Shelter Cove Park 3/30--Lesser Yellowlegs

Lesser Yellowlegs

Shelter Cove Park, in Toms River, a little south of Cattus Island CP, is a fairly small place with a lot of different habitats--beach, marsh, a couple of patches of woods, asphalt, and playing fields, although, with all the goose shit on the grass and the flooded areas overflowing from the marsh (and the floating goose shit in the flooded areas overflowing from the marsh), those must be some interesting soccer contests they have. The baseball fields look a little drier. It's a place you can handily cover in an hour and that's about what I had this morning.

The first bird I saw before I had barely parked the car was a Killdeer, a bird I always associate with Shelter Cove because my first county Killdeer was there, on the median in the parking lot. As I was leaving today, there was one standing in the gutter. Not a hard bird to find.

After all our recent rain, the fields were solidly soaked, with lots of puddles all around. In the past, I've seen snipe hunkered down in the instant marshes some of the fields become. Today, at a pool of standing water just past the fence line was a yellowlegs. I was pretty certain, as I rushed across the parking lot, that it was a Lesser Yellowlegs, and when I got close enough to view but not flush it that proved the case--short bill, no "knees" smaller, and more "dainty," as Greg would say, than a Greater. Eventually, as I was about to leave, it left too, with a little "do-do," not the 3 note call of a Greater.

As I walked on the drier parts of the field, picking my way around the many goose gifts, I found a small of flock of said geese, and behind them, 7 Turkey Vultures, stretching their wings and basking in the sun.

Puddle Duck

Near a little grove of trees the ponding wasn't as extensive as the rest of the field, probably because some grading looking to be in progress. But there were a few Mallards making use of whatever water they could find, living up to their sobriquet of "puddle duck."

Sparrows, grackles, robins, starlings were all about and one Northern Flicker calling crazily as it sat on the fence. An Osprey on its nets, cheeping away.

For the 45 minutes or so I spent there I came up with 20 species. As I was driving back up the road there were a couple of more Mallards sitting in a puddle on the shoulder.
Canada Goose 18
Mallard 3
Turkey Vulture 7
Osprey 1 nest on point
Killdeer 2
Lesser Yellowlegs 1
Northern Flicker 1
Blue Jay 1 Heard
American Crow 1 Heard
Fish Crow 1
Carolina Wren 1 Heard
American Robin 50
European Starling 150
Chipping Sparrow 1
White-throated Sparrow 1
Song Sparrow 10
Northern Cardinal 1 Heard
Common Grackle 25
Brown-headed Cowbird 6
House Finch 2 Ground feeding