Sandy Hook 9/5--Baird's Sandpiper, Say's Phoebe

Say's Phoebe

When I told Bob Auster a few days ago that I was going to sign up for Scott's Half-day Friday at Sandy Hook, he said that the winds didn't look favorable for migration. I told him that since I don't understand the winds, I don't worry about them and that I'd take what I could get.  What we could get (Bob signed up too) on a slow day at The Hook was a fairly rare sandpiper and a vagrant flycatcher far from its dry western habitat. 

We were going to poke around the officer's club area by Battery Potter when Scott got a text of the flycatcher at the end of the Fisherman's Trail. This required the dreaded death march through the sand, but the weather, at least, was fairly cool, and so with scopes shouldered, about 10 of us made the trek. I thought that a) chances were slim the bird would in sight and b) if it was, it would be lousy looks, but your chances are zero if you don't try. 

We trudged up to the stringed off area where the discoverer of the bird was maintaining a watch. As I feared, the bird had been seen in a far-off dune which wasn't promising for good looks, and hadn't been seen in a while, which was less promising. The group stood around for a while but, surprisingly, there were antsier people there than me, so, when Scott saw some shorebirds on a mud flat behind us, we left, hoping the bird wouldn't show up while we were gone. 

Almost immediately Scott found a Baird's Sandpiper on the mud flat. I too, almost immediately found it in my scope, after discarding a Semipalmated Plover just to its left. The whole group got on the bird, which scurried around from dry sand to mud and then we lost it somehow. In a bait and switch, a bird further down the flat looked like the Baird's but turned out to be a White-rumped Sandpiper. They look similar, but the Baird's was tawnier and flatter. We were hemming and hawing over where the Baird's might have gone--there's lots of wrack for it to disappear behind--when a late-comer to our group ran up to say that she'd seen the flycatcher--obviously, if you look at the header of this entry you know it was a Say's Phoebe--at the end of the Fisherman's Trail, just before you hit the beach. Baird's be damned, we all fast-walked back to the trail head and within a few minutes Bob said, "What's that bird on the sign? " It was, of course, the Say's and it put on quite show, affording beautiful looks through bins, scope, and naked eyes. It was especially amusing to watch it hawk flies that were buzzing around small dead fish that had died when puddles in a mud flat dried up. Driving up there this morning I was sort of hoping for a Baird's Sandpiper, since I knew they'd been seen the last couple of days, but Say's Phoebe certainly wasn't on my bingo card. Three tick marks: year bird, county bird, and most importantly, state bird. Who cares which way the wind blows when you can get a vagrant like that!

Not a prepossessing list, but quality over quantity.

34 species
Canada Goose  4
Mourning Dove  3
Black-bellied Plover  25
Killdeer  1
Semipalmated Plover  5
Willet  1
Greater Yellowlegs  1
Baird's Sandpiper  1     
White-rumped Sandpiper  1
Least Sandpiper  10
Semipalmated Sandpiper  5
Laughing Gull  25
American Herring Gull  35
Great Black-backed Gull  40
Least Tern  1
Forster's Tern  4
Royal Tern  10
Double-crested Cormorant  15
Snowy Egret  2
Osprey  6
Cooper's Hawk  1
Say's Phoebe  1    
Tree Swallow  500
Carolina Wren  1
European Starling  6
Gray Catbird  2
Northern Mockingbird  1
House Sparrow  2
House Finch  4
Chipping Sparrow  1
Field Sparrow  3
Eastern Towhee  1
Brown-headed Cowbird  1
Common Yellowthroat  1