(For the uninitiated, a Piney is a resident of the Pine Barrens, sort of New Jersey's version of a hillbilly.)
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| Lincoln's Sparrow (right) with White-throated Sparrow |
I looked up my Lincoln's Sparrow sightings and most of the ones I've had in New Jersey have come on that same Spizzle Creek trail. I can't guess what attracts them to that little patch of the park--or maybe the trail is just wide enough to see them more easily than on the narrower trails at the Tidal Pond or Reed's Road.
I'm stunned that snapping away under lowering skies I was able to get one half-way decent photo of the bird (next to a White-throated for comparison). The warblers, on the other hand, were much too active for me to even consider getting the camera off my shoulder. We were fortunate when one of the warblers would come out from behind a leaf or branch for more than a second.
The autumnal equinox is at 2:19 PM on Monday. Fall means ducks. I like ducks. They're big.
My list is small in comparison to the group's--we left before making it down to the winter anchorage for shorebirds on sandbars and some of the more obscure sightings I didn't bother to record.
39 species
Northern Pintail 8 High flyers
Mourning Dove 1
Black-bellied Plover 4
Laughing Gull 10
American Herring Gull 10
Double-crested Cormorant 5
Little Blue Heron 1
Tricolored Heron 5
Snowy Egret 1
Great Egret 11
Great Blue Heron 1
Brown Pelican 1
Osprey 2
Bald Eagle 1
Belted Kingfisher 2
Northern Flicker 4
Merlin 1
Carolina Chickadee 3
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 1
Marsh Wren 1 Heard kayak access
Carolina Wren 1
Gray Catbird 5
Brown Thrasher 2
American Robin 1
House Finch 2
White-throated Sparrow 2
Song Sparrow 3
Lincoln's Sparrow 1
Eastern Towhee 1
Bobolink 2 Plink
Common Yellowthroat 2
American Redstart 2
Cape May Warbler 2
Magnolia Warbler 2
Bay-breasted Warbler 1
Blackpoll Warbler 1
Black-throated Blue Warbler 1
Palm Warbler 1
Pine Warbler 4
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| King Eider |
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| White Ibises |
When I finally made it down to the inlet I walked toward the Rutgers facility. I was flushing up sparrows out of the grass and I was hoping they were Nelson's Sparrow, but I decided to look first toward the Rutgers area with the scope. On the floating dock the eider was not there but scanning for a minute until I came to a nearby peninsula, I found the bird with its diagnostic smile. The smile of a King Eider hen (oxymoron alert) must be contagious, because I found myself grinning too as I took photos. This was much more satisfying than standing on the beach at Barnegat Light on a frigid morning, scanning big flocks of Common Eiders for the outlier bobbing in the surf a quarter mile out.
I then devoted an inordinate amount of time--for me--in search for a Nelson's Sparrow. I had many candidates jump out of the marsh grass and flutter back down or else fly up and into a stand of reeds, but none of them were definitely identifiable in the harsh sunlight. They could just as easily have been Saltmarsh Sparrows (which were once lumped with Nelson's as Sharp-tailed Sparrow) or even Seaside Sparrows. I'm certain at least one of those little helicopters was a Nelson's but I couldn't tell which one. The one sparrow that stood still long enough for me figure out what it was turned out to be a Song Sparrow. Annoying, because the beach and marsh around the inlet are the best, maybe only, place to find Nelson's in the county, and if I don't get it there, I don't get it.
Still, a King Eider on a warm day made for a worthwhile trip.
33 species
King Eider 1
Clapper Rail 3
American Oystercatcher 1
Black-bellied Plover 2
Semipalmated Plover 3
Short-billed Dowitcher 1
Spotted Sandpiper 1 Beach
Lesser Yellowlegs 1
Greater Yellowlegs 3
Least Sandpiper 2
Laughing Gull 100
American Herring Gull 50
Great Black-backed Gull 5
Forster's Tern 15
Common Loon 1
Double-crested Cormorant 20
White Ibis 80
Yellow-crowned Night Heron 2
Black-crowned Night Heron 10
Snowy Egret 12
Great Egret 65
Great Blue Heron 15
Brown Pelican 4
Turkey Vulture 1
Osprey 2
Northern Harrier 1
Tree Swallow 1
European Starling 50
Gray Catbird 3
Song Sparrow 1
Red-winged Blackbird 1
Common Yellowthroat 2
Yellow Warbler 1
This morning, I parked in the Union Transportation Trail lot, crossed Sharon Station Road, plunked my scope down in the wet grass, and looked at a big puddle that has formed in a low spot. Killdeer, of course, and a few peeps that I would have to get closer to if I wanted to identify them, and then, well I guess I better start a list because there's a Buff-breasted Sandpiper. I walked along the edge of Herbert Road to get closer to the pond, hoping that the other shorebirds in and near the water would turn out to be my target, but while there was a decent mix, the plover was not among them. I then started walking down Herbert Road toward Old York, past the house and over to the barren dirt field that had already had its sod harvest. Besides the big flock of starlings, I saw smaller birds in the dirt and kept walking. I got my scope on one and it turned out to be a Horned Lark--nice bird, but when you want something else, disappointing. The bird next to it was also a lark, as was the next bird, and the next bird and the next 41 birds--all Horned Larks, eating bugs or seeds. I spent an hour looking and only came away with a year bird. Doesn't mean that tomorrow or Saturday there won't be a golden plover there--especially since it may rain tonight--and if I had found one, it wouldn't have meant there would be one on Saturday. That's the problem with these oxymoronic common rarities--they're soooo unreliable.
Canada Goose 20
Killdeer 5
Semipalmated Plover 1
Lesser Yellowlegs 2
Buff-breasted Sandpiper 1
Least Sandpiper 3
Pectoral Sandpiper 1
Semipalmated Sandpiper 3
Blue Jay 1
American Crow 2
Horned Lark 45
European Starling 200
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| Say's Phoebe |
We were going to poke around the officer's club area by Battery Potter when Scott got a text of the flycatcher at the end of the Fisherman's Trail. This required the dreaded death march through the sand, but the weather, at least, was fairly cool, and so with scopes shouldered, about 10 of us made the trek. I thought that a) chances were slim the bird would in sight and b) if it was, it would be lousy looks, but your chances are zero if you don't try.
We trudged up to the stringed off area where the discoverer of the bird was maintaining a watch. As I feared, the bird had been seen in a far-off dune which wasn't promising for good looks, and hadn't been seen in a while, which was less promising. The group stood around for a while but, surprisingly, there were antsier people there than me, so, when Scott saw some shorebirds on a mud flat behind us, we left, hoping the bird wouldn't show up while we were gone.
Almost immediately Scott found a Baird's Sandpiper on the mud flat. I too, almost immediately found it in my scope, after discarding a Semipalmated Plover just to its left. The whole group got on the bird, which scurried around from dry sand to mud and then we lost it somehow. In a bait and switch, a bird further down the flat looked like the Baird's but turned out to be a White-rumped Sandpiper. They look similar, but the Baird's was tawnier and flatter. We were hemming and hawing over where the Baird's might have gone--there's lots of wrack for it to disappear behind--when a late-comer to our group ran up to say that she'd seen the flycatcher--obviously, if you look at the header of this entry you know it was a Say's Phoebe--at the end of the Fisherman's Trail, just before you hit the beach. Baird's be damned, we all fast-walked back to the trail head and within a few minutes Bob said, "What's that bird on the sign? " It was, of course, the Say's and it put on quite show, affording beautiful looks through bins, scope, and naked eyes. It was especially amusing to watch it hawk flies that were buzzing around small dead fish that had died when puddles in a mud flat dried up. Driving up there this morning I was sort of hoping for a Baird's Sandpiper, since I knew they'd been seen the last couple of days, but Say's Phoebe certainly wasn't on my bingo card. Three tick marks: year bird, county bird, and most importantly, state bird. Who cares which way the wind blows when you can get a vagrant like that!
34 species
Canada Goose 4
Mourning Dove 3
Black-bellied Plover 25
Killdeer 1
Semipalmated Plover 5
Willet 1
Greater Yellowlegs 1
Baird's Sandpiper 1
White-rumped Sandpiper 1
Least Sandpiper 10
Semipalmated Sandpiper 5
Laughing Gull 25
American Herring Gull 35
Great Black-backed Gull 40
Least Tern 1
Forster's Tern 4
Royal Tern 10
Double-crested Cormorant 15
Snowy Egret 2
Osprey 6
Cooper's Hawk 1
Say's Phoebe 1
Tree Swallow 500
Carolina Wren 1
European Starling 6
Gray Catbird 2
Northern Mockingbird 1
House Sparrow 2
House Finch 4
Chipping Sparrow 1
Field Sparrow 3
Eastern Towhee 1
Brown-headed Cowbird 1
Common Yellowthroat 1
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| American Golden-Plovers |
I figured I could stay home, watch the Mets game and be aggravated on two fronts, or I could get back in the car and try again. I tried again. Fortunately, this time there was a line of birders who I knew parked on the side of the road and both the plovers and the uppie were easy to see, though very hard to photograph. How I missed the plovers the first time I don't know unless they were over a small rise in the field and were flushed by ATV activities in the field. Whatever the reason, I'm glad I went back, since the Mets played another crappy game and lost.
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| Red-breasted Nuthatch |
For the month I tallied 137 species
Don't look for the bird, look for the birders
Hudsonian Godwit
--Birding Law #4
The other day I was talking to Bob Auster on the phone. He'd just been down to Brig and said he'd seen something there he'd never seen before: A Marbled Godwit and an Hudsonian Godwit in the same scope view. Come to think of it, neither had I, and since I had neither bird for the year, I went godwit chasing.
According to the information on eBird, the birds were around Goose Marker 15, which is about 3/4 of the way around the Wildlife Drive. Instead of taking my walk first, which is how I usually approach my trips to Brig, I drove directly to that area--more or less the same place that the phalaropes were being seen a couple of weeks ago. There were shorebirds in the shallows and on the mud, including one Wilson's Phalarope (no longer flagged as rare this time of year), but of godwits there were none. With sigh and a groan, I continued on to Jen's Trail, parked the car and started my walk from there to the Gull Pond and back, with the only notable birds being a large flock of White Ibis that flew into the trees by the Gull Pond.
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| Immature White Ibises with Great Egret |
Returning to the car, I drove back to the start of the Wildlife Drive and did some actual shorebirding. As would be expected this time of year, Semipalmated Sandpipers abounded in take-a-guess numbers and random surveys of the flocks turned up the usual shorebirds, including a few White-rumped Sandpipers, in smaller numbers. I'm certain there were Western Sandpipers in there, but none with obvious field marks stood out to me, no surprise.
On a Monday, there weren't that many people there, which is good in one way, bad if you're hoping for a better set of eyes than yours. But at the dogleg I saw a vehicle parked and two scopes on the road, so I pulled over. The scopers turned out to be a couple of birding friends from Ocean County who I hadn't seen in a long time and, even better, they had both godwits in view. I got the Marbled Godwit first and then a second one was called to my attention. Meanwhile, the Hudsonian was in sight for a moment and then we lost it and after a few false sightings that turned out to Short-billed Dowitchers, we found it again. The Hudsonian had retreated to the mud and was standing there, preening, when one of the Marbled Godwits came up to it and casually moved it away, like a bully bumping you in the bar because he can and whaddya gonna do about it? So, I had my two species of godwits (and 50% of the godwit species in the world) in one scope view. Goal achieved. Unfortunately, distance and shimmer made for poor pictures but the slight upturned bills were no doubters.
For the two loops I had 60 species, pretty good, I thought, until I looked at the list of one guy who birds there almost every day--he had 99 which is by my precise calculations, 65% better. Anyway, here's what I got:
Canada Goose 20
Mute Swan 30
Blue-winged Teal 4
Mallard 125
Mourning Dove 4
Ruby-throated Hummingbird 1
Clapper Rail 2
American Avocet 4
Semipalmated Plover 4
Hudsonian Godwit 1
Marbled Godwit 2
Short-billed Dowitcher 150
Wilson's Phalarope 1
Lesser Yellowlegs 20
Greater Yellowlegs 50
Ruddy Turnstone 2
White-rumped Sandpiper 4
Least Sandpiper 2
Semipalmated Sandpiper 1000
Laughing Gull 200
American Herring Gull 25
Black Skimmer 75
Caspian Tern 25
Forster's Tern 125
Common Tern 2
Double-crested Cormorant 250
White Ibis 225
Yellow-crowned Night Heron 1
Black-crowned Night Heron 3
Snowy Egret 30
Great Egret 100
Great Blue Heron 8
Osprey 3
Cooper's Hawk 2
Red-bellied Woodpecker 1
Northern Flicker 1
Eastern Wood-Pewee 2
Eastern Phoebe 1
Great Crested Flycatcher 1
Eastern Kingbird 1
Blue Jay 3
American Crow 20
Fish Crow 2
Common Raven 1 Croaking. Mobbed by crows
Carolina Chickadee 2
Tufted Titmouse 2
Tree Swallow 20
Barn Swallow 25
White-breasted Nuthatch 1
Carolina Wren 1
European Starling 50
Gray Catbird 8
Northern Mockingbird 1
House Sparrow 1
American Goldfinch 4
Seaside Sparrow 1
Saltmarsh Sparrow 1
Red-winged Blackbird 100
Boat-tailed Grackle 2
Northern Cardinal 1
