Manasquan Inlet 1/8--Razorbill

Photo: Shari Zirlin

It is either a conviction or a superstition of mine that you will not see the bird you are looking for until you truly, sincerely, have given up on seeing it. Then, magically, it will appear.

Today we drove the short distance to the Manasquan Inlet to see if we could find the Razorbill that's been reported there off and on the last few days. The inlet is formed by two huge jetties. And what great jetties they are: once you take a couple of step up from the sand on a couple of rocks, it is all smooth concrete all the way out. Walking out toward the jetty it seemed very familiar; then we realized that a few years ago we'd been here, looking for some rarity which we never found. And it looked like that was going to be the case today too. After a while desultorily scanning the ocean and the mouth of inlet and finding only the occasional loon, I had shouldered our scope and was just walking away when another birder called out that he had the bird. It was a good distance away and there were no "seamarks" to go by, just featureless ocean, but if you tracked a gull that was harassing the Razorbill every time it came up from a dive, you could find the bird. Distant and briefly, but unmistakably a Razorbill in winter plumage.

So we were pretty happy with that when suddenly the bird flew out of the water and toward all of us on the jetty, landing inside the inlet, very close to the rocks, where Shari was able to get these diganostic photos.

Photo: Shari Zirlin

 Not a life bird, not even a new Jersey bird for me (I'd seen one flying low over the water a few years ago at Sandy Hook). In fact, I can say that we've seen literally thousands of Razorbills when we visited the island they nest on in the Bay of Fundy. They look much different in breeding plumage.

Photo: Shari Zirlin

But it's still a cool bird!

A stop at Lake of Lilies turned up nothing new for the year. Lots of handsome Hooded Mergansers were there.

After that we went to Lowe's to pick up material for the bluebird box we'ere going to set up in the field next the house. I'm sure that project will provide a few amusing posts.

Lists for the day:
Manasquan Inlet
12 species
Brant  3
Long-tailed Duck  1
Red-throated Loon  1
Common Loon  5
Double-crested Cormorant  2
Purple Sandpiper  20
Bonaparte's Gull  1
Ring-billed Gull  50
Herring Gull  40
Great Black-backed Gull  50
Razorbill  1  
Rock Pigeon  10
Lake of the Lilies
 7 species
Canada Goose  27
Hooded Merganser  20
American Coot  25
Ring-billed Gull  10
Herring Gull  15
Great Black-backed Gull  1
American Crow  2