November in Review--3 Year Birds, 1 Lifer

Bell's Vireo, Sandy Hook

Again, for the 2nd month in a row, only 3 year birds added to the list, but what birds! All rarities, all vagrants, and seeing them ran the gamut of how to find birds.

The first rarity, the Bell's Vireo at Sandy Hook, was the most fun because it was both unexpected and easy--we happened to be with a group a few hundred feet away from the where the bird had just been reported; we walked over, looked around for a few a minutes and there it was and everyone was surprised and happy. No chasing involved.

The 2nd year bird of the month was more of an expedition--a chase for multiple birds with only one success but it was our life bird LECONTE'S SPARROW. Shari, Mike, and I traveled down to Cape May to the "magic field" where all sorts of interesting birds were (and still are) being reported, but it took us almost all the day to finally stumble upon the LeConte's. It was bad enough that we couldn't also find the Golden-crowned Sparrow that was down there which would also have been a year bird, but when we decided to search for the Wood Stork a birder nearby turned around and said, "It's dead." That put a damper on the quest.

Finally, today was the kind of birding I dislike the most--traveling, for a 2nd time, to search a small area for a small bird. At least in the "magic field" we got to walk around a large area. Searching for the Pacific-slope Flycatcher today I walked almost 2 miles back and forth on what might have been an eighth of a mile stretch of trails.

As for the rest of the month, I spent most of it walking in my favorite spots--Assunpink, Manasquan Reservoir, Whitesbog, Manahawkin, Island Beach--plus I added a new favorite place in the extension of the Union Transportation Trail into Ocean County. While I haven't found anything new there, yet, it is only because it late in the year. I feel confident that this barely mowed power line cut will produce many warblers, sparrows, and other passerines in the new year. Plus, the hardwoods along the trail look very inviting for a Pileated Woodpecker.

Prairie Warbler,
Barnegat Light SP

Other interesting birds for the month, rare but not new, were the returning Trumpeter Swans to Stone Tavern Lake, a Cackling Goose for the county on Deerhead Lake, and a very late Prairie Warbler in the dunes of Barnegat Light.

I'm up to 293 NJ birds for the year, more than I've seen in the state any other year. If I'd been willing to chase more, or go on a pelagic, or was just a better birder, I could conceivable have 300 species which is the bogie for the state. With good weather and little less shilly-shallying, I could probably still make 300. But the weather looks lousy for the first couple days of the month and Cape May is an awful long way away.

For the month I had 136 species, all in the state, from Cape May to Sandy Hook.
Counties Birded: Atlantic, Burlington, Cape May, Monmouth, Ocean.

Species              First Sighting

Snow Goose   Manasquan Reservoir

Brant   Sandy Hook

Cackling Goose   Deer Head Lake

Canada Goose   Manasquan Reservoir

Mute Swan   Manasquan Reservoir

Trumpeter Swan   Stone Tavern Lake

Tundra Swan   Bamber Lake

Wood Duck   Sandy Hook

Northern Shoveler   Manasquan Reservoir

Gadwall   Assunpink WMA

American Wigeon   Assunpink WMA

Mallard   Manasquan Reservoir

American Black Duck   Manasquan Reservoir

Northern Pintail   Brig

Green-winged Teal   Brig

Ring-necked Duck   Manasquan Reservoir

Greater Scaup   Brig

Lesser Scaup   Assunpink WMA

Common Eider   Barnegat Lighthouse SP

Harlequin Duck   Barnegat Lighthouse SP

Surf Scoter   Sandy Hook

White-winged Scoter   Sandy Hook

Black Scoter   Cape May-Lewes Ferry Terminal

Long-tailed Duck   Island Beach SP

Bufflehead   Manasquan Reservoir

Common Goldeneye   Assunpink WMA

Hooded Merganser   Holly Lake

Red-breasted Merganser   Sandy Hook

Ruddy Duck   Manasquan Reservoir

Wild Turkey   Brig

Pied-billed Grebe   Manasquan Reservoir

Horned Grebe   Brig

Red-necked Grebe   Brig

Rock Pigeon   Manasquan Reservoir

Mourning Dove   35 Sunset Rd

American Coot   Manasquan Reservoir

American Avocet   Brig

American Oystercatcher   Island Beach SP

Black-bellied Plover   Sandy Hook

Killdeer   Brig

Ruddy Turnstone   Barnegat Lighthouse SP

Sanderling   Sandy Hook

Dunlin   Great Bay Bvld. WMA

Purple Sandpiper   Island Beach SP

Western Sandpiper   Brig

Long-billed Dowitcher   Brig

Greater Yellowlegs   Great Bay Bvld. WMA

Lesser Yellowlegs   Brig

Laughing Gull   Manasquan Reservoir

Ring-billed Gull   Manasquan Reservoir

Herring Gull   Sandy Hook

Iceland Gull   Island Beach SP

Lesser Black-backed Gull   Sandy Hook

Great Black-backed Gull   Sandy Hook

Royal Tern   Sandy Hook

Red-throated Loon   Manasquan Reservoir

Common Loon   Great Bay Bvld. WMA

Northern Gannet   Sandy Hook

Great Cormorant   Barnegat Lighthouse SP

Double-crested Cormorant   Manasquan Reservoir

Great Blue Heron   Manasquan Reservoir

Great Egret   Great Bay Bvld. WMA

Snowy Egret   Brig

Little Blue Heron   Brig

Black-crowned Night-Heron   Brig

Black Vulture   Sandy Hook

Turkey Vulture   35 Sunset Rd

Osprey   Sandy Hook

Golden Eagle   The Beanery

Northern Harrier   Sandy Hook

Sharp-shinned Hawk   Sandy Hook

Cooper's Hawk   Sandy Hook

Bald Eagle   Sandy Hook

Red-shouldered Hawk   Sandy Hook

Red-tailed Hawk   Sandy Hook

Great Horned Owl   Brig

Barred Owl   The Beanery

Belted Kingfisher   Manasquan Reservoir

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker   35 Sunset Rd

Red-bellied Woodpecker   35 Sunset Rd

Downy Woodpecker   35 Sunset Rd

Hairy Woodpecker   Assunpink WMA

Pileated Woodpecker   Assunpink WMA

Northern Flicker   Manasquan Reservoir

Merlin   Sandy Hook

Peregrine Falcon   Sandy Hook

Pacific-slope Flycatcher   Palmyra Cove Nature Park

Eastern Phoebe   Sandy Hook

Bell's Vireo   Sandy Hook

Blue Jay   35 Sunset Rd

American Crow   Manasquan Reservoir

Fish Crow   Assunpink WMA

Common Raven   Berkeley

Carolina Chickadee   35 Sunset Rd

Tufted Titmouse   35 Sunset Rd

Golden-crowned Kinglet   35 Sunset Rd

Ruby-crowned Kinglet   Sandy Hook

White-breasted Nuthatch   35 Sunset Rd

Brown Creeper   Sandy Hook

House Wren   The Beanery

Winter Wren   Palmyra Cove Nature Park

Marsh Wren   Brig

Carolina Wren   35 Sunset Rd

European Starling   Manasquan Reservoir

Gray Catbird   Manasquan Reservoir

Brown Thrasher   Assunpink WMA

Northern Mockingbird   Manasquan Reservoir

Eastern Bluebird   Union Transportation Trail

Hermit Thrush   Sandy Hook

American Robin   Manasquan Reservoir

Cedar Waxwing   Palmyra Cove Nature Park

House Sparrow   Holly Lake

House Finch   35 Sunset Rd

American Goldfinch   35 Sunset Rd

Snow Bunting   Island Beach SP

Chipping Sparrow   Great Bay Bvld. WMA

Field Sparrow   Union Transportation Trail

Fox Sparrow   Manasquan Reservoir

Dark-eyed Junco   Sandy Hook

White-crowned Sparrow   Sandy Hook

White-throated Sparrow   Manasquan Reservoir

LECONTE'S SPARROW   The Beanery

Nelson's Sparrow   Brig

Savannah Sparrow   Sandy Hook

Song Sparrow   Manasquan Reservoir

Lincoln's Sparrow   Brig

Swamp Sparrow   Assunpink WMA

Eastern Towhee   Brig

Eastern Meadowlark   The Beanery

Red-winged Blackbird   Great Bay Bvld. WMA

Common Grackle   Assunpink WMA

Boat-tailed Grackle   Great Bay Bvld. WMA

Palm Warbler   Sandy Hook

Pine Warbler   Whiting

Yellow-rumped Warbler   Manasquan Reservoir

Prairie Warbler   Barnegat Lighthouse SP

Northern Cardinal   35 Sunset Rd Boat-tailed Grackle, Barnegat Light SP Great Black-backed Gull, Barnegat Light SP

Palmyra Cove Nature Park 11/30--Pacific-slope Flycatcher

Pacific-slope Flycatcher

I got up early.

I gritted my teeth.

I girded my loins.

I gassed up the car.

I was going to Palmyra.

Palmyra Nature Cove Park, on the banks of the Delaware, is a terrific birding spot but it is a royal pain for me to get to, a long ride on Rt 70 and then north on Rt 73 with its constant traffic lights along an increasingly ugly industrial corridor as you near the river. You want to get there early and on a weekday, with rush hour traffic...I don't have the patience. If I did, I'd have a lot bigger Burlco list because this is a great migrant and vagrant trap. And the western vagrant it has been hosting for almost the last month I finally could not stand not having on my state and county lists, so today, a quiet Saturday, I made the journey and was happily surprised that it only took about an hour. 

Now all I had to do was find the bird. This wasn't my first attempt. About 3 weeks ago, Mike & I tried for the bird, going down there mid-afternoon and missing it by about an hour. This, like most flycatchers, is a very active bird that seems to have settled into semi-regular route, so I walked down to the intersection of the Cove and Perimeter Trails and started looking around. I met a trio of Palmyra regulars, but since the bird was old hat for them, they weren't actively looking for it. Soon I ran into an old friend (the man who taught Shari & me the song of the Field Sparrow, back when we were novice birders) and we, along with another birder, after exchanging phone numbers, spread out and reconvened for a couple of hours, never straying very far from the intersection. 

After more than 3 hours of hunting up and down the same trails, I was getting pretty disgusted. I was thinking that I have to make a decision about next year: either I'm going to drop everything and chase as soon as I hear about a bird or else I'm going to bird the places I like and find what I find and get over my FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), because this year's dilly-dallying diffidence has only led to frustration. And then...

Just as Tom, the birder who originally found the bird, came up the trail, my phone rang and 50 feet away one of the guys said that the birder next to him had just had the bird and we all (there were a few more seekers now) hurried up the trail. Tom stepped up into the woods, said he heard the bird (it makes a high "tseet" call, which is how it was separated from the nearly identical Corderillan Flycatcher) and then found the bird in a tree. Brief moment of panic while I looked and could not see but then it flitted from branch to branch as I checked off the field marks--wing bars, greenish back, tear-shaped eye ring, flicking tail, bang! Pacific-slope Flycatcher.

The bird lived up to its reputation as extremely active, flying onto the path for a second, then into the underbrush on the other side of the path, perching up for a moment, diving down, reappearing, as we all crept along following the directions of Lloyd who was best able to keep his eye on it. I climbed up a small hill next to the path just as the flycatcher flew across again to the west side and miraculously I was able to get pictures of the bird, perched low in the reeds. 

Yes. Brief moment of satisfaction. And then my thoughts turned toward the birds I was missing: Ash-throated Flycatcher at Sandy Hook, Mountain Bluebird in Cape May, White-winged Dove in Point Pleasant which would be a home county bird...birding is like baseball, it is, as Bart Giamatti wrote, "designed to break your heart."

The Beanery 11/21--LeCONTE'S SPARROW

LeCONTE'S SPARROW
Photo: Mike Mandracchia

Cape May has been the place to be the last week or so, particularly the Beanery (or the field across the road from it) which has hosted a couple of very rare sparrows, a "western" flycatcher, and a Wood Stork, along with less rare rarities like Dickcissel and Clay-colored Sparrow. Some birders jump in their car the moment they see the alert for a rarity and they have a better than even chance of finding the bird. Others, less motivated, like me, think, that's a long ride for a bird I might not see and hesitate and the longer you hesitate, the less chance you have of seeing the bird and the less chance you have of seeing the bird the more you hesitate until Mike says let's go to Cape May and I say "what the hey" and Shari isn't working today so she comes too and we three end up in a field shoulder high with vegetation, looking for birds I don't expect to find.

Golden Eagle

After spending about an hour in the field and hearing someone call out one of the rare sparrows which we missed because it flew deep into the undergrowth, I said let's go across the road and at least get the Wood Stork, figuring it's big and we can't miss that. That's when another birder told us it was dead. Gone is one thing; it might come back. Dead really puts a damper on the day. So we continued to circle the field and while we found just about every kind of sparrow you could expect, still we didn't have any luck with the rarities or even the semi-rarities. The best birds, I thought, were the Eastern Meadowlarks that flew above us and landed in a tree.  Or maybe the Golden Eagle we all saw flying over the field which gave us the diagnostic field marks and wasn't just the shape of a hawk flying in the distance, an "if you say so" bird.

But after a walk over in the Beanery proper, we returned to the field for one more circuit, hoping to find a lifer. We spread out, which is never a good idea because if one person spots the bird, it is almost a certainty someone is going to miss it. Almost. Mike was midway in the field, I was a the far end, and Shari a little farther behind me, when another birder called out that she had the bird. We all converged on her spot, pushing away the brush, stumbling on reeds and weeds and of course the bird, which was conveniently perched up for her, had dived down. Mike got a picture (above) and I saw movement and Shari, last to the scene, saw zilch. I wasn't about to count the zipping shape I saw. We continued to looked, hoping the bird would flush. It did, then dove down into what might be called a bush but was really just a collection of sticks. It move a tad to the left, stood on the ground, and I could see it well enough, and long enough, to describe some field marks. Happily, Shari was looking at the same bird and happily, it was a lifer for the three of us, a LeCONTE'S SPARROW, but unhappily, we didn't see it well enough to get the "field guide" looks we always desire. Still, a lifer is a lifer and I don't get that many in NJ. Considering how I was feeling when I was not seeing the bird (ranging from quitting birding for good to suicidal), it turned out to be a good day, especially when you throw in the Barred Owl we heard calling as 10:30 in the morning.

But I can never shake the sense that I'm fighting with Cape May, that it doesn't give up its birds willingly, only grudgingly, and that, all in all, I'd rather be in Ocean County, where the birds really count.

List for The Beanery, including the field across the road:

41 species

Canada Goose  2    Heard

Mute Swan  2

Mourning Dove  5

Killdeer  1    Heard

Great Blue Heron  1

Black Vulture  10

Turkey Vulture  15

Golden Eagle  1

Bald Eagle  3

Red-shouldered Hawk  2

Red-tailed Hawk  1

Barred Owl  1    Heard

Red-bellied Woodpecker  1    Heard

Northern Flicker  1    Heard

Eastern Phoebe  2

Blue Jay  1

American Crow  1    Heard

Fish Crow  1    Heard

Carolina Chickadee  1    Heard

House Wren  2    Exact count

Carolina Wren  2

Gray Catbird  1    Heard

Eastern Bluebird  1    Heard

American Robin  30

House Sparrow  1

House Finch  1

American Goldfinch  1    Heard

Chipping Sparrow  1

Field Sparrow  1

Fox Sparrow  1

Dark-eyed Junco  1

White-throated Sparrow  50

LeCONTE'S SPARROW  1   

Savannah Sparrow  10

Song Sparrow  50

Swamp Sparrow  15

Eastern Towhee  1    Heard

Eastern Meadowlark  6    Flyovers landed in tree very yellow breasts

Red-winged Blackbird  10

Yellow-rumped Warbler  3

Northern Cardinal  1

Waretown Wawa Teardown

I was driving north on Route 9 yesterday in Waretown when I saw a cloud of dust up ahead. As I approached the traffic light at Wells Mills Road, I saw that the cloud was rising from what was the Wawa Market as an orange excavator smashed down repeatedly on its roof tearing big chunks of the building away.

In happier days

Now, this was never my favorite Wawa. It was on an oddly shaped plot, it was hard to get into (a tough left turn off 9) and harder to get out of (an impossible left turn onto Wells Mills) and it was shabby inside, but, it was a Wawa, and if you didn't stop at the one at Barnegat, you had to drive all the way up to Lacey for the next one (like a whole 3 miles).  Because the land it was standing on was small and of an indescribable geometric shape, there is no room to rebuild it as a "Super Wawa" (i.e. "gas station"), so there is one less Wawa in the world.

It's been a bad month for Wawas: my local one in Whiting has been closed down for renovation since Oct 22 (not to reopen until the 22nd of this month), which has meant no end of inconvenience for me and my brother & I fear that with the alterations made to the exterior of the building, plus new lighting it will cease to be a mothing hot spot. The equivalent of a nice patch of birding habitat getting mowed down, except that it really isn't ideal for moths to cling to the surface of a building out in the open--easy pickings for predators, not to mention "hunters." We really won't know until spring what the change means for lepidoptera in Whiting until the spring. Not many winter moths around.

Sandy Hook 11/3--Bell's Vireo

Bell's Vireo

As Shari pointed out as we were leaving Sandy Hook this afternoon, it felt like today was the start of winter birding. It was cold and breezy this morning at B lot at the start of Scott's & Linda's NJA field trip and the first bird I saw was a flyover White-winged Scoter, a winter duck if there ever was one. Brant & Buffleheads were the next waterfowl we saw. Yup, winter.

The group hit a lot of spots, working the edges of parking lots, looking for sparrows and such and not finding very many. Yellow-rumped Warblers, which are honorary sparrows, however, were abundant. The raptor flight was more accommodating with Cooper's Hawk, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Northern Harrier, Red-tailed Hawk, Red-shouldered Hawk, Bald Eagle, Osprey (still), Peregrine Falcon and Merlin all making appearances.

But the bird of the day, most likely the month, and according to Bob Auster, probably the year, was a plain little Bell's Vireo that was found near the lighthouse by another birder who put out the alert. Fortunately, the group was within a few minutes walk of the location when Scott got the message. We all walked over to the Coal Road (a path I didn't even know had a name) and with the help of another birder the whole group got on the bird as it foraged in a cedar tree. I might have been the last one to find it and only because Auster helped by grabbing my skull and manipulating my head like he was positioning a dummy (he was) in a storefront window so I would stop looking too high for the bird. Even better, I somehow managed to get my camera to take a couple of decent shots of the bird, which, as you can see, is not much to look at--a little more interesting than a Warbling Vireo, but not by much. Lucky that we with good birders. Had I, by myself, by chance, come upon this bird, I wouldn't have had a clue as to what it was. It has been seven years since I saw my last Bell's, in Cape May on New Year's Day, and even longer since Shari and I saw a few of them in Arizona. A good look at the beak would have at least told me vireo. After that, I'd be looking up vireos in the field guide and saying "Nah, can't be that."

So despite the relatively slow birding (it was work to get to 50 species), one great bird made the day.

Brant  125

Canada Goose  10    Spermaceti Cove

Wood Duck  8    Flyover

American Black Duck  6    Spermaceti Cove

Surf Scoter  5

White-winged Scoter  1    Flyover B lot

Bufflehead  2    Plum Island

Red-breasted Merganser  5    Spermaceti Cove

Black-bellied Plover  20    Spermaceti Cove

Sanderling  1    Flyby off C  lot

Herring Gull  125

Lesser Black-backed Gull  1    Beach of C lot

Great Black-backed Gull  10

Royal Tern  1    Spermaceti Cove

Red-throated Loon  1    Off C lot

Northern Gannet  8

Double-crested Cormorant  10

Great Blue Heron  1    Spermaceti Cove

Black Vulture  2

Turkey Vulture  20

Osprey  1

Northern Harrier  2

Sharp-shinned Hawk  3

Cooper's Hawk  3

Bald Eagle  1

Red-shouldered Hawk  1    J lot

Red-tailed Hawk  1

Red-bellied Woodpecker  2    Heard

Downy Woodpecker  1    Heard

Northern Flicker  2

Merlin  1

Peregrine Falcon  1

Eastern Phoebe  3

Bell's Vireo  1    Very plain vireo, yellow underparts, one strong wing bar. M.obs. 

Ruby-crowned Kinglet  1

Brown Creeper  1

Carolina Wren  3    Heard

Northern Mockingbird  6

Hermit Thrush  1

American Robin  2

House Finch  4

American Goldfinch  2

Dark-eyed Junco  2

White-crowned Sparrow  1    Plum Island

White-throated Sparrow  5

Savannah Sparrow  1    Proving Grounds

Song Sparrow  2

Palm Warbler  1    Gunnison Lot

Yellow-rumped Warbler  20

Northern Cardinal  1