Double Trouble SP | Cranberry Bogs 5/12--Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Eastern Wood-Pewee, American Redstart

In current sociological jargon the noun "privilege" has morphed into a verb, as in "We privilege seeing over hearing." (Given a choice, would you rather be blind or deaf?) At any rate, I privilege my seeing a bird over merely hearing one--unless of course it's a nocturnal bird like our whip-poor-will.  I started out birdwatching, and I want to see the birds. So, it never seems quite legitimate to me when my year birds are found with my ears, as has been the case with the last 4. (That's not totally correct. Last night, Shari & I had our annual Chuck-will's-widow date where we have a nice dinner in Lacey and then drive down to Collinstown Road in Barnegat and digest our meal while waiting for the chucks to start singing as darkness descends. This year, for the first time, we actually saw one, sitting on the ground and then flying up into a low branch. Not a great look, naturally, since it was about 80% dark at the time, but a look nonetheless.)

I've been in a mood, the last few days, where I don't feel like going to where the birds are dense but want the birds to be where I want to be. This is not a good formula for building up your list, but I figure if I'm going to be frustrated, I may as well be frustrated somewhere I like. I was hoping for more than two year birds at Double Trouble this morning, but that was all I got, 2 American Redstarts and one Eastern Wood-Pewee, by ear. 

Little Blue Heron

Then, for the third day in a row, I went to the cranberry bogs on Dover Road. The recent heavy rains cause a blow out of one of the bogs, draining it down to mud, creating terrific shorebird & wader habitat--much like Whitesbog in the summer (when the bogs are intentionally drawn down). Birds not frequently seen in South Toms River are in the bog now, like Solitary Sandpiper (patch bird for me), Least Sandpipers, Snowy Egret, Little Blue Heron and others. Of course, what I'm hoping for is a true rarity which is why I keep checking. The blow out also disrupts my usual route, so I have been trying out a couple of alternatives to get around it. Today I walked through a lot high grass (thank you, whoever developed permethrin) and wound up walking a trail in the back that runs along the woods. I heard, at first distantly, but soon fairly loudly and consistently, a Yellow-billed Cuckoo. That's a bird that's hard to see, anyway, which makes it all the more desirable. But, hearing counts. You can't compete in the World Series of Birding (which is tomorrow) without being a good ear birder. Doesn't make it satisfying though. 

Here's the Cranberry Bog list:

37 species
Canada Goose  2
Mallard  3
Mourning Dove  2
Yellow-billed Cuckoo  1     Recorded
Least Sandpiper  15     Blow out bog
Solitary Sandpiper  4     Blowout bog + 3 on mud flats
Greater Yellowlegs  1     Blow out bog
Laughing Gull  3
Great Blue Heron  3
Great Egret  7
Little Blue Heron  1     Blow out bog
Glossy Ibis  12     Blow out bog
Osprey  1
Red-tailed Hawk  1
Eastern Phoebe  1     Heard
Great Crested Flycatcher  1     Heard
Eastern Kingbird  3
White-eyed Vireo  1     Heard
Blue Jay  1
Tufted Titmouse  1     Heard
Barn Swallow  10
House Wren  1     Heard
Carolina Wren  1     Heard
Gray Catbird  1     Heard
American Robin  1
American Goldfinch  1     Flyover
Chipping Sparrow  1
Field Sparrow  1     Heard
Song Sparrow  2
Red-winged Blackbird  30
Brown-headed Cowbird  1     Heard
Common Grackle  2
Black-and-white Warbler  1     Heard
Common Yellowthroat  20
Pine Warbler  1     Heard
Prairie Warbler  5
Northern Cardinal  1

Pareidolia

(Look it up) 

Cranberry Bogs 3/6--Eastern Phoebe, Tree Swallow

Eastern Phoebe

Precursor of spring: The Eastern Phoebe? 

I looked up the dictionary definition of "precursor" to see if the modifier "early" was redundant. It isn't, though "late" would be nonsensical. The usage example cited was "The first robin is a precursor of spring." Of course, it isn't, but accuracy isn't necessary when showing usage. Maybe in Maine it's true. 

Phoebes aren't all that unusual in winter either--I remember that the January day after Shari & I found the lapwings in New Egypt, I had a phoebe at Double Trouble. There's been one at Wells Mills Park this year reported off and on all winter. I didn't bother to go there; I figured I'd get a phoebe this year or else I had much bigger problems. But the cranberry bogs (the undeveloped section of Double Trouble, I'd like to know the history, whether it was part of the original Double Trouble cranberry operation or a separate entity) are only about 15 minutes away from here, so I've been traipsing around there a lot this season. 

Sunrise this morning was 6:23 and that is the precise time that my eBird list starts. It was very spring-like in terms of bird song. It seemed like everybody was singing at the proverbial crack of dawn. As soon as I got over the entrance hump, I could hear, among the cacophony of birds calling, the aggressive FEEBEE! from which the bird takes its name. The bird, however, was a good distance away, over by the buildings (a barracks, a storage shed, some kind of the cinderblock construction) and I walked over there to look for it. Normally, I wouldn't bother, but since this was FOY, I wanted to actually see it, and if possible, get some kind of photo to document it, as it is still flagged as "rare" for this time of year. 

I could hear the bird as if it was on top of me, standing by the barracks, but I have hard time locating birds by sound. They always seem like they're behind me, no matter what direction I'm facing. Of course, as soon as I finally found the bird, it flew off toward one of the bogs. I kept following it, as it moved from tree to tree, getting lots of crummy photos, until it relented and flew to the top of a tree where I was able to take a mediocre photo. More effort than I would normally put into a bird, but it was early. 

Tree Swallow

I then decided to walk back towards the big reservoir, which meant wading through a flooded path that seems to be getting deeper and longer each time I go there, which is why I always put on my muck boots there. There were lots of ducks along the way, mostly Ring-necked Ducks, and the blackbirds were singing, establishing territory. I don't think I've seen a female yet this season. When I got to the reservoir, I checked out the ancient swallow box that is stuck in the middle of the water--sometimes it is still used, but not today. Then I heard twittering. (Ever notice that Twitter's logo is a stylized swallow?) Looking up I saw 3 or 4 Tree Swallows swooping around. For me, this is pretty late in the year to get Tree Swallow--one or two are usually around one of the beaches I go to, living on bayberry fruit until the bugs come out, but until today, they managed to avoid me this year. 

After about an hour, the singing died down (except for the blackbirds). When I got back to the buildings, on my way out, I could still hear the phoebe's raspy "song," and I saw a Cooper's Hawk and a Hairy Woodpecker in the same area. For the morning, I tallied 26 species

Canada Goose  6     6+
American Black Duck  35     Flushed big flock from shallow bog
Ring-necked Duck  41
Bufflehead  2
Hooded Merganser  11
Mourning Dove  2
Herring Gull  2
Cooper's Hawk  1     
Red-tailed Hawk  1
Hairy Woodpecker  1     
Northern Flicker  1     Heard
Eastern Phoebe  1     
Blue Jay  1     Heard
American Crow  5
Carolina Chickadee  3
Tree Swallow  4     
Golden-crowned Kinglet  3
Red-breasted Nuthatch  1     Heard near big pit
Carolina Wren  1     Heard
Field Sparrow  2
Dark-eyed Junco  3
White-throated Sparrow  5
Song Sparrow  15
Red-winged Blackbird  30
Yellow-rumped Warbler  1
Northern Cardinal  2

Except...

There's no flush involved.

What at first seems to be a clever idea, turns out, after a moment's consideration, to be nonsense. There's a lot of that going around. 

Restroom Admonitions

When you're birding, the question of "Where's the closest restroom" starts percolating in the back of your mind about an hour after the first Wawa coffee and starts to become urgent about 5 minutes later. Restrooms climb a hierarchical ladder starting at "Does one exist," stepping up to "Rudimentary" as in Port-O-Sans which I usually have to investigate first before Shari will even consider one, then "Rudimentary Plus" which is an open pit but at least a permanent structure. From there, the next step up is the question of climate (warm in winter, no flies in summer) and then, at the top rung we have "Does it flush?"

"Is it entertaining in there?" is not a consideration for most birders, but inveterate reader that I am, I enjoy a little distraction while I'm "resting." Over the years, I've noticed that there's an awful lot of scoldings, warnings, and general admonitions going on in these johns and I've made a collection of them. Each sign tells a little story of the tug of war between the clientele and the restroom's proprietor.

For instance:

This sign must be available from a supply catalog for sanitary engineers, because I have seen it in every open pit toilet I have been in no matter if it was built by a county, state, or federal agency. It is justifiably grumpy because "extremely difficult to remove" is a euphemism for "extraordinarily disgusting."

There are instructional signs, which I appreciate it,  because, you know, sometimes I feel like I need a refresher course:

Although this one, from Australia, seemed a bit extreme:

There are warnings not to do something that up until that moment I'd never actually considered


There is poetry:

There is existentialism:

Meaning you better come out with the same personality as you went in with.

And then there is this wide-ranging sign.
 
The "absolutely" is perfect, as if "no" isn't nearly strong enough for these clowns to understand and the "No Smoking" sign stuck on the top as an afterthought, "Oh yeah, that too," is delightful. The sign, by the way, is just high enough on the wall so that if you wanted to vandalize it you'd have to sit on someone's shoulders or bring a step stool so maybe the next time I "go" there I'll see this sign:

ABSOLUTELY NO

SITTING ON SHOULDERS

OR STEP STOOLS ALLOWED 

IN THIS FACILITY

Barnegat Light SP 12/9--King Eider

Today I was planning on looking for birds I like--specifically Common Goldeneye on LBI--instead of birds I "need" for the year. Then last night my buddy Bob Auster called and suggested a birding outing, so we settled on Barnegat Light SP because we both "needed" a duck that had been reported there for the last few days. I figured Bob who probably has sharper eyes than me and definitely more patience would be able to pick out the oxymoronic hen King Eider that was supposedly in with a raft of Common Eiders at the end of the jetty.

Long-tailed Duck, Barnegat Light.

The language-loving Larry cringes every time the birding Larry has to say something like "hen King Eider" or "male swamphen," or (and this would be extremely hypothetical) "female Emperor Penguin." No one was happier when Common Moorhen got changed back to Common Gallinule, because, as I used to tediously point out, there are no moors in North America and half the birds aren't hens. And when an old birder tells me that he prefers "Oldsquaw" to Long-tailed Duck I begin to mutter very unpleasantly about casual racism and again about how half of them aren't squaws anyway.

So, with all that said and the fact that a hen Somateria spectabilis is not a particularly interesting bird to look at, being a medium-sized brown duck, I wasn't inclined to freeze my butt off looking for one by myself, but two of us looking might be fun. It was, kind of, and, ironically, I found the bird first, bobbing on the north end of the jetty, as advertised with a huge flock of eiders that also had mixture of both Black and Surf Scoters. Neither Bob or I was inclined to risk life, limb, and optics by walking out on the jetty out to the where the flock was--that's what scopes are for. We climbed up on the jetty at a spot where the sand had built up enough to make getting up there seem not too dangerous, but no way were we going rock-hopping. Of course, this means no photographs of the birds but the way it was bobbing in the waves and slipping out of sight, I don't know if even getting a 1000 feet closer would have helped.

Harlequin Ducks, Bayview Marina

Having got my "tick" plus all the usual birds you'd expect to see at and around the jetty except for Purple Sandpiper, making it two times this month I've missed it, we left the park and hit the usual spots along the bay. Our first stop, the Bayview Marina had a surprise. Bob pointed out two drake Harlequin Ducks (Histrionicus histrionicus) floating along between the piers. I can't think of a time that I've seen Harlequins in calm water--they're always diving very close to rocks or jetties somewhere.

We worked our way down to Sunset Park in Harvey Cedars and brought out the scopes to scan the big flocks of Buffleheads in the bay. And, as they reliably but mysteriously almost always are, there were Common Goldeneyes to be found. Why this little section of the bay gets goldeneyes while if you scan a mile north or south, you won't find them, is what makes birding so "interesting."

We built up a decent little winter list with some "quality" sightings. Our list for Barnegat Light SP will suffice:
26 species
Brant 25
King Eider 1 Continuing hen
Common Eider 200
Harlequin Duck 10
Surf Scoter 5
White-winged Scoter 1 Close in to shore
Black Scoter 20
Long-tailed Duck 75 A number of flocks and some very close in.
Bufflehead 10
Red-breasted Merganser 1
Rock Pigeon 9
Ruddy Turnstone 15
Sanderling 20
Dunlin 5
Ring-billed Gull 1
Herring Gull 200
Great Black-backed Gull 25
Red-throated Loon 2 One very close to shore
Common Loon 3
Great Cormorant 1
American Crow 6
Northern Mockingbird 1
European Starling 100
Dark-eyed Junco 2
Yellow-rumped Warbler 3
House Sparrow 10

Red-throated Loon, Barnegat Light SP

Manasquan Inlet 3/17--Glaucous Gull

Glaucous Gull
Photo: Mike Mandracchia

Mike & I planned to start our birding day in Pt. Pleasant Beach to look for white-winged gulls and then see where the rest of the day led us. It led us to an inadvertent big day in Ocean County, where we hit 14 locations (and left out some big ones, like Island Beach, LBI, Colliers Mills...). But the highlight of the day, I guess for both of us, came early on the jetty at Manasquan Inlet where, from a mixed gull flock Mike manage to winkle out our FOY Glaucous Gull (a white-winged gull, though "glaucous" means gray [glaucoma comes from the same root] and it really is a very pale gray). It started out on the beach and then we followed it into the surf. Always good to get a year bird, but especially good (for me) to get it in Ocean County and very special (for me) because it is also a county bird lifer. (There are probably only a very few obsessives reading this who will understand why this is such an event.)

It was a lot colder than we needed it to be for mid-March with a biting wind, but we managed to stick it out long enough for Mike to get his FOY Razorbill flying along the horizon. I was never able to get on the bird, but that was all right--I already sighted this species last month, on the same jetty.

We hit a few more spots in PPB then, looking for someplace out of the wind, decided that the roads through the Manahawkin marshes might be protected. By the time we got down there it had warmed up enough to bird comfortably and we found a lot of land birds in the trees and on the sides of the roads. The best sightings there were when we flushed an American Woodcock from the marsh and when, as Mike was pointing out where a Red-tailed Hawk was sitting in a dead tree, another Red-tail flew in and...well, there is a book called Red-tails in Love.

After lunch we drove up to Barnegat, found decent duckage plus a Horned Grebe off the Municipal Dock and then looked into the impoundments on Bayshore where there was surprisingly little, though we did add Green-winged Teal and Gadwall to the list.

We figured we might as well keep looking for ducks, there won't be many left in a few weeks, so we headed up to Toms River where we managed to find one hen Canvasback in the river and 6 Wood Ducks along with a couple of Ring-neck Ducks at Marshall's Pond.

Our last stop was at FREC, again looking for land birds and we did pretty well, adding Eastern Bluebird, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Golden-crowned Kinglet, and Dark-eyed Juncos (how did we go a whole day without seeing juncos?), as well as flushing another woodcock. Amazingly, we had no goldfinches the whole day.

My list shows 71 species, Mike had, I think, 3 more. Considering we thought 60 would be a respectable number, we were very happy with our day.

Locations:   Barnegat Municipal Dock; Barnegat--Bayshore Dr; Beach Ave; Edwin B. Forsythe NWR--Barnegat; Field next to Lakewood Wawa; Forest Resource Education Center; Lake of the Lilies; Little Silver Lake; Manahawkin WMA; Manasquan Inlet; Marshall's Pond; Mathis Veteran's Memorial Park; Mud City; Point Pleasant Beach-Baltimore Ave 

60 Brant
28 Canada Goose
18 Mute Swan
6 Wood Duck)
4 Gadwall
2 American Wigeon
14 American Black Duck
36 Mallard
2 Northern Shoveler
15 Green-winged Teal
1 Canvasback
2 Ring-necked Duck
11 Greater Scaup
30 Lesser Scaup
1 Black Scoter
4 Long-tailed Duck
33 Bufflehead
16 Hooded Merganser
30 Red-breasted Merganser
200 Ruddy Duck
36 Common Loon
1 Pied-billed Grebe
1 Horned Grebe
1 Northern Gannet
3 Double-crested Cormorant
5 Great Blue Heron
1 Black Vulture
5 Turkey Vulture
1 Cooper's Hawk
1 Bald Eagle
2 Red-tailed Hawk
20 American Coot
2 American Oystercatcher
25 Killdeer
6 Sanderling
X Purple Sandpiper
2 American Woodcock
75 Ring-billed Gull
280 Herring Gull
1 Glaucous Gull
63 Great Black-backed Gull
2 Rock Pigeon
7 Mourning Dove
3 Red-bellied Woodpecker
1 Downy Woodpecker
1 Hairy Woodpecker
1 Northern Flicker
1 Blue Jay
1 American Crow
31 Fish Crow
16 Carolina Chickadee
7 Tufted Titmouse
1 Red-breasted Nuthatch
5 White-breasted Nuthatch
1 Carolina Wren
2 Golden-crowned Kinglet
2 Eastern Bluebird
1 Hermit Thrush
36 American Robin
1 Northern Mockingbird
52 European Starling
1 Fox Sparrow
11 Dark-eyed Junco
1 White-throated Sparrow
4 Song Sparrow
2 Swamp Sparrow
4 Northern Cardinal
1 Red-winged Blackbird
35 Common Grackle
1 Boat-tailed Grackle
3 House Sparrow 

Idiomatic

I used the phrase "out of whack" this morning. Then it occurred to me: Has anything ever been in whack? For that matter, has anything ever been on kilter? Or in of kilter?

When you whack an object, it is certainly going to be out of something, I suppose. The etymology of "kilter" comes from "keiter" which meant, healthy, or in good condition, but is now like the word "gruntled," which is never used in positive form.

"Out of sorts?" That's easy for a former printer--sorts are punctuation marks, dingbats and decorations in a type font. When you're out of them you can't complete the job. Of course, that never happens nowadays when typefaces are all digital, but when you only had so many pieces of lead in your type case, you were in trouble when you ran out.

Another Distinction Lost

Linguists and dictionary makers divide those who care about language into "descriptivists" and "prescriptivists." Simply put, the former report how the language is used, while the latter make judgments as to how the language is used. I fall squarely into the camp of "I'm telling you, you're using the word incorrectly," but I know it is hopeless. The language changes. The language changes, unfortunately, "just between  you and I" because most people "literally" don't know what they're talking about. Language changes for the same reason that the Big Lie works--if you say it enough times, it becomes true. If everyone uses the wrong word, it becomes "for all intensive purposes" the right one.

Something can't be "very unique" because it is either one of a kind or it isn't. You can't get any "uniquer" than unique, yet my spell check doesn't even highlight "uniquer" so there's another battle lost.

The word "fulsome" is a polite word (or used to be) for "bullshit" (as in "fulsome praise") but now it seems to be an intensifier of "full." Being "artful" has nothing to do with being "artistic" or didn't, until recently.

And so when I saw the word "disinterested" used in a museum label today when what the writer really wanted to say was that McNamara was "uninterested" (if he was the former, he wouldn't have cared one way or the other) I knew another distinction was gone. It is fine for the descriptivists to take a disinterested approach to language but when two distinct words take on the same meaning the language gets just a little less precise. The language gets blurrier. And blurry, imprecise language is the refuge of politicians, advertisers, and other liars.

So, to whoever wrote the text in the label, I'm telling you, you're wrong. And, no, I don't know what you mean, anyway.

Bokay?

If there was ever a time for quotation marks to prove you're making a joke and don't really think the word is spelled that way, it is on this card. No florist could be this stupid. And yet...

And, what am I ordering to get this free bokay? 

After Dealing with Many Bureaucracies

Phone Rep: And sir, have we met or exceeded your expectations?

LZ: Yes, you've met my expectations because I expected you to screw this up and you've exceeded my expectations because even I, as pessimistic as I am, didn't believe you could screw it up as much as you did.

Phone Rep: Thank you sir and have a nice day.

Someone Paid Money for this Sign

Shari & I were at the NY/NJ Gem and Mineral Show held at NJ Expo and Convention Center in Edison today and after walking around the aisles with her for over 2 1/2 hours I was woozy from druzy when I looked over at this sign. Because we were in an "artsy" environment, I was trying to force the sign to make sense but after I called Shari over she confirmed that I was indeed looking at one big ugly typo.  A guy saw her taking the picture and asked if it was because of the spelling. So at least we weren't the only ones to notice. I always wonder if the owner of the sign notices the error. It was all I could do not to go over and point it out to the guy dispensing nuts and "non pareals." Shari noticed that goof when she was emailing me the pix. I hadn't even gotten that far down on the sign. Possible reactions from the counterman were a sigh, a shrug, a blank look, or punching me in the mouth, which I, in the end, kept shut.

Word Gripes

With the weather (another surprising snow event) keeping me from my outdoor obsession, this afternoon I turned to my indoor preoccupation--words:

Adjectives can be tricky

 When Shari showed me this label I had misgivings about dinner tonight.

The "original pork tenderloin?" The original pork tenderloin has got to be hundreds of thousands of years old--I don't care if it has been kept refrigerated, I think it's long past its stale date. Maybe the word Stop n Shop was looking for was "authentic," or better yet, "real."

Non-sequitur

I like everything about our Subaru except these four letters. Every time I see this logo I want to get a screwdriver and pry it off. I don't know a lot about mathematics, but I do understand the concept of "zero,"  which is say "nothing" and I know you that you can't divvy up nothing. A vehicle either emits zero toxic fumes or else it emits toxic fumes. The crap spewing out of that tailpipe cannot be "partially zero."

Actually right now the car is a zero emission vehicle because it is parked in the garage. Tomorrow, when Shari drives to Toms River, it will go back to being a vehicle with emissions that amount to a positive number. You don't get to average that number with zero and come out with a section of zero so you can feel better about your carbon footprint.

Meta-typo

I love to collect to typos and other printing errors--they make up most of the "words" entries in this blog--so I was delighted to find an essay about mislabeled pictures of birds in Pete Dunne's entertaining Small-headed Flycatcher. Seen Yesterday. He Didn't Leave His Name.

I was even more delighted when I read this sentence:

At one pregnant moment, a point-blank house finch was shown that, to everyone's astonishment, threw back its head and belted out a beautiful morning warbler song.

Perfect. A typo in an article poking fun at copy-editing errors. A meta-typo. For you non-birders, t'aint no such thing as a morning warbler. Try Mourning Warbler with the easy-to-read initial caps.

A Couple of Howlers

It's been a while since I posted any inanities that I come across in my daily reading, but today's blunders, being on consecutive pages of the Defenders of Wildlife Magazine that I receive, just could not go unremarked:

Here is an example of a phrase that the writer has only heard and never seen in print. It is like "for all intensive purposes." Of course, a moment of thought would show the writer that the phrase makes no sense, but a moment of thought is usually asking a lot. That's why there used to be proofreaders and copy editors.

That Vladimir Nabokov was an amazing guy. Not only did he discover a new species of butterfly 37 years before he was born, he was able to do it 14 years before even his mother was born.

I think I'm only donating my money to organizations that can pass a literacy test from now on.

Juxtaposition: New Mexico

Burlington County 2/16--Fish Crow

We explored several spots in Burlington County that I've been curious about--the main spot being Pemberton Lake WMA, where the water is for the most part open and there was lots of waterfowl--but the only new bird that we added for the year was found in the parking lot of the Pandora Diner on Route 206--a flock of Fish Crows duking it out with a much larger flock of starlings for bread that had been tossed over the snow drifts into a scraggly field.

Let me veer off a moment here from birds to words: What is it about the name "Pandora" that makes it so popular?  Okay, it's a Greek diner, but I can think of a lot of mythological names that have better connotations than the woman who brought all the woe into the world. There's the internet music service called Pandora for no reason that I can tell and I often see billboards for a line of jewelry called "Pandora." Why? If you type in "Pandora's Box store" into Google, you'll get 1,520,000 hits. Granted, there's a lot of duplicates in there, but it seems like a pretty popular name for jewelry, antique, gift, tapestry, and clothing stores. Folks, Pandora's box is empty. Except for hope. Hope is what didn't get out of the box into the world. Cold comfort, if you ask me.

Meanwhile, back in Burlington County, after we surveyed Pemberton Lake for a half hour or so (where the rarest bird was a Red-breasted Merganser, usually a salt-water duck), we drove around the area, scanning empty fields for flocks of either geese or larks--a Greater White-fronted Goose has been seen with the thousands of Canada Geese in the area, and a Lapland Longspur has been spotted, as so often happens, with the larks. Along the way we did see 4 beefy Fox Sparrows and in one farm field, a couple hundred each of Snow Geese and Horned Larks, but no target birds.

After a very good lunch at Pandora's Diner, we made the loop around the Mercer Sod Farm IBA but had no luck finding the Rough-legged Hawk (which would be a lifer for us) that has been reported there. We had to settle for a Northern Harrier.

Still, we found good birds and got the feel for another section of Burlington County. 28 species in the county.

Species                Location

Snow Goose     Pemberton Lake WMA

Canada Goose     Pemberton Lake WMA

Gadwall     Pemberton Lake WMA

American Wigeon     Pemberton Lake WMA

American Black Duck     Pemberton Lake WMA

Mallard     Pemberton Lake WMA

Canvasback     Pemberton Lake WMA

Ring-necked Duck     Pemberton Lake WMA

Common Merganser     Pemberton Lake WMA

Red-breasted Merganser     Pemberton Lake WMA

Turkey Vulture     Pemberton Lake WMA

Northern Harrier     Mercer Sod Farm IBA

Red-tailed Hawk     Pemberton Lake WMA

American Coot     Pemberton Lake WMA

Blue Jay     Pemberton Lake WMA

American Crow     Vincentown-Pemberton Rd

Fish Crow     Pandora Diner parking lot

Horned Lark     Vincentown-Pemberton Rd

Carolina Chickadee     Mercer Sod Farm IBA

White-breasted Nuthatch     Mercer Sod Farm IBA

American Robin     Pemberton Lake WMA

Northern Mockingbird     Mercer Sod Farm IBA

European Starling     Pandora Diner parking lot

Fox Sparrow     Simontown & Stockton Bridge Rd

White-throated Sparrow     Mercer Sod Farm IBA

Dark-eyed Junco     Pandora Diner parking lot

Northern Cardinal     Mercer Sod Farm IBA

Red-winged Blackbird     Vincentown-Pemberton Rd

Crestwood Village 1/23--Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

It has been bitterly cold the last couple of days and the 8 or so inches of snow we had on Tuesday hasn't gone anywhere, so my birding opportunities have been pretty much through the window. But this morning Shari wanted to finally try out the snowshoes she bought a couple of years ago to celebrate our move to the country. We actually haven't had snow on the ground for any extended periods, so today she took advantage. I went along in my boots. I also have snowshoes, but they seemed to me like more trouble than they're worth. We're not exactly living in Alaska here.

Still, it was good to get outside, even if the temperature was only about 14 degrees. You people in the mid-west and New England can stop smirking now; in New Jersey that's cold. We walked along the trail that separates the Crestwood Village from the WMA. The snow was thick, but powdery and dry, so she made her way pretty easily.

And there were a few birds to be found. At a suet feeder 5 or so houses down from here we found two Pine Warblers actively feeding--one a female, the other a bright male. I haven't seen the female that was in our yard for a couple of weeks, so I'm wondering if she's moved locations. I did see this morning the male that regularly comes to eat peanut butter off a pine cone in our yard, so I suspect we have at least 3 PIWA in the neighborhood. Pretty good for a winter rarity.

In a bare tree, climbing up a diagonal branch Shari spotted a bird. Without her binoculars (as you can see from the pictures, her hands weren't free) it fell to me to identify it as our first Yellow-bellied Sapsucker of the year.

I remember a few years ago chatting with a vendor and we got onto hobbies and when he found out that mine was birding he, said, as so many others have said to me and my fellow birders, "Oh yeah, have you seen a Yellow-BELLIED SAP-SUCKER?" And I replied, "Of course," which surprised him, since he didn't really think the bird existed.

Then I said, "Listen, there are birds with a lot funnier names than that," and the first one that sprang to mind was Blue-footed Booby, which seemed to fulfill the suggestive quality that sapsucker has. But other names occur with a few moments of thought, like Magnificent Frigatebird, Variegated Fairywren, and Laughing Kookaburra (the last 2 from Australia).

Hey kids! Send in your funniest bird name. No prizes, but I will list them in a future entry if I get enough responses.