Baltimore Avenue, Point Pleasant Beach7/26--Sandwich Tern

Sandwich Terns in the middle and on the piling, along with Royal Tern, Common Terns, etc.

I got a bad case of the "can't stand it-s" today. For the last week or so, Sandwich Terns have been reported up in Pt Pleasant, first at the inlet, and lately, at Baltimore Avenue which overlooks the Manasquan River just before it empties into the inlet itself. I've always wanted to find my first New Jersey (and it follows Ocean County) Sandwich Tern along a beach, like IBSP or Barnegat Light, somewhere I'd naturally be in the summer. But by mid-afternoon today, after more reports kept rolling in, I decided I had to make the long drive up Route 70 to see if I could find these birds--one an adult, the other supposedly a juvenile. 

It took me 45 minutes to get there. I set up my scope and started sorting through the gulls and terns roosting on the abandoned pier. They were far away and there was glare. The Royal Terns were easily recognizable, the Common Terns were too. I saw a couple of birds that looked like small Royal Terns (the tonsure "haircut" is a field mark), but from the distance I wasn't sure if their bills were black or orange. I didn't want to identify a Royal Tern as a Sandwich--size can be hard to judge from a quarter mile away. Finally, one of the terns turned sideways and I could see that its bill was black and that its tip was yellow--the classic "nose dipped in mustard" mark. There were two, though they didn't seem to associate as closely as others had seen. I was satisfied with the one I was absolutely sure of, because you only need one. 

It's been a slow month. This was only my second year-bird of the July, but it was my 375th NJ Bird, and my 327th in the county.