Merrill Creek Reservoir 2/25--Black-capped Chickadee, Boreal Chickadee

Boreal Chickadee
Photo courtesy and copyright Ernest P. Hahn

There are parallels between the stock market and birding. In the stock market, you invest money and the payoff is...more money. In birding, you invest time and the payoff is...birds. Of course, it doesn't always work out this way. Sometimes you lose money. Sometimes you don't get the bird. These thoughts started to occur to me on Saturday when I got the first alert that a Boreal Chickadee, a bird of the northern forests and a bird that hadn't been seen in NJ in over 30 years, was at the Visitor's Center of Merrill Creek Reservoir up in Warren County, a 4 hour round trip drive from my house. I didn't, as they say in investing, like the risk/reward of driving over 100 miles for a tiny bird that might not stick around.

On Sunday it was still there. I felt like a good stock was getting away from me, getting too expensive because now the drive was the same but the risk of it leaving was even more. When more and more reports kept rolling in the concept of "capitulation" came into play. When a stock is rocketing (or in the other extreme, dropping like a falling knife), even though you know it is a bad idea to chase it (or dump it) you do it anyway. When Mike, on Sunday afternoon, suggested we go up to Merrill Creek on Monday morning, I capitulated.

There is also a concept in technical investing called "The Three Day" rule which goes roughly like this: On the first day the smart money buys, on the second day, the semi-smart money buys, on the third day, the dumb money buys (or the inverse). The weather forecast for today was for high winds--gusts of 40 to 60 mph. The last thing Shari said to me last night before we fell asleep was "You know, when it's windy, birds hunker down." I was afraid we were going to be the birding equivalent of dumb money.

However, the dumb money can be successful (read: lucky) if it transacts its business early in the day before everything collapses, so Mike and I were on the road at 7 for the 2 hour drive to the reservoir. Halfway there we got an alert that the bird was still present. Upon arrival, instead of the mob scene of the weekend that had been described to me, there were only 4 or 5 old retired guys, like us standing beneath a Norway spruce. The bird had been seen very recently. Mike went off to the Visitor's Center. I stood with the guys, a couple of whom I knew (including Ernie, who provided the photo above). Within 5 minutes the bird flew into the spruce. I got brief, decent looks at it. Mike, however, was still inside. When he emerged, I told him I was ready to go. I am still alive.

We stood around some more, but not very long, as more birders arrived, more of whom we knew and then the bird, like a bullet, came out of the spruce and landed in a thicket behind us. Great naked eye looks at the bird.

Black-capped Chickadee

Oddly, I thought, the chickadee wasn't going to the feeders maintained by the staff of the very handsome and comfortable (and warm) Visitor's Center. Black-capped Chickadees, however, were, and these birds were also new state year birds for us. Amusingly, the other rare bird at the feeders was a Carolina Chickadee, identified by the small amount of white on its wings and not the "hockey stick" pattern of the black-capped. The ranges of Black-caps and Carolinas have been moving and merging and the birds do hybridize and probably if it weren't for the extensive DNA research done on these two species they'd be lumped as one.

Having two year birds, why not try for a third? A hen Barrow's Goldeneye has been present on the reservoir for a while. Not an easy bird to identify and though someone said there was one in his scope, Mike and I decided to get our scopes out of the car and walk closer to the water's edge (and out of the wind) to scan the goldeneye flock. Despite about an hour of serious scanning, we couldn't come up with the Barrow's. I should have looked in that guy's scope, but I doubt I would have found the duck from that distance. We did see a hen Long-tailed Duck, which didn't really register as anything special to us--we're from Ocean County--but on an inland body of water, that duck comes up as rare too.

So, one mega-rarity for the day and two very common south Jersey birds that were about 50 miles out of their range. The wind was, as forecast, brutal. That we lasted for over 2 hours is a testament to either our fortitude or silliness. But overall, I'd say it was a good investment of our time.

21 species

Long-tailed Duck  1    

Bufflehead  5

Common Goldeneye  30

Hooded Merganser  2

Common Merganser  3

Bald Eagle  1

Red-bellied Woodpecker  2

Downy Woodpecker  1

Hairy Woodpecker  1    Heard

Northern Flicker  1

Blue Jay  1    Heard

American Crow  1    Heard

Carolina Chickadee  1   

Black-capped Chickadee  5

Boreal Chickadee  1    

Tufted Titmouse  2

White-breasted Nuthatch  2

Eastern Bluebird  4

Dark-eyed Junco  6

White-throated Sparrow  1

Song Sparrow  2    Heard