Great Bay Blvd 9/7--Cliff Swallow

As I walking toward the inlet beach this morning, scope on shoulder, a guy heading toward the Rutgers facility asked me what I was looking for.

"Anything I can find," I told him.

He then told me that yesterday he'd seen "Night-herons, I think they're called."

"Yeah," I replied, "There were two black-crowns and two yellow-crowns down by the bridge."

"How can you tell the difference."

This was too much like the Red-winged Blackbird joke. "Look, I don't want to be snide but...Black-crowned Night-herons have black heads and Yellow-crowned Night-herons have...yellow heads."

And so he walked down the boardwalk with these new nuggets of knowledge.

Along the wires on the road were swallows, hundreds and hundreds of swallows, almost all Tree Swallows when I scoped them, but I was happily surprised to pick out of the flock two Cliff Swallows with their little white foreheads. I thought maybe I'd find some Bank Swallows migrating, or Northern Rough-wing Swallows, and there may have been some zipping by overhead or hidden in the long lines of birds on the wire, but I didn't expect to see the Cliff Swallows. Just not a bird I expect to see.

I've found I have to bird Great Bay Blvd weekdays. Weekends are impossible with all the motorboats and stupid jet skis scaring away all the birds. But a quiet weekday morning yielded lots of species and there were a few birds I wish I had seen better or longer--they had to go as simpler "warbler sp." or "empidonax sp."

39 species, 3 1/2 hours. 6 miles of road.
Double-crested Cormorant  5
Brown Pelican  15
Great Blue Heron  1
Great Egret  30
Snowy Egret  10
Tricolored Heron  1
Black-crowned Night-Heron  2
Yellow-crowned Night-Heron  2
Osprey  2
Clapper Rail  6
Semipalmated Plover  1
American Oystercatcher  2
Greater Yellowlegs  6
Lesser Yellowlegs  2
Ruddy Turnstone  10
Semipalmated Sandpiper  5
Western Sandpiper  1
Least Sandpiper  1
Short-billed Dowitcher  1
Laughing Gull  100
Herring Gull  100
Great Black-backed Gull  10
Forster's Tern  5
Rock Pigeon  3
Mourning Dove  2
Belted Kingfisher  2
Alder/Willow Flycatcher (Traill's Flycatcher)  1
Tree Swallow  500
Barn Swallow  3
Cliff Swallow  2
Gray Catbird  2
European Starling  250
Common Yellowthroat  3
American Redstart  1
Yellow Warbler  6
Pine Warbler  1
warbler sp.  1
Song Sparrow  1
Red-winged Blackbird  5
Common Grackle  1
Boat-tailed Grackle  70