PPA HQ 6/17--Dickcissel

Dickcissel, PPA HQ

To amuse myself I sought--and found--three different kinds of rarities in Burlco today. The first one is what I'd consider a rarity in the pure sense, a bird that doesn't show up much in these parts (NJ). The Dickcissel is mostly a mid-western grasslands birds. There are many grasslands extant in NJ anymore, but Burlington County has some patches and today at the Pinelands Preservation Alliance Headquarters (PPA HQ) three of as many 6 reported Dickcissels were present. I arrived early and started walking around the deer fence enclosing the fields. I heard the characteristic "dik dik sssssssssss" and was thinking I might have to be satisfied with that when one flew in, and, as advertised, alighted on the fence and continued singing. In the sunlight it was just gorgeous. Then I saw another a little farther down the fence line and finally, walking on the other side of the field I heard another one singing that managed to stay unsighted. Pretty good for me who has never encountered more than one at a time. I have an extra-avian fondness for Dickcissels because on the same day that Shari & I first viewed the house we live in we also made a trip up to Negri-Nepote and got our life Dickcissel there, so the bird is always connected with that life change from Brooklyn to NJ in my memory. 

Red-headed Woodpecker, 
South Park Rd

My second stop was South Park Road in Tabernacle. There I found a Red-headed Woodpecker, which to my mind is not so much rare as "localized." I can think of 3 or 4 places off-hand in the county where you can find the bird--the habitat they like is surprisingly sparse in the county--but Burlington is a big place (the largest county by area in the state) and those areas where the woodpeckers are found are relatively small and three of them fairly close to each other. So it is rare only in the sense that there just aren't a lot of them in Burlington County

The third so-called rarity is a "seasonal" example. At Whitesbog, ever since the end of May, there has been a drake Bufflehead in the Middle Bog. In the winter you wouldn't look twice at this bird. Obviously, he should be long gone and north of here yet here he is mid-June and seeming pretty comfortable. I've been watching the bird for a couple of weeks now (I'm at Whitesbog two or three times a week lately) and at first there was speculation that the bird was ill or injured as it seem to spend a lot of time preening itself or just sitting atop the water with its head tucked in. But today it was actively diving. There's plenty of pickerel in the bog but it may also be eating the vegetation at the bottom along with worms, snails and other invertebrates. So it won't starve. I'm interested to see how long it stay and if it will still be there in August when, I hope, the bog will be drawn down. I don't know if it can fly, so it may have to waddle over to Union Pond. 

Bufflehead, Whitesbog