Seaside Park | Brig 7/1--Wilson's Phalarope, Royal Tern

Wilson's Phalarope, Brig
Photo: Mike Mandracchia

Mike & I wanted to start off the month with some interesting birds and since most of the interesting birds of late have been near the coast, we headed to Island Beach SP. We arrived at 7:45. But unless you're a fisherman, you can't get into the park until 8 A.M. They need to comb & manicure the beaches and people (but not fishermen) get in the way. So we drove a couple of blocks over to the bayside near the state marina. All the birds were "new for the month" but one of them was a "finally" bird for me, meaning I finally saw a Royal Tern this year. It was sitting on a piling at the end of a row of other gulls and terns. 

Royal Tern, Seaside Park

We went back on got into the park. With all the stormy weather of late, a number of odd ocean birds have been sighted off the beach on the north end of the park, but we didn't see either of the two rare terns recently reported, nor the shearwater, nor the storm-petrel. And really, I didn't expect to find them because those are birds you only see when you're not looking for them. We did see, however, 3 Piping Plovers on the beach, filling in a hole on Mike's county list. We watched as the adult led a crow on a merry chase away from its chicks. It didn't do the classic "broken wing" charade. Instead it flew like a bullet north and played catch me if you can and the crow couldn't.

Speaking of holes, we also saw ghost crabs on the beach. Mike was familiar with them. I don't recall ever coming across these creatures which burrow into the sand and come out to feed on the wrack line.  We gave it a shot down at the Winter Anchorage, hoping for some rarity--or even a pelican--sitting on the sand bar but the tide was a little too high and the sand bar wasn't there. Neither of us had any interest in battling the mosquitoes of Spizzle Creek. Instead, we headed down to Great Bay Blvd in Tuckerton, because, you know, greenhead flies are so much more pleasant than skeeters.

Again, we saw a lot of birds along the boulevard, along with many terrapins struggling across the asphalt, but it wasn't until we were on our way back that I spotted a Yellow-crowned Night-Heron (county bird) in the marsh. Unfortunately, we were crossing one of the timed-light wooden bridges, so we couldn't stop to admire it.

By then it was post meridian and we'd built up a decent list for the day, so we were ready to quit.  Stopping at the Wawa in Little Egg Harbor, I checked my phone and saw the rare bird alert from Brig. The famous Marker 14 had another one. I had spent a goodly amount of time on Friday there looking for a stilt, and yesterday Mike and I spent more time there looking for an ibis that wasn't glossy, and now, what should show up there but a Wilson's Phalarope. Since we were "only" 18.7 miles away, not including the 5 miles of Wildlife Drive to Marker 14, off we went.

The greenhead flies were bouncing off the car windows like someone was throwing them at us. We stopped briefly a few times to check out pockets of birds, but were more goal-oriented than usual there so we didn't really do any scanning until we got past the dogleg where all the ibises and white egrets were hanging out. None of the ibises looked like good candidates for the white-faced variety, but Mike finally found the phalarope, way in the back, associating with a couple of yellowlegs. We got excellent scope looks, taking our optics about 20 feet away from the car. Amazingly, the flies won't follow you. It's the heat of the car that attracts them. I tried digiscoping the bird and had no success. Mike was able to get the proverbial "distant photo" to document the bird. We didn't linger on the dikes. Just in the 97 minutes we were there we had 47 species. For the day, an even 70. A decent start on the month