Great Bay Blvd 1/9—Red-breasted Merganser, Black-bellied Plover, Killdeer, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Common Grackle, + Ring-necked Pheasant on the Road.

Great Bay Blvd WMA from new bulkhead area

I drove down to Great Bay Blvd this morning even though the temperature was way below freezing because I just had to get out of the house and see some birds other than my feeder reliables. I was surprised, although I guess I shouldn't have been, to see the brackish creeks that run through the marshes frozen. Even Tuckerton Cove was iced up stretching far away from the beach. It was until a few hundred feet out that I saw open water and a large flock of Hooded Mergansers, probably forced there because all the ponds in the vicinity are frozen solid.

Great Bay Inlet

There really wasn't much to see along the 5 mile stretch of road down to the inlet with all the marshes iced up. Once I walked out to the inlet I started picking up some new birds for the year and county, like the flock of Red-breasted Mergansers and a lone Killdeer picking at the wrack line. It was low tide when I got there, so there were a lot of Dunlins, a couple of turnstones, and lots of gulls, including my FOY Lesser Black-backed Gull standing on a sandbar to the east. Scattered among the noisy flock of Boat-tailed Grackles were a 20 or so Common Grackles, the size difference being pretty obvious.

I took my mile walk from the inlet to the last bridge and back and all I found were about a dozen Yellow-rumped Warblers. I like to go back to the inlet for a 2nd look; I almost always find something new and this time the new bird for the day (and year) was a Black-bellied Plover with a some kind of sand worm in its mouth.

However, the bird that got me most excited today was found on the way down to Tuckerton. On Rt 539, just south of Warren Grove, on the shoulder between the road and the pygmy pines, I saw a Ring-necked Pheasant. I don't think Stafford Forge WMA is stocked. I haven't seen a legit pheasant in more than a year; it was free-ranging and wild--I'm counting it.

Today's list:
20 species
Brant  50
Canada Goose  12
Bufflehead  2    Inlet
Hooded Merganser  31
Red-breasted Merganser  12 
Ring-necked Pheasant   1  South of Warren Grove
Great Blue Heron  1
Northern Harrier  1
Black-bellied Plover  1
Killdeer  1
Ruddy Turnstone  2
Dunlin  30
Ring-billed Gull  25
Herring Gull  200
Lesser Black-backed Gull  1
Great Black-backed Gull  1
Mourning Dove  5
Yellow-rumped Warbler  15
Common Grackle  10
Boat-tailed Grackle  100

Great Bay Blvd WMA: former Coast Guard Station, now Rutgers research facility