Shark River Inlet | Manasquan Inlet 1/11--Purple Sandpiper, Black-headed Gull, etc.

Despite despising winter, I had a decent day birding two inlets. My original plan was to drive up Silver Lake in Belmar and get the Eurasian Wigeon reported there. Eurasian Wigeons are annual rarities up there, but this one was in a more accessible location than the usual spot on the Shark River where you have to find the right angle and stand on one foot and tilt your scope just so to find it. A nice, open lake with no obstructions. And no waterfowl this morning because it is winter and really cold and the lake was frozen. 

Purple Sandpiper

At least the Shark River Inlet was only a couple of blocks north, so I went there hoping for some ducks, or snow buntings, or winter finches. But the new bird for the year was one I wasn't thinking about, Purple Sandpiper. Usually I figure I'll get them at Barnegat Light, where they're ubiquitous in winter, but of course, any old jetty will do and there they were, mixed in with the Sanderlings. I also saw, across the way, a couple of Lesser Black-back Gulls roosting with a large flock of Herring Gulls. Not a rarity by any means, but good to find on my own.

From there I drove down to Lake Como, which, for some reason, had more open water and more waterfowl. I thought maybe the Eurasian Wigeon would have moved down there (it's only about a mile) but I only found, along with the Mallards, Ruddy Ducks, and Hooded Mergansers, two Pied-billed Grebes and a dozen American Coots, as new year birds.  I circumambulated the lake (hi Ellen!) and at found that it is 1.2 miles around. 

Now came the obligatory birding part of the day. Almost all winter I have been avoiding going to the Manasquan Inlet because I generally don't like standing on a jetty in winter winds sea watching. I like to move around, but having moved around, and being only a few miles away, I figured I may as well go down there and try to get the two rarities that I have avoided going to get. 

Black-headed Gull

I pulled into the parking lot of the inlet and looked around not seeing much worth even starting a list for. Along the seawall were Herring Gull, Ring-bill Gull, Ring-bill Gull, Ring Bull, oh, Black-headed Gull! That was easy. And I started a list.

On the first day of the year up at Sandy Hook, one of our group found a young drake King Eider which we all got on and I was happy to get that rarity on the year list so fast. "That bird is dead to me now," I said, with the caveat, "except in Ocean County." An oxymoronic hen King Eider has been an habitué of the inlet for just about as long as the Black-headed Gull but I couldn't find it from that spot. I drove over to another parking lot and eschewing the scope, walked out to the jetty, figuring that if the eider was in the inlet, I wouldn't need more powerful optics than my binoculars. And as soon as I got onto the jetty, I found the duck, across the way. Too far at first for photos, the duck eventually drifted out almost to the end of the jetty and on my side. One could think of the hen King Eider as the Mona Lisa of ducks with its sly grin being a prominent field mark. 

King Eider

Finally, as long as I was in the neighborhood, I drove down to Lake of the Lilies, usually a great waterfowl spot in the winter but again, today, mostly frozen. All I saw were geese and gulls and a few random ducks of little interest. I wasn't even going to make a list until I got back to my car and looked in the short end of the "L" shaped lake and found 24 American Coots swimming in open water. Since I "needed" coots for the county, I relented a made a list. 

American Coots

The temperature was peeking above freezing but I'd "accomplished" enough for one day and headed home, only to find, that, with the thaw, more ice must have melted on Silver Lake because around 1 PM, the Eurasian Wigeon was sighted. Well, the compensation with winter birds is that you get two shots at them--if you miss them in the first 3 months of the year, there's always the 2nd chance at the end.