Whitesbog 8/12--Scissor-tailed Flycatcher Continues

I wanted by my friend from Brooklyn, Peter, to see the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher that has stayed at Whitesbog much longer than anyone would have predicted. Peter was camping down at Bass River, so I got to Whitesbog before him, walked out to the bog that it has been frequenting the most and found the bird pretty quickly, even before I reached the little knot of birders who were already on it. Great, but Peter wouldn't be there for another half hour at least. So, I told Jeff and James to keep the bird there, while I went back to the parking lot to wait for Peter. When Peter arrived, a little bleary from staying up half the night to watch the meteor showers, we drove back to the bog and sure enough, Jeff and James had kept the bird there. Ironically, it had taken James 5 days of trying to find the bird. Peter: 5 seconds. That's birding.

Then Peter and I took a walk around the drained bogs--Whitesbog right now is like a min-Brig when it comes to shorebirds. I probably primed Peter by telling him to keep a look out for a Baird's Sandpiper. This species has been reported on and off the last couple of weeks, but only one record has been validated by eBird. I've seen two in my life, and both times I was practically standing on top of the bird at the East Pond at JBWR. It is not a bird I'd have a lot of confidence in identifying. Peter is a very good birder with a lot more time in the field than me. Peter found a largish bird and went through a mental checklist and was fairly certain he had found "the" Baird's. I took some lousy digiscoped photos.

(I told you they were lousy.) I have to say, that looking at these photos and comparing them to my memory of the bird Peter and I were looking at, that this isn't the bird we were looking at, which only goes to show the frailty of memory. After posting this on line a number of other birders all concurred that this is, alas, a Pectoral Sandpiper--which is still a rare bird for Burlington County, though I've been seeing them at Whitesbog the last couple of weeks. So at least those sightings are confirmed. The bird was pretty far out and the lighting wasn't ideal (it rarely is). This bird's "vest" just didn't seem to go down far enough on the breast for a Pectoral.  Baird's is a notoriously difficult sandpiper to identify. We gave it a shot, but the bird isn't the rarity we wanted.

The other oddity today was the number of Solitary Sandpipers that were on the mud flats. They're supposed to be Solitary Sandpipers.

I gave directions to quite a few birders who were looking for the Scissor-tail--Whitesbog doesn't exactly have road signs and the bog numbering system is not obvious. As we were leaving, two soldiers in a pickup truck stopped and asked us if we knew where "Bivouac Charlie" was located. I had to tell them that they weren't even on Fort Dix. But if they wanted to see a really interesting bird....

List for the day, sans Baird's:
26 species
Canada Goose  5
Mallard  10
Great Blue Heron  1
Great Egret  4
Turkey Vulture  5
Semipalmated Plover  10
Killdeer  3
Spotted Sandpiper  2
Solitary Sandpiper  6
Greater Yellowlegs  10
Lesser Yellowlegs  5
Semipalmated Sandpiper  10
Least Sandpiper  5
Pectoral Sandpiper  2    
Laughing Gull  2
Gull-billed Tern  12   The numbers of Gull-bill Terns have been building here for the past 2 weeks.
Mourning Dove  2
Eastern Phoebe  1    Heard
Eastern Kingbird  3
Scissor-tailed Flycatcher  1    Flying from sprinkler head to dike to sprinkler head.
American Crow  5
Fish Crow  3
Tree Swallow  10
Barn Swallow  5
Gray Catbird  2    Heard
Song Sparrow  2    Heard