Franklin Parker Preserve 1/13--Northern Shrike

Northern Shrike

With the heavy rains and gusting winds of late causing coastal flood warnings all over, I knew my best strategy was to go inland. I drove down to Franklin Parker Preserve in the heart of the Pine Barrens for the second time this month. Even there, in old cranberry bogs that are reverting to wetlands, the water was high, making the trails impassable in some places. I bumped into a couple of Burlco birding buddies who were looking for an out-of-season Grasshopper Sparrow that had been photographed there a couple of days ago. My goal was a little less esoteric and they pointed me the way to go for the Northern Shrike that has, presumably, returned for the 3rd year in a row to the preserve, albeit on the on the west side of 563 this time. I climbed up the observation platform and after a few minutes found the bird in a tree with a lot of dead branches in the line of sight. Then it jumped up to the top of the tree and I managed some very distant doc shots, and I was happy. It seems that most of my shrike sightings are like this, a gray/white/black blob in the distance where I can barely make out the mask. I tried walking down a breached dam to get a better angle on the bird but couldn't it find in the mess of bare branches in front of me.

Walking south along the Bald Eagle Reservoir, I came to one of those impassable spots and turned left on a much less used trail. And there before me, sitting in a tree, was the shrike. It flew into the reservoir on the right and perched for a moment on a stick, flew, came back to the stick, and let me get a decent look at it and some very lousy photographs which I won't show you. 

Eastern Meadowlark

I continued walking down the dam.  I had no idea if it was breached or not. There wasn't much activity, the winds had kicked up and I suspected that was keeping the birds hunkered down, aside from a flock of robins. I got as far as I could reasonably go without bushwhacking and turned around. A bird flew down into the grass from a pine. I my first impression was that must have been a dove. I knew I'd flush the bird on the way back and when I did, I saw that it wasn't a dove. Eastern Meadowlark?

One of the sentences from Roger Tory Peterson's field guides that has always stuck with me was his discussion of habitat and birds. He wrote something to the effect, "A meadowlark needs a meadow." I have found this to be only generally true. I have seen meadowlarks in the marshes along Stafford Avenue, on the barren strip behind the firing range at Colliers Mills, among other non-meadow spots. The overgrown dam at Franklin Parker certainly doesn't qualify as a meadow, yet there was the bird, roosting now in a dead pine. I still wasn't entirely certain until it flew across the water, and I saw the white outer tail feathers spread in flight. It landed in another dead tree with its back to me and was very hard to find. But when it turned around, it was like a yellow light in all the brown and gray across the water. It actually pleased me more to find the meadowlark than the shrike. My philosophy is I only need one cool bird a day. The meadowlark made it two.