Whitesbog Draw Down

Solitary Sandpiper

It is that happy time of the year when the bogs (technically the reservoirs) get drawn down at Whitesbog, creating prime conditions for shorebirds, terns, herons and egrets as short 15 minute drive from home. I made my way out there the first day back from our trip out west and found that the lower bog was already getting shallow. By the time I returned two days later, it was pretty much empty and there were lots of Great Blue Herons and Great Egrets standing on either side of Cranberry Run which runs down the middle picking at the passing parade of food. By Friday, the middle bog was starting to empty and today it was about halfway down with plenty of mud flats for shorebirds. I had my first Pectoral Sandpipers of the season in there this morning.

Last year, because of the breach in the Upper Reservoir, we didn't have a shorebird season there because the farmer wasn't confident he'd have enough water to irrigate the cranberries, so it was with great relief that I heard he'd agreed to make the draw down this year. The history of the draw down is interesting. Originally, the bogs were emptied so that grasses and plants would grow in them, providing a distracting food source for the Tundra Swans that flock there in the winter when the bogs are re-flooded and keep them out of the working cranberry bogs. The drained bogs naturally attracted birds, the mud being thick with invertebrates, the little puddles and Cranberry Run full of fish, frogs, and other goodies. But ever since the "string theory" of waterfowl control was introduced, in which a grid of thick strings is set up just above the flooded cranberry bogs, discouraging geese and swans from landing in them, the farmer (let's call him "Bob") has emptied the bogs as a favor to birders, especially one in particular who spends a great deal of time there, has known Bob forever and makes the request as to timing. It is a great thing to do and he deserves all the thanks in the world for going out of his way to create habitat for migrating birds.

There are 3 bogs (all, somewhat inconveniently when rarities occur, on the Burlco side of the county line) with the middle, largest bog, attracting the most birds. The birds usually get what they can out of the lower bog and move to the middle as soon as mud flat start to appear. I could see this happening today, with many more sandpipers in the middle bog and only herons, egrets, and Solitary Sandpipers in the lower. For some reason, the Solitary Sandpipers prefer the ditch that runs along the cross dike (in local parlance, a "dam") and are reliably found there. I was birding today with a friend who still "needed" Solitary for the year and sure enough, when we came to that portion of the bog, there were a couple in there.

The third bog, the upper, is a different story this year. While this one usually took the longest to drain and, because it has become overgrown with trees (in local parlance, "timber") only about half of it was attractive to shorebirds, though the grasspipers it sometimes attracted certainly made it worth scoping. Between the upper and middle bogs there was a breached dike (dam) with a gap of about 20 feet, through which the water ran out. I and few other birders sometimes had the fantasy of building a makeshift bridge across the gap so that we wouldn't have to walk around the entire middle bog just to get to the other side. On Thursday, that problem was solved:

It only took the excavator about an hour and a half to scoop mud from the middle bog and dump it into the gap, creating an oozing but passable bridge. The reason behind this muddy project is convoluted. Whitesbog was sold to the state many years ago and is technically part of Brendan Byrne Forest. Bob leases back the family's cranberry bogs from the state. Because of this he is subject to many arcane rules, one of which states that he is not allow to cut anything within the non-working bogs and reservoirs. However, since water is all important to cranberry farmer, he does retain water rights. Bob would eventually like to convert these reservoirs to working cranberry bogs and in order to do that, he'd have to clear out the upper bog. Since he can't cut down the timber (we call them "trees") he is going to kill them by flooding the bog. That should take a few years, I'd imagine. In the meanwhile, he obviously isn't going to draw down that bog. It should make for an interesting new habitat as the trees eventually die and it the whole bog becomes a swamp. Who knows what new birds it might attract? But in the meantime, this year we'll only have the lower and middle bogs to bird. But, to quote Meatloaf, "Two out of three isn't bad."

Green Heron

It usually isn't until the middle of  August that the grasspipers (American Golden-Plover, Buff-breasted Sandpiper, Baird's Sandpiper) and other local rarities (White-rumped Sandpiper, Gull-billed Terns, Little Blue Herons) start to show up. But, since there is really nowhere else to go to find a variety of birds, Whitesbog is pretty much where I'll be for the next few weeks, enjoying the diversity that's there and looking for the rarities that always seem to show up.

I've been there 3 out of 4 days of this month. Here is what I've seen (and/or heard) so far:

45 Species Canada Goose Wood Duck Mallard Pied-billed Grebe Mourning Dove Yellow-billed Cuckoo Semipalmated Plover Killdeer Least Sandpiper Pectoral Sandpiper Semipalmated Sandpiper Spotted Sandpiper Solitary Sandpiper Greater Yellowlegs Lesser Yellowlegs Great Blue Heron Great Egret Green Heron Turkey Vulture Red-bellied Woodpecker Northern Flicker American Kestrel Eastern Wood-Pewee Great Crested Flycatcher Eastern Kingbird White-eyed Vireo American Crow Fish Crow Purple Martin Tree Swallow Barn Swallow White-breasted Nuthatch Carolina Wren Eastern Bluebird American Robin Gray Catbird American Goldfinch Chipping Sparrow Song Sparrow Swamp Sparrow Eastern Towhee Red-winged Blackbird Common Yellowthroat Prairie Warbler Northern Cardinal