Cattus Island CP 1/23--Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Cattus Island CP (Trust me, it's there)

Because I had an appointment this afternoon on the Brick/Toms River border, I decided to bird my way north to it, starting at Shelter Cove Park and ending at the Ocean County Parks Offices grounds. In the middle was Cattus Island CP which proved to be the only productive site, there being no snipes at Shelter Cove, nor Winter Wren at OCPO.

Even that didn't look promising at first. The marsh along the boardwalk in was quiet and all the birds were being marked absent at the feeders. I soon figured out why the feeders weren't popular when I spotted a Cooper's Hawk lurking above them. With the marshes and the bay solid there was very little activity all the way out to and around Scout Island. A Downy Woodpecker there, a few Red-bellied Woodpeckers calling, but when I'm taking pictures of Mute Swans, you know it's slow.

Just to prove I can take a decent picture here's one of a
Carolina Wren

                                                            Once I got back into the woods on the main land it got a little more interesting--at least there were tweety birds to track down. As I emerged from the woods into the field where the family house once stood, I ran into Steve and Al. Most of the birds I was seeing were titmice, but it didn't take long for Steve to point out a year bird for me--a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker in a big dead tree. As Zirlin's Fifth Law of Birding states: If you want to see good birds, hang out with good birders.

Overcast, branches, and hyperactivity made getting any photograph a challenge. At the head of this entry is the best I could do.

After my appointment, I checked the rare bird alerts and saw that, yet again, the Black-headed Gull had been spotted in Point Pleasant Beach, this time at the Lake of the Lilies. As I was only about twenty minutes away I had to give it a shot. Of course, by the time I got there the only gulls on the ice were the expected, standard issue birds. I have been chasing this bird since day one of the year. Everybody else in the county seems to have seen it except me. I also tried the sand bar at Baltimore Avenue, so just I could say I left not gull unseen--nothing. Zirlin's Second Law of Birding is You won't find the bird until you have sincerely given up on seeing it, so I guess my problem is that I haven't conceded defeat yet.

I also had seen Snow Buntings reported a few miles south in Mantoloking and as they are a difficult bird for the county, I figured I had to go south to get home anyway, let's try for them. I plugged the address into my phone. It looked simple enough, straight down 35 until you got to the street. The only problem was when the phone's voice directed me to make a left, there was no left to make. I went down a street, made a left I could make and headed north. In a thousand feet I was supposed to turn right. There was no right to make. I went around in a circle, passed the phantom left and when I heard that my destination was a mere thousand feet away, I parked the car on a real street and walked up 35 to a big, sandy lot full of beach grass, perfect for buntings. I stood in the lot and created a personal hot spot for myself on eBird. I was apparently at 19 Elder Street. I suspect what happened is that pre-Sandy there were streets here. Now there is sand. A look at Google Maps confirms that. If they were just "paper" streets, they wouldn't have been plugged into the app.

Ghost streets in Mantoloking. The red marker is where I was standing.

The good news is that I did see a flock of about 20 Snow Buntings doing touch and goes in the sand. The bad news is that they wouldn't sit still long enough for even an attempt at a photograph.

That was enough for one day so I headed south again. My Cattus Island list below:

20 species

Mute Swan  8    6 flyovers on bay, two on ice

American Black Duck  6

Bufflehead  2    bay off Scout Island

Mourning Dove  1

Herring Gull  20

Great Black-backed Gull  1

Great Blue Heron  1

Cooper's Hawk  1    

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker  1   

Red-bellied Woodpecker  4

Downy Woodpecker  1

Blue Jay  2

American Crow  1    Heard upon exiting

Carolina Chickadee  6

Tufted Titmouse  5

White-breasted Nuthatch  3

Carolina Wren  6    All were very vocal

Golden-crowned Kinglet  1

Song Sparrow  1

Red-winged Blackbird  25