Brig | Motts Creek 2/16--Golden Eagle, Yellow-breasted Chat

I did a loop around Brig with Bob Auster today, who I hadn't, shamefully, seen or birded with since the first day of the year. While the duckage around the refuge was entertaining there was nothing truly outstanding--a trio of Common Mergansers coming closest to rare. We broke the eBird filter with 17 Great Blue Herons, but that's just bookkeeping. Only a Tree Swallow at the Gull Pond was supposedly rare, but they're really not, being hardy birds that can subsist of bayberries when the bugs are not out.

The two most interesting birds came after our circuit of the impoundments. Before Bob arrived this morning, I walked on the Leeds Eco-trail looking for the long-staying, constantly reported, Yellow-breast Chat. Naturally, despite 3 trips up and down the area where it was supposed to be, I didn't find it. After lunch, Bob (who once counted chat as a nemesis bird) & I walked down to the trail, hoping that the warming temperatures would bring it out. We met a photographer on the trail who said she hadn't seen it today. Then, another birder came up the trail and said he'd just seen it about 100 feet farther along. We went back with him but the bird had disappeared into the tangles. Bob & I hung around that area for a few minutes when the photographer came around the bend and waved us back. The chat was back in its usual place. It took a couple of minutes for it to show itself again but we both finally saw it, high in a bare tree, silhouetted against the cloudy sky. The profile was obvious. We saw it for maybe 3 seconds. I didn't a get a picture. If I was a real photographer, I would have insisted that we stay there until I could photograph it, but as the bird has been well-documented, I didn't feel obligated to spend any more time with it. Tick.

Then, instead of a 2nd loop where we'd probably see the same old same old, Bob suggested we got over to Motts Creek to look for the Golden Eagle that has been seen off and on this winter. I thought it a low percentage play, but, on the other hand, it was a no percentage play if I didn't go. I followed Bob over there to the new parking lot and the new boardwalk viewing area which made the birding a lot more pleasant than it had been in the past. First bird we saw was a Northern Harrier. We set up our scopes and after a while Bob said he had a bird out on an Osprey platform (too early for Osprey). It was a big bird, but very distant and the heat shimmer made it look like it was in the midst being beamed down by the Enterprise. Bob said we needed the bird fly in order to identify it.

Now, I'm not a very good hawk watcher. But Bob is; he's spent many hours at hawk watches identifying high flying specks. Instead of frustrating us and just sitting on top of the platform, the bird did fly. And we both got our scopes on it and Bob started ticking off the field marks--slight dihedral in flight, small head, tail length longer than the head, dark overall...Golden Eagle. The i.d. was cinched, for us, when two Bald Eagles came along and started to harass the Golden. We could see the difference in the two species, with the Beagles flying flat and having larger heads. Sometimes you get lucky. My luck was to be with Bob, because on my own that would have just been a raptor "spuh." The two Bald Eagles drifted left, the Golden drifted right, the call the fight a tie, and call it a day for us.

Unfortunately, no photos for the day. So how about this one of a smiling Cayuga Duck, one of about 4 that has been hanging around Meadowedge Park in Barnegat for the last couple of weeks. I stopped off there on the way home. Nothing to report there.

Day List

Snow Goose

Brant

Canada Goose

Mute Swan

Northern Shoveler

American Wigeon

Mallard

American Black Duck

Northern Pintail

Green-winged Teal

Ring-necked Duck

Greater Scaup

Bufflehead

Hooded Merganser

Common Merganser

Red-breasted Merganser

Mourning Dove

Herring Gull

Great Black-backed Gull

Great Blue Heron

Black Vulture

Turkey Vulture

Golden Eagle   Motts Creek

Northern Harrier   Motts Creek

Bald Eagle

Red-tailed Hawk

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Downy Woodpecker

Northern Flicker

Blue Jay

American Crow

Carolina Chickadee

Tufted Titmouse

Tree Swallow

White-breasted Nuthatch

Carolina Wren

Eastern Bluebird

American Robin

House Finch

American Goldfinch

Field Sparrow

White-throated Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Eastern Towhee

Yellow-breasted Chat

Red-winged Blackbird

Boat-tailed Grackle   Motts Creek

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Northern Cardinal