Island Beach SP 2/24--Swainson's Thrush, Purple Finch, Lincoln's Sparrow

I heard someone say today, "Timing is everything," and truer words have never been spoken. At Island Beach today a propitious alignment of good migration weather and great birders yielded 3 year birds, 7 county birds, and a long list of 78 species, heavy on the warblers, which is what you're hoping for as you walk the bayside trails.  We started Scott's & Linda's trip at the migrant trap of Reed's Road and, as it does every so often, it lived up to its reputation. I know that by myself I probably would have missed a third of the birds we saw there because my head doesn't swivel like a ventriloquist's dummy and the Cape May Warblers, Black-throated Blue Warblers, sapsuckers, flickers, et al, were in every direction.  I finally was able to see this year, thanks to Linda, a Swainson's Thrush. This is one of those 'second chance' birds that I hope to find in the fall if I miss them, as I usually do, in the spring. Then, Scott called our attention to the call of a Purple Finch, which sounded like it was coming from behind me--I'm certain I would have not recognized the distinctive tick of this finch had it not been pointed out to me. Sort of like Bobolinks, which are almost always called out to me by someone else--it is a sound I'm hearing but not registering. 

An interesting spot is the so-called maintenance yard, across the street from the park HQ--it is really a dump for broken down machinery and such, but with its overgrown weeds it can be a good sparrow spot and today it had the first of three Lincoln's Sparrows that we saw as we made our way down the park. 

Spizzle Creek was fairly active with herons, especially Little Blue Herons, both white immatures and lustrous blue adults, and one young Tricolored Heron posed for the group. This was the only picture I was able to take today--one disadvantage of birding in groups is that someone's shoulder or head is always in the way, especially for the birds I really wanted pictures of, like the Swainson's and Lincoln's, which were on the ground. 

Tricolored Heron, Spizzle Creek

Speaking of the ground, for me the most entertaining birds of the day were the three "walking warblers" we saw--an Ovenbird in the morning on Reed's Road, and then, in response to a text from Steve, the two Northern Waterthrushes and a Connecticut Warbler that we saw there when we returned in the late afternoon. While the Connecticut wasn't a year bird for me, it was a county year bird, and today for the first time in a couple of months, I was concentrating on building up my Ocean list. Not many shorebirds on the list, but one of them, the wheedle song of an American Golden-Plover at Spizzle, was a new one for the county this year. And it didn't cost me a traffic ticket to hear it. 

American Black Duck  3     Spizzle Flyover
Mourning Dove  2
Yellow-billed Cuckoo 1
American Golden-Plover 1     
Killdeer  2     Lot 1
Sanderling  10
Laughing Gull  10
Herring Gull  15
Great Black-backed Gull  10
Caspian Tern  1
Common Tern  2
Royal Tern  1
Double-crested Cormorant  70
Brown Pelican  6
Great Blue Heron  6
Great Egret  9
Snowy Egret  2
Little Blue Heron  6
Tricolored Heron  1
Turkey Vulture  5
Osprey  7
Cooper's Hawk  1
Bald Eagle  3
Belted Kingfisher  2
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker  5
Downy Woodpecker  2
Northern Flicker  20
Merlin  4
Eastern Wood-Pewee  1
Eastern Phoebe  3
Philadelphia Vireo  1     Dump
Red-eyed Vireo  1
Blue Jay  2
Carolina Chickadee  3
Tree Swallow  100
Ruby-crowned Kinglet  1
Red-breasted Nuthatch  8     
House Wren  1
Carolina Wren  3
European Starling  15
Gray Catbird  10
Brown Thrasher  2
Northern Mockingbird  2
Veery  1     Heard Kayak access
Swainson's Thrush  1     Reed’s
American Robin  1
Cedar Waxwing  50
House Sparrow  5
House Finch 2
Purple Finch  1     Reed’s
American Goldfinch  4
Dark-eyed Junco  1     Early on Spizzle
White-throated Sparrow  2
Song Sparrow  4
Lincoln's Sparrow  3     Dump Kayak Access & Spizzle
Swamp Sparrow  2
Eastern Towhee  2
Baltimore Oriole  1
Red-winged Blackbird  7
Boat-tailed Grackle  4
Ovenbird  1     Reed’s
Northern Waterthrush  2
Black-and-white Warbler  2
Connecticut Warbler  1     Drab with eye ring. Reed’s
Common Yellowthroat  1
American Redstart  4
Cape May Warbler  4
Northern Parula  5
Yellow Warbler  1
Blackpoll Warbler  1
Black-throated Blue Warbler  2
Palm Warbler  1
Pine Warbler  2
Yellow-rumped Warbler  1
Scarlet Tanager  1
Northern Cardinal  1
Rose-breasted Grosbeak  3
Indigo Bunting  2     Female Reed’s