17 species (+1 other taxa)
Brant 2
Canada Goose 1
Mallard 2
Mallard x American Black Duck (hybrid) 1
Bufflehead 9
Herring Gull 10
Great Black-backed Gull 1
Great Egret 45
Snowy Egret 40
Black-crowned Night-Heron 20
Yellow-crowned Night-Heron 40
White Ibis 200
Glossy Ibis 50
Osprey 1
Fish Crow 1
Song Sparrow 1
Red-winged Blackbird 2
Boat-tailed Grackle 40
I'll have to find a new nemesis bird for Ocean County, because this morning, after innumerable trips to the environs of New Egypt over the last couple of years, I finally tracked down a Pileated Woodpecker. I'd already gone to the Plumsted Recreational Park (New Egypt is part of Plumsted) a few times this year where the woodpeckers had been seen in the past, but this year I noticed that one birder was posting them as being in "North New Egypt."
A little investigation with Google Street View showed that his location was actually on the Ocean County extension of the Union Transportation Trail which follows a power line cut laid down on the old right of way of the milk train that used to run from New Egypt to Cream Ridge. I took a chance and parked in a lot behind an Ace Hardware store, next to some charity bins. I didn't see any signs that said, "No Parking." This section, like the section a little farther north, is not finished with gravel like the Monmouth County section, but rather is just a mowed strip between bushes and tangles on one side and woods on the other. After passing through a short alley of abandoned truck trailers, I started up the trail, where a gigantic flock of Common Grackles were kretzing in the treetops. A little farther on a flock of White-throated Sparrows scared up from the bushes, and then I saw a big woodpecker fly across the trail, landing somewhere in the woods. I was pretty certain that was my bird, but the first two woodpeckers on tree trunks that I glassed were just a Red-bellied Woodpecker and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. But then, raising my binoculars to the height of the flight, there atop the bare tree was the huge black and white woodpecker with a red crest. Success at last! I moved up, hoping to get a better angle on the bird and maybe even a photo op, but, as so often happens, changing position lost me the bird. Still, I saw it, big as life.
Pileated Woodpecker is rarely rare in NJ counties, but here in Ocean only the northern part of the county has suitable habitat. I guess they don't like pines. I've seen them all around Ocean: Burlco, Mercer, Monmouth, Middlesex, up norther in Warren & Somerset, down south in Cape May, but finding one here was starting to seem like my life's work. Lucky is that birder who made a video of one in his backyard in New Egypt.
The rest of the morning was spent walking around Colliers Mills, which was full of sparrows and not much else. No good pictures today except for these two birds I can't count. I'm wondering what kind of pet an ostrich makes and why you'd want two.
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| Across from Colliers Mills on Hawkin Road. |
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| Black-bellied Whistling Duck Glossy Ibis, Brig |
The first life bird of the year, DOVEKIE, was by far the highlight of the year. Never did I think I'd see a Dovekie from land and, as anyone who even cursorily read this blog know, Larry don't do no pelagics. So when Steve texted me in February and told me that the ongoing Dovekie incursion was ongoing right off the shore at Island Beach, I raced over there. It didn't take long to get a couple in the scope. It has been a long time since I jumped up and down in excitement over a life bird (or anything else for that matter) but I did that day.
The second lifer was not nearly as exciting, though it was another species that is rare from shore. In May, another seabird irruption occurred, this time of SOOTY SHEARWATERS, and a walk along the extreme southern end of Island Beach yielded distant looks at 3 of them. Not exactly something to jump up and down about.
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| HEERMAN'S GULL, Cape May |
The other lifer that day I thought was going to be the consolation prize. For the past few years a SWAINSON'S WARBLER has been singing, and very rarely seen, from the same spot at Higbee Beach. Each year I haven't bothered to chase but since we were in the neighborhood and striking out on the rare gull, we gave it a shot and immediately heard the bird and of course, did not see it.
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| Curlew Sandpiper, Brig |
Which leads to the distinction I have come to make in the two types of birding I seem to do. All of the above falls into the category of "Pressure Birding" while meandering around a spot like Whitesbog, Reeve's Bogs, Colliers Mills, or any of my regular spots going under the rubric of "Pleasure Birding." Obviously, pleasure is better than pressure, so why do I put myself under pressure to get a new bird or add one to the county list, the state list? I dunno. If I take a step back from it, it seems like a silly thing to do, but I've found if I take a step back from almost anything, it seems like a silly thing to do...why does walking around a bog looking at whatever birds are there give me pleasure? I dunno. It seems like a silly thing to do but I gotta do something.
I spent the morning of the last day of year on foggy Long Beach Island. I'd considered going to Island Beach, but the thought of all those photographers chasing after Snowy Owls made me queasy. As it happened, looking across the inlet from Barnegat Light I could see a mass of them all pointing cameras in one direction and even though I had only binoculars (figuring what good would a scope do with the fog, which had by then cleared up) I could see one of the owls atop atop a snow fence. Not great looks, but I knew it was there and I, at least, got a guilt free look, though, any species that can spend a winter on an ice floe in the arctic subsisting on eiders probably isn't as fragile as some would make out.
For the year I had 289 species, ahead of last year.s pandemic constrained birding, but nowhere near where I have been in years that we traveled. Perhaps next year I'll make a concerted effort to list 300 species. It seems like a silly thing to do, but I gotta do something.
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| Dickcissel, Pineland Preservation Alliance |
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| Cape May Warbler, Cedar Bonnet Island |
I ranged a little farther than usual with a trip to Delaware that bumped up the list by four and our chase in Cape May County (which seems like another state to me) that also put SWAINSON'S WARBLER finally on our list. With the Swainson's I think there is only one warbler in the lower 48 we're missing; it's name escapes me, but you have to walk a few miles in rugged terrain in Texas to get it. Unlikely.
Migration seems just about over and summer usually slows down, which is all right with me. The more I chase around after this bird or that, the sillier it seems. Any game whether baseball or birding, seen from outside the frame, appears absurd. And I have Whitesbog as a default location. Lately, I have been taking long walks through some of the more obscure parts of the old bogs; I'm fortunate to have a guide who not only knows his way around, but has built the bridges that get you over some of the breaches.
For the month: 194 species. I haven't had a month that productive without traveling in recent memory.
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| Indigo Bunting, Manasquan River WMA |
Let the chasing begin. As soon as we arrived Bill Boyle told us that the bird was being seen just a little bit north of where we were, so we doubled back a quarter of mile or so. By the time we had parked the car and walked out onto the beach (5 minutes maybe) the bird had been flushed by a dog walker and flown off. No dogs are allowed on the beach from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Check the calendar, today is--yeah Memorial Day. The bird maybe had flown south so back to the park we went and walked up the beach--nothing but Laughing Gulls and Herring Gulls. It was cold, damp, overcast and windy--not Memorial Day weather. Since I didn't want to be there anyway, because this is what I feared would happen, I told Shari my back up plan idea.
We went to Higbee Beach WMA, which we could see across the channel from the terminal but it about a 10 mile drive to get there and walked out to the beginning of the 2nd field. For the last couple of years in the spring and summer a SWAINSON'S WARBLER has been singing in this patch of brush but I've never felt like going down just to listen for a bird even if it was a lifer. I'd never even mentioned it to Shari who was little taken aback when I told her how long it had been coming to Higbee. I played the song 5 or 6 times in the car so we'd both have it fresh in our ears and just when Shari asked me where the spot was, I heard the bird. "That?" she asked. It sang again. "That," I replied. It sang again and again and again. It has a reputation for singing its little heart out. We were standing there listening, hoping it might show when a birder came up and aske if we knew where the Swainson's Warbler was. Before we could answer, he said, "Never mind, I hear it."
There was a little, overgrown path off the main trail and we ducked in there looking for the bird. Like a rail, it sounded like we were right next to it, but like a rail, we could not find it. It was loud though and finally we saw a bird zip from the right to left and the song continued to the left. I wouldn't say we'd seen the bird but we'd seen the bird's movement. However you view it, or hear it, we had a life bird. It might be the first Consolation Life Bird we've ever listed.
We went off to have lunch and while we were eating, I texted Steve, who I knew was coming down for the gull and told him we had just missed it by thirty seconds. He hadn't seen it yet either, was lunching, and was going to look for it again. As we were leaving, he texted me that the bird had been seen at Franklin Avenue maybe a quarter mile north of where we'd been in the morning. Again, it was about a 10 mile drive from where we were.
When we got to Franklin Avenue we ran into another birder we know and she said the bird had flown north. "Follow her," I told Shari. We drove about a mile before we all decided we'd gone too far when I got a text from Steve: Now the bird was at Browning. South of where we were, so we had overshot the mark. Down to Browning we drove, parked, walked to the beach, saw nothing. Started walking south on the beach with me carrying the scope and the beachgoers asking us if we'd seen "the bird." "Not yet," I grumbled and in truth, I'd given up on seeing it, as is required by the Second Law of Birding. I came to a bulwark with about a two foot drop onto the beach and I was thinking about how I was going to get Shari and her cane down it. I plunked down my scope, saw 3 gulls naked eye, got them in the scope and knew I didn't have to get her any farther down the beach. Assuming she could get to the scope before the bird took off again. Up until then, I didn't have much invested in seeing the bird, but now that I had it, for the few moments it took Shari to "run" up the beach, the anxiety level was high and banging. "Look in the scope, look in the scope." "I got it." Whew. Just then I got another text from Steve: "Now Roslyn St." I texted back: Got it!
Of course, there was no need to be anxious about losing the bird. After flying up and down the Delaware Bay coast line, now the bird just settled and sat there like a statue as birders north and south scoped it, bino'd it, photographed it, and texted about it. Steve found us and we fist bumped. I was pleasantly surprised how well we were able to see it; I had imagined trying to tease it out of huge, mixed flock of gulls, but luckily it seemed to keep pretty much to itself, even when surrounded by a cohort of Laughing Gulls. And while I'm certainly no larophile, I will concede it is a good looking gull, all gray on the body with a while head and just a dash of gray on the crown and standout bright red bill.
It is pretty unusual for Shari and me to get two life birds in one day in New Jersey. The last time it happened was four years ago. So the moral of this story is: Pessimism, grumpiness, and a bad attitude pay off!
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| Pine Siskin, Assunpink |
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| Evening Grosbeak, Wells Mills Park |
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| Clay-colored Sparrow |
Unlike the trip a couple of weeks ago, when the wind was a potential problem, the birding conditions today were excellent--clear, cool, calm. We started out on Reed's Road, a quarter mile of hard to see birds, but we all managed to get on most of them. Most interesting to me were the Blue-headed Vireos that seem to be moving through. I hadn't seen any since they were coming through in the spring. Warblers were in evidence, including an Ovenbird on the ground, and we broke the eBird filter with 3 Lincoln Sparrows. Overhead we heard a "tweedle" which I would just let go, but Scott, of course, knew what it was and what it was was an American Golden-Plover flyover. Also flying over was a Pine Siskin, another bird that like the Red-breasted Nuthatches of the last month, seems to be in an irruption year. After not seeing them for more than a year, I look forward to having them at our feeders this winter.
That dump is one great place to bird and we almost skipped it through distraction. It was in there that we saw, albeit briefly, a Lark Sparrow back among the junk. The directions to the bird were "beyond the big hamster wheel, over the square piece of machinery, up from its left corner, on a bare branch of the tree in back" and then, a Wood Thrush chased it away because that bare branch must be a valuable piece of avian real estate.
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| White-crowned Sparrow (imm) |
It was fun but exhausting. Looking deeply into cedars for flitting birds puts a strain on your brain and wears you out. The great birders just have to see what's making that noise. The mediocre birders like me, after 7 or 8 hours, are ready to concede to the bird's elusiveness.
For the day 75 species. Pretty amazing when you consider it took me 4 days to get 82 in Cape May.
