m., in the Stamford Government Center.

I'll talk about Long Island Sound, of course -- how it came to be in the shape it's in today, as well as trends and accomplishments that are a cause for optimism.

The talk will be in the Stamford Government Center's second-floor meeting room, and it's open to the public. Here's the Stamford Land Conservation Trust's website.

Stamford's Mill River Park

The office of the ophthamologist who is treating my glaucoma and who removed a cataract from my left eye this summer (but not the ophthamologist who fixed my detached retinas) is across the street from the site where Stamford’s Mill River is being restored, and I couldn’t help but noticing through dilated pupils that not much seemed to be happening there over the last year or so.

The Mill River itself has been re-channeled into a more natural stream bed but the rest of the site is covered with wildflowers and surrounded by a chain-link fence. I had wondered when the fence was coming down, and then I read this story in today’s papers, in which Milton Puryear, the head of the non-profit group that is overseeing the restoration, said, "A lot of people have wondered when the fences are coming down.”

So to reassure folks that the project is still alive, they’re bringing in Governor Malloy and Senator Blumenthal for a groundbreaking tomorrow to mark the official start of the next phase. The new park is expected to be open in the spring of 2013.

It’s a great project, and I look forward to strolling through it after an exam.

By the way, I loved this description:

Seeds planted along the riverbanks have sprouted into lush flowers, including a species of yellow daisy-like perennials called Black-eyed Susan.

That was printed in an old-fashioned medium of communication employing paper with ink impressions called a newspaper.

Hark! Is that the King Tide Approaching?

I've heard of a spring tide and a neap tide but never a king tide. Apparently one is on its way though and the Long Island Sound Study is crowd-sourcing its extent and with a good rationale:

As sea levels continue to rise due to climate change, this unusual flooding brought during the King Tide will become common as tides continue to rise and fall under an elevated sea level. Although not caused by sea level rise, the height of a King Tide gives us an idea of what the average high tide level will be in 20-30 years.

They want you to take pictures, before and at its height, and then email them in or put them on Facebook. It sounds like a good project. Here are the details.

(Gina says NO one will get the allusion in the title. Anyone?)

A Few Photos of Lobstermen

I missed it back in early August when the Times online edition published this brief, well-done photo essay of Long Island Sound lobstermen from the Mount Sinai area, taken by Barton Silverman with a short explanation by Kerri MacDonald. There's a video too.

Help Plan the Future of the Sound at this Year's Long Island Sound Citizens Summit

This year’s Long Island Sound Citizens Summit, which Connecticut Fund for the Environment/Save the Sound is organizing, will be as much a work session as a conference and will be a chance for those who attend to shape the future of Long Island Sound activism.

The goal is to come out of the event with a two-year work plan, based on the Long Island SoundVision agenda, for restoring and protecting the Sound, and so anyone who attends will have a say in that work plan.

I see this as a rare, if not unique, opportunity. In my previous job, I organized eight conferences in 10 years, and I’ve attended plenty of others, and I don’t remember any in which the people who attended the event helped devise such a broad, potentially important document -- that is, the two-year work plan.

The format is simple and conventional -- four morning work sessions, each one facilitated by an expert in some facet of the Sound's restoration and protection. The topics of the sessions are:

A Clean and Healthy Sound: Water Quality
The Sound People Love: Business, Tourism and Recreation
The Sound Environment: Habitat and Wildlife
Getting it Together: The Bi-State Working Group

Participants in each session will use the SoundVision agenda as a guide. Over an hour and 45 minutes, each group will come up with three priorities, hurdles to overcome, strategies to achieve what they want to achieve, key points to make to the public, and target audiences and partners.

Then everyone will re-assemble in the main conference room for a panel discussion among the leaders of the work groups and the audience. I’ll be moderating that discussion and the question and answer session that is part of it.

We’re thinking of trying to employ Twitter as a communications tool during the session I moderate. The plan is to have a laptop project a Twitter page onto a screen. People in the audience can then tweet their thoughts and questions, using the #LiSoundVision hashtag. The panelists and I will keep our eyes on it and react accordingly. We think it might be a good way of hearing from people without having to force them to stand up, wait for the microphone, and then ask their question (which we’ll also do as well).

In addition to all this, Senator Richard Blumenthal and Bridgeport Mayor William Finch will speak.

The Citizens Summit is scheduled 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday, October 28, at Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport.

Click here to register. And if you’re a Twitter user, include your Twitter user name as well.

Once Again, the Myth that Pesticides are Killing the Sound's Lobsters Won't Die

There's a story in today's Connecticut Post that asserts without a shred of evidence that pesticides were responsible for Long Island Sound's lobster die-off. I don't have the energy to take it apart but here's a link to a post I wrote several years ago, called The Pesticide Myth and Long Island Sound's Lobster Die-Off.

The link to the report is dead in that post but if you click here, the first link will get you a pdf of the report.

Here's what it says about pesticides and their role inthe 1999 die-off.

While it is evident that certain concentrations of these pesticides can kill lobsters, one important question was whether enough of the pesticides got into the LIS water column to cause illness or death in the lobsters. The dispersion of the individual pesticides over time was examined using two independent modeling techniques (carried out by Hydroqual, Inc. and at Stony Brook University) and very conservative assumptions (e.g., 100% of each pesticide applied entered the water before beginning to break down). The results indicated that only a few areas of the far western Sound could have had pesticide concentrations high enough to cause sub-lethal effects in lobsters.

In others words, if every drop of all the pesticides used in 1999 made it into the Sound intact, it would have injured lobsters in only a very few areas of the far western Sound but even then it would not have killed them. That's what sub-lethal means. And of course the only way 100 percent of the pesticides could have made it into the Sound would have been if they were sprayed directly into the Sound. Which they weren't.

I see no reason why if it was right in 1999 it's not right in 2011.

Here's why lobsters died in 1999:

Key findings that directly related to the die-off included sustained, above-average, stress- inducing water temperatures, hypoxia, and temperature stratification, followed by quick mixing of the water column caused by a rapidly moving weather front. Toxic sulfides and ammonium moving from the sediments into the near-bottom water column in late summer and early fall also acted as stressors. Driven by water temperature, these hostile environmental conditions placed undue stress upon the physiology of the lobsters, and may have been sufficient to have caused lobster deaths in absence of any other factors.

Environmental conditions were different this year than in 1999 -- hypoxia wasn't as bad this year; there are many, many fewer lobsters, so overcrowding isn't an issue.

But the unavoidable conclusion is that spraying a relatively small amount of mosquitoes in New York isn't going to kill lobsters off Darien.

Indian Point's Circle of Influence

Here's a photo, by Mardi Welch Dickinson, that gives a pretty good idea of who should be worried in the event of a serious accident at the Indian Point nuclear power plants. In short, everybody north of Staten Island, south of Kingston, west of Stratford, and east of -- actually I'm not sure. In the photo it's east of Michael Kaplowitz's ring finger.

Giuliani to Tout Indian Point's "Safety"

Indian Point has hired Rudy Giuliani to be a spokesman in ads meant to assure people that the two nuke plants, in Westchester County, are safe:

“Our goal is to reassure people about the safety of Indian Point,” Mr. Steets said in a telephone interview. “With the high regard people have for Mayor Giuliani, I think we can get that message across clearly.”

People have a high regard for Rudy Giuliani?

Commissioner Esty's Speaking Fees

Dan Esty, the commissioner of Connecticut's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, is taking heat for not disclosing that he was paid to give speeches to businesses that his department regulates. The speaking engagements were before he became commissioner. State regs say that as commissioner he has to recuse himself from participating in issues concerning companies he did business with within five years. The Hartford Courant reports:

In 2009, Esty received a $7,500 speaker's fee from United Illuminating, the utility company that supplies electricity to southwestern Connecticut and the New Haven area.

Meanwhile, Esty also received $10,000 fees from two other corporations in Connecticut — UTC Power, a fuel cell company that is part of United Technologies Corp., and ING, the financial services corporation — for speeches about three years ago.

Esty had submitted a recusal list of companies he had consulted for. But his spokesman drew a distinction between consulting and speaking. The spokesman said:

"... There's a real distinction between the kind of relationship you have over time and working closely with the management of a company [as a consultant], as opposed to the one-time 'come in, give a talk, leave' relationship [of speech-making]. It's just very different."

I don't know what the letter of the law says, but in general I buy that argument. On a different scale, I do consulting work and I give speeches, both for money, and to me it's clear. If you're consulting for someone, you are working for them. If you are giving a speech, it's not even remotely the same. it's more analogous to being a freelance writer who is in high demand. Someone pays you for a piece, you write it and submit it, and you move on. Someone calls up you (or your agent), asks you to give a talk, you give it, and you move on. But again, that might not be what the law says.

An Investment in Long Island Sound Would Create Up to 10,000 Green Jobs

Don Strait, executive director of Connecticut Fund for the Environment, is the co-author of a new op-ed about green jobs in Connecticut. One of the key points is that investing in Long Island Sound can create up to 10,000 new jobs, and very soon:

Our recent experience with Tropical Storm Irene dramatically underscored the need to invest, too, in habitat restoration and clean water infrastructure. With hundreds of miles of the state located on or near water, catastrophic flooding plagued areas of the state that were without adequate coastal wetlands and undeveloped riversides to buffer them from waves and high rivers. Moreover, millions of gallons of raw sewage discharged into our rivers and Long Island Sound because of inadequate and outdated sewage treatment plants. Increased investment in water treatment projects and coastal restoration would not only help protect us in future storms but also create between 8,000 and 10,000 new jobs—and that’s this year and next, not ten years from now. Lower-cost alternatives to clean water infrastructure, like green-infrastructure and low-impact development stormwater management strategies, would create new jobs here in Connecticut, too.

Read the whole thing here, on the Ctnewsjunkie.com site.

Irene Seems to Have Brought a Great Kiskadee to New York

A great kiskadee in New York City? That's what I read in this morning's Hudson River Almanac. Most of the bird rarities I hear about are along the Sound rather than the Hudson, so maybe it's not surprising that I didn't know of this:

9/20 - Bronx, New York City, HRM 14: Philip and Alice Brickner photographed a great kiskadee from their apartment window at Spuyten Duyvil on the Hudson River just north of Manhattan in the West Bronx. This is the second occurrence of this large tropical flycatcher (8.5") along the Hudson. The previous sighting was 8/31 at 46th Street near the Intrepid Museum on Manhattan's west side, about nine miles south.
- Angus Wilson

[The great kiskadee is most commonly found in tropical and semi-tropical forest settings from Central America into South America. They are occasionally found along the Gulf States of the U.S. with very rare strays into the Mid-Atlantic. For some context on their preferred habitat, the only great kiskadees I have ever seen were in the Amazon rainforest of eastern Ecuador. Tom Lake.]

If it was sighted on August 31 and then again on September 20, it probably traveled up on Hurricane Irene. At least that's my guess.