Island Beach SP 5/17--Brown Pelican, Common Tern, Bay-breasted Warbler

It's hard to think of more disparate year birds--the flying boat of the Brown Pelican and the little jewel of the Bay-breasted Warbler with a middling Common Tern thrown in, but that's what makes birding so great--they come in all shapes and sizes. (On the other hand, the shrew and the elephant are both mammals, yet I wouldn't be particularly interested in seeing them both in the same day.) 

I started off on Reed's Road, that warbler trap, on Island Beach early this morning--the vagaries of admission let me in well before 8 AM. I ran into a birder who asked me about a bird he'd just seen that he'd hoped was a Red-eyed Vireo. Having just seen one, I said yeah, probably. Turns out he was a new birder and it was a lifer for him. Now I wasn't so blasé about the bird and we quickly refound it. He also had a Blackpoll Warbler in the oak tree near us, and that was a lifer for him. Later, we saw a yellow and black warbler fluttering in the oak tree and identified it as an American Redstart. He looked puzzled until I explained that the  females and young birds were yellow. I didn't even go into the Yellowstart  spiel, out of pity for a new birder, but that was his third lifer for the morning. How I envied him. I have to make a real effort to get a lifer nowadays. 

I was soon joined by Steve and we continued into the bowl where, if I'd had my eBird tracking on, our wanderings would have made a meander look like a straight line. Plenty of warblers in there, just nothing new. And we, at this point in the year, want new. 

It wasn't until we were almost at the end of the trail that we both finally got a new warbler for the year, the aforementioned Bay-breasted Warbler. We were trying to track down a singing bird that neither of us could identify when I spotted the warbler high up in a tree. Playing its song we definitely eliminated it as the invisible singer. 

After that we went our separate ways. I wanted to walk along the beach at the south end of the park. If I was lucky (and I was) I'd get my first Brown Pelican for the year. There really wasn't much of anything along the mile walk to the jetty, but there was one pelican I spotted, naked eye. They're big. A couple of Common Terns cruising the breakers completed my day. Kind of late in the year to be getting your first Common Tern but that's birding for you. 

11 species of warblers. 50 species altogether. 

Mute Swan
Mallard
Mourning Dove
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
American Oystercatcher
Willet
Laughing Gull
Herring Gull
Great Black-backed Gull
Common Tern
Forster's Tern
Double-crested Cormorant
Brown Pelican
Great Egret
Glossy Ibis
Osprey
Red-tailed Hawk
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Great Crested Flycatcher
White-eyed Vireo
Red-eyed Vireo
Fish Crow
Carolina Chickadee
Red-breasted Nuthatch
House Wren
Carolina Wren
Gray Catbird
Veery
American Robin
American Goldfinch
Chipping Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Eastern Towhee
Baltimore Oriole
Red-winged Blackbird
Common Grackle
Ovenbird
Black-and-white Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
American Redstart
Northern Parula
Magnolia Warbler
Bay-breasted Warbler
Yellow Warbler
Blackpoll Warbler
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Black-throated Green Warbler
Scarlet Tanager
Northern Cardinal
Rose-breasted Grosbeak