Barnegat Light SP 2/19--King Eider

"Distant but decent scope views of drake..." is how my eBird description begins for this morning's year bird. I resisted the temptation to add FINALLY. Last month, during the Black Guillemot hysteria, there were numerous reports of a hen King Eider in the inlet. Despite looking carefully multiple days at the flock of eiders that at times were fairly close, I could never find it.  I actually saw the guillemot twice accidentally while trying to the find the oxymoronic hen King. Hen Kings and hen Common Eiders look very much alike and I never saw a convincing bird with the tell-tale "smile."  In disgust I said to the birding gods, "When a drake shows up, let me know."

Channel Marker 6 with Great Cormorants
& Great Black-backed Gull

A drake showed up this weekend and eBird let me know. And let me know over and over as seemingly every birder in Ocean County made the trek out to the end of the jetty to view the bird. This morning I finally had the chance to get to Barnegat Light to try. I wasn't looking forward to climbing up onto the jetty. As I understood it, I would have to walk to the end of the treacherous jetty to the tower to get the view of the distant duck. The seas were choppy and while it was low tide, the wind was still blowing spray up onto the rocks. I climbed up at the ocean's edge, hopped a couple of rocks toward the end until I found one flat enough and big enough to set up my scope and began to scan the scoter flock out by channel marker 6. I was hoping I wouldn't have to move much farther. Maybe I'm getting old (actually, there's no "maybe" about it), but the jetty seemed more uneven with wider gaps than the last time I was on it. Amazingly, within a few minutes, I saw the bird "with black flanks and back, white head with orange shield," as my list description continued. (The head is really very light blue but at the distance I was seeing it "light colored head" would be a better phrase.) There is no mistaking a King Eider as a Common Eider. I saw it for one second? Could I see it for two? Yes. It was bobbing in the water but I found it again in back of a line of scoters. Could I see it for three seconds. Yes again. Up and down in the chop but in the gray light its head and orange shield stood out like a beacon, especially again the flock of very Black Scoters.

I saw it a few more times, but never for an extended look. There was a photographer farther along the jetty. I thought I'd tell him about it, move over two more boulders, than figured it was worth risking my skull or scope so he could get a distant picture, if he even could find it in his lens.

A couple of guys I know were climbing up onto the jetty when I was making my way back from a walk up the beach. They didn't have scopes and try as I might, I couldn't relocate the bird in mine. Another birder I know was coming onto the beach as I was leaving; she did have a scope and she did, I see, find the bird.

I wasn't able to photograph any of the 14 Harlequin Ducks I saw today--the three that were close when I first got there I ignored because I had a goal and by the time I was to take picture they were gone. There were a couple of small groups floating around the old 8th St jetty, but none of them were close enough to get usable picture; plus they dive a lot.

I made more stops on the way off the island. I tried to find the Black-crowned Night-Herons in the roost near High Bar, but was unsuccessful this time. I looked for goldeneyes at Harvey Cedars but didn't find any there; however, as is almost always the case, they were at the end of 24th Street. Finally, a walk around Cedar Bonnet Island was uneventful, though it was good to see a Peregrine Falcon back on the hacking tower.