Eye Test 12/17

Green-winged Teal, Brig

Today was kind of an eye test--instead of just looking out the back window, or walking around the neighborhood, I went out with Mike and did some real birding with my one clear eye. It is one thing to stand in the backyard and look at birds at the feeders, quite another to scan a flock of ducks with a scope and come up with a Eurasian Wigeon, which I was able to do today at Brig. I was very pleased with my ability to see distance today--the flocks of Snow Geese were sharp naked eye and very bright in the scope using my right eye. The left eye, which will be fixed on Tuesday, has basically been coming along for the ride the last couple of weeks. The brain, where you really do all your "seeing" integrates the vision of the two eyes, essentially ignores the cloudy input from left eye and uses the information coming in from the good eye.

We had a pretty good day with one turn around the dikes at Brig, along with earlier stops at Chestnut Point and Motts Creek--besides the wigeon we had another 17 species of waterfowl, 9 Bald Eagles, a couple of harriers and couple of Sharp-shinned Hawks, plus a good mix of the expected seasonal birds. But in the winter, with its dearth of shorebirds, the tides changing aren't going to bring in anything too different than the first time around, so we kept it to one circuit

Snowy Owl

Looking at the rare bird reports on eBird when we were around the 7 mile mark on the Wildlife Drive, I said to Mike, "What a surprise, there's a Snowy Owl at Island Beach." It is over a month now that there have been multiple reports of these charismatic owls at Island Beach.  Mike, who didn't have Snowy Owl for the year, wasn't as blasé about the owl as I was and suggested we make a run up there. There are probably 4-6 Snowies along the dunes at IBSP, however, there are more than twenty trails onto the 8 mile long beach--more than twenty sandy trails, so to make the expedition less of a crap shoot, I texted a friend who's up and down the beach a lot and he gave me intel on where to look for an owl. We walked down the trail at parking lot 12, turned to look south, and in a classic example of "Look for the birders, not the bird," saw a crowd a couple of trails down the beach, walked back to the car, drove to parking lot 14 and after another quarter mile slog through the sand, had the owl practically at our feet when we emerged onto the beach. We kept our distance; most of the other photographers were at a respectful distance too, though one seemed a bit too close to me. However, this bird remained in place; Mike said it is probably inured to people by now. This is a good and bad thing--good, in that people aren't that worrisome to the bird, bad, in that it is vulnerable to the one moron who doesn't just want to look. 

All in all, the right eye passed the test swimmingly. It was good to get out and and gather a big day list (I had around 65 today). My only regret is that I'll be missing the MacGillivray's Warbler that was found in a small park up near Sandy Hook. Mike and I briefly debated heading up there today, but realized that by the time we got there, we'd only have about 20 minutes of light to find the bird and it  seemed like a low percentage move. If the bird sticks around, it will be at least a week before I'm able to try for it. Perhaps by the end of the year...at least by then I'll have figured out how to pronounce the bird's name.