Sandy Hook 9/14--Lark Sparrow

Lark Sparrow

There's an east wind coming, Watson
                                                   --Sherlock Holmes

I don't pay much attention to wind direction since I can never really tell where the wind is coming from anyway, but when I go to Sandy Hook in the middle of migration and don't see one warbler, I know the winds are bad. The miserable weather for the last week has kept the winds coming from the east, so I'm told, and even I know that for fall migration a northwest wind is a favorable condition. 

I should have gleaned this information yesterday when I went to Island Beach and didn't find any warblers either, but even had I figured out the winds were lousy, I still would have gone up to Sandy Hook for a Half-day Friday with Scott and Company. And glad that I did, because, like our Delaware trip last month, we got the good bird out of the way early and everything else that followed was gravy.

As the group gathered in the parking lot of Guardian Park, one of our number was alerted to a rare bird up at the Hawkwatch platform--a Lark Sparrow. How this mid-western bird found its way here on unfavorable winds is a mystery. Instead of walking the bike trail and the Road to Nowhere as we usually do on these trips, we all piled into our cars and drove the five minutes up to the Hawkwatch where the birder who'd found it was still there and within a minute the bird made its appearance. While we stood there a Bobolink flew overhead and a couple of Red-breasted Nuthatches were in attendance, so it was a good spot all around. We also had a couple of vireo species, but amazingly, not one warbler, not even a Common Yellowthroat.

We went back south and walked our normal route without finding very much if you exclude the eagle, the Baltimore Oriole, Belted Kingfisher, and Green Heron. Down at Spermaceti Cove it was the same story--many of the expected birds like oystercatchers and egrets, a slightly unusual sighting of 6 Black Skimmers (all immature birds) and scores of Tree Swallows flowing overhead. The winds, again I'm told, are expected to stay easterly until sometime in the middle of next week and Hurricane Florence is not on a path to blow anything unusual up our way (not that I enjoy trying to pick out a rarity in horizontal rain), so migration may be very late this year or somewhere else.

For the day I listed 38 species. I didn't bother to take my scope today, so missed a few birds out on the sandbar at Spermaceti.

Canada Goose 55
Green-winged Teal 4 Spermaceti Cove
Mourning Dove 1
Chimney Swift 1
American Oystercatcher 8 Spermaceti Cove
Black-bellied Plover 4 Spermaceti Cove
Laughing Gull 1
Herring Gull 2
Great Black-backed Gull 18
Common Tern 3
Royal Tern 3 Spermaceti Cove
Black Skimmer 6
Double-crested Cormorant 8
Great Blue Heron 1
Great Egret 3
Snowy Egret 5
Green Heron 1 Horseshoe Cove
Black-crowned Night-Heron 1
Osprey 4
Bald Eagle 1
Belted Kingfisher 3
Merlin 3
Eastern Wood-Pewee 1 Hawkwatch
White-eyed Vireo 2 Heard
Red-eyed Vireo 1
Tree Swallow 150
Red-breasted Nuthatch 3
Carolina Wren 2
Wood Thrush 1 Heard Guardian Park
Gray Catbird 2
Cedar Waxwing 25
Chipping Sparrow 10
Field Sparrow 2
Lark Sparrow 1
Song Sparrow 2
Eastern Towhee 5
Bobolink 1
Baltimore Oriole 1 Horseshoe Cove