Manahawkin 1/29--American Bittern

American Bittern

Stafford Avenue in Manahawkin divides two birding areas--the Manahawkin WMA and the Bridge to Nowhere section of Forsythe.  If you are walking southeast, then the Bridge to Nowhere marsh is to your left and Manahawkin is to the right and if you are interested in keeping assiduous eBird lists then down that potholed road lies madness because you would have to keep two concurrent lists as you walked along, noting the birds to the east and noting the birds to the west and then keeping track of which birds flew across the road and in which direction, not to mention the birds that are on the road and not in either of the marshes, so you would conceivably want to start a third list for Stafford Avenue itself or you could do what I do which is start the list with either one depending upon where you begin and throw everything onto that list since eBird protocol is that the list is a survey of where your feet are when you see or hear the bird and not where the bird actually is, anyway.

I bring up this "inside baseball" topic because this morning I started from the Manahawkin WMA's parking lot off Hilliard, walked through the woods and out onto the impoundments came out on Stafford and walked down to the Bridge to Nowhere. From the little hill there I saw off in the marsh something that didn't look like phragmites. Short-eared Owls are known to winter here, but since it was well past sunrise, I didn't think I'd be that lucky, and I wasn't. Instead, it was an American Bittern, craning its neck in the reeds. Always a great find and always amusing as the bittern merges in and out of the background, sometimes completely hidden and sometimes in plain sight and seemingly not knowing the difference. 

Technically, though, the bittern was in the Forsythe section. What a quandary, especially since I don't have bittern on my Bridge to Nowhere patch list, while I have it a number of times in Manahawkin. Tempting to finagle the data or in this case to untangle the data and make a separate list but in the end, I decided to let one more flaw in the database sit there undisturbed. (By the way, most of the 68 Hooded Mergansers I counted were also in Forsythe as well as half the Great Blue Herons. The Northern Harrier flew from one side to the other.  Shh. Don't tell anyone.)

25 species
Canada Goose  14
Mallard  2
American Black Duck  26
Hooded Merganser  68
Killdeer  2
Greater Yellowlegs  17
Ring-billed Gull  30
American Herring Gull  1
American Bittern  1
Great Blue Heron  6
Turkey Vulture  3
Northern Harrier  1
Belted Kingfisher  3
Red-bellied Woodpecker  2
Downy Woodpecker  4
Hairy Woodpecker  1
Blue Jay  1
Carolina Chickadee  3
Tufted Titmouse  5
Northern Mockingbird  1
Hermit Thrush  1
American Robin  2
House Finch  10
Swamp Sparrow  1
Yellow-rumped Warbler  1

Greater Yellowlegs