Barnegat | Manahawkin | Tuckerton 4/19--Willet, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Black-headed Gull, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, White-eyed Vireo, Ovenbird, Yellow Warbler, Seaside Sparrow

Willet, Great Bay Blvd

Mike and I ranged all over the southern section of the county today with two goals in mind: 1) lots of birds & 2) lots of new birds for the year. We accomplished both splendidly.

Starting off down on Collinstown Road in Barnegat, Mike, who'd been away for about 10 days, started to add birds to year list--"easy" ones like Blue-gray Gnatcatcher and Common Yellowthroat. A stop at Meadowedge Park got him Glossy Ibis (which I missed for the day) and quick turn into Woodmansie Blvd yielded him the expected Purple Martins.

I didn't get into the year bird act until Barnegat Municipal Dock where we had a flyby "flock" of 4 Willets (new for me, county birds for Mike). A ride down the road brought us to the Forsythe impoundments where we had two Northern Pintails (late, for this time of year), as well as two species of peeps, early for this time of year: Least and Semipalmated Sandpipers.

We went inland and walked around Cloverdale Farm for a while which was the least birdy spot of the day but it did offer up, at the feeder near the visitor's center, our first Ruby-throated Hummingbird, supposedly rare for the time of year, but, if you look at eBird, they were everywhere in the county today. Time to fix those filters.

A quick lunch and then we spent the biggest chunk of the day at the Manahawkin WMA, first by driving down Stafford Avenue and then by going around and walking the wooded area off Hilliard. The biggest and best surprise of the day was while we were walking the path to the back impoundment from Stafford. We saw a gull overhead, which from size we took to be a Ring-bill but a quick look at proved otherwise. It didn't have a black hood like a Laugher, and it wasn't the right size or flight pattern for a Bonaparte's. The under wings had black edges but the entire wing wasn't black. So, I finally have my Ocean County Black-headed Gull. Too bad it wouldn't land so I could produce photographic evidence. In fact, photos were hard to come by today--either the birds were too far, too fast, or were just heard, like the Ovenbird we had along Stafford, or the White-eyed Vireos we heard around the first field. We walked just to the edge of the back impoundment and came upon a little flight of warblers--Pine, Yellow-rumped, and our first Yellow Warbler of the year.

I was finally able to take a photo of a year bird once we got down to Great Bay Blvd in Tuckerton (a stop at Tip Seaman Park, known to birders for its expansive restrooms got Mike two more swallow species: Barn and Northern Rough-winged). Egrets, great and snowy, were everywhere you looked, as were large flocks of cormorants. We had timed our visit for low tide, thinking shorebirds would be on the mud flats and salt pans, but we were disappointed--not much to see and nothing new. We were hoping for dowitchers. However, we did heard, right after Mike mentioned that they would soon be singing, 3 Seaside Sparrows. He promises to use this power only for good. On our way out we found a Willet in the marsh and it dawned on me that there, at least, was a bird big enough and still enough to get into my camera. The saddest sight of the day was at the end of the road where the big eagle's nest was mostly on the ground along with any eggs or chicks that had been in it. It probably was the victim of vicious winds we had earlier in the week.

For the day, counting the whip-poor-will I heard tonight, I had 87 species and Mike, who along with the ibises heard a Hermit Thrush and saw a Hairy Woodpecker on Stafford, had 89. A tremendous day. If we tried to repeat it in a couple of weeks we could probably push a 100 what with the expected influx of warblers and shorebirds. We'll see.