Whitesbog 9/13--Baird's Sandpiper, Long-billed Dowitcher

I should have taken my camera. When I got to Whitesbog this morning around 7 o'clock, it was socked in by fog. You couldn't see from one side of the bogs to the other. You could hear some birds, you could see the silhouettes of some ducks or some egrets, but it didn't appear that any photo opportunities were in the offing. 

I didn't even bother to take my scope on my first turn around the Upper Bog. I walked to the east end of it, wondering if the large flock of egrets that had been in the bogs the last couple of days were roosting in their usual place along the Cranberry Run. A few were, but not in big numbers. I did see a couple of Solitary Sandpipers right below me at the edge of the bog. That, and some Killdeer calls, were about all I came up in my first half hour there.  

Long-billed Dowitcher

It was also chilly, so I headed back to the car for another layer. Just then Tom pulled up and asked if I was getting my scope. I guess I was. He hadn't been there since the weekend, so I told him all the action, such as it was, had moved to the Middle Bog. We set up on the south side of the bog, but it was very difficult viewing conditions. We kept walking around until we got to the north side, with Union Pond behind us. In the mist we could see a lot of Great Egrets in both areas--33 was the number we settled on. It was clearing up a little, but it was still like looking through a scrim. In Union Pond I saw a shorebird with a very long bill and that was about all I could see of it. "Is that just a yellowlegs?" I asked Tom. He got on the bird and immediately said it was a dowitcher. Funny, we'd been talking about how dowitchers hadn't shown up yet just a few minutes before. Now, which dowitcher was it? 

Fortunately, the bird obliged us by flying into the Middle Bog, calling "Keek!" which is diagnostic for Long-billed Dowitcher. None of that subjective junk about whether it looked like it swallowed a basketball or if there was a slight bend at the tip of the beak. Keek!=Long-bill. Here was a bird, probably immature, that a couple of months ago had hatched on the North Slope of Alaska, around Prudhoe Bay, and now it was 4 or 5 thousand miles away in Burlington County eating worms and invertebrates in mud that two days ago was covered by 4 feet of water. Amazing. Tom put it on the RBA. And the sun suddenly burned away all the fog. 

But that day got better, surpassing the One Cool Bird A Day requirement. After scouring the bog for all the other sandpipers and plovers that were alternately feeding and flying, Tom came up with a Baird's Sandpiper only a few feet away from the dowitcher. Normally, you'd expect to see Bairds on dryer land or in a grassy area--when they've shown up at Whitesbog, that's where they've been, but this one seemed to prefer the channel that runs through the bog. It was, like the rest of the birds there, pretty active, and we had a hard time keeping an eye on it, but with three of us there (we had been joined by Eric who saw the RBA and immediately came over from his nearby workplace), we managed to keep track of it and enjoy it. Sometimes we had both the Baird's and dowitcher in the same scope view. 

Of course, all this time my camera was in the car, but I did manage decent digiscope shots of the dowitcher. The Baird's was too far, and the glare was too bad for me to manage a digiscope of it that looked like something more than "blurry shorebird.

One more highlight of the day was a huge, swirling kettle of Turkey Vultures over Ditch Meadow that we could see from our vantage point. In with those vultures were 4 Common Nighthawks (very unusual to see so late in the morning) and 3 Red-shouldered Hawks. It was the calling of the hawks that alerted us to the kettle in the first place. And, still standing in the same spot, watching the Lower Bog draw down as the pump sucked out water, we had 6 Common Ravens fly over us. 

And that is why I return to Whitesbog every day that the water is low: FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). You just don't know what's going to plunk down or fly over that relatively small area of mud and puddles. 11 species of shorebirds today--you have to do a lot of driving at Brig to get as much variety as we did just standing in one spot. 

The day list:

33 species
Mallard  17
American Black Duck  2
Green-winged Teal  3     Middle Bog
Common Nighthawk  4
Killdeer  8
Semipalmated Plover  15
Long-billed Dowitcher  1     
Spotted Sandpiper  2
Solitary Sandpiper  2
Lesser Yellowlegs  6
Greater Yellowlegs  4
Baird's Sandpiper  1     
Least Sandpiper  20
Pectoral Sandpiper  10
Semipalmated Sandpiper  12
Great Egret  33     
Great Blue Heron  2
Black Vulture  4
Turkey Vulture  38
Red-shouldered Hawk  3     
Belted Kingfisher  1
Downy Woodpecker  1
Northern Flicker  2
Eastern Phoebe  1
American Crow  4
Common Raven  6     
Carolina Chickadee  2
Barn Swallow  1
Gray Catbird  5
Song Sparrow  2
Eastern Towhee  3
Common Yellowthroat  3
Northern Cardinal  1

Whitesbog 9/11--New Feeding Grounds

30+ Great Egrets on Union Pond (with 2 Great Blue Herons)

Yesterday the Whitesbog farmer stopped along the dam to tell me that he was pulling down water out of the Middle Bog and that by this morning it should be just as empty as the Upper Bog, which over the last few days has been very active with shorebirds. So, this morning, just as the sun was a half-circle on the horizon, I was there, ready for another day of compulsively walking around the bogs. 

And there were no birds there. 

All that empty mud. I was amazed and disheartened. I decided to walk around to the east end of the Upper Bog, because I knew that some Great Egrets had been roosting there. And they were, but only 8, way down from yesterday's count of 22. I did come upon a Merlin in a dead tree. I walked around the Upper Bog and then set up my scope on the dam between Union Pond and the Middle Bog. I had heard a Solitary Sandpiper, and on Union Pond there were a few Killdeer, but this was thin gruel for me. And then, after the sun had been up for about a half hour, birds, seemingly out of nowhere, came streaming in to the Middle Bog--Semipalmated Sandpipers, Semipalmated Plovers, both yellowlegs, Least Sandpipers, a Pectoral Sandpiper, Spotted Sandpiper. None, save two Greater Yellowlegs, went into the Upper Bog.  It isn't possible that the all the invertebrates had been eaten in the Upper, and the mud was still pretty wet, yet almost all the action was concentrated on the newly drained bog. Inexplicable. 

In the center, where the water was a few inches deep, was the usual duck flock, 22 Mallards and the 2 American Black Ducks, but with them were two Green-winged Teal, unusual for the spot. And then, rushing overhead, was a large flock of Great Egrets that first went to the Upper Bog, decided they didn't want to be there either, and swung around to land in the Middle and in Union, before all congregating in Union. I counted 33. Now, anyplace along the coast, 33 Great Egrets would not be remarkable, but inland, in Burlco, that number breaks the eBird filter. Fortunately, egrets are pretty easy to count, unlike skittering, scurrying sandpipers. 

Buff-breasted Sandpiper (best of the lousy pictures)

Eventually, I ditched the scope and took a walk around Union Pond and back into Ditch Meadow (Wood Duck, Ovenbird, another Merlin being highlights) and came back late morning for one more traipse around Middle Bog to see if anything else had come in (or, just as likely, been overlooked). The ducks had flown off and the shorebirds seemed to be more spread out. One looked peculiar, but because I was looking into the sun, it was hard to get much on it. I took a bunch of photos, though distance and bad lighting didn't really help me much. I was pretty certain I knew what it was, but until I got home and could look and my photos, crappy as they were, enlarged on the computer screen, I put down a placeholder for shorebird sp., which I hate, because every bird is something, and the spuh designation doesn't help anyone. 

When I finally looked at the photos, my suspicions were confirmed--Buff-breasted Sandpiper. A couple of other birders, seeing my listing, went there this afternoon and got much better photos than I did. A rarity, but since I had buffy for the year and for Whitesbog, not the kind of rarity I was hoping for. Which is why I'll go back tomorrow morning--you never know who's going to drop in. 

For the morning 39 species:

Wood Duck  1
Mallard  22
American Black Duck  2
Green-winged Teal  2     
Killdeer  7
Semipalmated Plover  12
Spotted Sandpiper  1
Solitary Sandpiper  1
Lesser Yellowlegs  3
Greater Yellowlegs  9
Buff-breasted Sandpiper  1     
Least Sandpiper  5
Pectoral Sandpiper  1
Semipalmated Sandpiper  15
Laughing Gull  1     Immature. Middle Bog
Great Egret  33     
Great Blue Heron  6
Osprey  1
Bald Eagle  2
Belted Kingfisher  1
Red-bellied Woodpecker  1
Downy Woodpecker  1
Northern Flicker  4
Merlin  2
Eastern Phoebe  1
White-eyed Vireo  2
Blue Jay  3
American Crow  5
Carolina Chickadee  3
Tufted Titmouse  1
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher  1
Gray Catbird  6
Brown Thrasher  1
Song Sparrow  6
Swamp Sparrow  1     Heard
Eastern Towhee  5
Ovenbird  1     
Common Yellowthroat  2
Pine Warbler  5

Whitesbog 9/6--White-rumped Sandpiper

 It's the most wonderful time of the year.

You might think I'm a couple of months early with that sentiment, but for me, it's a month late. For the second year in a row, the bogs at Whitesbog have remained full, because the farmer needed the water for the fall. True, Union Pond, which isn't connected to the system, evaporated nicely and provided some exciting rarities in August, but it is always better when the 3 main bogs are drawn down, creating a mini-Brig. On Wednesday, the farmer pulled up to me in his pickup and told me that he was moving the water out of the bogs (really reservoirs) and over the dikes and across Route 70 to prepare for the cranberry harvest mid-month. He figured there'd be mud by the weekend. 

This morning the bogs were still pretty full, but in the higher spots of the Middle Bog and in the back of the Upper Bog, there was some nice moist mud and sand, and a lot of the shorebirds were feeding there instead of Union Pond, which is actually pretty dry by now. At the corner of the Middle Bog I found about dozen Least Sandpipers feeding and a much larger sandpiper, actually too big to qualify as a peep--my first White-rumped Sandpiper of the year, and a rarity in Burlco. I wanted to get a picture, of course, and only then noticed how light my right shoulder felt; I had left the camera in the car. I digiscoped a couple of shots and walked back to my vehicle, which was diagonally across from the White-rumped.  I was hoping it would stick (a lot of rarities tend to make "touch and goes" at Whitesbog), and when I got back, I was able relocate the bird and take some better documentary pictures. I looked up the dam and there was my informant strolling toward me with his big black dog running in front of him, coming up to me. I was waving to my friend to hurry up, but I guess Gunny thought I was urging him on.  Gunny is always thrilled to see me. The birds, however, were not thrilled to see Gunny and took flight as soon as he came up to me. "Your big dopey dog just scared off the rarity," I told my friend. That was the second time he's missed White-rumped at Whitesbog this year. 

As the bogs draw down, I'm hoping for a September to remember with late shorebirds and who knows what other oddities plunking down in the puddles and feeding along Cranberry Run around which the bogs were dug out 100+ years ago. 

I had 29 species, 9 of the shorebird variety, this morning, walking around the dams and Union Pond and back into Ditch Meadow, where I found the Wood Ducks for the day. 

29 species
Wood Duck  2
Mallard  17
American Black Duck  2
Killdeer  6
Semipalmated Plover  4
Spotted Sandpiper  3
Lesser Yellowlegs  2
Greater Yellowlegs  3
White-rumped Sandpiper  1     
Least Sandpiper  30
Pectoral Sandpiper  2
Semipalmated Sandpiper  1
Great Egret  2
Great Blue Heron  2
Belted Kingfisher  1
Northern Flicker  2
Merlin  1
American Crow  3
Common Raven  1     Croaking
Carolina Chickadee  2
Tree Swallow  100
Purple Martin  5
Barn Swallow  3
Gray Catbird  5
American Goldfinch  1
Song Sparrow  7
Eastern Towhee  1
Common Yellowthroat  1
Pine Warbler  1

Displaying crossed wing tips, next to Least Sandpiper