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Today we went on a field trip with the inimitable Pete Bacinski of NJ Audubon and did something I've wanted to do since we moved down here: Drive on Route 9 and explore the roads that run through the marshes down to the Barnegat bay shore. While the only new bird for the year was Dunlin--a couple of them across the Great Bay inlet on the Holgate side, "just on the edge of conjecture," as Pete likes to say--we did find a lot of species. Pete's goal was 55. He had 54. We missed a few (one them Chipping Sparrow, which I need for the year) and came away with 48, still not bad.
The most amazing sight today, though, was not one bird but a flock of them--an astounding 400 American Oystercatchers standing on the beach over at Holgate. When Shari first found them in the scope we thought they might be Brant, but color, shape, everything was wrong for that goose species. I guessed there were 200 there; I tend to underestimate. Mike estimated 300. Pete spent a moment scanning the flock and declared 400 to 500 so my number is sort of an average of the three.
Other interesting birds along the way were Horned Grebes, Great Egrets, a Greater Yellowlegs along Great Bay Blvd, and huge rafts of Greater Scaup. Include Great Black-backed Gull and you can see everything was great today.
Where we birded:
Starting from the Value City parking lot on East Bay Ave in Stafford, we drove up East Bay, crossed 9, and looked into Manahawkin Lake (finding nothing of note), then drove down 9 to Great Bay Blvd. From there we drove up CR 539 to Stafford Forge Road and checked out the lake there (again, not much of interest), continued on that road, going under the Parkway, back to Route 9, drove up to Cedar Run Dock Road. Drove back on Cedar Run Dock Road and made a left on 9, went exactly 4 miles and turned left onto West Creek Dock Road. Drove back on that, made another left, went point 8 miles and made a left on Dock Street (also know as Parker Run Dock Road--do you detect a theme here?), drove back out on the same road, made a right on 9, and drove up to Cedar Bridge Road. Backtracked on that road, crossed 9 and the road now became Hilliard Avenue. Turned off Hilliard and went down Beach Road, which is part of the Manahawkin WMA. Beach Road dead ended, we turned around, got back on Hilliard and made a left onto Stafford Road, drove that to the end which is the Bridge to Nowhere. Looked around there a bit, drove out on Stafford back to East Bay Ave and drove to its terminus, which is a large wedding mill called Mallard Landing. Found a few birds there but not quite enough for Pete, so we made one more stop, driving back up East Bay, turning back onto Hilliard, somehow, and then onto an unnamed gravel road in the WMA where we picked up our final bird of the day (Downy Woodpecker), a bird, unfortunately, that Pete had already ticked. This concluded our program for the day and we drove home via Route 9, naturally.
Our combined list for 8 or 9 stops:
Species Count
|
Brant 20
|
Canada Goose 6
|
Mute Swan 1
|
American Black Duck 35
|
Mallard 14
|
Greater Scaup 300
|
Long-tailed Duck 2
|
Bufflehead 60
|
Hooded Merganser 16
|
Red-breasted Merganser
25
|
Red-throated Loon 1
|
Common Loon 4
|
Pied-billed Grebe 1
|
Horned Grebe 10
|
Double-crested Cormorant
1
|
Great Blue Heron 1
|
Great Egret 2
|
Turkey Vulture 1
|
Red-tailed Hawk 1
|
American Oystercatcher
402
|
Greater Yellowlegs 1
|
Dunlin 2
|
Ring-billed Gull X
|
Herring Gull 5
|
Great Black-backed Gull
7
|
Rock Pigeon 10
|
Mourning Dove 10
|
Belted Kingfisher 2
|
Red-bellied Woodpecker 2
|
Downy Woodpecker 1
|
Peregrine Falcon 1
|
Blue Jay 1
|
Fish Crow 1
|
crow sp. 8
|
Carolina Chickadee 3
|
Tufted Titmouse 3
|
White-breasted Nuthatch
2
|
Golden-crowned Kinglet 1
|
Eastern Bluebird 5
|
American Robin 20
|
European Starling 5
|
Savannah Sparrow (Ipswich) 2
|
Song Sparrow 2
|
White-throated Sparrow 1
|
Dark-eyed Junco 2
|
Northern Cardinal 2
|
Red-winged Blackbird 3
|
Boat-tailed Grackle 50
|
House Finch 1
|
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