Cattus Island 2/16--Great Cormorant

I was walking along the path at Cattus Island County Park this morning around 10, out past the woods where it opens up again to salt marsh and wondered if I could find any object not colored gray or brown. It was that bleak a morning. The best I could do was a white object, an incongruous one, in the middle of the marsh.

Mail Box in the Marsh

Who gets their mail out there I can't imagine.

I thought Cattus Island would be a good place to tick off Ruddy Duck for my Bird A Day contest/obsession, and I did find 5 of these winter ducks, but I'll hold off using them, because out in the bay, after I had walked out to the end of park's peninsula, I found a cormorant with an extreme amount of white on it's face, making it a Great Cormorant, another winter visitor to these parts, unlike the year-round double-crested. I hardly ever find these big birds--the most usual place is to see them from the jetty at Barnegat Light roosting on a tower in the inlet. I still have at least a month before the ruddies will be gone.

Other than that sighting, everything else was pretty common. Most passerines were in hiding. I suppose not having feeders because the Nature Center is closed due to Sandy damage has cut down on the bird diversity in the park. The sparse list for the day's  2 1/2 hour walk:

Even the greens are gray

15 species
Canada Goose  6
Mute Swan  3
American Black Duck  9
Bufflehead  50
Red-breasted Merganser  3
Ruddy Duck  5
Great Cormorant  1
Great Blue Heron  1
Ring-billed Gull  10
Herring Gull  2
Great Black-backed Gull  2
Downy Woodpecker  4
American Crow  1    Heard
Carolina Chickadee  4
Tufted Titmouse  3