Double Trouble SP 4/17--Blue-headed Vireo

Blue-headed Vireo

I've been a promiscuous birder of late: Friday, I was in Cape May and Cumberland counties, Saturday in Atlantic, yesterday I birded Sandy Hook in Monmouth. Today, I got back to local birding. I had things to do in the morning, but killed an hour and a half at Shelter Cove Park, birding in a light rain. Nothing new, but I enjoyed the ibises the soccer field and the Wilson's Snipe I flushed.

In the afternoon, the weather was clearing up, so I drove over to Double Trouble where, over the weekend, I kept getting reports of Yellow-throated Warbler. I already have the bird on the year list from Belleplain, but for some reason this is a supposedly hard bird to find locally. Especially for me, apparently, because, though three other birders listed it today, before and after I was there, I didn't find it. It is probably because I don't have the patience to search up and down a small area looking for one bird. However, it was relatively busy behind the old sawmill and it was there that I found my FOY Blue-headed Vireo, along with some kinglets, gnatcatchers and Palm Warblers.

I found another along the little stream that comes out of Canoe Pond (the reservoir) but that wasn't why I was walking there. It is along that stream that two years ago Greg found a Louisiana Waterthrush (another toughie for the county) and last year I found one along there too, so I thought I'd try again and damn if the bird didn't pop up suddenly just where it was two years ago! No mistaking the bird for its cousin the Northern Waterthrush. This one was white below (not buff) with a bright white "eyebrow." Bobbed its tail and disappeared before I could even think about taking a picture. It wasn't singing either like the one in Belleplain, so I couldn't relocate it.

The habitat is a little odd for LOWA--the textbooks say they prefer fast running water and this little stream barely moves. Last year I found it up on the dam of the reservoir, where the water certainly moves fast. Another one was reported today down in the Manahawkin WMA and I can't think of any swiftly running water down there either.

I didn't walk out on the bogs, so my list starts with the woodpeckers instead of geese, ducks, herons, or egrets.

24 species (+1 other taxa)
Red-bellied Woodpecker 1 Heard
Downy Woodpecker 1
Eastern Phoebe 2
Blue-headed Vireo 2
American Crow 1
Fish Crow 4
Tree Swallow 1
swallow sp. 4 too far away to get any field marks
Carolina Chickadee 1 Heard
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 5
Golden-crowned Kinglet 1
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 2
American Robin 3
Louisiana Waterthrush 1
Black-and-white Warbler 1
Common Yellowthroat 1 Heard behind sawmill
Palm Warbler 3
Pine Warbler 1 Heard
Yellow-rumped Warbler 1
Chipping Sparrow 2
Dark-eyed Junco 1
White-throated Sparrow 6
Eastern Towhee 2 Heard
Northern Cardinal 3
American Goldfinch 1