Barnegat Light SP 2/10--Thick-billed Murre

It's funny, sometimes, how the timing works out. Had I not spent much longer than I planned at 5th Street in Barnegat Light waiting, unsuccessfully, for a Western Tanager to show up because I was having a pleasant conversation with Bob L who was waiting alongside me, I would have been leaving the state park probably an hour earlier after having spent time on the jetty looking for the current rarity there. I also would not have run into a couple of birders I know who also were searching for it. And I would not have been almost leaving the park 0 for 2 when I ran into one of them again, as he was rushing back to the jetty because the Thick-billed Murre had just been reported at the mouth of the inlet.  Since I don't subscribe to alerts, I wouldn't have known until hours later, when it would appear in the eBird rare bird reports.  

I fast walked with him back to the jetty and climbed up in "my" spot where there is a slanted rock that works almost like a ramp, but I was reluctant to walk very far out on the jetty as the boulders were wet and on that part of it seem more uneven with wider gaps than the section that runs along the beach. I advanced as far as couple of guys with scopes and said to myself that the murre could be anywhere and my odds were just as good there as they were at the end of the jetty where my fellow seekers had gone, perhaps another quarter mile of rough rock hopping.

The day, which had started out sunny and calm and unseasonably warm had turned partly cloudy and very windy. Lifting my bins to scan the inlet I felt unsteady as the wind hit me in the back. I abhor the jetty, productive as it has been for me. I also didn't want to stand there indefinitely waiting for a bird that has a tendency to dive and come up very far way if it all, especially after waiting for the non-appearing tanager. Waiting for a bird to show up is like holding a losing stock position--you have to know when to cut your losses and it is very hard to cut your losses because it is an admission of failure but, as the saying goes, your first loss is your best loss, because to lose an hour is much better than to lose 4 or 5. So I set an alarm. 16 minutes. I don't know why I picked 16 minutes, but I did. If I didn't see the bird in 16 minutes, then I take the loss. Like setting a stop-loss on a stock. 

So, I stood there, waves crashing on the rocks, wind making my balance slightly precarious, time skittering away, when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a non-duck, non-loon, YES, a Thick-billed Murre, out of nowhere seemingly, was just floating by me out to the ocean. "There's the bird," I yelled, and the 2 other guys standing near me got on the bird right away. It was a lifer for one of them. Meanwhile, my companions were way up the jetty at its tip. I yelled, but my words were lost in the wind. (As it turns out, one of them saw it and the other didn't as the bird, which was drifting toward them, was up for a minute or so then dove out of sight.)

Thus, in a New Age-y kind of way, failure leads to success, as my whiff on the tanager set up the perfect timing for the murre. Thanks Bob, my patience on 5th Street would have run out a lot sooner had you not been there too.