Backyard 1/4--Pine Warbler

When I first started keeping backyard lists on eBird around 13 years ago, every time I listed Pine Warbler it would be flagged as "rare."  Dutifully, I would take a picture and embed the photo in my list. But because the bird was "rare," and I am borderline OCD, I felt compelled to take a picture and list it every time I saw a Pine Warbler in our backyard, and I saw a Pine Warbler in our backyard every day. Sometimes more than one; once, I saw seven hanging around the suet and in the cedars. Finally, it got to be too much even for me. I wrote to the eBird reviewer and told him that I had Pine Warblers in the backyard all the time, that they weren't really all that rare in the (who'da thunk it) Pine Barrens, and that as my late friend Pete Bacinksi use to explain, they were just overlooked because they were more or less silent. Something must have resonated, because now Pine Warbler is merely "infrequent" at least in the 20km x 20km square that eBird uses as measure in which our house sits. 

Today, looking out the window in the living room at our camera feeder I saw our first Pine Warbler of 2025. Naturally, I had to list that one. I checked the history on the camera feeder and saw that it has been snatching seeds all morning. The camera feeder takes pretty good pictures, so long as you remember to clean the lens every once in a while.

Whitesbog 1/2--Red-shouldered Hawks & Water Levels

Red-shouldered Hawks, roosting and flying to the left

There's a spot at Whitesbog, pretty well hidden, that only the cognoscenti know. It's in the section mysteriously called Ditch Meadow. At one time, Ditch Meadow was blueberry fields and reservoirs for the cranberry bogs, but now it is off the main water sources, so the ponds back there get filled through run-off and rain. While the main reservoirs that Cranberry Run feeds are coming back, thanks to the rain and a semi-successful fight with the beavers, the ponds of Ditch Meadow are still very dry from the summer's drought. 

Red-shouldered Hawk sitting above the water line, Ditch Meadow

Just how dry was brought home to me when I went back there today. When there is water in this pond it is always a good spot for Wood Ducks year-round and for Ring-neck Ducks in the winter. This winter you're more likely to find sparrows and robins feeding in the mud. This morning that was the case with a flock of juncos in the back, but then I saw a red patch in a tree which a close-up photograph showed to be a Red-shouldered Hawk. Actually two hawks, because the photo captured one bird flying to the left. I took a photo of that one too when it landed and while the photo of the hawk is mediocre, the picture of the trees it is sitting in is revealing. The bottoms of the trees are very dark, ending in a straight line about four feet above the muck--that's the waterline and shows how high the water was before the drought. That is a lot of water to lose through evaporation and seepage. 

But there is now enough water in Union Pond for the Tundra Swans to feed there, though you're just as likely to find them in Rome Pond as you're coming in, or even in the Fenwick Bogs which have been flooded for the winter. There has been a couple of big flocks of geese in all these spots, as well as large flocks of black ducks. I noted a few Buffleheads and Hooded Mergansers last week, but none on my first visit there this year. 

I got there just before dawn this morning, hoping to hear owls but none were calling in the usual spots. I did get a good look at a Sharp-shinned Hawk sitting on the wires along the entrance road just before sunrise. In all, I only had 20 species walking around the bogs and part of the village on this very cold morning with increasing winds:

Canada Goose  110
Tundra Swan  28
Mallard  1
American Black Duck  115     Rome & flyover flocks Union Pond & village
Turkey Vulture  2
Sharp-shinned Hawk  1     
Red-shouldered Hawk  2     
Red-bellied Woodpecker  1
Hairy Woodpecker  1
American Crow  3
Carolina Chickadee  3
Tufted Titmouse  2
Golden-crowned Kinglet  1
White-breasted Nuthatch  1
Winter Wren  1     Heard
Eastern Bluebird  7
Hermit Thrush  1
Dark-eyed Junco  40
Song Sparrow  3
Northern Cardinal  1

Kicking Off the Year at Sandy Hook--Western Tanager

"As is my custom, I drove up to Sandy Hook this morning to "Kick Off the Year List" with Scott, Linda, Carole, et al, and about 29 other birders, though I had to go solo this time as Shari's knee hasn't recovered enough for walking through sand." Those are the words I wrote last year on New Year's Day and they apply today as well as Shari recovers from her second knee replacement. Last year my first bird of the year was a pre-dawn American Crow cawing somewhere in the neighborhood, today it was Canada Geese flying overhead. The crows came a little later at dawn, along with mockingbird, turkey, nuthatch, Carolina Wren and Song Sparrow. 

Even the great rarity was the same as last year--a bright Western Tanager which was around the old visitor's center on the southern part of the hook.  But that's where the similarity ends. It was not as easy to see this tanager as last year's because the weather conditions were the opposite--where it was calm and relatively warm last year, it was blowing up a gale this year. Since birds are smarter than we are, the tanager made the wise decision to stay out of the wind, meaning it was ensconced deep in the leaf litter beneath some cedars, where last year it was happily displaying high in the trees around the observation deck. It isn't easy to get 20+ people on a bird that doesn't want to be seen, so we spent a lot of time circling the little grove of trees where it has been hanging out for the last week or so. I don't know if everyone managed a look--I left after the group returned to the spot--but I had some okay but non-photographable looks when it was about a foot off the ground. I can't say the same for the Orange-crowned Warbler that was in the area, or for the Red-necked Grebe that was in the ocean off North Beach. I saw a blur of a bird jump down from a high cedar and decided that wasn't a good enough look to list as Orange-crowned, and the Red-necked Grebe was just impossible for me to see as it continually dived just as I looked in someone's scope. After a while, with the 30-mph wind watering my eyes and shaking my scope I ran the fun test, which came up negative, so I shouldered my scope and turned back. I think the only reason I hung at the beach as long as I did was because the wind was mostly at our backs and walking back to the parking lot meant facing it full force. 

Usually on field trips I hang in until the end, but today, with Shari at home and the prospect of standing on a beach again viewing ducks at a distance unappealing, I left around 1:30. So my list for Sandy Hook is short, but I'm happy with the tanager and to have all 3 scoters on the list first day. I also enjoyed the gannet show. 

Northern Mockingbird

33 species

Brant  100
Canada Goose  10
American Black Duck  3
Greater Scaup  1
Common Eider  1
Surf Scoter  4
White-winged Scoter  1
Black Scoter  45
Long-tailed Duck  8
Bufflehead  10
Red-breasted Merganser  5
Sanderling  35
American Herring Gull  100
Great Black-backed Gull  10
Horned Grebe  1
Red-throated Loon  2
Common Loon  1
Northern Gannet  25
Great Cormorant  8
Double-crested Cormorant  1
Great Blue Heron  1
Turkey Vulture  1
Northern Harrier  1
Bald Eagle  1
Downy Woodpecker  1
Common Raven  2
Northern Mockingbird  1
House Finch  2
American Goldfinch  1
Snow Bunting  40
Song Sparrow  2
Yellow-rumped Warbler  20
Western Tanager  1