Great Bay Blvd 3/25--Marsh Wren

American Oystercatcher

There is a subset of bird listing obsessions that I don't pay all the much attention to: Patch birding lists. It's one thing to worry about what county you're seeing a bird in--where in that county the bird is gets a little too finicky for me most of the time. But it's easy to build patch lists on eBird (they encourage this kind of crackbrained listing to get more records). I keep a patch list on Whitesbog mostly because it is bifurcated, half in Ocean and half in Burlington. But I don't care if I've seen bird X on the Ocean side of the line or the Burlington. 

Today though, down on Great Bay Blvd I saw two weird birds for the area and it occurred to me that, while neither was new for the year or even the county, I had never seen them along that 4 mile stretch of road and I have now seen, according to eBird, 185 species there, which is a lot of species. Which only proves I go there a lot. 

First, while I was looking around the north end of the second wooden bridge which was full of robins, juncos and Song Sparrows migrating one way or the other, I saw a bird fly into a dead tree. First thought was a flicker but instead it turned out to be a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, totally out of place for the habitat, but there was no mistaking it and no photographing it either as it flew away before I could get the camera off my shoulder. Then, coming back from the beach at the end of the road, I flushed a Wilson's Snipe. The tide was high in the mash next to the road, so the snipe may have been a little higher up than usual. Of course, since it was a snipe, it vanished instantly.  Never saw one of those there either. 

But the only new bird for the year is the only bird I had to list as a "heard only," a Marsh Wren in the reeds on the section between the two wooden bridges. I heard its distinctive burbling sound but couldn't find it. 

Merlin

The most impressive bird I saw today was after I had given up trying to refind the sapsucker. I looked up into a little tree and there, roosting, was a Merlin. With all the sparrows there I'm surprised it was just roosting. Or maybe it was digesting. 

Waterfowl are moving out. Where a few weeks ago I might see a couple hundred Greater Scaup, today I saw two hens. The hundreds of Brant have been reduced to around 60. Aside from 9 oystercathers and 2 Greater Yellowlegs (and the snipe), shorebirds have not returned to the flats yet, though, for a good part of the morning, the flats were underwater, but even at low tide, back on the beach, only the oystercatchers were active. 

Dark-eyed Juncos with Chipping Sparrow in lower right corner

The juncos were in impressive numbers. I put down 75, could have been twice that but they're hard to count when you're moving them along either in your car or just walking. The same with the robins. I did spend some time looking at each Song Sparrow to try to make it something a little more interesting, but the best I came up with was a Chipping Sparrow. 

In all I had 31 species in the 4 hours I spent there. 

Brant  60

Canada Goose  7

Mute Swan  2

American Black Duck  25

Greater Scaup  2

Bufflehead  40

Red-breasted Merganser  10

Mourning Dove  4

American Oystercatcher  9

Wilson's Snipe  1    

Greater Yellowlegs  2

Herring Gull  75

Great Black-backed Gull  15

Common Loon  1

Great Blue Heron  5

Great Egret  3

Osprey  2

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker  1    

Merlin  1    

Eastern Phoebe  8    

American Crow  2

Fish Crow  3

Marsh Wren  1    

Carolina Wren  1     700 GBB

American Robin  75

Chipping Sparrow  1     700 GBB

Dark-eyed Junco  75

Song Sparrow  25

Red-winged Blackbird  100

Boat-tailed Grackle  50

Northern Cardinal  3