Barnegat Municipal Dock 3/20--Laughing Gull

I had the Year Bird Jones today. Yesterday, I spent my birding time at Colliers Mills looking, for probably the 15th time this year, for Red-headed Woodpecker. The absence of a post here about that species tells you the result. Today, I figured I may as well look at my other supposedly reliable spot, South Park Road in Tabernacle. This is usually a good place for Red-headed Woodpeckers; I believe I have a higher "hit rate" for them there than I do at Colliers Mills, but a back forth walk of 1.9 miles on the gravel and dirt road turned up none of the birds today. Plenty of other birds, including the first Wood Ducks I've ever seen there and a Pine Warbler every 100 feet, but the target bird remains elusive. 

And I still wanted a year bird.  So, I did something I rarely do. Usually, after a long walk, I'm pretty much done birding. As I've said, I bird every day, but I don't bird all day. And I'm especially averse to taking a long drive from one spot to the other but that's what I did this morning, driving 28 miles from South Park Road up 70, across 72, down Bay Avenue, to the Barnegat Municipal Dock parking lot. Because that parking lot is always full of gulls and I figured it would be the obvious spot for Laughing Gull, despite my earlier vow to just let that bird come to me. 

When I got there, it was full of gulls, but just Herring and Ring-bill Gulls, it seemed. Then a few gulls shuffled about and revealed my FOY Laughing Gull. A couple of minutes later a second one appeared at another spot in the lot and was quickly joined by a third. And there, along with decent pictures, is my accomplishment of the day. 

A quick scan of the bay turned up a pair of Horned Grebes and then a couple of American Oystercatchers on an island, both flagged as "Infrequent" on eBird. The "Infrequent" designation is a little mysterious. It could just be that the area isn't birded as much as it might be and thus the reports are sparse, or it really could be that the species doesn't turn up there much. For the most part when I encounter this flag, I assume the former. 

A couple of more stops on the way back home turned up semi-interesting birds: Greater Yellowlegs off the observation platform at the Barnegat Impoundments (hadn't seen them this month) and a Pied-billed Grebe in a channel along Bay Parkway in Waretown (again, "Infrequent," and maybe so, because it is the first time I've seen one there).