Barnegat Light SP--Scoter Hat Trick + 4 FOY

At least once during the fall or winter we try to get over to the northern tip of Long Beach Island to bird Barnegat Light SP. It's the best place we know of to find Harlequin Ducks, which are real beauties, and Purple Sandpipers, one of the few sandpipers that winter around here. The inlet between Long Beach Island and Island Beach is also good for all kinds of winter ducks. The problem is, as I've mentioned before, is that there is an approximately mile-long jetty, which can be treacherous. I'm pretty sure-footed, but when I'm carrying expensive optics I'm not real crazy about jumping from wet rock to slippery boulder.

Today, instead, we walked on the beach along the jetty; it was low tide. The sand must have built up over the last year, because I was happy to see that I could, for long stretches, see over the jetty into the inlet without actually having to climb up on the rocks and compete with the dozens of fishermen casting into the water. Purple Sandpipers and Harlequin Ducks both usually hang around close to rocks and, as Shari pointed out, it was pretty unlikely that they'd be there will all the fishing lines whooshing about.

We started out on the  concrete pathway, scoping for birds and didn't find much except for some Ruddy Turnstones in winter plumage, always a treat, and some White-winged Scoters far off up the channel. I was hoping that the ocean would turn up some other scoters and perhaps eiders. Shari was pretty pessimistic, which I believe is a requirement for really good birding--you won't find the bird until you have truly, sincerely given up on finding it. You can't fake it; you have to believe the bird is not there.

Ruddy Turnstones

White-winged Scoters--hens

So we'd given up on the harlequins and purples. When we finally arrived at the beach I scoped out a raft of ducks, but before I could even begin identifying them, another birder came up to me and told me that down the beach, by some rocks, there was a small flock of harlequins along with a large raft of Common Eiders (as in "eiderdown"). We hustled down the beach and found the eiders easily enough. (I was surprised to find out later when I made out my eBird list that the eiders were first of year for me--usually we see a lot of them off Jones Beach or Point Lookout but we didn't bird Long Island much in January and February.) Also mixed in were quite a few Black Scoters, another FOY.  Our helpful birder came back to look over the ducks and he noticed that in with the Black Scoters was a very handsome drake Surf Scoter--a Scoter Hat Trick!  (I have always relied on the kindness of birders.)

There is a channel marker tower at the end of the inlet that has always been reliable for Great Cormorants and   it had 4 cormorants on it today--very good scope looks, considering how far out in the water the tower is, but the light was perfect today. I asked a couple of other birders if they'd seen any purples and they said that they were there, moving along the rocks with the turnstones beyond the crowd of fishermen. The tide was starting to come in flooding the beach side of the jetty, but I found a low, dry spot and climbed up after we'd passed the mass of anglers and there, as advertised, were 3 Purple Sandpipers hopping along the rocks eating microscopic sea life off the algae.

Finally, mixed in with the huge flocks of gulls and Forster's Terns, I was able to pick out,  here and there, some Bonaparte's Gulls ("they're the small ones that aren't terns," as I said to my new birder friend)--hadn't seen them yet this year either.  And why was I so late getting these 4 species this year? Because most fall and winter days by the ocean aren't like today--warm with virtually no wind.

"Only" 18 species for the day but I'm more than satisfied.
Common Eider  20
Harlequin Duck  5
Surf Scoter  1
White-winged Scoter  5
Black Scoter  20
Northern Gannet  10
Double-crested Cormorant  5
Great Cormorant  4
Ruddy Turnstone  18
Purple Sandpiper  3
Bonaparte's Gull  5
Ring-billed Gull  X
Herring Gull  X
Great Black-backed Gull  10
Forster's Tern  100
Rock Pigeon  1
Carolina Wren  1
European Starling  1