My best look ever at a Pileated Woodpecker and me without a camera.
I was up at Etra Lake early this morning, once again sorting through the thousand geese on the lake looking for a Greater White-fronted Goose. I've been looking for one all this winter, there and at Conine's Millpond in Allentown. Couldn't end the year with one, can't start the year with one.
So, after looking at every goose, twice, I started my walk around the park. There is a peninsula where you can get a closer look at the waterfowl and I scanned with binoculars from there. Figuring my chances of getting a photo of the goose were not good if it was going to be far out on the lake, I didn't bother carrying my camera--it's just another winter nuisance that slips off my shoulder and is hard to manipulate with gloves on.
Walking back to the trail I heard a loud WOOK that I first thought was a robin but immediately dismissed and before I could run through any more possibilities, saw this huge Pileated Woodpecker fly down from one tree and land on another close by, giving me great unobstructed views. So many times that I've seen Pileated it has been partially blocked by the branches, or only half the bird was showing from behind a trunk. Not today. And me without a camera. I took a couple of shots with my phone; they are bad. Blown up, photoshopped, cropped, they show a woodpecker shape. Still, a real surprise and one of the joys of birding, finding what you don't expect.
Assunpink isn't far away; I was confident I could add at least one rare bird for the day there. I parked by the lake was unpleasantly surprised to see it almost duckless. Then I saw a hunter pulling in his string of decoys and knew why. Still, they don't hunt what I was looking for, at least not in NJ. I walked the road that follows the lake stopping into the off shoots that go down to the lake shore. There actually were a decent number of Ruddy Ducks there in the narrow part of the lake, 3 Lesser Scaup and a Common Merganser. I came upon a duck hunter and he started to talk. He asked what I was looking for and when I said swans, he pointed to the Mute Swans floating by, but I told him I was looking for rarer ones. "Gray?" he asked.
"One of them is."
He pointed to the east end of the lake and said he'd seen a gray one there. That's the immature Trumpeter Swan that's been with the two adults. I saw that he'd shot a Ruddy Duck. It looked even smaller dead than they do alive. I asked how they tasted but he wasn't sure. In fact, he asked me what kind of duck it was. I have nothing against hunting but I think you should at least know what you're killing.
I continued along the road flushing huge numbers of sparrows--Field, Song, White-throated. Finally, at the extreme east end of the lake I found the Trumpeters. Pretty neat, they being probably the only 3 in the state. And I'm glad they were there, because I didn't feel like driving around to Stone Tavern Lake where they sometimes are.
In birding, you can either wander around and see what's there, or you can be goal oriented. I usually prefer the former, but today at least I achieved one of my goals and wandering around also had its rewards.
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