Ocean County 1/15--Hermit Thrush, Brown Thrasher, Cedar Waxwing, Swamp Sparrow, Orange-crowned Warbler

Hermit Thrush, Manahawkin WMA

Mike & I started off dark & early down in Barnegat along Collinstown Road, hoping for American Woodcock, which I fear is about to become a nemesis bird after being relatively easy for me to find until last year. For crying out loud, I once had one in the backyard, but today we must have been too late because at dawn there was no sign of them despite perfect habitat. Maybe the snow on the ground discouraged them.

No worries, as they say in Australia, we went over to the municipal dock to find a grebe for the county list. Lots of the usual ducks, but not a grebe in sight. Between us we've seen two this year--where are they all?

It wasn't until Taylor Lane, a little dirt road off of Route 9, that the birding started to pick up. Driving slowly with the windows open (and the heat on) we heard the distinct kissing note of a Hermit Thrush, FOY for both of us. The road peters out to mud after about 3/4 of a mile so we turned around and at the head of the road, just before Route 9, the birds started to come out. Along with usual sparrows, goldfinches, and cardinals, Mike heard a Cedar Waxwing--I don't hear waxwings unless they're on my shoulder. We got out of the car and there atop a tree with some sort of berry on it was a beautiful example. Mike says two, I saw one and that's all I need. So my favorite bird is on the year list.

Fox Sparrow, Manahawkin WMA

On to Manahawkin WMA for a walk where we were happy to see a couple of Hermit Thrushes instead of just listing a "heard only," bird. We also had a couple of nice sparrows--Fox Sparrow for Mike and Swamp Sparrow for both of us. We've reached the point where our lists are big enough for us to have to consider whether relatively common birds are new for the year or not and neither of us was sure about Swamp. I looked up my list and saw I didn't have it and Mike couldn't think of a place he'd had one so happiness prevailed.

Most of the water in the impoundments was frozen so we only had a couple of swans to list. No raptors. A female Belted Kingfisher was making the rounds--I guess there were enough open patches of water to make hunting worthwhile. On the way back we saw a Brown Thrasher fly across the path into the thickets. A few minutes later it emerged, flew around the bend in the trail was gone. They don't seem to respond to pishing. The thrasher was the 4th new bird, for me, for the year.

It's a good thing I keep a list of every stop because the sequence is already getting a little blurry in my memory. There was a stop at Tip Seaman Park in Tuckerton where there was lots of ducks of no consequence and then a ride down Great Bay Blvd with more ducks along the way. We took our scopes out to the inlet and Mike & I got into sort of mutual birding groove--in the water we found a Red-throated Loon simultaneously and then, scanning all the way over to the southern tip of Holgate on LBI, when I said, "I have a Northern Harrier" he said, "I have a Snowy Owl," so we switched scopes and both got both birds. The owl was sitting on a dune, very clear in the scope, with no photographers around--few make the 7 mile trek to that point. That's the way I like to see a Snowy Owl.

Our highlight bird was next. Mike "stepped away" for a minute and as I was scoping the bay in the other direction (finding a Common Loon for the day list) he called me over to a little patch of seaside goldenrod where he had a warbler. He couldn't get a good look at it and thought maybe it was a Palm Warbler, but I suspected that it was a "continuing" Orange-crowned Warbler, which I had chased down there more than a week ago. It popped up on a stalk of goldenrod and we both got excellent looks at this dun and shallow yellow warbler, probably the dullest warbler you're going to see but rare in NJ. I tried for pictures but the bird was way too active and aside from some nice botanical photographs, I came away empty.

On the drive north up the road we had a couple of Great Egrets, county birds for Mike, and after a Wawa stop, we continued on to Cloverdale Farm where the feeders were fairly active though siskin-less. We did add Pine Warbler to our list, so with the Yellow-rumped Warbler we had at Manahawkin, that made it a 3 warbler day, hard to do in mid-winter.

Bamber Lake was our next stop. Mike had never been there and since he needed Tundra Swans for the county it was a good excuse to show him where it was. We drove over to Toms River and added Canvasback to the day list and Lesser Scaup to our county lists. Marshall's Pond put Green-winged Teal on Mike's county list.

Finally, and I do mean finally, we drove over to Shelter Cove where, for the 3rd time I was looking for Wilson's Snipe. We found 5 American Tree Sparrows for Mike's list in the exactly the same tree where I'd seen two on Saturday, but no snipes, bookending the day nicely by failing to find two closely related species of non-shore shorebirds. The sun was setting--in the approximately 10 hours of daylight we had a day list of 65 species.