Great Bay Blvd 9/29--Nelson's Sparrow

 I went down to the inlet beach at Great Bay Blvd specifically to look for Nelson's Sparrows, a tricky bird to both find and identify. I didn't think I'd find one in the jaws of a German Shorthaired Pointer. 

The dog, which belonged to a fisherman, was running around on the beach and through the marsh grass. There was a time, when I lived in the city, that I was frightened of dogs off leash, but now, aside from German Shepherds which I associate with the Gestapo, I don't mind them. In fact, I was a bit pleased to see the dog rushing through the reeds. Maybe it would flush up a Nelson's, birds that are notorious for running on the ground through the vegetation instead of flying. The tide was hight so there was too much water in the marsh for me to walk through but the dog didn't care. When I was just on the borderline of the Rutgers property, the dog came running by me. I saw a sparrow on the beach running toward the phrags, but the dog blocked its way. It tried to fly back to the beach and the dog maneuvered around and snatched at it with its teeth. The bird headed back to the phrags and then the dog caught it in its mouth. I have never seen a dog catch a bird. Cats yes. But never a dog.

I yelled NO NO, to the dog, but it paid no attention. It ran away with the bird in its mouth. I chased after it at the same I was yelling at its owner that it had just killed a bird. The owner came over and started to explain nature to me. There is no profit in arguing with idiots, so I just let him prattle on, even when he said the dog was supposed to point, no catch. Obviously, he wasn't much of a dog trainer. The dog, by this time, had dropped the sparrow. I pushed its muzzle out of the way and looked at the bird, which was still breathing. Blurry stripes and an orange wash on its mangled breast--a Nelson's. A hell of way to see it. And I confess, my shameful thought was, "It's still alive, I can count it." 

Then the dog picked up the sparrow and ran off with it, dropped it in the mud and then rolled on its back, crushing whatever was left of the bird. It then ran off into the marsh and flushed another sparrow, which flew into the high reeds away from the dog's reach, but not before I was able to glimpse its orange breast--my second Nelson's. 

The gory scene put me in a bad mood. I wasn't much in the mood for birding right then. There was a small group of birders on the beach who happened to be from Chicago--what were they doing there. It seems that their plan had been to go to Brig, but it was inexplicably closed--something about spraying, so they had pivoted to Tuckerton, hoping that the Forsythe site would update and say that the Wildlife Drive was again open. In the meantime, they and I saw a Saltmarsh Sparrow, some pelicans and lots of terns. The shorebirds they were hoping for were not around. The only shorebird I recorded today was a flock of Greater Yellowlegs on a mud bank off the first wooden bridge.  

Immature Yellow-crowned Night-Heron

Driving back up the road I stopped at one of the cedar stands by the first wooden bridge and found both flavors of night-heron, and out in the marsh a single. But as I said, after the murder, my heart really wasn't in it anymore. 

22 species
Mute Swan  1
Mourning Dove  1
Clapper Rail  1
Greater Yellowlegs  41
Laughing Gull  25
American Herring Gull  20
Forster's Tern  50
Double-crested Cormorant  30
White Ibis  14
Yellow-crowned Night Heron  1
Black-crowned Night Heron  1
Tricolored Heron  1
Snowy Egret  55
Great Egret  100
Great Blue Heron  3
Brown Pelican  7
Tree Swallow  20
European Starling  10
Nelson's Sparrow  2     
Saltmarsh Sparrow  1
Song Sparrow  1
Boat-tailed Grackle  20