I am not fond of chasing birds in unfamiliar locations because I am not good at following directions, but after much Google Map study of the layout of Mercer County Park, plus almost step by step instructions from posts on JerseyBirds, I thought I'd be able to find the dam at the lake where, since Saturday, an Ash-throated Flycatcher (a western species) has been hanging around. I was wrong.
Like an over-anxious batter who swings at the first pitch he sees, I pulled into the first parking lot I came to when I saw the lake on my right. I figured I could walk along the shore and get to the spot in no time. I was wrong. The lakeshore is sinuous and the walk along it was alternately slippery with ice or, if you stepped off the path to avoid the ice, ankle-deep muddy. I wasn't making much progress, so I decide to cut my losses, head back to the car and see if there was a closer parking lot. There was, but I rejected it, thinking that there was an even closer lot. I was wrong.
I soon found myself outside the park on a busy road with nowhere to turn around. More infuriating was that I had passed two birders who were looking intently into the woods at the side of the road. It took me almost a half hour to find my way back to the park. I then parked at the lot I had originally rejected, only to find that it wasn't really much closer to my goal than the first lot. When in doubt, read the instructions. Again. The directions said to park at Fields 3-9. I drove out of the parking lot, down a long drive, came back to the main road and lo and behold, across the road, right in front of me was the lot for the said fields. I pulled in there, followed the walking directions and came upon the two birders I'd seen so long ago. They were still looking like they knew something. I was half-wrong.
The first birder had not seen the flycatcher, but was hanging around the area because it had been spotted a half hour ago by the 2nd birder. Now, this wasn't the area where the bird had been reported, but birds have wings. I looked at the 2nd birder and realized it was a local birder I knew and walked over to him. Of course, he had seen the bird, probably just about the time I'd passed him. But since it wasn't showing up there, we decided to walk the rest of the way to the dam, which was only about a 5 minute walk.
We were hanging out for about 15 minutes with nothing showing up. There was one birder/photographer up on the dam. As he walked back toward us, we noticed he was taking pictures. Since he wasn't signaling to us, as any conscientious birder would, I figured he was just taking pictures of a random bird. But Bill then spotted the flycatcher and pointed it out to me. The bird was, as advertised, staying fairly low to the ground, perching on sticks or low branches of the sweetgum trees. I got good looks at it, saw all the field marks, and was not surprised that the birder who originally found it at first thought it was a very late Great Crested Flycatcher. I took some distant photos just for documentation and was walking back with Bill when Steve arrived. We pointed out the direction of the bird and wished him well. He found the bird after a Cooper's Hawk left the area and got much better photos then I did as the bird came to within 20 feet of where he stood.
But I was happy since it was my second successful chase of the week: I got my Burlington County Sandhill Cranes in a cornfield in Pemberton on Monday. However, I am kicking myself since there was also an Iceland Gull near where I originally parked but I didn't feel like looking for gulls with a cold lake wind in my face, so I blew it off. Steve didn't and said it was easy to find. Inexcusable laziness on my part.
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