Great Bay Blvd 4/14--Barn Swallow

It should not have taken this long or been this difficult to find a Barn Swallow this year but after a couple of weeks of not just running into one, I actively went looking for them yesterday.  I know that they nest under the building at the marina just before the first wooden bridge on Great Bay Blvd, or at least they have in all the previous years I've been down there, but of course, not yesterday when I stopped there. Too early? 

Then I remembered I had a fallback option at the inlet itself. I walked up to the boundary with the Rutgers facility in the old coast guard station and finally saw two Barn Swallows flying around the building. They didn't look like they were landing anywhere there so maybe it is still too early for them, but at least I saw a couple.

Tree Swallow investigating nest hole

It is not too early, however, for Tree Swallows. I was delighted to see them investigating the two holes in pilings at the launches just before the 2nd wooden bridge. I just like that the swallows are using semi-natural holes (they used to be trees) instead of boxes put out for them. 

I was also hoping to find a Yellow-crowned Night-Heron along the road but failed there too. I wasn't finding any Black-crowned Night-Herons either at the cedar grove by the wooden bridge until a fisherman walking back from the marsh flushed a half dozen of them when he passed by. "Thank you," I said to him. He was a little perplexed but amiably said "No problem." 

It's like when guys running dogs through the fields at Colliers Mills ask me if it's all right or will the dogs bother me. "No, go ahead," I say, "Maybe it'll flush a bird...ethically I can't do that but the dog is okay." 

Still a lot of birds I should have by now for the county that I thought might be along the road but weren't. I can either be frustrated or just consider them pocket birds because I know I'll eventually stumble into them.

28 species for the road.

Brant  60

Canada Goose  3

Mallard  4

Red-breasted Merganser  9

Mourning Dove  1

American Oystercatcher  5

Black-bellied Plover  50

Dunlin  300

Greater Yellowlegs  4

Herring Gull  100

Great Black-backed Gull  1

Forster's Tern  12

Common Loon  1

Double-crested Cormorant  90

Great Blue Heron  1

Great Egret  16

Snowy Egret  10

Tricolored Heron  1

Black-crowned Night-Heron  6

Osprey  12

Northern Harrier  1

Bald Eagle  2

Fish Crow  3

Tree Swallow  8

Barn Swallow  2

Song Sparrow  6

Red-winged Blackbird  100

Boat-tailed Grackle  150

Boat-tailed Grackle