The last place I expected to end up today was under a bridge on a railroad line in Ridgefield, NJ, but, as a poet friend of mine once wrote, "the day gets away from you in the strangest ways."The day started off normally enough, with Mike and I going north to Sandy Hook (admittedly a little peculiar for us) to look for warblers and what not. What not we found, including an American Golden Plover (year bird for Mike) at Spermaceti Cove where we began and where we had our most success, but warblers were thin on the ground (and in the trees and in the air) both for us and from all we met along the way, though, had we started our day pre-dawn as some did we'd have had a bigger list than the 40-some species we came up with. A stop at the banding station on the Road to Nowhere made for great conversation, but the banders there told us that after a fast start at dawn the birds just disappeared. We tried the old tennis courts (moderate success with a few common warblers) and around the hawk watch platform (virtually nothing) and by noon the Hook was getting crowded with people and emptier of birds so we decided to look elsewhere.
Mike asked if anything had been seen at DeKorte lately and an eBird search brought up an intriguing flycatcher that would be a year bird for both of us. It was seen yesterday on the Kingsland Overlook, which was fine except that neither of us is familiar enough with DeKorte (this was our first foray into Bergen County this year) to know exactly where that was. Well, it turned out to just be that big hill at the edge of the parking lot that overlooks a part of the dump (okay, landfill) that DeKorte once was. We walked around there once looking for dead trees and snags without any luck then took a bio-break. Coming back I noticed a dead tree which would be perfect for this bird so decided to post myself there until Mike got back. Just as he did, the flycatcher flew into the tree next to the one I was watching, landing on a dead branch. Big, peaked head, gray vest, white breast, no eye-ring to speak of, wing-bars...all looked good for Olive-sided Flycatcher. Even though the bird has apparently been there all summer, I was pretty impressed that we actually found it.
We walked around the impoundments, but the water was very high--a few egrets, a Marsh Wren, some shovelers, black ducks and Mallards. We ran into a birder we know (which happened today seemingly every quarter mile we walked) and he told us that the American White Pelican that has been hanging around DeKorte for months was still there. We walked back to one of the impoundments and there, about a mile away, in the heat shimmer, on the far shore, behind 3 cormorants, was a huge white lump that was not a swan and if I hadn't already had pelican on my year list and if I really cared about my Bergen County list, I probably wouldn't have counted this ridiculously distant bird, but I rationalized that I was just adding one more bit of info into the gigantic eBird database maw.
After that, Mike asked if I'd listed Monk Parakeet yet for the year and I hadn't, because I haven't visited my mother enough lately and she lives only about 20 minutes from the Carteret birds. Mike knew of an overpass in Ridgefield where there were big nest so we decided to try to get those clownish birds for the year. We were now in "hic sunt leontes" territory for me, blank spaces on my mental map of New Jersey. I've heard of Teterboro Airport hundreds of times--today was the first time I actually saw it. So after passing through or by a number of towns I've also heard of but have never visited (Hasbrouck Heights, Moonachie, Hackensack) we arrived below the bridge and parked next to the tracks. The big, colonial nests of the parakeets were intact but the birds were nowhere to be found--whether because they were all out feeding or because they've colonized another part of the area we don't know. There are literally dozens of spots where they've been reported in the Edgewater area, but it was getting late so, having had at least one cool bird for the day, we shrugged and headed back south.
The DeKorte List:
24 species (+1 other taxa)
Mute Swan 1
Northern Shoveler 4
Mallard 6
American Black Duck 2
Double-crested Cormorant 5
American White Pelican 1
Great Egret 5
Snowy Egret 4
Osprey 1
Herring Gull 1
gull sp. 10
Rock Pigeon 1
Mourning Dove 5
Olive-sided Flycatcher 1
Blue Jay 1 Heard
Marsh Wren 1 Heard
American Robin 10
Gray Catbird 1
Northern Mockingbird 1
European Starling 5
Common Yellowthroat 2
Palm Warbler 1
Chipping Sparrow 1
House Finch 1
House Sparrow 4
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