Oros Preserve 11/10--Rusty Blackbird

When I lived in Iselin, NJ during the dark days of my adolescence, my sense of the place was very dim, or so it seems to me now, 45 years later. I had and still have, only the vaguest notions of the geography of the area, where the various towns of Woodbridge Township, of which Iselin is a part, were in relation to each other. I'm wistful now, about the fields that use to be across the street from our house--I didn't care about birds then. I can only imagine the birds I may have missed in those woods--my brother, who was the nature boy of the family, was always out there, but his interest was butterflies and moths. But from what I've seen in the last couple of years around the area, going to a couple of remaining wood lots nearby, I missed a lot.

All this is preamble to our venturing up to Middlesex County today to go to the Oros Preserve in Avenel, about 10 minutes from my mother's house. I don't know the history of this preserve--it is a relatively large wetlands reclamation project. The body of water, according to Google maps, is the Woodbridge Creek, which is the first time I've encountered that name. Right now it is a particularly popular "hot spot" because rare and always sought-after Red-headed Woodpeckers have been easy to find there in the abundant stands of dead trees.

Photos: Shari Zirlin

We found one, possibly two, juveniles. Hard to say if the bird(s) we kept seeing flying around the property were a single bird or a couple.As many as 3 birds have reported there.  It didn't take long to find one. We walked along one trail at random that came out on a small pond where there was a flock of Canada Geese and mixed in, a pair of Hooded Mergansers. Also in the dead tree limbs were many icterids--mostly Common Grackles though two distant birds (I kick myself for not lugging the scope today) brownish, smaller than grackles and obviously not sparrows, turned out to by our FOY Rusty Blackbirds, another rarity for the area. I'm sure some of the other blackbirds flying directly into the low autumn sun were also rusties, but I'm only "calling" two. 

I wish I'd known about this place a couple of years ago when I was essentially living in Iselin during a family health crises, though then it might not have been as well tended as it is now with mowed paths between the reeds. A dog walker warned me about keeping away from one side of the refuge because some homeless people were living there, so the area may have been a little sketchier back then. 

If you're wondering why the Red-headed Woodpeckers aren't red-headed it's because they don't attain their eponymous heads until adulthood. The juveniles are compositions in gray, black & white. 

 Our little list for a half hour's walk. Afterwards, we took my mother out to lunch to at an Indian restaurant on Oak Tree Road--the first time in her 86 years that she ever had Indian food. She liked it.

11 species
Canada Goose  85
Hooded Merganser  2
Herring Gull  1
Mourning Dove  1
Red-headed Woodpecker  1 

Red-bellied Woodpecker  1    Heard
Downy Woodpecker  1
Blue Jay  1    Heard
European Starling  20
Rusty Blackbird  2    
Common Grackle  10