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| Razorbill on the beach shortly before its demise. |
I then proceeded to work my way north up the park, walking the various short trails that lead to the bay and ocean. The predominant bird of the day was robin. Everywhere I went hundreds were flying overhead, landing in the trees, resting in the bushes. I decided to list them at 150 at each stop, since there were more than 100 and probably not 200 that I was seeing. By late morning I was up at A6 where a boardwalk takes you out the beach. Nothing much there except for a lot of loons, Long-tailed Ducks, and a raft of Black Scoters. But my luck changed when who should drive up the beach but Steve.
He said he had seen a Razorbill on the beach up where he entered and, if I was interested, he'd drive me back up to see it. I was in his vehicle like a shot, and we drove north, past the swimming beaches to just south of the "Dune Buggy" (what a misnomer) entrance, where the alcid was resting, we thought, on the beach. I hadn't brought my camera, but the bird allowed me to get close enough to use my phone to get some photos. It is exceedingly rare to see a Razorbill out of water unless you're at Machias Seal Island in the Bay of Fundy where they nest, but the bird was preening and didn't look in distress. Yet, how would we know? It's not like they howl in pain and anguish. Steve had let a few people know the location of the bird and within an hour, when we were down at the inlet, he'd received a text that someone else had found the bird but...it looked like a gull was attacking it. A little while after that another birder found the site and a dead Razorbill with a gaping gull bite in its neck. I guess it never really had a chance. Grisly as this sounds, had we been a little late getting back to that spot, I wouldn't have been able to count the dead bird. Alive and wild are the rules.
On our way back down to the inlet Steve caught sight of a couple of ducks flying north that were not Long-tails; instead, they turned out to be my coveted White-winged Scoters, so for the 2nd time Steve got me that duck on Island Beach.
Down at the inlet we found the expected birds: eiders, Brant, loons, Long-tails, Red-breasted Mergansers and the one oddity, in a pool at the very back of inlet, a hen Common Merganser. Common Merganser is occasionally reported at Barnegat Inlet but they are mostly misidentifications. However, this really was a Common and new patch bird for me at IBSP.
Tomorrow the day looks like it will be backyard birding for me. Today's list of 33 species is appended below.
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