Cedar Bonnet Island 5/7--Bobolink

Bobolink
Photo: Skyler Streich

I had a plan today to hit a couple of spots looking for migrants. Supposedly the radar was promising, but predicting bird migration from radar seems to me to be second order uncertainty--there's the uncertainty of the weather itself and then there's the uncertainty on top of that of whether or not those blobs are birds and where those blobs will end up in the morning. Still, it is May and birds do move in May so at 6:30 AM I was at Double Trouble. According to reports, yesterday there were interesting birds there and according to reports I saw later today, there were interesting birds there today. I just didn't happen to run into very many of them, perhaps because I didn't cover my full route there and they were in the places I didn't look (3rd Law of Birding: Wherever you are, you should be somewhere else), or perhaps because I'm a lousy birder. That's the kind of snit I get into when I miss good birds.

The reason I was rushing through Double Trouble was that I also wanted to get over to Island Beach and visit that other migrant trap, Reed's Road. But I changed my plan when I saw that the Bobolink reported yesterday at Cedar Bonnet Island was still there--two Bobolinks actually. Bobolink is a tough county bird--there are not many grasslands in the Pine Barrens and the only likely place I can think of, aside from the Joint Base, is Colliers Mills but the dogs and their trainers act as an impediment. Since Cedar Bonnet has become another migrant trap, I figured that was the place to go.

And I'm glad I did on two counts. When I got to Cedar Bonnet I saw two friends up ahead (one shall go nameless for work reasons). They had already been to Reed's Road and said it was quiet, though I would like to have had the Nashville Warbler they saw there. The other reason I was happy (aside from them being fine folks) is that they are both bird magnets, a mystical condition that no one understands but a condition that I, sadly, lack. Skyler, in fact, showed me the first Bobolinks I ever saw in New Jersey about 5 years ago during fall migration when we had an astounding 17 of them on, where else? Reed's Road. So I felt like that was a good omen

These were peculiar Bobolinks. I was hoping to get a picture but, unlike every other Bobolink I've ever seen, these, when one of the magnets found them, were not perched on a post or bush, but foraging on the ground through the tufts of grass in the restoration area. Skyler, with his much better optics and skills, was able to get the photo above. It is a great looking bird and though not officially rare, certainly decreasing in these parts and interesting enough to attract a number of birders to the increasingly popular (for birders and birds) former dredge spoils.

The only other bird of note on Cedar Bonnet was a handsome drake Blue-winged Teal that I spotted next to a Greater Yellowlegs. Only using bins, from a distance I couldn't work out what kind of fat shorebird it was. When it turned and gave us a profile, it was evident that it was duck not shorebird.

A walk in the Manahawkin WMA had nothing unusual though it was fun to see a couple of Yellow Warblers picking up and carrying nesting material. Yesterday, at the Barnegat Impoundments, there were no shorebirds. Today someone posted that there were hundreds, so I drove up there despite having left the scope at home. I felt sure that someone else would be there with one and was disappointed when I was alone. I could make out the usual birds but it wasn't until Mike coincidentally arrived that we were able to sort through the birds thoroughly. Nothing new in the shorebird family but the tern family yielded two new county birds, which were far out on a sand bar: Gull-billed Tern and Black Skimmer. The skimmer I almost missed, dismissing it, at a distance in the shimmer, as a Laughing Gull. It was another birder who arrived as I was leaving, that posted the true identity of the bird when I was about 5 miles away. I turned around and saw it to my listing satisfaction.

The Cedar Bonnet List:

30 species

Canada Goose  2

Blue-winged Teal  1    

Mourning Dove  5

Clapper Rail  3    Heard

Killdeer  2

Least Sandpiper  2

Short-billed Dowitcher  25

Greater Yellowlegs  2

Willet  4

Lesser Yellowlegs  1

Herring Gull  1

Great Egret  5

Snowy Egret  4

Tricolored Heron  1

Glossy Ibis  25

Osprey  2

Eastern Kingbird  1

Tree Swallow  1

Barn Swallow  5

American Robin  2

Gray Catbird  5

American Goldfinch  1    Entrance Path

Seaside Sparrow  1    Heard

Song Sparrow  10

Bobolink  2    Near West Pavilion

Baltimore Oriole  1    At corner of entrance path and path to east pavilion

Red-winged Blackbird  50

Brown-headed Cowbird  1

Boat-tailed Grackle  25

Common Yellowthroat  5