Manahawkin WMA 3/29--Blue-winged Teal, Snowy Egret, Tricolored Heron

Tricolored Heron

Today is my birthday, so naturally I awoke to thoughts of death and mortality. Then I saw a message on my phone from Bob D who wanted to meet me down at Manahawkin to chase the Townsend's Solitaire that was there yesterday. It was from 5:30 AM, so I figured he was already there. He was close by; I gave him directions to the parking lot on Hilliard got dressed and ran out of the house, telling Shari I'd open her presents at dinner. Bob, who is my senior by quite a few years, was the perfect anecdote for the birthday mopes. When I grow up, I want to be like Bob and still have that enthusiasm for finding birds.

Breakfast was an energy bar and I skipped coffee altogether and got down there about 7:45. There was no real need to rush because, as I suspected yesterday, that bird was gone, despite the efforts of about a dozen people looking for it in all the appropriate habitat. One birder said he heard it call. Hearing a western rarity call doesn't do it for me and no one else was as lucky as he.

Snowy Egrets

But the day was not a waste at all. Bob & I walked out to the impoundments had got our FOY Snowy Egrets. There were plenty of ducks to look through and a few yellowlegs. We walked back to the area of where the bird was seen yesterday, met the man who heard it and proceeded to search, again with no luck. By then, more people were showing up, most of whom I knew, so I kept toggling between the impoundments and the fields with various combinations of birders.

An alert came through that a Tricolored Heron was in the back impoundment so I hustled out there. A rarity at this time of year. In a week, it'll be listed as common, but get 'em while you can, I say, especially when you start the day thinking the thoughts I had. When the Tricolored Herons return to Ocean County (this is about as far north in NJ as they regularly get) I send out an email to a friend who lives up north so that he and his son can make the excursion down here to put them on the list. In case he's reading...this is his semi-official notification.

Blue-winged Teal hen & drake

Even though I never expected to get the solitaire, I was hoping to add a somewhat difficult county bird to the list which I had seen listed and with the help of another birder's scope I finally was able to add Blue-winged Teal to the year & county list. Not a rarity by any means, but also not a duck you're going to find on every pond and puddle like Mallards.

So despite this being the 3rd time I've missed Townsend's Solitaire in the last two years (twice in the county), I had an excellent bird day with 3 year birds and 31 species for the 5 hours and 1 minute I spent there. It's only about a mile from the parking lot on Hilliard to Stafford Avenue, but if you walk it back and forth 3 or 4 times the hours add up.

31 species

Mute Swan  4

Blue-winged Teal  4    Back impoundment

Mallard  5

American Black Duck  50

Green-winged Teal  30

Hooded Merganser  1    Impoundment between Stafford Av and back impoundment.

Mourning Dove  1

Dunlin  2

Wilson's Snipe  1

Greater Yellowlegs  10

Herring Gull  10

Great Egret  2    Flyovers

Snowy Egret  2    Back Impoundment

Tricolored Heron  1    

Turkey Vulture  2

Osprey  1    On nest across Stafford Avenue

Belted Kingfisher  2

Red-bellied Woodpecker  1    Heard

Northern Flicker  1

Eastern Phoebe  1

Tree Swallow  10

Carolina Chickadee  3

Tufted Titmouse  1    Heard

Carolina Wren  1    Heard

American Robin  10

Fox Sparrow  1

Song Sparrow  3

Red-winged Blackbird  10

Brown-headed Cowbird  2    "Drip drip" call

Pine Warbler  3    Singing. Two chasing each other

Yellow-rumped Warbler  1    Trail off Stafford Avenue

Snowy Egret and Tricolored Heron in the back impoundment

Point Pleasant Beach 3/28--Laughing Gull

It has been getting silly just to find something new... Yesterday, as I was driving around, I looked in every Wawa parking lot I passed, I looked in the parking lot of the Barnegat Municipal Dock, I scanned the skies while stopped at traffic lights along Route 9 and still never found what I wanted, which was a Laughing Gull. Ridiculous, because pretty soon they'll be here, there, and everywhere, eating French fries on the beach, swooping through the Costco parking lot, defecating on cars all along the east coast, but my chronic impatience, fueled by my boredom with winter weather which has lingered into spring, wanted one now. Bad enough that I keep missing Black-headed Gull in the county, now I couldn't find a Laughing Gull?

Finally today, after walking around the Manasquan River WMA in yet another fruitless effort to find a towhee (a bird that will, sooner than later, be nesting in my very own backyard), I drove the circuitous route from Brick down to Baltimore Avenue in Point Pleasant Beach and there, viewing over the cruddy slip to the sandbar (thankfully, the tide was low), I saw a few dozen standard issue gulls with one Laughing Gull, standing aloof from the flock. Would it fly closer to where I stood so that I might take a decent picture of it? No it would not. Fine. Put it on the list and stop thinking about them for the rest of the year.

Speaking of the backyard, at least activity there is picking up. In the last couple of days we've had our first Fox Sparrow of the year there (getting late for this species), our first Common Grackle of the year, a couple of Pine Warblers scarfing down Shari's gourmet suet, and this afternoon, while she was sitting on the patio, our first backyard turkeys of the year casually walked by her and started picking at the dirt beneath the feeders. Two Red-breasted Nuthatches are still hanging around too. All this makes for interesting entries into my Feederwatch log.

Pine Warbler

Wild Turkey displaying

Fox Sparrow

Common Grackle

Island Beach SP 3/24--Piping Plover

Piping Plover (digiscope)

A combination of weather (rain, then gale force winds) and being under the weather (an annoying, persistent cold) has limited my birding the last few days. This morning I went out to Island Beach, hoping for something, anything, new.

And not finding it. Reed's Road had mostly chickadees. A little trail across from the first large beach parking lot that I often find interesting birds on had nothing except 22 swans in the bay. Spizzle Creek was marginally more interesting; at least there were oystercatchers, a Peregrine Falcon on its igloo nest, and a Great Egret in the marsh (I was hoping for a Snowy or an early ibis) but it was barely worth the walk.

So, there was nothing for it, but to walk on the beach from A-23 south. The ocean was flat, with very few bumps that were birds and those were gulls. I saw about 10 Northern Gannets and enjoyed a few plunged dives. A duck here and there, 4 Common Loons. I was getting disgusted, thinking this was a stupid way to spend the day especially when I could be home watching a meaningless spring training game. Then, scanning the high part of the beach where the "beach buggies" drive I saw a little gray something dart into a tire track. I took the scope off my shoulder, focused in and there was my first Piping Plover of the year. My first thought was, "Now I don't have to go to Barnegat Light this summer and search in the heat for one." (I probably will go to Barnegat Light anyway, but I don't have to.)

A guy walking up the beach saw me looking into my scope and asked the natural question, "Snowy Owl?" I tried to be a good birding ambassador, so instead of saying I don't a #$$% about Snow Owls, I told him this was better! Here's an endangered species that may nest on this very beach. He looked into my scope, saw the light gray lump of feathers and shrugged. He then told me about all the photographers from Philadelphia who had been there a couple of weeks ago chasing after the owls. I withheld comment.

Later, on the way back, I passed a couple. I saw that the woman was actually holding binoculars (though they were more like opera glasses). Again, they asked about Snowy Owls, again I said I'd seen something better. I explained how these birds nest on the beach, how difficult their life was with predators (especially with the foxes on the beach that two people asked me if I had seen--I suppressed the "no feathers" reply) etc., but a little bird the color of the sand is not charismatic like a big owl that is featured in Harry Potter. As we walked along I saw an Ipswich Savannah Sparrow flush from the sand and move up onto the ridge of a tire track. "Another cool bird," I told them and explained that they only breed in a small area up north and how surveys are conducted to count them. "But it just looks like a plain bird," the woman said. "That's the fun of it," I said, "Knowing which plain birds are special," but I don't think they saw the fun of it. I showed them a Long-tailed Duck. "There's two," she said. I looked and saw that a Common Loon had surfaced and told her it what it was. Finally, that impressed her--a big water bird with a prominent bill and a name she recognized--"loon." I tried. Really, I tried.

A little Piping Plover, scurrying along the beach, seems so vulnerable that I start feeling sorry for it. But this is a tough bird, probably as tough, in its way, as any Snowy Owl. It migrates thousands of miles, it scratches out a nest in the sand, it protects that nest and somehow raises chicks and its numbers wouldn't be declining if it wasn't for us--it isn't the foxes that are the threat, it's that it wants to nest on beaches where we have other intentions. And the foxes (which are another charismatic species) wouldn't be such a problem either if they weren't fed by people who think they're cute. With these kinds of thoughts, by the time I got off the beach I wasn't feeling so joyful about finding my first Piping Plover of the year.

Piping Plover, hunkered down
(click photos to enlarge)

Wawa-ing

Had today's expedition gone as we hoped, the heading for this entry would have been Somewhere in Salem County, because that's where Mike, Bob Auster and I were this morning, searching for Barn Owls in a desolate area of that county where we had been told they could be found. They could be found, but not by us, so instead we have the neologism coined by Mike for a title, since that is more or less what we wound up doing as we wended our way across the widest part of New Jersey from the Delaware Bayshore to Brig.

Since we didn't exactly know where we were in Salem, we decided to orient ourselves by finding the closest Wawa, which turned out to be one of two in Pennsville.

Pennsville

Unfortunately, this is a Wawa Market, which means no rest rooms. Worse, the coffee was lukewarm. But, it was on a major road which made finding our bearings easier (cell phone service is spotty in the Salem County marshes). We then started heading east and it wasn't too long before we came upon a Super Wawa, also in Pennsville. Naturally we stopped to use the facilities and for me to refill for a hotter cup of coffee.

Pennsville #8332

I mentioned to the guys that I had started the day with 96 Wawa's on my life list, so this one was #98. Mike took that as a challenge and figured that we had to hit at least two more Wawas on the way to the east side of the state. The question was, which one would be #100?

#99 turned out to be in the toddling town of Upper Pittsgrove (not to be confused with nearby Pilesgrove, which sounds like an orchard of hemorrhoids), where we stopped for photos, snacks, and facilities again.

Upper Pittsgrove

Driving east along Route 40 (which is not as easy as it sounds since the road tends to veer off in unexpected directions) we left Salem County and crossed into Gloucester where, in Malaga, a rather old Wawa (you can tell by the slab serifs on the logo) became the 100th Wawa that I have visited (or, at least that I have recorded visiting). It was a cause for celebration, with handshakes all around, the planting of the flag, a 20 gun salute, fireworks, and congratulatory telegrams from various heads of state. It is quite an accomplishment and I couldn't have done it without the support of my friends and family who never wavered in their faith in me.

Malaga. #100 (Bob & Mike)

Malaga (Bob & Larry)
photo by Mike

Counting our first stop in Clarksburg this morning, that made 5 Wawa stops for the day, which is a personal high. As we continued, there were at least 4 more Wawa's that I had never visited we could have stopped at but by that point, basking in the glow of Malaga, I considered the rest of the journey to Brig as a scouting trip, sort of what one does before the World Series of Birding.

(All the Wawas, plus bonus material, can be seen here)

Oh yeah, I heard two Eastern Towhees today at our first stop in Salem County. Year bird.

Brig 3/16--Gyrfalcon Again

Talk about your intersecting vectors! I went back down to Brig today with Shari to try for the Gyrfalcon again. We hadn't been there 2 minutes when we were about to make the turn onto the Wildlife Drive. We saw a few Turkey Vultures wavering over the marsh, then, among them, a big, fast flying raptor. Shari thought it was an eagle but I could tell by size, shape, color, and speed that it was the Gyrfalcon. So she got her life bird with out any angst, sturm, or drang.

I put an alert out but no one saw, definitively, the bird for a few hours, until it appeared farther up the road, where it had been seen yesterday. So yesterday I had a brief look at it on the ground and today I saw it flying (for comparison, we also had a Peregrine Falcon later--much different-looking bird), but I still don't have the field guide illustration look at it.

This was Shari's 1500th life bird, putting her, again, 102 ahead of me. Unlike Shari, I've never been Iceland, I didn't want to stay in South Africa for a month (with a side trip to Lesotho) and, of course, I am a committed landlubber which rules out pelagics. Hence her big lead, which I'll never overtake.

But, really, birding isn't a competition.
Unless I'm winning.

Brig 3/15--GYRFALCON

Sometimes I think that birding is just a matter of your vector intersecting the bird's vector and skill is involved only when you don't at first recognize the bird whose life line you're colliding with. Which is another way of saying "Right place, right time=success" but 90% of success, as a discredited comedian once observed, is showing up. Which is why, when I got an alert that a GYRFALCON was again being seen at Brig, I showed up there, abandoning my noodling around in the Barnegat area. It's hard for me to get a life bird in New Jersey these days.

The bird was first reported on the Osprey platform on the east dike, which I found amusing, because in a month or so, that will be my least favorite spot in Brig as the photographers line up waiting for the light to be just so in order to take the 17 billionth picture of the raptor on its nest. But today, unfortunately, when I arrived there with Chris, another birder from Ocean County who also sped down when he saw the alert, there was no Gyrfalcon to be seen.

About a month ago this same bird, probably, was being seen off Nummy's Island, about 30 miles south of Brig. I remember getting the alert when I was at Assunpink, doing a quick calculation that it was over 100 miles from me to the bird and dismissing the idea. Then on Sunday or Monday of this week, there was a late report that the bird had been photographed at Brig, but nothing since, so it obviously ranges around into areas not accessible to birders and only once in a while does its vector intersect with observability.

Chris and I continued around the dikes, stopping a couple of times to look in what we thought would be likely spots, but the bird wasn't around. I got back to the parking lot, trying to decide whether it was worth going around again when I saw Mike pull in. He too had seen the alert and hurried down. We joined forces and it was out onto the dikes again. Chris texted me that bird had been seen flying with prey, in the same area as before. Then he texted me that the bird had flown right over his head. Well, at least he got to see it. Mike drove as fast as the speed limit allowed and when we turned onto the east dike we saw a birder with a scope out, motioning us on. Having a scope out was an accomplishment today because the winds were brutal, probably at least 30 mph and more likely 40 mph. At least the air temperature wasn't cold or I wouldn't have stayed there, life bird or not.

How windy was it? When Chris and I first got there, we drove toward the east dike perhaps a bit over the speed limit with Chris in front. It was so windy that I lost sight of his vehicle in the dust blowing up behind it. How windy was it? Sitting in Mike's car as it was buffeted by the wind, I was getting motion sickness. How windy was it? I still have a headache from the wind pounding my head.

The bird, being more intelligent that we are, was sitting on the ground out of the wind, pretty far out in the impoundment. I took a look through the guy's scope and saw a big, gray, barrel-chested falcon with no "hooded" appearance, and satisfied myself, in the 5 seconds I had, that it was my lifer. Mike, ever environmentally conscious, unfortunately, was picking up checklists that had blown out of the car, so a woman cut in front of him, got the bird and by the time Mike looked, it had flown (or been blown) away. We set up our scopes to scan, but the shake from the wind was too much.

We never did relocate the bird, though it did come back to the same platform when we were 4 miles away from it. That's what I mean about intersecting vectors: some birder's were, some birder's weren't. I feel a little fortunate to have seen the bird at all yet, I hate looking through someone else's scope because you're always rushed. That's why I say it isn't satisfying until I see it in my scope.

Who knows, maybe the bird will more reliable this weekend and Shari and I can go down and get it tomorrow--it would be a lifer for her too. No photos today. The bird was too far away. Besides, I forgot my camera. And even had I remembered my camera, the battery was still in the recharging unit.

My list:

42 species

Snow Goose  3000

Brant  200

Canada Goose  100

Mute Swan  4

Northern Shoveler  70

Gadwall  25

American Wigeon  5

Mallard  7

American Black Duck  25

Northern Pintail  15

Green-winged Teal  55

Canvasback  15

Ring-necked Duck  12

Bufflehead  10

Hooded Merganser  5

Red-breasted Merganser  2

Ruddy Duck  11

Dunlin  50

Greater Yellowlegs  20

Ring-billed Gull  13

Herring Gull  100

Great Black-backed Gull  3

Double-crested Cormorant  3

Great Blue Heron  2

Great Egret  6

Turkey Vulture  3

Northern Harrier  2

GYRFALCON  1    

Peregrine Falcon  2

Eastern Phoebe  1    Heard upland

American Crow  4

Fish Crow  5

Tree Swallow  1

Carolina Chickadee  1    Heard parking lot

Tufted Titmouse  1    Heard upland

Red-breasted Nuthatch  1    Heard parking lot

Eastern Bluebird  2

American Robin  1

Savannah Sparrow  1

Song Sparrow  2

Red-winged Blackbird  15

Northern Cardinal  1    Heard

Barnegat Light SP 3/3--A Nemesis No More

Iceland Gull, center

It had become a standing joke among my birding buddies: I didn't have Iceland Gull on my Ocean County list. I've seen Glaucous Gull, which is considered more of a rarity, a number of times in the county--twice this year in fact. I go to Barnegat Light, Manasquan Inlet, and Island Beach a lot. Yet, never did I stumble upon this white-winged gull. Scott, in particular, found it hard to believe since he thinks Glaucous Gull is a much harder bird to find. I've come close: I once saw an Iceland Gull fly over my head on the north side of Manasquan Inlet, which, unfortunately is the southern extreme of Monmouth County.

The last time I saw Scott, I said to him, "Someday, we'll be at Barnegat Light on one of your trips and you'll point one out to me." I said this with confidence, despite having gone on probably 10 trips to the Light with Scott & Linda. Today, Mike and I went over to LBI for the trip. We'd just been there on Wednesday--naturally no Iceland Gull.

Scott and Linda pulled in to the lot and then I saw that Scott had brought a heavy hitter when Jason climbed out of the back seat. I had been on Jason's trip to the Edison Boat Launch and Sayreville Marsh last month and, naturally, got my year Iceland Gull up there--In Middlesex County.

Of course, one of the reasons I've never found an Iceland Gull around here, aside from sheer incompetence, is that I don't particularly find gulls and their permutating molts particularly fun to sort through. Jason does. Jason has spent probably thousands of hours studying gulls. So today, when the group started to scan the bay from the picnic area of the park, it wasn't long before Scott and Jason were conferring and then, with much ceremony, Jason lowered his scope so that I could see, across the way, on a sand bar off Island Beach, my county lifer Iceland Gull.

I reached over my shoulder, grabbed that monkey off my back, and threw it into Barnegat Bay!

But it gets better. After we had walked on concrete covered part of the jetty, the group drove over to 9th St so we could walk the beach to the jetty without actually walking on the jetty and risking cracked skulls and (even more importantly) the estimated $35,000 worth of optics everyone was carrying. There, Jason set up shop again, and while everyone else was looking for Harlequin Ducks, Common Eiders, and Purple Sandpipers (all of which were found), he came up with a second Iceland Gull, this one much closer, on the north side of the jetty, and easier to see since its white body contrasted starkly with the algae-covered rocks of the jetty. Iceland Gull might not be considered rare in the county, but two Iceland Gulls trips the eBird filter. So it isn't like they're everywhere for the asking.

We got a decent number of the expected birds at the Light, though no year birds, but the day, for me was a roaring success. Now, I have to practice looking through gull flocks for the remainder of the year so I can find another one in 2020.

My list for the state park. Mike also had a Cooper's Hawk while my back was turned.

23 species

Brant  50

Greater Scaup  2

Common Eider  200

Harlequin Duck  4

Black Scoter  2

Long-tailed Duck  50

Bufflehead  12

Red-breasted Merganser  3

Ruddy Turnstone  4

Dunlin  100

Purple Sandpiper  5

Herring Gull  200

Iceland Gull  2   

Great Black-backed Gull  3

Red-throated Loon  1

Common Loon  20

Northern Gannet  6

Great Cormorant  5

Double-crested Cormorant  1

American Crow  1

European Starling  10

Northern Cardinal  1

House Sparrow  1

Jackson 3/2--Horned Lark

Horned Larks, Jackson

Normally, a couple of scruffy old guys with binoculars cruising the grounds of a high school  is not a good idea--someone call the authorities! But on a Saturday afternoon you can get away with it.

After Mike's first Birds of Jackson trip for this year, we were going to head up to Point Pleasant Beach, but first we thought it might be a good idea to check out the lawns of the local high school since, for some reason, they seem to attract Horned Larks and Horned Larks are a very difficult bird to find in Ocean County. Especially now that one of the other reliable sites down in Stafford is undergoing development, making the bird potentially even more scarce.

Horned Larks prefer crappy habitat. The more hardscrabble and uninviting the ground looks the more likely you are to find larks there. So why they like the relatively lush, though brown, grass of the high school is a mystery, but they do. We were hoping to find one or two and almost immediately we did spot a couple. Then a couple more, then more and more until we had an eBird filter-busting count of 23 Horned Larks, all running around in the grass, all camouflaged extremely well, being the same color as the grass, except for their yellow eyebrows, which stood out splendidly.

Other highlights of our wanderings in Jackson Township this morning included 3 Bald Eagles in 3 different locales, a large flock of Common Mergansers on Prospertown Lake, a big flock of Snow Geese in the corn field on Hawkin Road (technically this is New Egypt), 3 Eastern Bluebirds on the wires along Success Road at Colliers Mills and 2 Tundra Swans in Success Lake about two miles up the road. Because of all the wet weather we've been having lately, we didn't attempt to drive all the way through Colliers Mills to Route 571, as we usually do--from the lake on that part of the road is probably more like a river, but instead turned around and drove out as we came in.

Canvasbacks (hens), Little Silver Lake

The noteworthy birds we had up in Point Pleasant Beach included a huge Northern Gannett show, with at least 350 birds flying north in flocks of of 10 & 20 seen from the jetty at Manasquan Inlet, Canvasbacks at both Little Silver Lake and Lake of the Lilies, and Lesser Scaup at both of those locations too.

Our last birds of the day were 3 Killdeer in the field next to the Wawa on Route 70 in Lakewood. Another field that is not long for underdevelopment. Enjoy 'em while you can, I guess.