Meadowedge Park 4/20--Cattle Egret

To continue the analogy from the last post, today I went shopping for birds at the local specialty stores. I started the morning at Colliers Mills, hoping for new warbler, especially the Prothonotary that Greg found yesterday. I was successful with only Ovenbird, new for the county. Then, after walking my 4 miles at Colliers Mills and tracking down the Red-headed Woodpecker in its usual spot, I drove down to Great Bay Blvd, where I was hoping to add some more county birds, but really wanting a Yellow-crowned Night-Heron. I could have left after my first stop at the bulwark where I got Willet and Seaside Sparrow for the county. Despite assiduous searching, I was unable to come up with the Yellow-crowned, though I did manage to find 4 Black-crowned Night-Herons, one of which was immature. I took a loooong look at in the scope, but was unable to convince myself it was a Yellow-crowned. 

Not that I was experiencing a dearth of birds...I had 35 species at Colliers Mills and 36 along Great Bay, but nothing new & exciting. Just before I left Tuckerton, I stopped and looked at the eBird email alerts and saw that a Cattle Egret was reported in Ocean County. My first instinct was to dismiss since there was a Cattle Egret at Brig over the weekend and inexperienced eBirders often choose an Ocean County Forsythe site instead of the correct one, but actually reading the alert I saw that the bird was in Meadowedge Park in Barnegat. Oddly, or not, a number of  years ago a Cattle Egret also spent a day or so in that little pocket park. 

The listing was recent and Barnegat was only about 15 miles away up Route 9 so, I powered up there, amazingly only hitting one red light the entire drive. No one else was in the parking lot when I arrived and neither was the bird. But, looking into the adjacent backyard, I saw it wandering around the lawn. I took some pretty good photos, looked around the park and watched a flock of Glossy Ibis land in the muddy area. No White-faced Ibis among them and then took off after only a few minutes. Going back to my car, I looked for the egret and didn't see it on the lawn anymore. Gone already, I thought, until I saw that it was standing and preening on  the homeowner's car. Nice hood ornament. 

Cattle Egret is a tough bird for New Jersey, never mind Ocean County. The invasion from the sixties seems to have not been as successful as it was once thought it might be, so I was very happy to get this bird as a walk up.