Great Bay Blvd 6/16--Caspian Tern

Caspian Terns

To paraphrase Pete Seeger: 

                There is a season tern tern tern. 

Because migration is over and most of the shorebirds are up north, I have spent an inordinate amount of time the last couple of weeks looking for terns missing from the year list, without, until today, much luck. Everybody and his uncle have managed to find Roseate Tern except for me and I there has even been a Sandwich Tern reported but despite walks on the beaches of Barnegat Light and Island Beach, the best I've come up with is a large number of Royal Terns. (This is starting to remind me of a former Jersey birder who used to catalog in her Listserv missives the birds she didn't see--I once kept a spreadsheet of her misses--it was impressive. So, onto what I did see.) 

I went down to Great Bay Blvd this morning. There is a spot about 1/2 mile north of the first bridge, that looks out onto Tuckerton Cove. I've been able to find Caspian Terns there for the past few years--and my luck held this morning. As soon as I crossed the road and put up my bins, I saw two loafing at the edge of the water. Scope views confirmed them not to be Royal Terns, and so the day had taken a tern for the better. 

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron

It's June so I didn't expect much from the rest of the Boulevard. The only shorebirds present were many vocal Willets. In one of cedar groves both flavors of night-herons were roosting (or were until they sensed my presence). Yellow-crowned Night-Heron can be a difficult bird to find but there were at least four of them in the grove today--3 immature and a very handsome adult. 

There were lots of fishermen on the beach, so that put the kibosh on any activity there aside from the many buzzing Seaside Sparrows. Walking and driving for 4+ miles of road and beach I managed 28 species for the day--not bad for a "shoulder month." 

Mourning Dove  8
Clapper Rail  1
Willet  14
Laughing Gull  70
American Herring Gull  10
Caspian Tern  2     
Forster's Tern  6
Double-crested Cormorant  1
Yellow-crowned Night Heron  4
Black-crowned Night Heron  8
Tricolored Heron  1
Snowy Egret  10
Great Egret  18
Osprey  2
Willow Flycatcher  3
Eastern Kingbird  1     Beginning of road
Fish Crow  1
Tree Swallow  2
Northern Rough-winged Swallow  1     Roadside
Barn Swallow  25
Marsh Wren  2
Gray Catbird  4
Seaside Sparrow  12
Song Sparrow  6
Red-winged Blackbird  35
Boat-tailed Grackle  15
Common Yellowthroat  5
Northern Yellow Warbler  1

South Park Road | Juliustown-Georgetown Road 6/14--Summer Tanager, Dickcissel

Summer Tanager

 As I often do, another Sunday morning in Burlco. Since Reeves Bog has now become impassable in three spots due to flooding and breaches, I went a little farther and walked along South Park Road in Tabernacle. This late in the season, I didn't expect much. It's usually a reliable spot for Red-headed Woodpecker, but today I couldn't find any--it didn't bother me since I've seen them any number of times this year. South Park runs along a field that once was a farm and bisects a typical Pine Barrens woods, both owned by a private hunting club, so you have to stick to the gravel road itself. I was hearing more birds than I was seeing when I came to the right turn in the road where I had decided to turn around. I heard a call that didn't sound like the usual warblers or vireos that would be in that habitat, so I turned on Merlin and Summer Tanager immediately popped up. I was a little skeptical until I looked up and right in front of me in an oak was the tanager. All red, no black wings, eliminating Scarlet Tanager (which I had seen back by the old farm), and a hefty beak. I got my bins on it for a little big and then it flew off to be replaced by a female--drab yellow, same beak. I was trying to get a picture of the female, which I couldn't, when the male came back and I switched my attentions to him. Finally, I was able to get decent pictures for eBird documentation, along with a recording of the calls. If both male and female were there, could they be nesting? There are records of Summer Tanager nesting in the Pine Barrens, so it is possible. 

Unfortunately for my year list, Summer Tanager wasn't a new addition--I'd heard one last month at the Manasquan River WMA, but seeing one is so much better. But for my next year bird, I did have to settle for "heard only." After stopping at the Thompson-Wright Preserve, which lately has been incorporated as part of the Huber Prairie Warbler Preserve, and walking back to the sand quarry to visit the nesting Bank Swallows, I was of a mind to try find some of the many Dickcissels that have shown up in the county. I knew that they had been heard in fields of Pemberton MUA but having already walked 5 miles, the idea of trudging around fields wasn't all that attractive. I checked the rare bird alerts and saw that a couple had been heard along a road in Columbus, which was only about 20 minutes from where I was at Burrs Mills Brook. They have been singing in the field for a week. I figured if they were there for a week, and had been heard 90 minutes before, there was a decent chance I could get them too. I was half right. After driving along a lot of hyphenated roads and making a left onto Odd Fellows Road, I finally ended up at the pin on Juliustown-Georgetown Road. And there was even a place to pull off the road. Immediately I heard a buzzy call, but it didn't sound like a Dickcissel as I remembered them. Granted, it has been a while since I saw one so I pulled out my semi-trusty Merlin and it instantly returned Dickcissel. The bird was very loud and sound close by across the road. Of course, after standing there for twenty minutes, I still couldn't put eyes on the bird and since the field is private property, I couldn't walk through it to the little stand of trees where the bird sounded like it was singing. I only heard one bird, not the two that had been listed, but that was probably because I was stationery and not traveling up the road listening every quarter mile. I know one Burlco birder had 6 Dickcissels last week along one of the hyphenated roads, but I'm not going for the record, and you only need 1 (Laws of Birding #6).

For the 3 sites, 41 species:

Species            First Sighting
Wild Turkey    South Park Road
Mourning Dove    South Park Road
Turkey Vulture    South Park Road
Red-bellied Woodpecker    South Park Road
Hairy Woodpecker    South Park Road
Northern Flicker    South Park Road
Eastern Wood-Pewee    South Park Road
Eastern Phoebe    South Park Road
Great Crested Flycatcher    South Park Road
Eastern Kingbird    South Park Road
White-eyed Vireo    South Park Road
Eastern Warbling Vireo    Juliustown-Georgetown Road
Red-eyed Vireo    South Park Road
Blue Jay    South Park Road
Carolina Chickadee    Thompson-Wright Preserve
Tufted Titmouse    South Park Road
Bank Swallow    Thompson-Wright Preserve
Tree Swallow    Juliustown-Georgetown Road
White-breasted Nuthatch    South Park Road
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher    South Park Road
Carolina Wren    Thompson-Wright Preserve
Gray Catbird    South Park Road
Northern Mockingbird    South Park Road
Wood Thrush    Thompson-Wright Preserve
American Robin    South Park Road
House Finch    South Park Road
Chipping Sparrow    South Park Road
Field Sparrow    South Park Road
Song Sparrow    Juliustown-Georgetown Road
Eastern Towhee    South Park Road
Baltimore Oriole    South Park Road
Red-winged Blackbird    Thompson-Wright Preserve
Ovenbird    South Park Road
Common Yellowthroat    South Park Road
Pine Warbler    South Park Road
Prairie Warbler    South Park Road
Summer Tanager    South Park Road
Scarlet Tanager    South Park Road
Northern Cardinal    South Park Road
Blue Grosbeak    South Park Road
Dickcissel    Juliustown-Georgetown Road