Union Transportation Trail 9/26--Lincoln's Sparrow

The magic pile of junk with 7 species 

Four consecutive days of rain has forced me to become my own weatherman, checking maps to see where the weather might be clear, as least for a few hours. Yesterday, there was a break down in Tuckerton. Today, the rain seemed to be circling around, but not actually falling, in Upper Freehold. I've also had no desire to walk through rain-soaked fields, so the Union Transportation Trail, the Sharon Station Road section, seemed like the obvious choice.  

It can be an interesting walk, as the former railroad bed goes through a few different habitats, including over Assunpink Creek, but I wasn't expecting much. I first walked north and, as I expected, there wasn't much action aside from scaring up a Great Blue Heron from beneath one of the bridges. Walking back south, I stopped to look in the field across from the parking lot, because I was hearing Killdeer. Getting the scope out of the car I found them, and somewhat surprisingly, a few Semipalmated Plovers and Least Sandpipers. Nothing exotic, though, even though this is prime sod farm territory. Walking south, after you emerge from a little allee of trees, the walk can get a little boring with sad-looking cornfields on both sides. Farther south there are equipment sheds and some kind of grain processing silo and a typical farmyard filled with broken down machinery and plain old junk. Along a fence line I found a few Savannah Sparrows, which flew into a pile of pallets just inside the yard. By now, what Scott calls "fool's rain" had started to fall, a mist, hardly perceptible to the eye. I lingered by the pallets and found a couple of Song Sparrows, then another sparrow that didn't look right--at first I thought Field, but the buffy vest and light streaking told me I had my first Lincoln's Sparrow of the year. But the pile wasn't through giving up birds. There was a Field Sparrow hopping around in there, and then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a House Wren jump down into the pile from a little tree next to it. Another sparrow came out of nowhere and I saw that it was my second Clay-colored Sparrow of the last week--and in Monmouth County, they're flagged as rare. And bobbing its tail on the next stick over: a Palm Warbler.

Clay-colored Sparrow

That made five sparrow species, a wren and a warbler all seeking refuge among a stack of busted pallets. 

By now the "fool's rain" had turned into idiot's rain--very perceptible and only and idiot would be standing out in it. Unfortunately, I was at least a half mile from my car. I didn't bring my camera, thinking the weather might turn on me, so I took the photos with my phone, and if you think the photo of the Clay-colored is crappy, you should see the one of the Lincoln's--on a scale of 1 to 5 it rates -0. 

25 species in my 2 mile walk and almost a third of them were found in pile of junk. 

Mourning Dove  7
Semipalmated Plover  11     Muddy field across from parking lot
Killdeer  19
Least Sandpiper  5     Muddy field across from parking lot
Great Blue Heron  1
Turkey Vulture  3
Red-bellied Woodpecker  3
Blue Jay  10
American Crow  4
House Wren  1
Carolina Wren  2
European Starling  100
Gray Catbird  8
Northern Mockingbird  2
House Finch  3
Clay-colored Sparrow  1     
Field Sparrow  1
Savannah Sparrow  3     Buildings
Song Sparrow  2
Lincoln's Sparrow  1
Swamp Sparrow  1
Common Yellowthroat  2
American Redstart  1
Palm Warbler  1
Northern Cardinal  5