Jumping Brook Preserve 4/7--Sandhill Crane

On a day so dreary and thick with mist that it felt like walking in an aquarium, I drove out to New Egypt to look around before the really bad weather hit. I figured I'd worked Colliers Mills to avian exhaustion of late, so instead I started at the longhorn farm on Brynmore Road. I thought perhaps with all the recent rain, the muddy fields might have an early, interesting sandpiper, but they had only the usual flocks of blackbirds, starlings, and, of course, cowbirds, along with, by my count, 42 Black Vultures, mostly standing like sentries among the cattle. 

My next idea was to go over to Jumping Brook Preserve, only 5 minutes away, but little known and thus, underbirded. This is probably because it is hard to find, accessible by an easement that runs along the lawn of a large house, and the easement sign is barely visible in the bushes. Jumping Brook is on Cranberry Canners Road, which, as the name indicates, used to have a cranberry cannery, the ruins of which are across from the easement. There is a sign at the Emson Preserve detailing the history of the canned cranberry which was, like many inventions (the telephone, calculus) hit upon almost simultaneously, the New Jersey woman developing her recipe at more or less the same time as a man in Massachusetts did. Eventually, this all became Ocean Spray. Her, as the signs says, "extensive holdings" from what I can garner, included the abandoned bogs now called Jumping Brook, which is hard up against the boundary of Ft. Dix, though around here, what isn't hard up the boundary of Joint Base MDL? 

The property has an on again off again history of maintenance--I've been there when the beavers have made the trails almost impassable--but right now the NJCF seems to be doing a good job of keeping the trails around the bogs mowed. I even noticed, today, that some of the dams along the drained bogs toward the back are walkable. Those drained bogs were my target, with sandpipers in mind again, and while I didn't find anything new, I did find at least 5 Wilson's Snipe flying around along with a Killdeer and a Greater Yellowlegs. I was hoping for Blue-winged Teal but didn't come up with any--the only waterfowl being geese, Mallards, and Wood Ducks. There's often a large contingent of Ring-necked Ducks in a back reservoir, but they seem to have left. 

But the most notable sight came when I was three-quarters of the way around the "main" bogs. I saw a huge bird flying toward me and knew immediately by size and flight style that it wasn't a Great Blue Heron. Putting up my binoculars I was able to follow its flight for enough time to note it's overall gray color and long, extended neck with a relatively small head, all of which builds a Sandhill Crane. That makes up for the one I missed last month at Whitesbog, which was also flying toward Ft. Dix, so, note to Joint Base birders (and there are a lot of them), there are cranes somewhere near you. 

Of course, Sandhill Crane is flagged as "rare", but it is also flagged "infrequent." Gone are the days when they were somewhat easy to find in the corn stubble next to the longhorn fields. They seem to hopscotch between the counties, sometimes showing up at the Pemberton MUA fields, sometimes reported flying over New Egypt. Their mysterious disappearance may be because they are in a restricted access area. 

I got out of there just before the weather went from drizzle to big fat raindrops.

22 species
Canada Goose  4
Wood Duck  4
Mallard  5
Sandhill Crane  1     
Killdeer  1
Wilson's Snipe  5
Greater Yellowlegs  1
Black Vulture  1
Red-bellied Woodpecker  1
Northern Flicker  1
Eastern Phoebe  2
Blue Jay  3
Carolina Chickadee  1
Tree Swallow  50
White-breasted Nuthatch  1
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher  1
White-throated Sparrow  2
Song Sparrow  3
Red-winged Blackbird  15
Common Grackle  1
Yellow-rumped Warbler  1
Northern Cardinal  1     

🠜Chimney of old cannery.

I think Black Vultures nest there.