September Wrap-up

Tricolor Heron, Spizzle Creek, Island Beach SP

Snowy Egret, Spizzle Creek, Island Beach SP

I got dem Why am I always in the wrong place? migration blues. Once again, migration was a frustrating season to me, so much so that I am formulating Zirlin Third Law of Birding which states that "Wherever you are, you should be someplace else."

So if I was at Higbee's Beach today, where I didn't see much, I should have been somewhere in Burlington County. If I was on Reed's Road on Tuesday, I should have been there on Wednesday. Or Monday, since I seem to be a day late. If I was at Assunpink this week, according to my informant, I should have been there last week. Or the week before that. Or the week before that, but certainly not the day I was there.

This is not to say I had a disappointing month. I found a lot of species (170) including 10 year birds, but it was work. Never did I have one of those magical days where the warblers are falling out and you don't know where to look first. I built the list in dribs and drabs and lots of walking.

Rarities weren't much of a problem this month--I finally got the Roseate Spoonbill I would have like to have had for Ocean County; on the other hand, I finally got Wood Stork for Ocean County. Plus a county Red-necked Phalarope.

Today, down in Cape May with Mike, we knew migration was winding down when we encountered our first Yellow-rumped Warblers in the state park. When they show up, you know you probably only have a few more days to scramble up any warblers you're missing for the year.  The shorebirds have all pretty much departed, judging from a run around Brig this afternoon. Soon it will be waterfowl, gulls, and raptors--and the winter finch report is not promising since there is a lot of food up in the boreal forest this year.

This month's list:
Counties birded: Atlantic, Bergen, Burlington, Cape May, Cumberland, Monmouth, Ocean.

Species                First Sighting

Snow Goose   Brig

Canada Goose   Mercer Sod Farm IBA

Mute Swan   Forsythe-Barnegat

Wood Duck   Colliers Mills WMA

Blue-winged Teal   Island Beach SP

Northern Shoveler   Brig

Gadwall   Brig

American Wigeon   Cape May Point SP

Mallard   Colliers Mills WMA

American Black Duck   Brig

Northern Pintail   Brig

Green-winged Teal   Brig

Hooded Merganser   Brig

Ruddy Duck   Cape May Point SP

Wild Turkey   County Hwy-539

Common Loon   Island Beach SP

Pied-billed Grebe   Brig

Wood Stork   Forsythe-Barnegat

Double-crested Cormorant   Forsythe-Barnegat

American White Pelican   Richard W. DeKorte Park

Brown Pelican   Island Beach SP

Great Blue Heron   Whitesbog

Great Egret   Whitesbog

Snowy Egret   Forsythe-Barnegat

Little Blue Heron   Island Beach SP

Tricolored Heron   Island Beach SP

Green Heron   Whitesbog

Black-crowned Night-Heron   Great Bay Blvd

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron   Island Beach SP

Glossy Ibis   Brig

Roseate Spoonbill   Heislerville WMA

Black Vulture   New Egypt

Turkey Vulture   W Colliers Mill Rd

Osprey   Island Beach SP

Northern Harrier   Sandy Hook

Sharp-shinned Hawk   Higbee Beach WMA

Cooper's Hawk   New Egypt

Bald Eagle   Mercer Sod Farm IBA

Broad-winged Hawk   Cape May Point SP

Red-tailed Hawk   Mercer Sod Farm IBA

Clapper Rail   Brig

Sora   Brig

American Avocet   Brig

American Oystercatcher   Sandy Hook

Black-bellied Plover   Sandy Hook

American Golden-Plover   Whitesbog

Semipalmated Plover   Forsythe-Barnegat

Piping Plover   Sandy Hook

Killdeer   Colliers Mills WMA

Upland Sandpiper   Mercer Sod Farm IBA

Whimbrel   Sandy Hook

Ruddy Turnstone   Island Beach SP

Red Knot   Island Beach SP

Stilt Sandpiper   Brig

Sanderling   Sandy Hook

Dunlin   Brig

Least Sandpiper   New Egypt

White-rumped Sandpiper   Brig

Buff-breasted Sandpiper   Sandy Hook

Pectoral Sandpiper   Mercer Sod Farm IBA

Semipalmated Sandpiper   Forsythe-Barnegat

Western Sandpiper   Brig

Short-billed Dowitcher   Brig

Wilson's Snipe   Whitesbog

Red-necked Phalarope   New Egypt

Spotted Sandpiper   Island Beach SP

Solitary Sandpiper   New Egypt

Greater Yellowlegs   Whitesbog

Willet   Sandy Hook

Lesser Yellowlegs   New Egypt

Laughing Gull   Forsythe-Barnegat

Ring-billed Gull   Brig

Herring Gull   Forsythe-Barnegat

Great Black-backed Gull   Island Beach SP

Caspian Tern   Brig

Black Tern   Sandy Hook

Common Tern   Sandy Hook

Forster's Tern   Forsythe-Barnegat

Royal Tern   Island Beach SP

Black Skimmer   Forsythe-Barnegat

Rock Pigeon   Mercer Sod Farm IBA

Mourning Dove   New Egypt

Yellow-billed Cuckoo   Sandy Hook

Common Nighthawk   Sandy Hook

Eastern Whip-poor-will   35 Sunset Rd

Chimney Swift   Whitesbog

Ruby-throated Hummingbird   35 Sunset Rd

Belted Kingfisher   Colliers Mills WMA

Red-bellied Woodpecker   Colliers Mills WMA

Downy Woodpecker   Union Transportation Trail

Hairy Woodpecker   Sandy Hook

Northern Flicker   Island Beach SP

American Kestrel   Mercer Sod Farm IBA

Merlin   Whitesbog

Peregrine Falcon   Brig

Olive-sided Flycatcher   Richard W. DeKorte Park

Eastern Wood-Pewee   Colliers Mills WMA

Yellow-bellied Flycatcher   Sandy Hook

Eastern Phoebe   Union Transportation Trail

Great Crested Flycatcher   Whitesbog

Eastern Kingbird   Sandy Hook

White-eyed Vireo   Colliers Mills WMA

Philadelphia Vireo   Sandy Hook

Warbling Vireo   Bunker Hill Bogs

Red-eyed Vireo   Bunker Hill Bogs

Blue Jay   35 Sunset Rd

American Crow   New Egypt

Fish Crow   Colliers Mills WMA

Purple Martin   Whitesbog

Tree Swallow   Whitesbog

Barn Swallow   Colliers Mills WMA

Carolina Chickadee   Colliers Mills WMA

Black-capped Chickadee   Sandy Hook

Tufted Titmouse   35 Sunset Rd

White-breasted Nuthatch   Colliers Mills WMA

House Wren   Sandy Hook

Marsh Wren   Jake's Landing

Carolina Wren   Colliers Mills WMA

Ruby-crowned Kinglet   Sandy Hook

Eastern Bluebird   Colliers Mills WMA

American Robin   Union Transportation Trail

Gray Catbird   Colliers Mills WMA

Brown Thrasher   Island Beach SP

Northern Mockingbird   New Egypt

European Starling   Mercer Sod Farm IBA

Cedar Waxwing   Sandy Hook

Ovenbird   Sandy Hook

Northern Waterthrush   Sandy Hook

Blue-winged Warbler   Island Beach SP

Black-and-white Warbler   Island Beach SP

Nashville Warbler   IBSP--A11 path

Connecticut Warbler   Sandy Hook

Common Yellowthroat   Union Transportation Trail

American Redstart   Union Transportation Trail

Cape May Warbler   Sandy Hook

Northern Parula   Sandy Hook

Magnolia Warbler   Sandy Hook

Bay-breasted Warbler   Sandy Hook

Yellow Warbler   Brig

Chestnut-sided Warbler   Sandy Hook

Blackpoll Warbler   Sandy Hook

Black-throated Blue Warbler   Sandy Hook

Palm Warbler   Brig

Pine Warbler   Whitesbog

Yellow-rumped Warbler   Cape May Point SP

Prairie Warbler   Island Beach SP

Black-throated Green Warbler   Sandy Hook

Canada Warbler   Sandy Hook

Wilson's Warbler   Brig

Saltmarsh Sparrow   Brig

Seaside Sparrow   Brig

Chipping Sparrow   Colliers Mills WMA

Field Sparrow   Sandy Hook

White-throated Sparrow   Sandy Hook

Savannah Sparrow   Brig

Song Sparrow   Union Transportation Trail

Swamp Sparrow   Sandy Hook

Eastern Towhee   Colliers Mills WMA

Scarlet Tanager   Sandy Hook

Northern Cardinal   35 Sunset Rd

Blue Grosbeak   Manasquan River WMA

Indigo Bunting   Sandy Hook

Yellow-headed Blackbird   Brig

Bobolink   Whitesbog

Red-winged Blackbird   Union Transportation Trail

Brown-headed Cowbird   Union Transportation Trail

Boat-tailed Grackle   Brig

House Finch   35 Sunset Rd

American Goldfinch   35 Sunset Rd

House Sparrow   New Egypt

30 Days Hath September

April, May, and November...so how do you explain this sign at Cape May Point SP?

I guess on March 31, it's a free for all, dogs running loose on the beach, no leashes.

Another sign I saw today at the park:
I for one can say that I came out with the same personality as I did when I went in and if I were going to metamorphose into someone else, I think I'd pick a more amenable spot than a restroom in Cape May.

Update on Mystery Bird

It is, not unexpectedly, a White-rumped Sandpiper.  Nothing exotic and certainly not a year bird. All who have seen the photos agree. The tell-tale field mark, one I wouldn't have thought much about, is the streaking on the flanks. That, with all the other clues, like the slightly down-turned bill, the primaries extending past the tail, is pretty much conclusive. It didn't help that the bird was in molt.

The best thing about this little adventure in identification is that this was, without a doubt, the best and longest look I've ever had at a White-rumped Sandpiper, which are, typically for me, mixed in with peeps at a shimmering distance or else in low light, as the ones I've seen at Whitebog seem to be. Ironically, had we seen this bird from a distance and had we not been able to examine every feather and subtlety of leg color, we would probably have checked it off as a White-rump and gone on our way.

So it looks like I'm going to go this year without seeing a Baird's Sandpiper, invoking Zirlin's Second Law of Birding.

Brig 9/24--Sora and the Saga of the Mystery Bird

Zirlin's Second Law of Birding (the first one has to do with pick-up trucks and eagles) states that you will never see the bird until you truly give up on seeing the bird. You cannot fake giving up; it must be a sincere abandonment of your quest, an abject acknowledgment that the bird will forever elude you. Today, Mike and I excessively forfeited  hope. We were making our 2nd pass around the Wildlife Drive at Brig when Mike said, "I guess I'm not going to see a Sora this year." "Me either," I replied, "and it won't be the first year I've missed it." "And it won't be the last," Mike said. "Oy," I thought, "I could go to my grave without ever seeing a Sora again, I'm old, how many years do I have left to see this bird? Aieee, this won't be the last year I miss Sora!" We drove on in silence, the car slowly inching forward through a miasma of despair.

Five minutes later, between Goose Markers 4 & 5, Mike said, "Oo Sora!"

We had just been looking at a domestic duck that had insinuated itself onto a little island in the marsh when Mike saw the bird. I looked but it was gone. Ten seconds later, after he told me where the bird was in relation to some goldenrod, the bird came out, gave good looks, then disappeared into a tunnel of reeds. No pictures, of course, but Zirlin's Second Law had once again been demonstrated. Perhaps we didn't have to take it to the existential extreme that we did and we'd have still seen the bird but who can really say?

Our first loop around took a lot longer than normal because we spent about 40 minutes at Turtle Cove, studying one bird in a flock of about 500 sandpipers, mostly semis, but with quite a few Western Sandpipers in the mix. The Westerns were what stopped us, but it was the much larger bird among them that intrigued us:

As you can see, the bird is a monster compared to the other sandpipers. It has long thick legs, a bull-like neck, and long primaries that come to a point past the tail. Color is problematic. The photo above shows a grayish bird with brownish legs.

This photo, a digiscope, has much warmer color. The legs, in all my photos, do not match my memory of them looking at the bird through scope and binoculars--they seemed darker, more of reddish brown than these photos show, almost the color of dried blood.

At first we considered the bird might be a gigantic Western, then perhaps Red Knot (too small), or perhaps a wayward, early, Purple Sandpiper (too big), or some exotic sandpiper (unlikely). Because it has no supercilium (eyebrow) we discounted White-rumped Sandpiper. Because it is on rocks, not grass, we doubted Baird's.

Here's the true frustration. Most of the time with shorebirds I'm looking at them from a good distance, in bad light for a short time before they fly, so I can't see a lot of the field marks described in the books. With this bird, we had enough time to actually eat lunch while we studied it and we could see every detail of every feather, we could photograph its toes, we could watch its nicitating membrane in its eye (see top photo)--and I still can't tell you what kind of bird it is!

One field mark I did notice was color at the base of the bill and Sibley seems to indicate that this is a diagnostic field mark for White-rumped Sandpiper. Mike doesn't think so. I listed it as Baird's on eBird because that would flag it as a rare bird, whereas White-rump is expected. That way, I can expect a reviewer to contact me and tell me why I'm wrong and with luck, what the bird actually is.

It was fun, though, to go through virtually every possible shorebird in Sibley's comparing and contrasting field marks with the bird before us. It was not fun to come up more or less empty. What I learned this afternoon was that I know a lot but not nearly enough.

For the 9 hours we spent driving and walking around Brig, I came up with 73 species, not including Mystery Bird; Mike had a few more that I either missed or didn't feel comfortable counting. I hope to add an update soon as to Mystery Bird's true identity.

Snow Goose 1 the continuing injured bird
Canada Goose 50
Mute Swan 15
Wood Duck 6
Blue-winged Teal 2
Northern Shoveler 1
Mallard 15
American Black Duck 15
Northern Pintail 20
Green-winged Teal 10
Pied-billed Grebe 6 Actual count
Double-crested Cormorant 100
Great Blue Heron 7
Great Egret 90
Snowy Egret 30
Little Blue Heron 2 immatures at Gull Pond
Black-crowned Night-Heron 3
Yellow-crowned Night-Heron 3
Glossy Ibis 1
Turkey Vulture 1
Osprey 2
Northern Harrier 3
Sharp-shinned/Cooper's Hawk 1
Sora 1 South dike between goose markers 4 & 5
Semipalmated Plover 2
Stilt Sandpiper 6
Least Sandpiper 1
White-rumped Sandpiper 1
Pectoral Sandpiper 2
Semipalmated Sandpiper 540
Western Sandpiper 20
Short-billed Dowitcher 2
Greater Yellowlegs 25
Lesser Yellowlegs 15
Laughing Gull 125
Ring-billed Gull 1
Herring Gull 50
Great Black-backed Gull 3
Caspian Tern 3
Forster's Tern 50
Black Skimmer 2
Mourning Dove 2
Belted Kingfisher 1 Dogleg
Red-bellied Woodpecker 2
Downy Woodpecker 1
Northern Flicker 3
Merlin 1
Peregrine Falcon 1
Eastern Phoebe 4
Red-eyed Vireo 1
Blue Jay 9
American Crow 5
Fish Crow 7
Tree Swallow 25
Carolina Chickadee 10
Tufted Titmouse 2 Heard
White-breasted Nuthatch 1 Heard
House Wren 2
Carolina Wren 2 Heard
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 1
American Robin 3
Gray Catbird 3
Brown Thrasher 1 Leeds Eco-trail
European Starling 25
Black-and-white Warbler 1 Leeds Eco-trail
Common Yellowthroat 2
Saltmarsh Sparrow 1
Savannah Sparrow 15
Song Sparrow 10
Swamp Sparrow 1
Northern Cardinal 2
Red-winged Blackbird 125
Boat-tailed Grackle 3
American Goldfinch 5

Richard W. DeKorte Park 9/23--Olive-sided Flycatcher

The last place I expected to end up today was under a bridge on a railroad line in Ridgefield, NJ, but, as a poet friend of mine once wrote, "the day gets away from you in the strangest ways."

The day started off normally enough, with Mike and I going north to Sandy Hook (admittedly a little peculiar for us) to look for warblers and what not. What not we found, including an American Golden Plover (year bird for Mike) at Spermaceti Cove where we began and where we had our most success, but warblers were thin on the ground (and in the trees and in the air) both for us and from all we met along the way, though, had we started our day pre-dawn as some did we'd have had a bigger list than the 40-some species we came up with. A stop at the banding station on the Road to Nowhere made for great conversation, but the banders there told us that after a fast start at dawn the birds just disappeared. We tried the old tennis courts (moderate success with a few common warblers) and around the hawk watch platform (virtually nothing) and by noon the Hook was getting crowded with people and emptier of birds so we decided to look elsewhere.

Mike asked if anything had been seen at DeKorte lately and an eBird search brought up an intriguing flycatcher that would be a year bird for both of us. It was seen yesterday on the Kingsland Overlook, which was fine except that neither of us is familiar enough with DeKorte (this was our first foray into Bergen County this year) to know exactly where that was. Well, it turned out to just be that big hill at the edge of the parking lot that overlooks a part of the dump (okay, landfill) that DeKorte once was. We walked around there once looking for dead trees and snags without any luck then took a bio-break. Coming back I noticed a dead tree which would be perfect for this bird so decided to post myself there until Mike got back. Just as he did, the flycatcher flew into the tree next to the one I was watching, landing on a dead branch. Big, peaked head, gray vest, white breast, no eye-ring to speak of, wing-bars...all looked good for Olive-sided Flycatcher. Even though the bird has apparently been there all summer, I was pretty impressed that we actually found it.

We walked around the impoundments, but the water was very high--a few egrets, a Marsh Wren, some shovelers, black ducks and Mallards. We ran into a birder we know (which happened today seemingly every quarter mile we walked) and he told us that the American White Pelican that has been hanging around DeKorte for months was still there. We walked back to one of the impoundments and there, about a mile away, in the heat shimmer, on the far shore, behind 3 cormorants, was a huge white lump that was not a swan and if I hadn't already had pelican on my year list and if I really cared about my Bergen County list, I probably wouldn't have counted this ridiculously distant bird, but I rationalized that I was just adding one more bit of info into the gigantic eBird database maw.  

After that, Mike asked if I'd listed Monk Parakeet yet for the year and I hadn't, because I haven't visited my mother enough lately and she lives only about 20 minutes from the Carteret birds. Mike knew of an overpass in Ridgefield where there were big nest so we decided to try to get those clownish birds for the year. We were now in "hic sunt leontes" territory for me, blank spaces on my mental map of New Jersey. I've heard of Teterboro Airport hundreds of times--today was the first time I actually saw it. So after passing through or by a number of towns I've also heard of but have never visited (Hasbrouck Heights, Moonachie, Hackensack) we arrived below the bridge and parked next to the tracks. The big, colonial nests of the parakeets were intact but the birds were nowhere to be found--whether because they were all out feeding or because they've colonized another part of the area we don't know. There are literally dozens of spots where they've been reported in the Edgewater area, but it was getting late so, having had at least one cool bird for the day, we shrugged and headed back south.

The DeKorte List:
24 species (+1 other taxa)
Mute Swan 1
Northern Shoveler 4
Mallard 6
American Black Duck 2
Double-crested Cormorant 5
American White Pelican 1
Great Egret 5
Snowy Egret 4
Osprey 1
Herring Gull 1
gull sp. 10
Rock Pigeon 1
Mourning Dove 5
Olive-sided Flycatcher 1
Blue Jay 1 Heard
Marsh Wren 1 Heard
American Robin 10
Gray Catbird 1
Northern Mockingbird 1
European Starling 5
Common Yellowthroat 2
Palm Warbler 1
Chipping Sparrow 1
House Finch 1
House Sparrow 4