American Golden-Plover--An Ironic Tale

American Golden-Plover, Middle Bog

Every rarity you can expect--and a couple like Marbled Godwit and Whimbrel that you can't--had appeared at Whitesbog this year with the exception of American Golden-Plover. While I have this bird on my year list from our trip down to Delaware in August, I still wanted to "get it" for my NJ year list and since it looked like it would skip Whitesbog this year, I drove up to the Sharon Station Road section of the Union Transportation Trail in Upper Freehold where one had been reported for the last few days on the sod farm across the way from the parking lot.  

And of course, didn't find it for the longest time, until I saw, and here is the first irony, a birder I know from Burlco who put me on the bird. I got very good binocular looks at the bird (I didn't feel like going back to the car to get the scope) but it was much too far for pictures. Still, on the Jersey list. I had walked about a mile of the trail in between looking for the plover, but now that I had the bird, I wasn't inclined to walk the southern section, so I decided to go to Whitesbog for the rest of the morning. Driving south, there is a construction zone on Sharon Station just before it turns into Rt 539. It's a real mess and the speed limit is 35 mph.  I noticed that I was going 40 mph and slowed down but apparently, I didn't slow down fast enough (there's an oxymoron), and I got pulled over by an Upper Freehold cop who claimed I zoomed by him (I didn't zoom) and kindly gave me a ticket for "Failure to Obey Signs, Signals, or Directions." I say "kindly" because while the infraction costs $55, there are no points on my license. But that certainly put a damper on the day. 

When I finally got to Whitesbog I was not in the best of moods. I walked out on to the dam of Middle Bog, put up my bins and saw semiplo, semiplo, semiplo...not a semiplo. It was...a juvenile AMERICAN GOLDEN-PLOVER! Which I immediately lost as it flew from one side of Cranberry Run to the other. After about 5 minutes I relocated the bird on the mud flats. It had all the right field marks, so I put it on the alert and hung around for about an hour while a few other birders (it is a workday for most) arrived and I was able to put them on the bird. 

So, the moral of this story is, had I just gone to Whitesbog, as I have almost every day for the last month and half, I would have put the bird on my Jersey list and saved myself the aggravation of getting a $55 fine plus a $1.65 "service fee" for paying online.