Working on the Ocean County List Redux

Harlequin Duck, drake, Barnegat Light SP

77 Ocean County species on 1/4: at this rate there won't be anything to do in December. Of course, "at this rate" is one of the great falsehoods of statistics.

Mike picked me up way early so that we could be on Beach Avenue in Manahawkin before dawn. We wanted owls. Within 12 minutes we had "hoo hoo" Great Horned Owl and "woooo-oooo" Eastern Screech Owl. üü  With those two on the list we were on our way to Cedar Bonnet Island where we added a few winter species like Savannah Sparrow and Northern Harrier. Then we hit the Ship Bottom Wawa and it was on to Barnegat Light SP to get Harlequin Duck and whatever other sea ducks we could find. 

Before we walked on the jetty (never fun for me and I climbed on at about the halfway point), we scoped across the inlet toward Island Beach and were happy to find a Snowy Owl sitting on the ground. It pays to have good optics. Since I don't care about getting a photograph of a Snowy Owl and in fact would like to keep as far away from them (and the orthinorazzi that chase after them) as possible, I was happy to get this bird on the list without having to actually trudge down the beach scanning the dunes. Now we had a 3 owl day before 9 AM. 

Common Eider, hen.

The inlet was teeming with Common Eiders with a smattering of other ducks including the Harlequins. If the hen King Eider was there we didn't see and we weren't going to seek it at the end of the jetty where eiders were thickest, because once we got past the beach and there was water on either side of us, the rocks were glistening and we could feel our footing slipping. I want a rare bird as much as the next guy (and the next guy is Mike) but we've heard too many horror stories of mishaps on that jetty  to risk life, limb, and optics (in fact, it amazes me the state allows people on it without even posting a hazard warning: the state must have great liability insurance or really vicious lawyers).

Surf Scoter, drake

We listed 27 species at the Light:
Brant 50
Canada Goose 20
Common Eider 150
Harlequin Duck 10
Surf Scoter 3
Black Scoter 1
Long-tailed Duck 20
Bufflehead 1
Ruddy Turnstone 20
Dunlin 200
Purple Sandpiper 2
Herring Gull 200
Great Black-backed Gull 10
Red-throated Loon 2
Common Loon 2
Northern Gannet 100
Great Cormorant 2
Double-crested Cormorant 1
Snowy Owl 1
Carolina Wren 1 Heard
Northern Mockingbird 1
European Starling 15
Fox Sparrow 1
White-throated Sparrow 2
Boat-tailed Grackle 30
Northern Cardinal 1
House Sparrow 5

Then we started "working" the bayside. We stopped at the marina, looking for the wintering Tricolor Heron without any luck. Then at the park on Bayview Avenue we added Greater Scaup & Belted Kingfisher to the list. We always stop at Sunset Park in Harvey Cedars, the reliable spot for Common Goldeneye except when it's not and when it's not you go south a mile or so to 24th street and scan the bay from there which is what we did and where they were. 

Another stop at Wawa (two hard boiled eggs for lunch) and back onto the mainland. We stopped at the easternmost end of E Bay Avenue to scan the bay from there without thinking that anything interesting would turn up, so naturally, when Mike spotted a raptoid blob in a distant tree on a distant island in the bay we figured it might be a Red-tailed Hawk but in the scope it proved to be, unmistakably, a Rough-legged Hawk. Another bird I don't have to think about for the rest of the year. 

We walked the trails at the Manahawkin WMA which were fairly dead by mid-afternoon and hit a few other spots without finding much of note. A little pond in Ocean Acres gave us our last two county birds, ducks, naturally, 6 Gadwalls and one Northern Shoveler. 

We looked for grebes of the Barnegat Municipal Dock (no) and then, as it was almost sunset, we figured what the hell we'd already been out for over 10 hours, why not take a run down to Cedar Run Dock Road and try to make it a four owl day with Short-eared Owl. But that didn't work out, so after 11 hours and more than 60 species, a day that felt very much like a Christmas Count or the World Series of Birding concluded. 

Ruddy Turnstone on the jetty