Somerset County 1/5--Cackling Goose, Pileated Woodpecker

Off to look for rarities in Somerset County this morning. I thought the day got off to an auspicious start when we spotted a Bald Eagle flying over Rt 539 in New Egypt (Ocean County) and then, a few minutes later, another one just to the side of 539 in Upper Freehold (Monmouth County).  My plan was to stop at the Mercer Corporate Park in Allentown just before we got on I-195, not so much to look for the Barnacle Goose we saw there at the end of December, but just to rack up some birds in case the birding got frustrating in Somerset.

But the ponds at the park were frozen and the frustration set in early--there were only a few Canada Geese and Ring-bill Gulls there. We drove up to Franklin Township via I-195, the Turnpike, Rt 18 and I-287, arriving at Randolph Road around 10:30. The goal here was to find Sandhill Cranes which have been reported in the stubble fields the road runs along. We've tried here in the past and had no luck. Today was no different. Another birder who had also struck out told us that geese hunters were in the area which was probably discouraging any birds to alight in the fields. Honestly, I hadn't expected to find the cranes but nothing ventured etc...

I did have higher expectations for the Greater White-fronted Goose that had been seen in Duke Island Park lately. We saw one there in December of 2011 so why not today? There were thousands of Canada Geese on the Raritan River today--my count of 2000 is very conservative. We scanned and scoped about 3/4 of a mile worth of geese and didn't come up with our target. But, we did notice a few much smaller geese.  They tended to get lost in the flock so we weren't able to latch onto to one to study it until finally one goose leading 3 others jumped out at me.

This goose was the size of a Mallard with a much shorter bill than the other geese and a differently shaped head. A few years ago it would have been considered one of the small sub-species of Canada Goose. Now, however, it is a species unto itself: Cackling Goose.

I was happier to find and i.d. a Cackling Goose by myself than to find another bird already reported there.

A couple of other interesting sightings were some crows mobbing a Red-tailed Hawk and 6 Killdeer on an open lawn.

After lunch we got back on I-287 and drove to Scherman-Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary. At Duke Island we were surprised to see small patches of snow on the grass. At SHWS, about 15 miles to the north, the snow covered the trails. I hadn't expected to walk through snow today. The feeders there were not as busy as they had been in October when we were last there--then a flock of siskins was the highlight. Walking along a trail that headed toward the Passaic River (more of a stream at this point in it journey to Newark Bay) we heard a wild Woody Woodpecker call. I thought maybe Northern Flicker. Shari disagreed. We walked toward the stand of trees where we heard the woodpecker when suddenly it flew--a giant and no flicker but instead a Pileated Woodpecker.

This presented a little quandary for my Bird A Day game--which rare bird to list? One prong of the strategy I'm using is to list the rarest bird I see each day and hold the more common ones aside until I need them. (The other is to list common seasonal birds as late as possible) This works well if you only see one rare bird a day. If you see more than one you may wind up wasting the ones you don't use--who knows if I'll see another Pileated Woodpecker this year--I only average about 1 a year. On the other hand, I hardly ever see Cackling Geese. I could go back to Scherman-Hoffman next week and find another woodpecker but what are the chances of me picking out another Cackling Goose from a flock of thousands of Canadas? So I used the Cackling Goose.

For the day we had 23 species (I'm not counting the flocks of starlings I saw along the Turnpike) and made finds in 4 counties.
Somerset County's Day List:
22 species

Species             Count      First Sighting

Cackling Goose   1      Duke Island Park

Canada Goose   2000      Duke Island Park

Mallard   50      Duke Island Park

Great Blue Heron   2      Duke Island Park

Turkey Vulture   1      Randolph Rd

Red-tailed Hawk   1      Randolph Rd

Killdeer   6      Duke Island Park

Ring-billed Gull   8      Duke Island Park

Rock Pigeon   7      Duke Island Park

Mourning Dove   4      Scherman-Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary

Downy Woodpecker   1      Scherman-Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary

Hairy Woodpecker   1      Scherman-Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary

Pileated Woodpecker   1      Scherman-Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary

American Crow   4      Duke Island Park

Black-capped Chickadee   5      Scherman-Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary

Tufted Titmouse   4      Scherman-Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary

White-breasted Nuthatch   1      Duke Island Park

Carolina Wren   1      Duke Island Park

American Tree Sparrow   2      Scherman-Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary

Song Sparrow   1      Scherman-Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary

White-throated Sparrow   3      Scherman-Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary

Dark-eyed Junco   2      Scherman-Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary