Sunday, February 16, 2014

Burlington County 2/16--Fish Crow

We explored several spots in Burlington County that I've been curious about--the main spot being Pemberton Lake WMA, where the water is for the most part open and there was lots of waterfowl--but the only new bird that we added for the year was found in the parking lot of the Pandora Diner on Route 206--a flock of Fish Crows duking it out with a much larger flock of starlings for bread that had been tossed over the snow drifts into a scraggly field.

Let me veer off a moment here from birds to words: What is it about the name "Pandora" that makes it so popular?  Okay, it's a Greek diner, but I can think of a lot of mythological names that have better connotations than the woman who brought all the woe into the world. There's the internet music service called Pandora for no reason that I can tell and I often see billboards for a line of jewelry called "Pandora." Why? If you type in "Pandora's Box store" into Google, you'll get 1,520,000 hits. Granted, there's a lot of duplicates in there, but it seems like a pretty popular name for jewelry, antique, gift, tapestry, and clothing stores. Folks, Pandora's box is empty. Except for hope. Hope is what didn't get out of the box into the world. Cold comfort, if you ask me.

Meanwhile, back in Burlington County, after we surveyed Pemberton Lake for a half hour or so (where the rarest bird was a Red-breasted Merganser, usually a salt-water duck), we drove around the area, scanning empty fields for flocks of either geese or larks--a Greater White-fronted Goose has been seen with the thousands of Canada Geese in the area, and a Lapland Longspur has been spotted, as so often happens, with the larks. Along the way we did see 4 beefy Fox Sparrows and in one farm field, a couple hundred each of Snow Geese and Horned Larks, but no target birds.

After a very good lunch at Pandora's Diner, we made the loop around the Mercer Sod Farm IBA but had no luck finding the Rough-legged Hawk (which would be a lifer for us) that has been reported there. We had to settle for a Northern Harrier.

Still, we found good birds and got the feel for another section of Burlington County. 28 species in the county.
Species                Location
Snow Goose     Pemberton Lake WMA
Canada Goose     Pemberton Lake WMA
Gadwall     Pemberton Lake WMA
American Wigeon     Pemberton Lake WMA
American Black Duck     Pemberton Lake WMA
Mallard     Pemberton Lake WMA
Canvasback     Pemberton Lake WMA
Ring-necked Duck     Pemberton Lake WMA
Common Merganser     Pemberton Lake WMA
Red-breasted Merganser     Pemberton Lake WMA
Turkey Vulture     Pemberton Lake WMA
Northern Harrier     Mercer Sod Farm IBA
Red-tailed Hawk     Pemberton Lake WMA
American Coot     Pemberton Lake WMA
Blue Jay     Pemberton Lake WMA
American Crow     Vincentown-Pemberton Rd
Fish Crow     Pandora Diner parking lot
Horned Lark     Vincentown-Pemberton Rd
Carolina Chickadee     Mercer Sod Farm IBA
White-breasted Nuthatch     Mercer Sod Farm IBA
American Robin     Pemberton Lake WMA
Northern Mockingbird     Mercer Sod Farm IBA
European Starling     Pandora Diner parking lot
Fox Sparrow     Simontown & Stockton Bridge Rd
White-throated Sparrow     Mercer Sod Farm IBA
Dark-eyed Junco     Pandora Diner parking lot
Northern Cardinal     Mercer Sod Farm IBA
Red-winged Blackbird     Vincentown-Pemberton Rd

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