Delaware 8/22-8/25--American Golden-Plover, Black Tern

Black Tern

Come for the avocets, stay for the rarities.

Shari & I & our buddy Bob Auster spent 4 days in Delaware this week, mostly at Bombay Hook, bracketed around an NJ Audubon trip led by Scott Barnes. The trip didn't get off to an auspicious start. We got into Delaware a little after noon on the 22nd and headed straight for the pond on Amalfi Road in Clayton, in order to get the Black-bellied Whistling Ducks "out of the way." However, in a phrase that was to be repeated many times over the next four days, the pond was "dry as a bone," and thus, no ducks. 

On to Bombay Hook, a short distance away. A Sedge Wren had been reported across from the pay station "where it always is" so we stopped to listen. "Always" apparently has a stale date because we never heard, never mind saw, the bird in the four days we were there. The construction of a new visitor's center/HQ across the road didn't add to our listening enjoyment. 

Next stop, Raymond Pool. Never have I seen so much mud with nothing on it. Not a sandpiper, an egret, a gull, or a tern. Empty. Fortunately, things picked up at Shearness Pool around the bend where we started lots of egrets, along with what, a few years ago, would have been an astonishing number of juvenile White Ibis. Here's a bird that used to a rarity and is now being seen in great numbers much farther north than its usual breeding area. That's good news right? Nope. They're coming north due to climate change.

Also in Shearness we had two of the shorebirds that make Bombay Hook an attraction--a couple of Black-necked Stilts and hundreds of American Avocets. The stilts turned out to be a problem on the trip. While the group saw perhaps 70 species each day, we never came across any stilts, which for some of the people in the group would have been a life bird. Then today, as we made our last pass around the refuge, Bob found a single stilt, again in Shearness. A much closer look, too, than what we'd had on Monday. What frustration!

Green Heron, Shearness sluice gate

Tuesday morning, we met up with the group. Happily, Raymond Pool, at high tide in the surrounding marshes, was full of birds, as was Shearness where I got my first year bird of the trip, a Black Tern. Not a rarity down there, but a darn hard bird for me to see in New Jersey. Not a rarity, yet not exactly seen in flocks either. One on Tuesday, two on Wednesday, three today. 

After spending perhaps a little more time than I like squinting into a scope (I'm of the Mississippi Fred McDowell school of birding--You Got Ta Move), we drove on to Bear Swamp Pool. Here's the joke about Bear Swamp Pool: No Bear, No Swamp, No Pool. Dry as a bone. 

Which makes good habitat for the so-called "grasspipers." Everybody started scanning the flocks of little shorebirds in front of us but I focused on the empty quarter farther away. After a while, all the little peeps look the same to me (because, they are, for the most part, the same), so I look for single anomalies away from the flock. And even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes, because back at the edge of the "pond" I saw a medium-sized shorebird with dove-like head and buffy coloring. "Uh, Scott." Luckily, Scott was somehow able to look in the vicinity of where my scope was pointed and confirmed that it was indeed, a Buff-breasted Sandpiper. Not a year bird (had one at Whitesbog in July), but a rarity and a good one for the group. I didn't have much time to bask in my glory, because a few moments later Scott called out "Golden-Plover!" An American Golden-Plover was seen in flight and then landed far back in the pond (naturally) among a slew of gulls & egrets. A number of birders were able to get their scopes on it after an assiduous search and I believe everyone in the group got a half-way decent look at this bird which, surprisingly, is not considered rare this time of year in Delaware. New for the year for me though. 

After lunch, we headed down to Port Mahon Rd, a rough road (though not as rough as I remembered it in the past) along the bayshore where we were treated to a Royal Tern show, along with a number of Caspian Terns.

Bonaparte's Gull

The next day was more scoping in Raymond Pool where Scott, somehow, picked out a Dunlin, a few Western Sandpipers, and a Wilson's Phalarope from the thousand or so Semipalmated Sandpipers picking at the mud. On our return trip, Scott stopped the caravan at the sluice gate of Shearness Pool. There, in the channel with a flock of Laughing Gulls in every molt, was a Bonaparte's Gull in basic plumage. Rare this time of year and an easier bird (for me, at least) to identify when it isn't in it's winter garb.

Clapper Rail juvenile

When the trip was over, mid-afternoon, Shari, Bob & I drove down to Mispillion to check out the bay and the jetty at the du Pont Nature Center. It was a little bit disappointing; not many shorebirds on the beach, no oystercatchers, and only a smattering of terns on the pilings. But, a family of Clapper Rails close in kept us entertained as the mama and a couple of juveniles ran in and out of the reeds and fed on the shell-covered sand bar. 

Today we were not ambitious, so we didn't go, as we sometimes do, all the way down to Prime Hook. Instead, we made one more fast (3 hours, 18 minutes) run around Bombay Hook. Aside from the Black-neck Stilt, probably the most interesting bird we added to our trip list was a Sora whinnying from the reeds at Shearness. 

For the trip I listed 88 species. I think Bob may have seen a couple of high/fast flying birds that I missed. 

Species        First Sighting
Canada Goose  Bombay Hook
Mute Swan  Bombay Hook
Wood Duck  Bombay Hook
Mallard  Bombay Hook
Mourning Dove  Bombay Hook
Ruby-throated Hummingbird  Bombay Hook
Clapper Rail  Bombay Hook
Virginia Rail  Bombay Hook
Sora  Bombay Hook
Black-necked Stilt  Bombay Hook
American Avocet  Bombay Hook
Black-bellied Plover  Bombay Hook
American Golden-Plover  Bombay Hook
Semipalmated Plover  Bombay Hook
Killdeer  Bombay Hook
Ruddy Turnstone  Port Mahon Rd.
Sanderling  Port Mahon Rd.
Dunlin  Bombay Hook
Least Sandpiper  Bombay Hook
White-rumped Sandpiper  Bombay Hook
Buff-breasted Sandpiper  Bombay Hook
Pectoral Sandpiper  Bombay Hook
Semipalmated Sandpiper  Bombay Hook
Western Sandpiper  Bombay Hook
Short-billed Dowitcher  Bombay Hook
Wilson's Phalarope  Bombay Hook
Spotted Sandpiper  Bombay Hook
Solitary Sandpiper  Bombay Hook
Greater Yellowlegs  Bombay Hook
Willet  Bombay Hook
Lesser Yellowlegs  Bombay Hook
Bonaparte's Gull  Bombay Hook
Laughing Gull  Bombay Hook
Ring-billed Gull  Wawa New Castle
Herring Gull  Bombay Hook
Great Black-backed Gull  Bombay Hook
Caspian Tern  Bombay Hook
Black Tern  Bombay Hook
Common Tern  DuPont Nature Center
Forster's Tern  Bombay Hook
Royal Tern  Port Mahon Rd.
Double-crested Cormorant  Bombay Hook
Great Blue Heron  Bombay Hook
Great Egret  Bombay Hook
Snowy Egret  Bombay Hook
Little Blue Heron  Bombay Hook
Tricolored Heron  Bombay Hook
Green Heron  Bombay Hook
Black-crowned Night-Heron  Bombay Hook
Yellow-crowned Night-Heron  Bombay Hook
White Ibis  Bombay Hook
Glossy Ibis  Bombay Hook
Black Vulture  Port Mahon Rd.
Turkey Vulture  Bombay Hook
Osprey  Bombay Hook
Cooper's Hawk  Bombay Hook
Bald Eagle  Bombay Hook
Red-shouldered Hawk  Bombay Hook
Red-tailed Hawk  Bombay Hook
Belted Kingfisher  Bombay Hook
Red-bellied Woodpecker  Bombay Hook
Downy Woodpecker  Bombay Hook
Peregrine Falcon  Bombay Hook
Eastern Wood-Pewee  Bombay Hook
Acadian Flycatcher  Bombay Hook
Eastern Phoebe  Bombay Hook
Eastern Kingbird  Bombay Hook
White-eyed Vireo  Bombay Hook
Red-eyed Vireo  Bombay Hook
Blue Jay  Bombay Hook
Fish Crow  Dover
Carolina Chickadee  Dover
Tufted Titmouse  Bombay Hook
Tree Swallow  Bombay Hook
Barn Swallow  Bombay Hook
Marsh Wren  Bombay Hook
Carolina Wren  Bombay Hook
European Starling  Bombay Hook
Gray Catbird  Bombay Hook
Eastern Bluebird  Bombay Hook
House Sparrow  Bombay Hook
American Goldfinch  Bombay Hook
Eastern Towhee  Bombay Hook
Bobolink  Bombay Hook
Red-winged Blackbird  Bombay Hook
Brown-headed Cowbird  Bombay Hook
American Redstart  Bombay Hook
Northern Cardinal  Bombay Hook

Great Egrets (mostly)