Barnegat Light SP | Harvey Cedars Sunset Park 1/30--Harlequin Duck, Common Goldeneye, Purple Sandpiper

Common Goldeneye, Harvey Cedars

Today it was a "Let's get 'em on the list day" both for the year and the county. You can find them elsewhere, but supposedly the easiest place to get Harlequin Ducks and Purple Sandpipers is Barnegat Light SP.  Today it was not easy. My first climb up onto the jetty produced lots of other ducks but no Harlequins, nor were Purple Sandpipers in evidence. There were big flocks of ducks on the ocean, including my county Common Eiders, but it took a walk up to the end of the remnants of the old 8th St jetty to finally find a half dozen or so of the Harlequins, mixed in with Buffleheads and Long-tailed Ducks. In my experience, if you can't find them off the jetty, then the walk up the beach is a reliable Plan B, but unfortunately, not a photo op. 

Purple Sandpiper, Barnegat Light SP

I returned to the jetty and despite not liking to do it I clambered up it again. I was happy to get great looks at a small flock of skunkheads (Surf Scoters) and then, turning around, sitting on a rock in the water I found my first Purple Sandpiper, posing. It flew up very close to me (they and the Harlequins are extraordinarily tame), in fact too close for the camera to focus. Eventually, I found a few more out on the rocks on the ocean side, and even two more Harlequins (drake & hen) sitting on a distant stone. 

Walking back through the pond area, I added Snow Bunting to the county list with an active flock of about 15. In the pond itself, aside from the usual Mallards, black ducks, Brant, and geese, were a drake and hen
American Wigeon, fairly unusual for this site. 

Snow Buntings, Barnegat Light SP

For the park I had 28 species, a spectacular number compared to what I've been able to find walking around the Pine Barrens.

Brant  150
Canada Goose  120
American Wigeon  2
Mallard  50
American Black Duck  30
Greater Scaup  60
Common Eider  20
Harlequin Duck  8
Surf Scoter  12
Black Scoter  15
Long-tailed Duck  100
Bufflehead  50
Red-breasted Merganser  70
Sanderling  20
Purple Sandpiper  7
Ring-billed Gull  1
American Herring Gull  300
Great Black-backed Gull  15
Common Loon  1
Double-crested Cormorant  2
Great Blue Heron  1
Blue Jay  1     Heard
American Crow  5
Common Raven  2     Large wedge-tailed croaking corvids
Red-breasted Nuthatch  1     Heard yank yank in cedars
Snow Bunting  15
Savannah Sparrow (Ipswich)  3
Yellow-rumped Warbler  15

Then I drove down to Harvey Cedars for another specialty of the site. Close to shore the water frozen, but farther out there were ducks, mostly Buffleheads and scaup too difficult to separate in the glare, but after the 40th Bufflehead I finally found what I was looking for--Common Goldeneye, actually two good-lucking drakes. For some inexplicable reason, Sunset Park in Harvey Cedars will almost always yield up a goldeneye or two, while you could look up and down the rest of Barnegat Bay and count yourself lucky to find one. 

Earlier in the month, when the deep freeze was on, someone asked me if I was interested in going to Barnegat Light and I said I could wait until March to get the ducks and sandpipers. But apparently the itch for them had to be scratched long before that.