Great Bay Blvd 4/7--Caspian Tern, Black-crowned Night-Heron

Caspian Terns

Usually, I start my trip at Great Bay Blvd at the bulwark just over the first bridge, but a few years ago, a couple of good birders I know showed me a place along the alley of cedars that you drive through before the road opens up into marsh. Last time I was there, in March with Mike, we stopped there and found large flocks of shovelers and Green-winged Teal, so this morning I made that my first stop, reasoning that I'd be too tired to hit it on the drive out. The flocks of teal and shovelers were still there, along with black ducks, but the semi-surprise was the two Caspian Terns sitting on a sandbar. I write "semi-surprise" because, 1) it's early for these big terns around here but 2) this is the spot where they were a few years ago when I was first shown the spot--the reason we were looking in there on much the same kind of day, cool, blustery, and overcast. I took a few digiscope doc shots. Happily, aside from a little preening, the terns didn't move the entire time I was there.

Would that I could say as much about the next new species for the year. If you walk along the cedars that bracket most of the bridges along Great Bay, you're almost guaranteed to flush a Black-crowned Night-Heron or twenty. Today, at the 2nd bridge I flushed 3, and then at what is the usually the most populated grove, 15 or 20 more came flying out of the trees as I walked along. None of them were in a roosting mood, or even, it appears, in a landing mood. They just kept flying around, coming back to the cedars for a moment, then taking off again, squawking the entire time. 

Black-crowned Night-Herons

During the last few years, I'd have night-heron by now, because there was a great roost of them all winter on LBI. Unfortunately, that roost is gone, because someone (more likely, some agency) cut a path into the woods there and made a clearing. It seems the birds didn't take to the disturbance. 

I was actually hoping for a couple of birds that I didn't find today--Clapper Rail and/or Tricolored Heron. I missed Tricolored Heron at Cattus Island yesterday, which, this time of year, is almost impossible. Ah well, gotta leave something interesting for the next trip. 

For the day, 32 species. 

Brant  38
Canada Goose  2
Mute Swan  1
Northern Shoveler  50
Mallard  2
American Black Duck  85     85+
Green-winged Teal  25
Black Scoter  1
Bufflehead  75
Red-breasted Merganser  11
Mourning Dove  1
Black-bellied Plover  21
Killdeer  1
Dunlin  130
Greater Yellowlegs  13
Herring Gull  150
Great Black-backed Gull  25
Caspian Tern  2     
Forster's Tern  14
Common Loon  1
Double-crested Cormorant  7
Great Blue Heron  2
Great Egret  24
Snowy Egret  32
Black-crowned Night-Heron  20    
Osprey  6
Northern Harrier  1
Bald Eagle  1
Merlin  1
American/Fish Crow  2
Song Sparrow  13
Red-winged Blackbird  50
Boat-tailed Grackle  45