Colliers Mills WMA 11/29--Ring-Necked Pheasants: Can't Count 'em

Looking for someplace different to walk today I grabbed my hunter-orange vest and traipsed around Colliers Mills this morning. Immediately after getting out of the car I heard "kok-kok" to my left and saw a bird's green face. My first thought was Wood Duck. But then I saw that they were Ring-necked Pheasants.  Nice to look at, but I can't count them in a WMA during pheasant hunting season.

These were pretty smart pheasants, I think, since they were hanging around the game refuge section of the WMA--no hunting permitted.

They weren't taking any chances either as they took off for the underbrush as soon as they spotted me a hundred or more feet away.

I came across more of them in the field near Turnmill Pond. A couple of guys in full camo, including painted faces, stopped their pick up truck to ask me if hunting was allowed on that pond. "Why, do you want to shoot the pheasants?" I asked.

"No, there are ducks out there."

I don't know the hunting regulations (and it is my opinion that if you don't know the hunting rules, you shouldn't be hunting), but I asked where they'd seen the ducks. "I'm not a game warden, so..." I shrugged my shoulders. "But let me see the ducks before you shoot 'em."

The ducks turned out to be 6 Ring-necked Ducks. Good to have them back in Ocean County. I have a sentimental attachment to Ring-necks because they were the first interesting ducks I saw on the pond in the Whiting WMA when we moved here a couple of years ago. Whether they're dead ducks now, I don't know.

Nothing else really unusual  on my walk--I was constrained in my wandering by gunfire--but I did see one Black Vulture swooping low over a field.

Before I went to Colliers Mills I made a quick stop at the cattle farm in New Egypt. Sandhill Cranes have returned to Somerset County and I wanted to see if they'd also returned to the field where they were pretty reliable earlier this year. Not yet. Nothing in the fields to see except Texas Longhorns and some crows.

The birds at Colliers Mills that I could count:
20 species
Canada Goose  15    f/o. More heard
Ring-necked Duck  6    Turnmill Pond
Black Vulture  1
Turkey Vulture  2
Red-tailed Hawk  2
Rock Pigeon  3
Belted Kingfisher  1
Red-bellied Woodpecker  3
Blue Jay  1
Tufted Titmouse  1    Heard
White-breasted Nuthatch  1    Heard
Carolina Wren  1    Heard
Golden-crowned Kinglet  3
European Starling  10
Yellow-rumped Warbler  1
Song Sparrow  3
White-throated Sparrow  2    Heard
Dark-eyed Junco  4
Northern Cardinal  1    Near parking area
American Goldfinch  5