New Egypt | Colliers Mills 2/27--Brown Thrasher, Rusty Blackbird

On an incredibly windy day, Mike & I bounced between Jackson & New Egypt looking for birds brave enough to withstand the 30 mph gusts. We hoped for snipe (or even Pectoral Sandpiper) at Patriots Park in Jackson, where we have seen both before in winter, but had to settle for a nice for bluebirds.  A quick stop at Colliers Mills failed to turn up the Canvasback hen that had been on Turnmill Pond last week. We spent more time on Brynmore Road in New Egypt, coming up with the expected species though the lack of starlings was startling. It wasn't until we thought we were done there that we came up with our first year bird--a Brown Thrasher in some tangles along the road.

Along W. Colliers Mills Road we stopped in at the new Ephraim P. Emson Preserve, which looks promising for warblers in the spring, being mostly hardwood forest, but today all it had for us was an American Kestrel. Across the road, as we were leaving, a large flock of Eastern Meadowlarks flushed and a Northern Harrier hunted the fields

We spent most of our time in the woods at Colliers Mills, trying to stay out of the wind. Sometime in the last week the annual burning of the fields occurred and picking at the charred ground was a mixed flock of robins, blackbirds, and starlings. When we approached the blackbirds and starlings flew to a tree. The robins didn't care. The light on the blackbirds was perfect and one of them was not a Red-winged Blackbird but the much more desirable Rusty Blackbird.

We looked at Prospertown Lake but no Common Mergansers (or any other waterfowl that wasn't a Canada Goose) were on the choppy water. After a quick stop at the New Egypt Wawa, I showed Mike the newest mini hotspot, the Old Zoar Cemetery, which is next to a yard with feeders. The owner of the feeders made the mistake of listing Pileated Woodpecker during the Great Backyard Bird Count and now a few of us Ocean County birders have been visiting the cemetery hoping to find one at her suet. No luck yet. If Pileated Woodpecker hadn't been reported in other spots of New Egypt, I wouldn't have taken the report seriously, since the GBBC is notorious for misidentifications.

Another sweep of the New Egypt fields turned up nothing new save a Common Raven, which, I was happy to see, no longer is flagged as "rare" in the county, so no rote description of "large croaking corvid with wedge-shaped tail" is required any longer on the eBird list.

By that time we had been out in the wind for over 5 hours and the birds, being smarter than birders, were all hunkered down and out of sight so windblown but satisfied with a few cool birds, we packed it in for the day. 39 species in all:

Mallard  4

American Black Duck  2

Ring-necked Duck  3

Bufflehead  4

Rock Pigeon  25

Mourning Dove  10

Killdeer  9

Herring Gull  130

Black Vulture  5

Turkey Vulture  18

Northern Harrier  1

Red-tailed Hawk  2

Red-bellied Woodpecker  7

Downy Woodpecker  3

Hairy Woodpecker  1

American Kestrel  1

Blue Jay  10

American Crow  4

Common Raven  1

Carolina Chickadee  6

White-breasted Nuthatch  3

Carolina Wren  3

European Starling  79

Brown Thrasher  1

Northern Mockingbird  1

Eastern Bluebird  10

American Robin  26

House Sparrow  2

Chipping Sparrow  1

Dark-eyed Junco  39

White-throated Sparrow  12

Song Sparrow  7

Eastern Meadowlark  15

Red-winged Blackbird  16

Brown-headed Cowbird  7

Rusty Blackbird  1

Common Grackle  15

Northern Cardinal  9