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