Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Island Beach SP 10/5--Lincoln's Sparrow

Yet another dreary day, overcast, cool, windy. Memo to self: Get over it; summer's done.

To drive home that notion, we've switched in migration from warblers to sparrows, at least around here. I was at Island Beach today and saw exactly 1 warbler I could identify: Black-throated Green Warbler. On Reed's Road I saw my first juncos of the fall, along with White-throated Sparrow. There were more sparrows on the Spizzle Creek trail, and like yesterday on Great Bay Blvd, they were winning at the game of hide and seek. They don't seem too interested in being pished out either.

However, I did score one year bird sparrow. At the "T" of the trail there was some activity: chickadees, the now ubiquitous Red-breasted Nuthatches, a phoebe and couple of sparrows. One of the birds was a Song Sparrow, no big deal, but the other was different, smaller, with a buffy wash on the breast and a thin eye-ring. Lincoln's Sparrow. Not unexpected in migration, and one of those birds I probably see more often than I think and just let them go as Songs, but this one, being right next to a Song Sparrow, stood out and grabbed my attention. Despite hanging around the little thicket the birds were in for 10 minutes and then leaving and returning and hanging around another 5 minutes, and pishing, neither the Song or the Lincoln's (or that matter the phoebe, the nuthatch, or chickadee) reappeared. Very frustrating and thus no photo.

Other minor highlights of the day were 3 Tricolored Herons (getting late, I suspect) at Spizzle, a Ruby-crowned Kinglet on Reed's Road, a Golden-crowned Kinglet on Two Bit Road, and my FOS Brown Creeper, the first bird I saw on Reed's Road.

The next couple of days I'm going to make a push for warblers and then mentally switch over to sparrows, waterfowl and lingering shorebirds.

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