Island Beach SP | Great Bay Blvd 5/15--Common Nighthawk, White-rumped Sandpiper, Least Tern

Unhappy juvenile Bald Eagle, IBSP

Yesterday Mike & I  went looking for warblers. We were a day early. Today was the big push. This is not to say the day was a bust. We started out at Ocean County Park (the old Rockefeller estate) and there Mike was able to add Magnolia Warbler to his list, at least. But of the 3 species I added, two were unexpected and the third was a bird that we should have had already.

After our drive around Ocean County Park we headed over to Island Beach SP, where we hoped Reed's Road would be a migrant trap. Not very much was happening on the road itself and the high tide, coupled with easterly winds, made the beach impassable, so we weren't able to walk up to the bowl, where, at least for me, most of the action takes place. We did get a great look at a Black-throated Green Warbler but the surprise bird was a flyover Common Nighthawk. Nighthawk, not 8 o'clock in the morning hawk. I saw it flying over the road and my first reaction was that it was a Willet, but then I saw the white wing patches were fooling me into a misidentification and I called out "nighthawk, going right" and Mike was able to get a good look at it too.

We tried the trail across from the first bathing beach parking lot, which was muddy and eroded and didn't come up with anything special. The beach yielded some late gannets which are always fun to watch as they plunge dive and a flock of Common Terns. But by far the most interesting sight was on the edge of the parking lot where we saw 4 Fish Crows swooping and diving around a tree. We drove over there and found the source of their agitation--a very young Bald Eagle, sitting on a low branch. I don't remember seeing an eagle sit so low in a tree. It did not look happy (who would with 4 noisy birds harassing you?) and Mike thought perhaps it was not in good health.

Since the passerines weren't working out we switched gears and drove down to Great Bay Blvd in Tuckerton where the last few days the shorebird show has been something to see. We usually start counting birds at Holly Lake, about 6 miles from the inlet. We stopped there, just to put the swan and its cygnets on the list when I saw a small tern fly over the car--Least Tern. And Mike missed it. Usually it's just the opposite. We drove the road, stopping whenever we saw a flock of shorebirds which meant we were stopping every 500 feet or so. Going over one of the bridges I saw a  couple of shorebirds in a little puddle in the marsh and for some reason called them out. Mike stopped at the other end of the bridge and we walked back with our scopes. There were lots of birds farther out, mostly peeps and dowitchers, but the birds I saw weren't evident until I found one of them feeding in the grass. At first we took them for more Semipalmated Sandpipers, but they didn't look quite right and once we saw the crossed wings at the back and the white supercilium we knew we had a couple of White-rumped Sandpipers, a very hard bird for me to get in the county because I don't usually have the patience to sort through big flocks of sandpipers and I'm reluctant to call a notoriously difficult bird from a distance.

Black-bellied Plover, Great Bay Blvd

We hit the inlet and walked north so Mike could get Saltmarsh Sparrow on the county list. Easy to find if you know where they lurk--walk along the muddy path and one will flush. But after a while we kind of stopped counting and listing and just admired the beauty of the shorebirds--the dowitchers with their red chests, the Dunlins with their russet back and big black belly patches, the Black-bellied Plovers in stark black & white, and the big Red Knots head to belly a rich salmon. The numbers were overwhelming. I've had this much variety in species at Tuckerton before, but never in the kinds of numbers we were estimating. Whenever we would think we had a pretty good idea of a count, another mixed flock would lift out of the marsh and swirl around. So we just enjoyed the show. And Mike got his Least Tern too, hunting over the marsh.

Our Great Bay Blvd list:

48 species

Brant  50

Mute Swan  7    one adult, 6 cygnets, Holly Lake

Mourning Dove  2

Clapper Rail  5    Heard

Black-bellied Plover  300    Tremendous flocks all along the road

Semipalmated Plover  10

Whimbrel  12

Ruddy Turnstone  5

Red Knot  3

Dunlin  1000

Least Sandpiper  8

White-rumped Sandpiper  2

Semipalmated Sandpiper  50

Short-billed Dowitcher  1000

Greater Yellowlegs  6

Willet  30

Laughing Gull  50

Herring Gull  50

Great Black-backed Gull  2

Least Tern  2

Gull-billed Tern  6

Common Tern  15

Forster's Tern  20

Black Skimmer  6

Double-crested Cormorant  15

Great Egret  20

Snowy Egret  15

Tricolored Heron  2

Black-crowned Night-Heron  1

Turkey Vulture  2

Osprey  8    on nests

Red-bellied Woodpecker  1

Fish Crow  2

Barn Swallow  20

American Robin  1

Gray Catbird  2

European Starling  1

House Finch  1    Heard

Seaside Sparrow  10

Saltmarsh Sparrow  2

Song Sparrow  4

Red-winged Blackbird  20

Common Grackle  2

Boat-tailed Grackle  50

Common Yellowthroat  5

Yellow Warbler  3

Northern Cardinal  2

House Sparrow  5