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. 

Waretown Bay Parkway 1/9--Redhead

2 Greater Scaup, hens (left) 3 Redheads (drakes & hen)

Unexpected birds are always satisfying. This blustery morning at the end of Bay Parkway in Waretown (which overlooks--surprise!--Barnegat Bay) I brought out the scope to look at ducks. I saw a big flock right off shore to the north but upon closer examination, they turned out to be decoys. Hunters were hiding in the brush just off the point. But, in front of me were some ducks, a couple hundred yards out. With just my bins, one of them appeared to have a red head. Scoping them, they turned out to be 6 ducks, 3 hen Greater Scaup + 1 hen and 2 drake Redheads. 

Not decoys

Last year I had no Redheads in New Jersey--it wasn't until we were in Oregon that I finally saw one. Usually there is a flock of them off some of the points in Brick, but I almost never go up there. Now, I don't have to. To find them off Bay Parkway was quite the surprise--it's a first for me at this spot and no one else has ever listed one from there either. 

However, there was a nagging thought: After seeing those decoys, I couldn't help but think there was the possibility that those were loose decoys bobbing along, pushed by the wind. I didn't see any of them dive or spread their wings. The light was gray and the birds (if they were birds) distant. I walked up the marsh into the woods and when I got back to the end of the road, saw the two hunters wading through the water in what is usually the eel grass covered beach. I asked them about their decoys and was happy to hear they had no Redheads in their spread--just scaup. They were surprised to hear that I'd seen the Redheads, an opportunity missed I guess. To be clear, I have nothing against duck hunting--I'm a member of Ducks Unlimited which does great work maintaining and rehabilitating marshes, but hunting sea ducks doesn't make a lot of sense to me since I can't imagine they're edible, given what (and where) they eat. They had shot one scaup and one merganser which they thought was a common but, looking into their bucket, I told them it was a red-breasted. Still, we all left Bay Parkway happy. 

(Update: That goose yesterday at Harvey Cedars was a Cackling Goose)

Harvey Cedars & Barnegat Lighthouse SP 1/8

Hen & drake Harlequin Ducks

I'm usually not a very good birding ambassador (I hear that some people even refer to me as "The Curmudgeon" hmph!), but sometimes, inadvertently, I'll find myself giving strangers birding advice, as I did today at Barnegat Lighthouse when I saw a couple on the concrete walkway excitedly taking pictures of Brant. "Well, photographers," I said to myself, "they take pictures of anything," but, when I saw them eyeing the jetty from the end of the walk, I asked them what they were looking for, knowing the answer was probably Harlequin Ducks, which it was.  As to the Brant, since they're from North Carolina, they turned out to be lifers for them, so their excitement was understandable. 

Savannah Sparrow (Ipswich ssp)

I told them they could walk the jetty, but since the Harlequins would be all the way at the end of it, the less hazardous, and more birdy, route was to walk around the pond, which is what I do. They took my advice, and we walked up the berm and around the pond. There were a few treats along the way, like a Snow Bunting posing and the Ipswich subspecies of Savannah Sparrow picking at the rocks along the jetty. When I got to end of the beach, I climbed up to the jetty and could see the Harlequins a little farther down where the jetty extends into the water. They climbed up and I pointed out the ducks, saying "I don't need photos, so this is as far as I go." I got photos anyway, as a couple of ducks were sitting on a rock, not too far from my position. 

I also saw my first Purple Sandpipers of the year, my first Dunlins, and my first Ruddy Turnstone, so I ticked all the boxes for what you'll usually get there this time of year. However, none of the rarities I'd been reading about on the eBird alerts were there that I could see. I look at flocks of gulls or shorebirds, but if something doesn't leap out at me the cold starts to seep in and I have to get moving again. I certainly don't spend time scanning an empty ocean or sky, waiting for the rare flyby.

Cackling Goose (probably), Canada Geese

But, speaking of leaping out at me--it didn't exactly happen like that at Harvey Cedars, where I stopped before going up to the tip of the Island, but I did find, I think, a Cackling Goose that was reported there. I purposely made it my first stop so I wouldn't be too tired after Barnegat to look for Common Goldeneye--Sunset Park is the go-to spot in Ocean County for that duck. On the lawn were about 50 Canada Geese. I can stand scanning a flock of 50. Nothing looked outstanding until I got to the last goose on the left--it seemed smaller, shorter necked, maybe the beak was stubbier than the others. It stood aloof from the rest of the geese, seeming not to want to have anything to do with them. I circled around the flock and half the time I said "no" to myself and half the time I said "yeah," and when it got to be 51% "yeah," I listed it as a Cackler. There are so many subspecies of Cackling Goose (as well as Canada Goose) and the variation so wide that unless the goose is the size of a Mallard (or someone much more knowledgeable tells me so), I'm never really convinced. 

And I found one Common Goldeneye in the bay. I only need one. 

Barnegat Lighthouse SP 1/12--Least Sandpiper

Least Sandpipers

I went looking for LBI specialties this morning and had a fairly successful trip. A quick walk around Cedar Bonnet Island had nothing of interest and I was disappointed that the Black-crowned Night-Heron roost on Bayview Avenue seems to have been abandoned by the birds, probably because someone cut a path into the pines and made it too accessible for the birds to countenance. When I went in late December they weren't there either, so two times in a row, and I get the message. 

Barnegat Lighthouse SP (I just noticed that it is "Lighthouse" not "Light" as the official designation; "Barnegat Light" is the town) was the real goal anyway. The tide was high and coming in, crashing against the jetty, which I had no intention of walking on anyway, but the incoming tide also runs into the plover pond that was created in the dunes a few years ago. Since I wasn't wearing my wading boots, I couldn't get across the stream, so I was forced to walk along the back edge of the pond. Which led to my first happy find of the morning, 5 Least Sandpipers feeding at the east end of the pond. My first thought was Semipalmated Sandpiper, but I knew they would be ridiculously rare. I then considered Western Sandpiper, which does occur in the winter, but they didn't look right for that either once I sent some pix to Steve and consulted with him via text. I knew they weren't Dunlin (I studied some Dunlin later on the jetty, and the bills were much longer than my peeps. I ran one of my photos through my Seek app and it came up Least Sandpiper. Then I remembered that in December a small number of Least Sandpipers had been reported for a few days but none had shown up this year so far. They had all the characteristics of Leasts, save for the yellow legs, but in the gray light and standing in mud, that really wasn't a disqualification. So, I went with Least and no one's told me different. 

Harlequin Ducks

Once out at the beach, I gingerly climbed up on the jetty with my scope. I was willing to maneuver on 3 relatively flat and dry rocks. Everything else looked precarious. Down at the far end of the jetty I found one Brant sitting on the rocks, surrounded by a small flock of Purple Sandpiper (one of the specialties, though I'd already ticked this species off at Manasquan Inlet) and closer to me a larger flock of Ruddy Turnstones, next to said Dunlin. The waves were hitting the jetty and splashing up pretty high and even the interior rocks I was standing on were getting the spume, so when I finally spotted one Harlequin Duck, I was more than happy to climb down intact. While I was going back & forth with Steve about the peeps I scanned the ocean for ducks and after a while found a small flock of Common Eiders. Eiders have been scarce this winter; I know Steve has commented on the paucity of the flocks--I counted 8 eiders, where in usual times a flock of 50 or 100 wouldn't be uncommon. I looked as long as I could stand looking at the ducks bobbing in the rough surf for one smiling eider which would indicate the hen King Eider that has been seen off and on there, but distance and light and constant motion were all arrayed against me. I also spotted a few Harlequins sitting on the far end of the jetty, as well as some Black Scoters, one Surf Scoter, and lots of Long-tailed Ducks. 

My last stop, as it usually is in the winter, was Sunset Park in Harvey Cedars. For some peculiar reason, this is the best place to find a specific duck and when I plunked my scope down to look at the bay, I immediately found that duck, a Common Goldeneye. Then I quickly found 5 more. Much better looks that I got on the first at Sandy Hook, and besides, they're now on the Ocean County list. And having seen the goldeneyes, I figured I'd exhausted the entertainment value of LBI for the day.

34 species on the Island:

Species  First Sighting
Brant  Barnegat Lighthouse SP
Canada Goose  Cedar Bonnet Island
Mallard  Cedar Bonnet Island
American Black Duck  Cedar Bonnet Island
Greater Scaup  Bayview Ave Marina
Common Eider  Barnegat Lighthouse SP
Harlequin Duck  Barnegat Lighthouse SP
Surf Scoter  Barnegat Lighthouse SP
Black Scoter  Barnegat Lighthouse SP
Long-tailed Duck  Barnegat Lighthouse SP
Bufflehead  Cedar Bonnet Island
Common Goldeneye  Sunset Park-
Hooded Merganser  Cedar Bonnet Island
Red-breasted Merganser  Cedar Bonnet Island
Ruddy Duck  Sunset Park-
Rock Pigeon  Bayview Ave Marina
Ruddy Turnstone  Barnegat Lighthouse SP
Sanderling  Barnegat Lighthouse SP
Dunlin  Barnegat Lighthouse SP
Purple Sandpiper  Barnegat Lighthouse SP
Least Sandpiper  Barnegat Lighthouse SP
Herring Gull  Cedar Bonnet Island
Great Black-backed Gull  Cedar Bonnet Island
Common Loon  Bayview Ave Marina
Great Cormorant  Barnegat Lighthouse SP
Double-crested Cormorant  Barnegat Lighthouse SP
Great Blue Heron  Cedar Bonnet Island
Belted Kingfisher  Bayview Ave Marina
American Crow  Bayview Ave Marina
Carolina Wren  Barnegat Lighthouse SP
American Robin  Barnegat Lighthouse SP
White-throated Sparrow  Barnegat Lighthouse SP
Savannah Sparrow  Barnegat Lighthouse SP
Song Sparrow  Cedar Bonnet Island