Cream Ridge 2/11--Ross's Goose

Find the white needle in the white haystack

Sure, Mike & I could have braved the snow, ice, & wintry mix--and the slick roads that go along with it--in Cape May county to chase the continuing Gyrfalcon on Nummy Island, but while we might be crazy, as our wives so often tell us, crazy fools we are not! Instead, we headed north of the weatherman's magic border I-195, as if the weather knows there's an asphalt line there above which no snow shall fall. Yet somehow, it works.

We started up in Seven Presidents Park in Long Branch and worked out way down along the North Shore ponds and ocean lookouts, gathering up the expected birds for a decent but humdrum list until we got down to Fletcher Lake in Bradley Beach. Fletcher Lake is home to a feral population of Muscovy Ducks. They're sorta countable since they're "established" (i.e. they breed, I've seen ducklings) but when they appeared on the rare bird list, Bob Auster immediately texted me that he saw we had "shamelessly" listed them, then admitted that a couple of years ago he did the same thing. I wouldn't have even made a list there if Mike hadn't spotted a couple of American Black Ducks, which we hadn't had today. When Mike & I do one of these multi-stop days, I start a list at the first place we bird, then only make a list when we add a new bird for the day. Otherwise, we would have twice as many lists for the day and we already have too many as it is. American Black Duck is not a very exciting "add" but immediately upon pointing them out, Mike found a much better duck--Eurasian Wigeon.

We both had the same thought: Good, now we don't have to go to the Shark River in Belmar and scope from a gas station for the Eurasian Wigeon that has been present there for the last couple of months. We hadn't seen the Muscovy Ducks, so there was no dilemma until we were driving away and saw three of them standing on a street corner as if they were waiting for a bus. So I listed them. Mike made me do it.

We wended our way down to Point Pleasant, gathering up more ducks at various ponds like a Wood Duck at Little Silver Lake and Lesser Scaup at Lake of the Lilies. An eBird alert appeared on my phone that the Ross's Goose that was found yesterday in a big flock of Snow Geese was still in the fields along Route 546 in Cream Ridge. Neither of us relished the idea of sorting through thousands of Snow Geese for the one outlier. In fact, of all the Ross's Geese I have seen, none has ever been in a flock. They've always been alone. But, a year bird's a year bird, so off we went back north to the horse country of Monmouth County.

Mike said that what we needed when we got there was a group of birders with the ROGO in their scopes. We got close to that dream. When we drove up there was one birder there with a scope who said he thought he had the bird. It was on the outer edge of the flock, weaving in and out and sticking its head down to feed but eventually, using a blue morph as a landmark, all three of us were able to agree on which goose we were considering and when it finally raised its head to look around it had a sweet expression on its face, due to the lack of the "grin patch" which really should be called the "grimace patch" since it makes all  Snow Geese look like they're very unhappy. The bird was very active and following it was like following the card in a game of thousand goose monte.

About one tenth of the flock of geese we were looking through

A note on orthography: I used to worry about the way words looked typographically when I was a printer and the 3 terminal esses in Ross's are, to my eye, very ugly and completely unnecessary. While I don't subscribe to the proposal of one of the bird organizations to do away completely with the possessive apostrophe (I don't like the way Ross Goose, Wilson Warbler, etc sound), I do think that the typographical practice of letting the possessive hang off the second ess (Ross' Goose) would be sufficient, efficient, and more attractive to the eye.

We tried for a few more rarities at Conine's Millpond in Allentown (where we did have three Bald Eagles calling to each other from the trees) and at Assunpink (where we added Trumpeter Swan to our waterfowl list), that was about it for the day. Of course, had we not gone to Assunpink via Stone Tavern Road but had taken Herbert Road instead, we probably would have stopped for the big flock of geese on the sod farm that contained the Barnacle Goose that has been in the vicinity for the last few weeks. Mike could have used it for a year bird. Another example of Zirlin's Third Law of Birding: Wherever you are, you should be somewhere else.