September--A Whitesbog-centric Month

American Golden-Plover

I pretty much spent all my time at Whitesbog after the first week of the month, once the bogs were drawn down. There really seemed no place else that was as attractive as those 3 muddy flats, along with the emptied-out Union Pond and Ditch Meadow behind that. You never know what's going to show up and since whatever does show up often doesn't stay, constant vigilance is required. I always like to say that when the water is down, the place becomes a mini-Brig, and even though it was September, the shorebirds did not disappoint. 

Long-billed Dowitcher with both sp. of yellowlegs

Early in the month, White-rumped Sandpipers were present, sometimes multiple birds, and later in the month there were 3 different sightings of Buff-Breasted Sandpipers, and opinion seemed to be that they were 3 different birds. The day I picked out a Long-billed Dowitcher (which did linger for a long time) was the same day that one of my fellow birders found a Baird's Sandpiper practically next to the dowitcher. And then finally, toward the end of the month, I found an American Golden-Plover, an immature bird, which, as of Friday, was still there, albeit having moved from Union Pond to the Upper Bog. That's five rarities in what amounts to about 10 acres of mud. 

Immature Little Blue Heron with Great Egret

Non-shorebird rarities (at least for Burlco) were multiple Snowy Egrets and an immature Little Blue Heron, both of which could be found by sorting through the very large flock of Great Egrets that took up residence to feast on trapped pickerel and frogs which were forced into ever-shrinking pools of water. 

To add to the fun of the month, there were a lot of swallows in the first 10 days or so, including Cliff Swallows, Bobolinks overhead, nighthawks and whip-poor-wills, and Eastern Screech-Owl. The raptor show included a pair of Bald Eagles and an immature bird, Osprey, Red-shouldered Hawk, Cooper's Hawk, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Merlin and American Kestrel, not to mention the big flock of vultures that alighted in Union Pond to pick at the dead fish. I missed a couple of birds (at least) like Wilson's Snipe and Great Horned Owl, but I was pretty happy with what I got. 

A couple of years ago, when the bogs were low in August, I made a determined effort to get 100 species at Whitesbog in one month, which I accomplished. I didn't occur to me to do that this month, but I doubt I would have been able to with a lot of the passerines having moved on. As it was, I had 88 species for the month at Whitesbog. It was patch birding at it's best.

Canada Goose
Wood Duck
Northern Shoveler
Mallard
American Black Duck
Green-winged Teal
Mourning Dove
Common Nighthawk
Eastern Whip-poor-will
Chimney Swift
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
American Golden-Plover
Killdeer
Semipalmated Plover
Long-billed Dowitcher
Spotted Sandpiper
Solitary Sandpiper
Lesser Yellowlegs
Greater Yellowlegs
Buff-breasted Sandpiper
Baird's Sandpiper
White-rumped Sandpiper
Least Sandpiper
Pectoral Sandpiper
Semipalmated Sandpiper
Laughing Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
Little Blue Heron
Snowy Egret
Green Heron
Great Egret
Great Blue Heron
Black Vulture
Turkey Vulture
Osprey
Sharp-shinned Hawk
Cooper's Hawk
Bald Eagle
Red-shouldered Hawk
Eastern Screech-Owl
Belted Kingfisher
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
American Kestrel
Merlin
Eastern Wood-Pewee
Eastern Phoebe
Great Crested Flycatcher
Eastern Kingbird
White-eyed Vireo
Blue Jay
American Crow
Fish Crow
Common Raven
Carolina Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
Bank Swallow
Tree Swallow
Purple Martin
Barn Swallow
Cliff Swallow
White-breasted Nuthatch
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Carolina Wren
Gray Catbird
Brown Thrasher
Northern Mockingbird
Eastern Bluebird
American Robin
House Finch
American Goldfinch
Chipping Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
Eastern Towhee
Bobolink
Ovenbird
Northern Waterthrush
Black-and-white Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
American Redstart
Palm Warbler
Pine Warbler
Prairie Warbler
Northern Cardinal

American Kestrel, Union Pond

Whitesbog 9/23--American Golden-Plover

Really bad digiscope of American Golden-Plover

Not having much luck with the camera this month. Today, I didn't neglect to take it with me, but the battery died, so, when I finally found, after searching all month, an American Golden-Plover at the back of Union Pond, I had to resort to trying a digiscope and both the lighting and the bird's active feeding were against me.  

I actually gave Whitesbog a pass yesterday, since over the last few days the shorebird activity had died down and I was getting bored counting Great Egrets (42 today, my biggest count so far). I wasn't sure if I was going to go back today until I saw an alert for American Golden-Plover at Whitesbog but on the Ocean County side. I knew that was wrong just by looking at the number of egrets listed and from the birder's description of where he'd seen them (he had 2). It's easy, if you're not familiar with Whitesbog, to pick the wrong county pin since in places you can be standing in Burlington but be much closer to the Ocean County pin. (The border line is just about 50 feet east of the double-laned road at the back of the Upper Bog.)

Snowy Egrets, Great Egrets, dawn, Upper Bog

When I arrived about a half-hour before sunrise, I could already see, in the gloaming, the big flock of Great Egrets standing at the back of Union Pond. Among them were 3 or 4 smaller egrets/herons. In that light I couldn't make out what they were, but fortunately, at 6:43, just a couple of minutes before dawn, the entire flock got up and headed for the Upper Bog to eat breakfast along the Cranberry Run channel. With them were 3 Snowy Egrets, rare in Burlington County and continuing since last week. (Later in the morning I found the continuing Little Blue Heron, also "rare," in Union Pond, feeding with a group of egrets who had flown back to it.)

I scoped out the back of Union Pond and could see some shorebird activity, but it all seemed to be both species of yellowlegs and Killdeer, which has been the case for the last few days. But there's always the possibility of something interesting being there with a closer look, as indeed there was when I walked back there and set the scope down...Killdeer, Killdeer, Killdeer, Golden-Plover! It was an immature bird, a lovely golden-brown, with a short beak and a beady eye. Golden-Plover is annual at Whitesbog and one had been seen there briefly when I was in Delaware. Usually, plovers do "touch-and-goes" at Whitesbog, so I was a little surprised to find this one hanging out overnight--its compatriot seems to have left, unless they both left, and this is a third bird. No way to tell. 

With the plover about the only expected rarity that hasn't touched down at Whitesbog this year is Short-billed Dowitcher. I guess that gives me an incentive to return a couple of more times.

The relatively small list for the morning:

31 species
Wood Duck  3
Green-winged Teal  6     Union Pond
Mourning Dove  1
American Golden-Plover  1     
Killdeer  8
Lesser Yellowlegs  5
Greater Yellowlegs  2
Little Blue Heron  1     Continuing. 
Snowy Egret  3     Continuing with Great Egrets. 
Great Blue Heron  4
Turkey Vulture  2
Cooper's Hawk  2
Bald Eagle  1
Belted Kingfisher  1
Red-bellied Woodpecker  1
Downy Woodpecker  1
Hairy Woodpecker  1
Merlin  1
Blue Jay  5
American Crow  6
Carolina Chickadee  5
Tufted Titmouse  3
Carolina Wren  1
Gray Catbird  8
House Finch  1     Village
Song Sparrow  2
Eastern Towhee  9
Common Yellowthroat  1
Pine Warbler  2
Northern Cardinal  1

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