Cedar Bonnet Island 10/5--Bobolinks

Bobolinks

I hadn't even heard a "plink" all year. That's usually how I get my first Bobolink of the year, standing in a bog with the Burlco Boys when one of them calls my attention to the call of a Bobolink speeding by overhead.  I was thinking that this morning, walking around Cedar Bonnet Island, which, through most of September had reports of Bobolink, yet the couple of times I was there, I never saw or even heard one. I figured my chances for that bird this year had pretty much gone by now. Which is the recipe for finding the bird: You must truly give up. 

I didn't expect warblers this morning--it's getting late in migration and the number of birds crossing Ocean County last night, according to BirdCast, was ridiculously low. I got there just at dawn and not much was moving around in the trees. The center of the island has been replanted with native grasses and trees, and this is usually a good place to look for sparrows--which were in abundance, but only Song & Savannah. Then, sitting in some bare trees, illuminated by the harsh, rising sun, I saw some sparrowish  that I didn't recognize.  They were extraordinarily yellow, which I at first thought was due to the sunlight, but soon saw that was their coloration, perhaps accentuated by the yellow orb behind me. But I couldn't figure out what they were. I knew what they were not--sparrows, Dickcissels (5 Dickcissels would be record-shattering), blackbirds, though they did kind of look like icterids, meadowlarks...I took pictures, from a distance (it's always from a distance), and, just as they flew off, the penny dropped: Bobolinks!

Bobolinks, of course, molt into plumage in the fall that is completely different from their reversed tuxedo breeding plumage, and not seeing them all that often, I was slow to identify them.  So I felt simultaneously happy & dumb. 

Cedar Bonnet was supposed to be a quick stop, because I planned a long walk at Holgate, on the south end of LBI--10 miles that seems like 50 to me. And a good thing I planned a short walk, because as I was leaving, a school bus dumped 30 teenagers out at the entrance (no idea what kind of class trip this was) and when I got to the parking lot, the photographers were out in full force, getting ready to march in. 

Piping Plover

My semiannual walk on Holgate (I usually go once in the winter, once in the early fall) was pretty good. Nothing much in the ocean, but the bayside and the beach had more shorebirds than I expected, including 6 Piping Plovers, which surprised me, as I think of them as summer birds.  One of the reasons, though, that Holgate is inaccessible in summer is that the Piping Plovers nest there, as they do on the northern end of the island at Barnegat Light. So I guess these were lingerers.

For the two stops, 35 species.

Canada Goose
Mallard
American Black Duck
Green-winged Teal
American Oystercatcher
Semipalmated Plover
Piping Plover
Sanderling
White-rumped Sandpiper
Semipalmated Sandpiper
Laughing Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Great Black-backed Gull
Caspian Tern
Double-crested Cormorant
Brown Pelican
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Snowy Egret
Little Blue Heron
Northern Harrier
Belted Kingfisher
Northern Flicker
Merlin
Carolina Wren
Gray Catbird
American Robin
Savannah Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Bobolink
Common Yellowthroat
Palm Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler