September Summary

It was a productive month--110 species, 3 life birds  (BROWN BOOBY rarest bird of the month)+ another 5 FOY birds. But it was a frustrating month also
1) because there were more birds (like Black Terns, Bobolinks, Marbled Godwit come to mind) reported that I didn't find when I looked and
2) because I would have liked to have seen a few of the birds (Cape May Warbler, YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD) a lot better than I did. I would have like to have seen that Great Horned Owl a little longer than I did. I would have liked to have both cuckoos in Whiting stand still a while. (The Yellow-billed Cuckoo in Prospect Park was great--it posed, stayed low, and gave great looks; it's rare that I leave a bird before it leaves me.)

I walk in the Whiting  WMA almost every day and keep adding species as the season progresses. Plenty of Pine Warblers in there, not many other warblers. The lake has had phoebe, kingfishers, kingbirds, and Osprey sitting in the bare trees that jut out of the water but I've yet to see anything on the water. I'm told that a few ducks come in winter and that gulls sit on the ice when it freezes. I was hoping for a little more than that but we'll see what persistence yields.

Herewith the September list:
Counties birded
New Jersey:  Atlantic, Cape May, Ocean
New York: Kings, New York

Species	First Sighting
Canada Goose	CMBO Northwood Center
Mute Swan	CMPSP--Hawkwatch Platform
Gadwall	Brigantine
American Black Duck	Brigantine
Mallard	CMPSP--Hawkwatch Platform
Northern Shoveler	Prospect Park
Green-winged Teal	Brigantine
BROWN BOOBY	Jarvis Sound
Double-crested Cormorant	Jarvis Sound
Great Blue Heron	Jarvis Sound
Great Egret	Jarvis Sound
Snowy Egret	Jarvis Sound
Little Blue Heron	Great Bay Bvld. WMA
Tricolored Heron	Jarvis Sound
Black-crowned Night-Heron	Jarvis Sound
Yellow-crowned Night-Heron	Jarvis Sound
White Ibis	Brigantine
Glossy Ibis	Brigantine
Turkey Vulture	Whiting WMA
Osprey	Jarvis Sound
Northern Harrier	Brigantine
Cooper's Hawk	Whiting WMA
Red-tailed Hawk	GSP MM 4
Merlin	Whiting WMA
Peregrine Falcon	Jarvis Sound
Clapper Rail	Great Bay Bvld. WMA
Black-bellied Plover	Jarvis Sound
Semipalmated Plover	Jarvis Sound
American Oystercatcher	Jarvis Sound
Spotted Sandpiper	Jarvis Sound
Greater Yellowlegs	Brigantine
Lesser Yellowlegs	Jarvis Sound
Whimbrel	Jarvis Sound
Hudsonian Godwit	Brigantine
Ruddy Turnstone	Brigantine
Sanderling	Island Beach SP
Semipalmated Sandpiper	Brigantine
Western Sandpiper	Brigantine
Least Sandpiper	Brigantine
White-rumped Sandpiper	Brigantine
Dunlin	Brigantine
Short-billed Dowitcher	Brigantine
Long-billed Dowitcher	Brigantine
Wilson's Phalarope	Brigantine
Laughing Gull	Jarvis Sound
Ring-billed Gull	Island Beach SP
Herring Gull	Jarvis Sound
Great Black-backed Gull	Jarvis Sound
Caspian Tern	Brigantine
Common Tern	Jarvis Sound
Forster's Tern	Jarvis Sound
Black Skimmer	Brigantine
Rock Pigeon	Central Park
Mourning Dove	Whiting WMA
Yellow-billed Cuckoo	Prospect Park
BLACK-BILLED CUCKOO	Whiting WMA
Great Horned Owl	Whiting WMA
Common Nighthawk	35 Sunset Rd
Chimney Swift	Whiting WMA
Ruby-throated Hummingbird	35 Sunset Rd
Belted Kingfisher	Great Bay Bvld. WMA
Red-bellied Woodpecker	Double Trouble State Park
Downy Woodpecker	35 Sunset Rd
Hairy Woodpecker	Cattus Island County Park
Northern Flicker	Whiting WMA
Eastern Wood-Pewee	Whiting WMA
Eastern Phoebe	Whiting WMA
Eastern Kingbird	Whiting WMA
Red-eyed Vireo	Prospect Park
Blue Jay	Whiting WMA
American Crow	Whiting WMA
Fish Crow	Forsythe NWR--Barnegat
Tree Swallow	Jarvis Sound
Barn Swallow	Brigantine
Carolina Chickadee	Whiting WMA
Tufted Titmouse	Whiting WMA
White-breasted Nuthatch	Whiting WMA
Carolina Wren	35 Sunset Rd
Eastern Bluebird	Whiting WMA
Veery	Prospect Park
American Robin	Whiting WMA
Gray Catbird	Whiting WMA
Northern Mockingbird	Cedar Run Dock Rd.
Brown Thrasher	35 Sunset Rd
European Starling	Great Bay Bvld. WMA
Ovenbird	35 Sunset Rd
Northern Waterthrush	Prospect Park
Black-and-white Warbler	Prospect Park
Common Yellowthroat	Cattus Island County Park
American Redstart	Central Park
Cape May Warbler	Brigantine
Northern Parula	Prospect Park
Yellow Warbler	Cattus Island County Park
Chestnut-sided Warbler	Prospect Park
Blackpoll Warbler	Prospect Park
Palm Warbler	Cattus Island County Park
Pine Warbler	Whiting WMA
Black-throated Green Warbler	Prospect Park
Wilson's Warbler	Prospect Park
Eastern Towhee	Island Beach SP
Chipping Sparrow	Whiting WMA
Seaside Sparrow	Brigantine
Northern Cardinal	Whiting WMA
Red-winged Blackbird	Jarvis Sound
YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD	Brigantine
Common Grackle	Brigantine
Boat-tailed Grackle	Jarvis Sound
House Finch	Whiting WMA
American Goldfinch	Whiting WMA
House Sparrow	Central Park

Even the Utility Company

A few months ago I found this wonderful typo in neon:
http://birdsandwords-larryz.blogspot.com/2011/06/typo-in-neon.html
Today, paying my first water bill here in Whiting, I was studying the amusing little bill they send you on a perforated postcard, without even putting your zip code in the address. And when I read the address of where I should send my check, I experienced a feeling common to all proofreaders at one time or another, which is, "Maybe I don't know how to spell!" But no, I typed the word and spell checked it and I'm not crazy.

Even the utility company can't spell "UTILITIES."  After seeing that, I didn't even mind paying the bill.

UTILITES: It has a Biblical ring to it.
"And God smote the Utilites and the children of Israel rejoiced."

The Last 100 Books I've Read

It took me a lot longer to get through the last 100 books I've read than the 90 or so I did when I first started keeping track after I was laid off--16 months.  A lot of life got in the way of reading. 


Looking over the list I see some themes--Updike always is interesting, a surprising (to me) interest in Hemingway, lots of books on science and math which I partially understand at best, a couple of books on typography, and a sad interlude rereading the works of Paul Violi, too soon gone. 


The first book, OOPS, was about bad ideas in science and culture. Book # 100 I've commented on below. Books with ® are books I reread--again I paraphrase Nabokov, "You cannot read a book; you can only reread it." Especially when you have my memory.


Aside from my inexplicable predilection for keeping lists and databases (cf. all the bird lists in this blog), what I find interesting looking over the titles, is how unpredictable it is what I'll be willing to read. All books are potentially interesting. 

5/30: Oops!

6/4:   More Than You Know

6/7:   An Encounter at St. Elizabeths®

6/8:   The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes

6/13: The Roots of Treason®

6/16: My Father’s Tears

6/20: Seek My Face®

6/22: Bech at Bay®

6/25: Duchamp

6/25: I Wanted to Write a Poem®

7/8: A Quiet Flame

7/12: Memories of the Ford Administration

7/15: The Devil in the White City

7/16: The Sages

7/19: The Trillion Dollar Melt Down

7/21: Bech is Back

7/23: Bech: A Book®

7/26: Fortune’s Formula

7/28: Labyrinths of Reason®

7/30: The Name is Archer

7/31: The Lacquer Screen

8/2: Violent Saturday

8/3:  Ghosts

8/5: All Fires the Fire and Other Stories.

8/9: Fever

8/11: Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler

8/25: Gaming the Vote

9/12: If the Dead Rise Not

9/16: Problems and Other Stories

9/20: Robert Runcie: Reluctant Archbishop

9/22: Essays by Wallace Shawn

9/27: Bohemian Paris (was only able to read ½ the book before I sold it)

10/1: One Time Fits All (not a very interesting book)

10/3: Howl and Other Poems®

10/6: Bob Dylan in America

10/15: Quantum

10/18: Nemesis

10/26: Cigarettes Are Sublime

10/28: Priceless

11/10: Painted Shadow

11/14: The Laws of Thermodynamics A Very Short Introduction (if I understood 10% of this book it would be a lot)

11/18: The Finkler Question

11/23: Sunset Park

11/26: The Hard Way Around

12/2: Nothing A Very Short Introduction (I understood approximately 50% of this book)

12/27: Snow

12/30: Enormous Changes at the Last Minute®

1/5/11: Ferocious Alphabets

1/6: Trading Options for Dummies

1/7: Beliefs, Attitudes, and Human Affairs® (40 year old college text)

1/9: A Farewell to Arms

1/11: The Man Who Loved Books Too Much (Not a book about me)

1/13: Bunner Sisters

1/20: S. ®

1/21: Nabokov’s Butterfly

2/1: Couples

2/7: The Ballantine House

2/21: In the Beauty of the Lilies

2/26: The Rebel Angels

3/30: A Good Man in Africa

4/5: Roger’s Version

4/7: The Duel

4/13: Lucky Jim®

4/15: A Moveable Feast

 

4/17: Fracas®

4/17: Likewise®

4/18: Selected Accidents, Pointless Anecdotes       Paul Violi 1944-2011

4/18: Splurge®

4/18: Overnight®

4/20: Economics in One Lesson (simple-minded screed against New Deal policies, yet oddly relevant.)

5/16: Moby-Duck

5/18: The Good Priest’s Son

5/24: The Information

5/26: Helvetica and the New York City Subway System

5/29: The Glass Menagerie

6/5: Engineers of Dreams®

6/7: A Shortage of Engineers

6/9: Campaign 1997

6/13: Gödel’s Proof (If I read this book 10 times I might understand 50% of it.)

6/19: An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England

6/24: A Month of Sundays

6/29: Field Grey

7/13: Collected Stories of Saul Bellow

7/18: A Fan’s Notes

7/21: Eureka

7/23: Avian Architecture

7/28: Mrs. Ted Bliss®

7/28: The Pine Barrens®

7/29: Dime Store Alchemy®

8/4:   Humboldt’s Gift®

8/4:   The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

8/9:   More Die of Heartbreak

8/13: Even the Browns®

8/14: Poets in Their Youth®

8/14: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead®

8/26: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

9/9:   1493

9/14: Just My Type

9/16: To Have and Have Not

9/22: Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman

Personality Flaw

I guess I'm not properly sympathetic

or empathetic or some kind of thetic

but I'm reading a biography of Berryman

and I can't wait for the fucker to jump off that bridge.

Heard on New Jersey News

"Angela Gibbons is still in shock over the murder of her son last night..."

Still in shock? STILL IN SHOCK? It happened last night for crying out loud---GET OVER IT!

Brigantine 9/18--YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD

BVD: Better View Desired. I can't think of a more unsatisfactory life bird than today's YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD.

First of all, it's a bird I've always really wanted to see--so dramatic with its contrasting colors. So today, driving around Brig in what seemed like gale force winds, we were on the lookout for a flock of blackbirds in which the YEBL had been reported, but didn't hold out much hope, thinking the wind would keep any right-thinking bird hunkered down in the reeds. Around 2/3 of the way around we finally came across the flock which lifted out of the high grass,  flushed by our car's approach. They moved a little farther on when Shari suddenly shouted out that she saw the bird--of course, I didn't see it. Trying to get nearer only moved the birds farther along until they rose in a mass and flew across the channel. There I stood, the wind so strong it blew off my hat, scanning the other side of the channel looking at blackbirds and starlings, not finding what I wanted. However, I did see,  partially obscured by a tuft of tall grass, a bird with a yellow breast, which I at first dismissed as the light playing tricks with a starling. But then a starlings' iridescence doesn't run to yellow and when we informed by another birder that the blackbird reported was probably a female or juvenile, I realized I'd seen the bird. But it isn't the bird I want to see, not the "type" of the species and certainly not the way I want to see it. But it counts. The flock flew closer than was scared by a Northern  Harrier and flew south while the one-way wildlife drive at the point heads north. So, BVD.

But other "good" birds were about. Western Sandpipers were for once obvious in their coloration, size, and bill, another birder helped us pick out some White-rumped Sandpipers, and at least a couple of Dunlin, one in fading breeding plumage were mixed in with Semipalmated Sandpipers, plovers (semipalmated and black-bellied) and yellowlegs.

3 Turkey Vultures were on a mudflat, feasting on the carcass of a Black Skimmer. When  one of them picked up the head and dangled it upside down, the skimmer's huge beak swinging back and forth, it just about the grossest thing I've seen this year.

35 species for the circuit.
Canada Goose  25
Mute Swan  1
American Black Duck  20
Mallard  25
Double-crested Cormorant  75
Great Blue Heron  6
Great Egret  150
Snowy Egret  100
Black-crowned Night-Heron  5
Turkey Vulture  3    Eating remnants of Black Skimmer
Northern Harrier  1
Merlin  1
Peregrine Falcon  1
Black-bellied Plover  25
Semipalmated Plover  10
Greater Yellowlegs  9
Semipalmated Sandpiper  500
Western Sandpiper  5
Least Sandpiper  3
White-rumped Sandpiper  7
Dunlin  2
Short-billed Dowitcher  3
Laughing Gull  500
Herring Gull  100
Great Black-backed Gull  2
Caspian Tern  1
Forster's Tern  200
Black Skimmer  4
Belted Kingfisher  1
Blue Jay  1
American Crow  1
Tree Swallow  15
European Starling  100
Red-winged Blackbird  100
YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD  1    With large flock of blackbirds and starlings near dogleg

Prospect Park 9/16--Black-throated Green Warbler

We  had to be in Brooklyn for a couple of days so I took the opportunity to head over to Prospect Park, hoping to find some warblers.  I've been getting Peter's tweets all along while I've been in Whiting and while I've had plenty of good birding in my own backyard, it's always a case of the grass is greener.

I hadn't been to the park since before Hurricane Irene blew through and knocked down enough trees to make a decent forest. At one point I was walking along Lookout Hill when I stopped, looked around, and couldn't quite place where I was for a minute because so many of the trees around the steps leading down to the Maryland Monument were no longer there. Over on the peninsula there were so many trees blocking the "thumb" that it looks like it will take a hundred chainsaws to clean it up. 

As to warblers, I wasn't disappointed--9 species, including my FOY Black-throated Green Warbler (how did I miss that one up 'til now?) But the best and most surprising bird was the compliment to last week's Black-billed Cuckoo--a Yellow-billed Cuckoo on the side path of Lookout Hill.  I  was walking along when two birders (Jessie & Erin) waved me over to show me the bird, which was out in the open on the ground. I've never had better looks at a cuckoo--it was very calm and stayed in sight almost the entire 15 or so minutes we hung around that spot (which was also where we saw the Black-throated Green).  Usually cuckoos skulk around or stay very still high up in a tree--this one was so cooperative that I expected it to start signing autographs.

American Redstarts seem to be the most common warbler in the park--my count of 8 is conservative--hard to tell when they're fluttering around like falling leaves whether you're seeing the same one 2 or 3 times or different ones. Over on the peninsula I saw a Wilson's Warbler with it's black cap still fairly dark and a Blackpoll Warbler flitting about high in a tree. There was a couple of drab warblers I had to let go unidentified--looking at another birder's report today, I wonder if one of them might have been a Tennessee? 

It was good to be back in the park. I might be biased because of my familiarity with the place, but I think that acre for acre, it's one of the best birding spots on the East Coast.

We're back in Whiting now--all our common backyard birds were in attendance at the feeders this afternoon plus 2 Black-and-White Warblers. 

Prospect Park 
30 species
Canada Goose  55
Mute Swan  8
Mallard  60
Herring Gull  2
Rock Pigeon  6
Mourning Dove  4
Yellow-billed Cuckoo  1    Lookout Hill
Chimney Swift  10
Belted Kingfisher  1    Peninsula
Northern Flicker  2    Lookout Hill
Red-eyed Vireo  2
Blue Jay  4
Tufted Titmouse  1
Veery  1
American Robin  5
Gray Catbird  8
European Starling  1
Black-and-white Warbler  4
Common Yellowthroat  1    Lake
American Redstart  8
Northern Parula  1    Lake
Chestnut-sided Warbler  1    Lookout Hill
Blackpoll Warbler  1    Peninsula shelter
Pine Warbler  2    Lake
Black-throated Green Warbler  1    Lookout Hill
Wilson's Warbler  1    Peninsula shelter
Northern Cardinal  2
Red-winged Blackbird  1    Lake phragmites
American Goldfinch  1    Lily Pond
House Sparrow  70