Great Bay Blvd 4/11--Northern Rough-winged Swallow, Vesper Sparrow

While Shari & I were away over the weekend visiting friends in NY, more new species kept popping up on my alerts. With most of them, it is only a matter of time and neoprene before I add them to the list, but one species was intriguing enough for me to make another trip down to Great Bay Blvd, especially since the bird appeared one day after I'd been there. I went there with little expectations that the bird would hang around, but figured there had to be something interesting to see along a 4 mile stretch of marsh.

At 700 Great Bay Blvd there is an array of environmental testing instruments run by Rutgers, including one wind monitor that is famous for its constant and incessant, every five seconds "beep." Because there are no homes for miles around, it bothers no one except for birders, like me, who stop there because many odd species of sparrows over the years have been found in the sand area in around the fenced off area. The cedars across from it are also one of the Black-crowned Heron roosting sites along the road. 

They were there, and after finding about 10 Song Sparrows, I finally found the sparrow I hoped to see when I spotted one with a bold white eye ring--a Vesper Sparrow, always rare in New Jersey, but not the first one that I've seen in that very spot. There's something about the gravel, pulverized shells, and sparse vegetation there that attracts the sparrows, common and oddball alike. 

Everything else I saw today was more or less what's to be expected there, and I though the Vesper Sparrow would be the only new year bird for the day, but on the drive back up the road, I saw a brown sparrow with a square tail fly across the road--a Northern Rough-winged Swallow. Pretty unusual for that area and I'm surprised to see one of them before I see a Barn Swallow, especially since they like to nest beneath the eaves of the one of the marina buildings. 

30 species
Brant  70
Northern Shoveler  1
Mallard  5
American Black Duck  8
Green-winged Teal  50
Bufflehead  15
Red-breasted Merganser  12
Mourning Dove  3
Black-bellied Plover  6
Greater Yellowlegs  16
Herring Gull  100
Great Black-backed Gull  3
Forster's Tern  25
Common Loon  2
Double-crested Cormorant  17
Great Egret  15
Snowy Egret  12
Black-crowned Night-Heron  8
Osprey  5
Bald Eagle  1
Northern Rough-winged Swallow  1
Tree Swallow  3
Ruby-crowned Kinglet  1
Dark-eyed Junco  1
Vesper Sparrow  1     
Song Sparrow  15
Red-winged Blackbird  25
Boat-tailed Grackle  50
Pine Warbler  1     End of the road
Northern Cardinal  2