Cedar Bonnet Island 5/4--Spotted Sandpiper, White-crowned Sparrow, Northern Waterthrush, Tennessee Warbler

Luckily for me, I (to use a Newarkism of my mother) bunked into a couple of faster, sharper birders than me at Cedar Bonnet Island early this morning, otherwise I doubt I'd have caught sight of the Tennessee Warbler high up in a tree and I certainly wouldn't have heard the Northern Waterthrush at the corner of the two trails. And it took me a while to hear it and it took a longer while for me to hear it twice so I could count it. It is becoming apparent to me that 35 years of listening to the roar of printing presses and the staccato bang bang bang of folding machines is finally taking its toll on my hearing. Of course, I only notice this when I with younger people with better hearing. Most of the time I don't know what I'm missing. 

The two other year birds of the day I found on my own, more or less. The White-crowned Sparrow was in the same spot as where I later heard the waterthrush. I was alone then, and for all I know, the waterthrush was singing then. I was starting to think I wasn't going to find WCSP this year since they seem to have disappeared from their spots at Assunpink and the New Egypt fields. Cedar Bonnet seems like an odd place to find one, but I'll take it. I saw my first Spotted Sandpiper standing with another birder I "bunked into" who said he'd seen them in the area and as we were talking about them we saw one coming toward us with its distinctive flight, its wings never lifting above the horizontal. That's probably the only shorebird I can identify by its flight pattern. Later, I walked down to the shore line of the channel where I flushed three more spotties. Thus, no photos: one skittish warbler, one heard only warbler, one sparrow that flew away before the camera came off my shoulder, 3 flushed sandpipers is how the score stands. 

Gull-billed Tern, Sands Pt, Bay Parkway

I made a stop at Manahawkin but it was already late in the morning and things were slowing down. A stop at suddenly busy Forsythe-Barnegat yielded two county birds at least--Semipalmated Plover and Semipalmated Sandpiper. But the most interesting new county bird today was my final stop at Bay Parkway, normally a winter spot for me, but I was curious if the marsh would have anything in it. The first bird I saw there was a Gull-billed Tern standing on a sand spit looking off into the bay. Gull-billed Tern is not common in that spot; it is the first one I've ever seen there and according to eBird, it is the first one recorded there too. 

The longest list was the first at Cedar Bonnet, thus appended:

44 species

Brant  4     Flyover

Canada Goose  8

Mallard  6

American Black Duck  2

Mourning Dove  8

Clapper Rail  4     heard

Least Sandpiper  50

Spotted Sandpiper  4

Greater Yellowlegs  1

Willet  1

Herring Gull  20

Great Black-backed Gull  2

Forster's Tern  4

Double-crested Cormorant  30

Great Blue Heron  1

Great Egret  3

Snowy Egret  1

Little Blue Heron  1

Glossy Ibis  30

Osprey  2

Peregrine Falcon  1

White-eyed Vireo  1     Heard

American Crow  1

Tree Swallow  2

Carolina Wren  1

European Starling  2

Gray Catbird  15

American Robin  20

House Finch  2

American Goldfinch  2

White-crowned Sparrow  1

White-throated Sparrow  1

Seaside Sparrow  1     Heard

Song Sparrow  8

Baltimore Oriole  2

Red-winged Blackbird  50

Brown-headed Cowbird  1

Boat-tailed Grackle  20

Northern Waterthrush  1     Heard

Tennessee Warbler  1     Greenish plain warbler with eye stripe

Common Yellowthroat  10

Yellow Warbler  5

Northern Cardinal  1

Indigo Bunting  1     Female