Great Bay Blvd 3/7--American Oystercatcher

Digiscoped

I subscribe to the eBird alert " Year Needs--Ocean." For the majority of the birds featured in those alerts, I know that eventually I'll come across them (although, I'm starting to have my doubts about Wild Turkey, normally a backyard bird that I haven't seen in months). But sometimes impatience pushes the "eventually" to "today." Thus, after a week of American Oystercatcher reports from several locales, I headed down to Great Bay Blvd in Tuckerton where I was pretty certain I'd be able to spot a few on the usual mud bank. Gusty winds of 35mph didn't dissuade me from plunking down my scope and scanning east, but all I could see between the shaking scope and heat shimmer were apparitions that I thought might be oystercatchers. So, I walked through the mud until it was just a little deeper and slicker than where a reasonable person would stand, searched around for those shapes and there they were, 9 oystercatchers standing into the wind.

Almost as soon as I ticked those birds, my phone started pinging with alerts for Laughing Gull. I like oystercatchers and they're worth seeing any day but Laughing Gull I am definitely going to wait until I stumble across one or a flock. 

My Eastern Phoebe sighting Saturday was just the first of a slew of phoebe reports the last few days and I found two in the cedars south of the 2nd wooden bridge while I was walking the road. There are certainly insects for them to eat as the warm weather the last couple of days seems to have caused a hatch. At an earlier stop this morning at Stafford Forge the air was thick with gnats; I was swatting them away from my face like it was July. I could have used some swallows to thin the herd. 

The list is a little sparse; any right-thinking bird would have been hunkered down today.

17 species
Canada Goose  3
American Black Duck  12
Bufflehead  9
Red-breasted Merganser  21
American Oystercatcher  9
Herring Gull  20
Great Black-backed Gull  3
Double-crested Cormorant  1
Bald Eagle  1
Peregrine Falcon  1
Eastern Phoebe  2     
American Robin  4
Dark-eyed Junco  2
Song Sparrow  10
Red-winged Blackbird  2
Boat-tailed Grackle  50
Yellow-rumped Warbler  3