Forked River 8/4--Roseate Spoonbill

Roseate Spoonbills with Great Egret

The probability of a Roseate Spoonbill turning up in New Jersey is low, but with at least 15 past sightings, not that remarkable. Narrow it down to Ocean County and the odds get longer, but it has happened a few times--Island Beach and Manahawkin stand out in my memory. But the odds of three Roseate Spoonbills turning up in Forked River in the lagoon just off Spoonbill Court? Astronomical.  And yet, for the last couple of weeks or more, that has been the place to go to put this species on your year list--if you can time the tide right. Which the first three times I went to this obscure section of Barnegat Bay I wasn't able to do and left frustrated. 

But today, after I passed Albatross, Egret, Grebe, Plover, Penguin, Skimmer, and Gannet Courts and arrived at Spoonbill, there they were, with the customary M.obs facing west as they fed just at the edge of the reeds to where, when the tide gets higher, they apparently retreat. 

Immature Roseate Spoonbills are known to widely disperse, perhaps pushed out by adults who don't want them impinging on their territories, so these birds were not as pink as the adults would be, but still amusing birds to observe. For 15 minutes. I have a wise birding friend who has (or had, I don't know if he still keeps it) a rule that he had to stay at a spot at least as long as it took to drive there, and since I had come down from Double Trouble SP I only shaved off a few minutes from that edict. I don't like standing around a private neighborhood with a large group of birders, no matter how well-behaved they are; I really feel like I'm intruding. So, I took some photos, listed the obvious birds around the spoonbills and had my one cool species for the day