Since I haven't found anything new and exciting in the WMA since the Solitary Sandpiper, I thought I'd start the month off by driving down to Tuckerton and bird Great Bay Boulevard. "Boulevard" is a grandiose joke. Great Bay Broken-up Asphalt Road would be a more appropriate name. This is a road that runs, for no good reason that I can see, through the marshes that separate Great Bay from Tuckerton Bay. Its informal name is Seven Bridges Road. There are five bridges on it.
The two stars of the day were the Brown Pelican I saw looking very much like one of the army cargo planes that fly ponderously overhead around here and a Saltmarsh Sparrow I found on the beach. I was happy that it stood still on some sea wrack long enough for me to scope it, since I haven't seen one of these birds in years--I think only at Jamaica Bay so long ago that back then it was called a Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrow.
Other notable encounters were with a Tricolored Heron that flew into a bare tree across the road from me, which is as close as I've been to one and good side by side view of a Western Sandpiper next to a Semipalmated Sandpiper. While I was sitting at the beach, picking deer ticks off my pants and shirt, I saw a Belted Kingfisher fly over the water, think better of it, then turn around. I never noticed before, but kingfishers in silhouette look like miniature pelicans. Big heads, big beaks, relatively squat bodies.
37 species along the Boulevard of Birds:
Double-crested Cormorant 4 On fish factory ruins
Brown Pelican 1
Great Blue Heron 1
Great Egret 50
Snowy Egret 50
Little Blue Heron 1 Immature, gray-blue bill, different shape than SNEG
Tricolored Heron 2
Black-crowned Night-Heron 2
Glossy Ibis 13
Osprey 10
Black-bellied Plover 1
Semipalmated Plover 7
Spotted Sandpiper 1 Inlet beach
Greater Yellowlegs 1
Ruddy Turnstone 1
Semipalmated Sandpiper 25
Western Sandpiper 1 Good comparison next to SESA, larger, thicker bill.
Least Sandpiper 1
Short-billed Dowitcher 6
Laughing Gull 200
Herring Gull 50
Great Black-backed Gull 5
Least Tern 1
Forster's Tern 25
Mourning Dove 5
Belted Kingfisher 1
Fish Crow 2
Tree Swallow 500
Barn Swallow 15
Carolina Chickadee 1 Heard
Gray Catbird 2 Heard
European Starling 50
Common Yellowthroat 1
Saltmarsh Sparrow 1 Inlet beach
Song Sparrow 3
Red-winged Blackbird 50
Boat-tailed Grackle 10
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