Whitesbog 4/25--Brown Thrasher

I got my first Brown Thrasher today at Whitesbog. Brown Thrasher is sort of a perpetual nemesis bird for me--it seems that whenever Shari sees one I miss it. So I'm glad to get this one out of the way without any teeth gnashing.

The thrasher was one of the first birds I saw when I got out of the car. I heard what sounded like a pathetic mockingbird and realized it was probably a thrasher. A few minutes of staring up into branches just coming into bloom found the noisy guy high up in the crown of the tree.


My routine at Whitesbog lately has been to walk around the area by the General Store, then drive out to the bogs, park the car, hoist the scope on my shoulder, and walk back into Ocean County, looking at all the bogs. But today that didn't promise to be too rewarding with very little waterfowl around, so instead, I walked on some dikes I don't usually get to.

I also walked around this field which is next to Katherine White's house. This is the very field where the modern blueberry as we know it was developed. Katherine White was the daughter of the owner of Whitesbog and it was she, who from very unpromising huckleberry plants, along with a government scientist name Colville, teased out the high bush blueberry and made it into a commercial enterprise. The field now holds varieties of the blueberry bush. My favorite story about Miss White (in her time "Ms" did not exist) is about the luncheon she served to Garden State Parkway engineers who she wanted to plant blueberry bushes along the highway, then under construction. She served each of them a dish of one blueberry with cream. The blueberry was as big as a softball. The engineers agreed to spec blueberry bushes for the section of the parkway running through the pine barrens.

Out on the bogs

Nothing else was really exciting today, but I did see my first goslings of the year around the area of this shed. For the day I had 26 species.
Canada Goose  16
Mallard  4
Turkey Vulture  2
Cooper's Hawk  1
Killdeer  1
Northern Flicker  2
Eastern Phoebe  1
American Crow  1    Heard
Fish Crow  1    Heard
Tree Swallow  2
Barn Swallow  5
Carolina Chickadee  1    Heard
Carolina Wren  2    Heard
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher  2
Brown Thrasher  1
European Starling  3
Ovenbird  1    Heard
Common Yellowthroat  2    Heard
Yellow-rumped Warbler  1
Eastern Towhee  2
Chipping Sparrow  6
Song Sparrow  4
Northern Cardinal  2
Red-winged Blackbird  4
Common Grackle  5
American Goldfinch  4

Too bad this soda machine doesn't work. Who wouldn't want a Ma's Root Beer after a day out on the bogs?