Great Bay Blvd 5/23--Red Knot, Least Tern, Saltmarsh Sparrow

Least Terns (digiscope)

Sometimes the birds are where you think they'll be. I saw that low tide at Great Bay Inlet was mid-morning so I thought that it would be a good time to check the beach for Red Knots. I knew it was going to be a good day when I crossed over the first bridge and saw 4 Black Skimmers flying into the back of the marsh. The tide was already low enough to give them a sandbar on which to loll about. In the high grass were 25 or 30 Great Egrets, a few Snow Egrets and a single Tricolored Heron, a bird that seems to get harder to find as the season progresses.

Seaside Sparrow (digiscope)

As I drove the down the road there were pockets of birds everywhere. At one stop I saw my first Least Terns of the year and while I was attempting a digiscope of both them and singing Seaside Sparrow nearby, first one then two Saltmarsh Sparrows flew in--and quickly out, just staying in front of me long enough to get all the salient field marks.

There were lots of sandpipers everywhere, particularly Dunlin which are handsome birds in breeding plumage. The more dully colored Semipalmated Sandpipers were, as usual, an i.d. challenge and I dearly wanted to change at least one of them into a different species and almost did until I consulted my Sibley guide.

Semipalmated Sandpiper
(just to prove I can take a half-way decent picture)

At the 2nd wooden bridge I found my county Willow Flycatcher singing "fitz-bew" and another flycatcher on a wire that after much pondering I can only think is an Acadian Flycatcher, based on likelihood, shape, color and the one "whit" it voiced. I'm more than willing to be corrected.

Willow Flycatcher singing

Acadian Flycatcher more than likely

The mud flats at the boat launch were lousy with shorebirds but again, nothing out of the ordinary that I could see. Those with more patience...who can say what they'd find?

Down at the inlet I expected to walk toward the Rutgers Research Center where last year I had found a large flock of Red Knots just off the beach. There was a largish flock of shorebirds though to the left and I turned my scope to them and saw that I needn't really walk all the way over there because there were Red Knots, 16 by my count, right there, mixed in with the Dunlins and Semis. I took some pictures in bad light and from a distance and walked over in the opposite direction anyway. And, of course, there were no Red Knots on that side--just more Dunlins and a few Ruddy Turnstones. So I trudge back to the other end of the beach and took more photos of the Red Knots, this time closer but still in lousy light. (I'm starting to think I need a better camera, but I also don't need one more obsession. Or expense.)

 was going to do my walk from the inlet back to the first wooden bridge, hoping for some interesting shorebirds or waders along the way but I hadn't gotten more than 500 steps from the car when an alert came in that White-rumped Sandpipers were at Forsythe-Barnegat, just to the right of the observation platform. That was only about 10 or so miles away up Route 9. White-rumped Sandpiper, is a problematic bird for me, as I had never seen one in Ocean County. It was the bird I was hoping to pick out from the rest of the more common sandpipers.

Red Knots, Dunlins

White-rump Sandpiper in back

I figured I had a 50/50 chance of finding the birds if there weren't too many sandpipers to sort through. But I figure 50/50 for everything because in this life it either will or won't and that's about all you can say. So after fighting traffic I got up to the platform within the hour (this is a 10, maybe 15 mile drive) small a few sandpipers close by with a much larger flock behind them, looked at the closer smaller flock and behold--there were 2 White-rumped Sandpipers. White-rumps have what I think are a lot of subjective field marks--they're "sleeker," larger than semis (fine if a bird you know to be a semi is standing nearby), their primaries are longer and cross at the back...but there is one field mark, that is not subjective, though it is very hard to see. The back of the lower mandible on every molt of White-rumped Sandpiper is reddish. These birds had a reddish patch just there--so I was satisfied. Again, I took pictures; again, they're not very good.

So I consider it a very successful day, which, considering that the day got started very early with a wrong number from the Bronx at 3 AM, which got the cat crying and kretzing which somehow set off the whip-poor-will to start singing so loud it sounded like it was on our windowsill so I had to get out the flashlight and scare it away, is saying something.

My list for Great Bay Blvd:
42 species
Brant 8
Mallard 1
Double-crested Cormorant 53
Great Blue Heron 3
Great Egret 55
Snowy Egret 25
Tricolored Heron 1
Osprey 3
Bald Eagle 1 end of the road nest
Clapper Rail 2 Heard
Black-bellied Plover 9
Semipalmated Plover 3
Ruddy Turnstone 9
Red Knot 16
Dunlin 78
Least Sandpiper 20
Semipalmated Sandpiper 50
Short-billed Dowitcher 8
Spotted Sandpiper 1
Willet 18
Laughing Gull 100
Herring Gull 50
Great Black-backed Gull 5
Least Tern 2
Common Tern 1
Forster's Tern 5
Black Skimmer 10
Mourning Dove 2
Acadian Flycatcher 1
Willow Flycatcher 1
Fish Crow 5
Tree Swallow 4
Barn Swallow 35
Marsh Wren 1 Heardbir
Gray Catbird 4
Northern Mockingbird 1
Common Yellowthroat 15
Yellow Warbler 4
Saltmarsh Sparrow 2
Seaside Sparrow 5 probably an undercount
Song Sparrow 3
Red-winged Blackbird 100
Boat-tailed Grackle 30