Ocean County Fairgrounds 2/20--Chipping Sparrow

 The deadness of winter continues. For the last few days I've been driving all over Hell and Gone (another name for Ocean County), looking for the most, supposedly, common of birds to add to my year lists and getting very little bang for my $3.22 gallon gas. True, yesterday at Reed's Road I heard an Eastern Towhee, new for the county, and at the end of the Johnny Allen Cove Trail I espied, distantly, a couple of Lesser Black-backed Gulls, but those weren't the birds I had in mind.  I mean, where are my waxwings? Where are my Snow Buntings? Where are my Fish Crows for crying out loud!

Today was more of the same nothing. I hit a couple of places where there are large expanses of grass surrounded by trees, hoping they would attract something of the above (except Snow Buntings, of course) and the soccer fields and baseball fields were active, but with robins, cowbirds, starlings and the like. 

I rarely go out after lunch, but I saw a report from the Ocean County Fairgrounds, a spot I almost never go to--even when on the rare occasion I visit the Robert J. Miller Airfield across the road. It isn't even a 15 minute drive from here so I drove over and walked on the empty field. Looked like nothing was there at first but at the far end I saw a flock of birds hopping around. Of course, before I could even start for them, they flew up into the trees. Pete used to say any sparrow on the ground that flew up into a tree was a Chipping Sparrow until proven otherwise. But with the flashing white outer tail feathers, these looked like juncos to me. 

However, when the flock came down, and mixed in with the robins, there were a few sparrows that were not gray & white--they were, indeed, Chippies. Chipping Sparrows use to be really rare in winter--I remember a CBC where ours got flagged--but with the warmer weather of late they are just "infrequent." Seems to me not so infrequent that everyone else in the county hasn't already listed them. Still, I was happy to get them on my list. In a few weeks, I know, they'll be all over my backyard, but in dreary February, I want novelty now.