 |
| Tufted Duck, Lake of the Lilies |
Instead of going up to Barnegat Lighthouse SP, as we had planned, we called an audible, went outside, told Paul the news, and hurried back north. You know it was serious when I agreed to skip a Wawa stop. I was thinking, as we drove up the Parkway at perhaps a tad over the speed limit, that Scott had told me that the only Tufted Duck he had ever seen in Ocean County was in this very spot. Coincidence, of course, because that sighting was almost twenty years ago.
As we drove up to the west side of the lake we saw the expected line of cars there and the expected local birders, who all looked at me with amusement as if to say "What took you so long." It was almost like I had to apologize for being at extra-county at Brig.
The duck wasn't too hard to fine though it had the aythya habit of constantly diving. Paul was able to get on the bird in Mike's scope, so that made his 5th lifer of the trip and 2nd one (Pink-footed Goose yesterday) that was completely unexpected. I was able to get decent-enough photographs showing the little tuft. This is possibly the same bird (which was thought to be a hen) that was only a few miles north) or perhaps a 2nd bird that was an immature male. Very hard to say and I'll let the experts examine much better photographs than mine to make that determination.
After about a half hour we got back in the car and drove back south to Barnegat Light. I was under the misapprehension that Harlequin Duck would have been a lifer for Paul--it wasn't. Purple Sandpiper, which is easy to find there, would have been the target bird if we hadn't knocked that one off yesterday a half-mile away from Lake of Lilies on the jetty at Manasquan Inlet. However, Paul did want better looks and possibly photos of Great Cormorant which we only saw poorly yesterday at Sandy Hook. After a long, arduous, walk to the end of the jetty at Barnegat he accomplished both goals, as well as getting the expected close looks at the very tame Harlequins. Just as a by-the-by we had four species of shorebirds there: Purple Sandpiper, Ruddy Turnstone, a big flock of Dunlins, and a small flock of Sanderlings.
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Harlequin Ducks, Barnegat Lighthouse SP
For the day we had 53 species among the 3 locations. An odd day when Brig is the least interesting spot birded.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment