FREC 3/27--Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, FREC

Pre-pandemic, Mike led a series of "Birds of Jackson" trips where the group would explore a number of locations from late winter to early spring.  The trips have obviously been a no-go the last two years but there was no reason Mike & I couldn't recreate one. Yesterday, a Saturday, which is the day the trips were held, Mike and I met up at FREC (Forest Resources Education Center) a bit earlier than the trip would have started but from thereon we essentially did the full trip in order, including a stop at a Wawa on County Line Road. Besides FREC, we stopped at Butterfly Bogs for ducks, Lake Enno, which is a really obscure spot that practically no one birds but is a great place to pick up Baltimore Oriole a little later in the spring, then Wawa, a retention pond at Jackson Mills, Prospertown Lake, which still had Common Mergansers, one of the few places in the county you can find this duck, and finally, Colliers Mills, though we didn't drive up the length of Success Road out to Rt 571 as we do on the trip. 

My only new bird for the year was a little tricky to get. At FREC, just as we crossed the bridge over the mighty Toms River (barely a trickle this far upstream) Mike said he heard Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. My first reaction was, "Nah, too early." Blue-gray Gnatcatcher is just at the lower bottom of the highest calls I can hear, but I wasn't hearing this one. However, eventually the little bird showed itself high up in just-budding tree. Early, perhaps, but Saturday all of sudden, lots of gnatcatchers were reported all around Ocean County, so there must have been a push of them overnight. Later, as we walked on the other side of FREC which is just outside the limits of the Pine Barrens, we saw another and I was able to document it. 

I missed hearing Northern Waterthrush as Mike did because I was hearing a woodcock softly peent us and didn't catch the warbler in front of us. Would like to get that bird, but would really like to get LouisianaWaterthrush, a much more difficult species to find. I'll have to start haunting Double Trouble soon to see if I can stumble upon one. 

Red-headed Woodpecker, Colliers Mills

Our other accomplishment occurred at Colliers Mills. I asked Mike if he wanted to try to track down the Red-headed Woodpecker, since he needed it for the year and of course he did. We went into the woods north of the Success Road and started looking around--bluebirds and robins abounded but no woodpeckers. I told Mike I had a 50% hit rate and since I didn't see it last time I was there, we should find it. Finally, near the edge of the woods we heard the bird and started walking towards its "Queer" cry. Mike spotted the bird first and we watched it move it around but it kept coming back to one dead tree full of holes and we realized that was its nest or at least it was investigating it as one. And the tree is very easy to find with a series of landmarks but of course I'm not going to reveal that information. I'll be curious next time I'm there to see if one of those holes is occupied. 

For the day we had 51 species, an excellent count for the township:

Species          First Sighting
Canada Goose   FREC
Wood Duck   FREC
Gadwall   Butterfly Bogs
Mallard   FREC
American Black Duck   Prospertown Lake
Green-winged Teal   Butterfly Bogs
Ring-necked Duck   Butterfly Bogs
Bufflehead   Butterfly Bogs
Common Merganser   Prospertown Lake
Mourning Dove   FREC
Killdeer   Colliers Mills WMA
American Woodcock   FREC
Herring Gull   Prospertown Lake
Double-crested Cormorant   Prospertown Lake
Great Blue Heron   Butterfly Bogs
Great Egret   Butterfly Bogs
Turkey Vulture   Jackson Mills Pond
Red-tailed Hawk   Lake Enno
Red-headed Woodpecker   Colliers Mills WMA
Red-bellied Woodpecker   FREC
Downy Woodpecker   FREC
Hairy Woodpecker   Colliers Mills WMA
Northern Flicker   FREC
American Kestrel   Colliers Mills WMA
Eastern Phoebe   FREC
Blue Jay   FREC
American Crow   FREC
Fish Crow   FREC
Carolina Chickadee   FREC
Tufted Titmouse   FREC
Tree Swallow   Prospertown Lake
Red-breasted Nuthatch   FREC
White-breasted Nuthatch   FREC
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher   FREC
Carolina Wren   FREC
European Starling   FREC
Northern Mockingbird   Prospertown Lake
Eastern Bluebird   FREC
American Robin   FREC
House Finch   FREC
American Goldfinch   FREC
Chipping Sparrow   FREC
Field Sparrow   FREC
Dark-eyed Junco   FREC
White-throated Sparrow   FREC
Song Sparrow   FREC
Red-winged Blackbird   FREC
Brown-headed Cowbird   FREC
Common Grackle   Lake Enno
Pine Warbler   FREC
Northern Cardinal   FREC

New Egypt | Colliers Mills 2/27--Brown Thrasher, Rusty Blackbird

On an incredibly windy day, Mike & I bounced between Jackson & New Egypt looking for birds brave enough to withstand the 30 mph gusts. We hoped for snipe (or even Pectoral Sandpiper) at Patriots Park in Jackson, where we have seen both before in winter, but had to settle for a nice for bluebirds.  A quick stop at Colliers Mills failed to turn up the Canvasback hen that had been on Turnmill Pond last week. We spent more time on Brynmore Road in New Egypt, coming up with the expected species though the lack of starlings was startling. It wasn't until we thought we were done there that we came up with our first year bird--a Brown Thrasher in some tangles along the road.

Along W. Colliers Mills Road we stopped in at the new Ephraim P. Emson Preserve, which looks promising for warblers in the spring, being mostly hardwood forest, but today all it had for us was an American Kestrel. Across the road, as we were leaving, a large flock of Eastern Meadowlarks flushed and a Northern Harrier hunted the fields

We spent most of our time in the woods at Colliers Mills, trying to stay out of the wind. Sometime in the last week the annual burning of the fields occurred and picking at the charred ground was a mixed flock of robins, blackbirds, and starlings. When we approached the blackbirds and starlings flew to a tree. The robins didn't care. The light on the blackbirds was perfect and one of them was not a Red-winged Blackbird but the much more desirable Rusty Blackbird.

We looked at Prospertown Lake but no Common Mergansers (or any other waterfowl that wasn't a Canada Goose) were on the choppy water. After a quick stop at the New Egypt Wawa, I showed Mike the newest mini hotspot, the Old Zoar Cemetery, which is next to a yard with feeders. The owner of the feeders made the mistake of listing Pileated Woodpecker during the Great Backyard Bird Count and now a few of us Ocean County birders have been visiting the cemetery hoping to find one at her suet. No luck yet. If Pileated Woodpecker hadn't been reported in other spots of New Egypt, I wouldn't have taken the report seriously, since the GBBC is notorious for misidentifications.

Another sweep of the New Egypt fields turned up nothing new save a Common Raven, which, I was happy to see, no longer is flagged as "rare" in the county, so no rote description of "large croaking corvid with wedge-shaped tail" is required any longer on the eBird list.

By that time we had been out in the wind for over 5 hours and the birds, being smarter than birders, were all hunkered down and out of sight so windblown but satisfied with a few cool birds, we packed it in for the day. 39 species in all:

Mallard  4

American Black Duck  2

Ring-necked Duck  3

Bufflehead  4

Rock Pigeon  25

Mourning Dove  10

Killdeer  9

Herring Gull  130

Black Vulture  5

Turkey Vulture  18

Northern Harrier  1

Red-tailed Hawk  2

Red-bellied Woodpecker  7

Downy Woodpecker  3

Hairy Woodpecker  1

American Kestrel  1

Blue Jay  10

American Crow  4

Common Raven  1

Carolina Chickadee  6

White-breasted Nuthatch  3

Carolina Wren  3

European Starling  79

Brown Thrasher  1

Northern Mockingbird  1

Eastern Bluebird  10

American Robin  26

House Sparrow  2

Chipping Sparrow  1

Dark-eyed Junco  39

White-throated Sparrow  12

Song Sparrow  7

Eastern Meadowlark  15

Red-winged Blackbird  16

Brown-headed Cowbird  7

Rusty Blackbird  1

Common Grackle  15

Northern Cardinal  9

Jackson 3/2--Horned Lark

Horned Larks, Jackson

Normally, a couple of scruffy old guys with binoculars cruising the grounds of a high school  is not a good idea--someone call the authorities! But on a Saturday afternoon you can get away with it.

After Mike's first Birds of Jackson trip for this year, we were going to head up to Point Pleasant Beach, but first we thought it might be a good idea to check out the lawns of the local high school since, for some reason, they seem to attract Horned Larks and Horned Larks are a very difficult bird to find in Ocean County. Especially now that one of the other reliable sites down in Stafford is undergoing development, making the bird potentially even more scarce.

Horned Larks prefer crappy habitat. The more hardscrabble and uninviting the ground looks the more likely you are to find larks there. So why they like the relatively lush, though brown, grass of the high school is a mystery, but they do. We were hoping to find one or two and almost immediately we did spot a couple. Then a couple more, then more and more until we had an eBird filter-busting count of 23 Horned Larks, all running around in the grass, all camouflaged extremely well, being the same color as the grass, except for their yellow eyebrows, which stood out splendidly.

Other highlights of our wanderings in Jackson Township this morning included 3 Bald Eagles in 3 different locales, a large flock of Common Mergansers on Prospertown Lake, a big flock of Snow Geese in the corn field on Hawkin Road (technically this is New Egypt), 3 Eastern Bluebirds on the wires along Success Road at Colliers Mills and 2 Tundra Swans in Success Lake about two miles up the road. Because of all the wet weather we've been having lately, we didn't attempt to drive all the way through Colliers Mills to Route 571, as we usually do--from the lake on that part of the road is probably more like a river, but instead turned around and drove out as we came in.

Canvasbacks (hens), Little Silver Lake

The noteworthy birds we had up in Point Pleasant Beach included a huge Northern Gannett show, with at least 350 birds flying north in flocks of of 10 & 20 seen from the jetty at Manasquan Inlet, Canvasbacks at both Little Silver Lake and Lake of the Lilies, and Lesser Scaup at both of those locations too.

Our last birds of the day were 3 Killdeer in the field next to the Wawa on Route 70 in Lakewood. Another field that is not long for underdevelopment. Enjoy 'em while you can, I guess.

Birds of Jackson 5/5--Red-eyed Vireo, Black-throated Green Warbler

House Wren, FREC

The trees are leafing out, the birds are getting harder to see and well nigh impossible to photograph. Add to that my crack-brained theory that the new leaves actually muffle sound, making the birds harder to  hear (never did get that pewee today) and you have a lot of birding frustration.

Scarlet Tanager, FREC

Shari and I went on the 4th of Mike's Birds of Jackson trips today. This is the series where we start in March and through the late winter and early spring watch the birds change at a set sequence of locations: FREC, Butterfly Bogs, Lake Enno, Jackson Mills Pond, Prospertown Lake, and finally, Colliers Mills. Most of the birding action took place at FREC (Forest Resource Education Center) today, not surprisingly since migrating birds are more active in the morning. It was there that I added to new birds to the year list and a few new birds to the county list. It was also there that I continually missed hearing the Eastern Pewee--people talking, the rustling leaves, the gap in my hearing...all contributing factors. I know there are a few birds I don't hear like Blackpoll Warbler and, unless they're right over my head, Cedar Waxwings. Today I discovered that I only hear half a chickadee's song. The Carolina Chickadee is always described as having a four note song but all I have ever heard is, at best, 2 1/2 notes--ffff fee bee. I never took the four note description seriously until Shari was asking me what song she was hearing in the distance. I listened, told I heard "fee bee"which meant chickadee and it took a long time for us to convince each other that we were hearing the same bird, only she was hearing more of it.

We spent the most time at FREC. Then it was quick sops at the next 4 places on the itinerary, the highlights being both species of orioles at Lake Enno and 3 Warbling Vireos there. Usually I have to wait for the parking lot of Colliers Mills to get Warbling Vireo (where they breed) as a county bird, so this was an "early" sighting by about an hour.

By the time we got to Colliers Mills it was midday so activity was quieting down but there was a Chestnut-sided Warbler there which everyone else got to see and which I missed behind those very annoying leaves. How I envied the new birder on our trip who got 13 life birds today--I need a passport to get more than a couple of lifers in one day and those birds tend to have very long names like Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl or Yellow-Olive Flycatcher. Instead, I'll be happy with the 2 FOY and 6 county birds collected during our peripatetic day.

Canada Goose  22

Wood Duck  1

Mallard  6

Double-crested Cormorant  1

Great Blue Heron  1

Great Egret  2

Black Vulture  2

Turkey Vulture  7

Red-tailed Hawk  2

Spotted Sandpiper  1

Mourning Dove  3

Red-bellied Woodpecker  2

Hairy Woodpecker  1

Eastern Phoebe  2

Great Crested Flycatcher  2

Eastern Kingbird  1

White-eyed Vireo  5

Warbling Vireo  5

Red-eyed Vireo  2

Blue Jay  2

Fish Crow  3

Northern Rough-winged Swallow  1

Tree Swallow  3

Carolina Chickadee  7

Tufted Titmouse  2

White-breasted Nuthatch  1

House Wren  1

Carolina Wren  2

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher  1

Eastern Bluebird  1

Wood Thrush  3

American Robin  3

Gray Catbird  10

Northern Mockingbird  1

Ovenbird  11

Black-and-white Warbler  7

Common Yellowthroat  6

Hooded Warbler  1

Northern Parula  1

Pine Warbler  3

Yellow-rumped Warbler  1

Prairie Warbler  6

Black-throated Green Warbler  2

Chipping Sparrow  8

Eastern Towhee  7

Scarlet Tanager  1

Northern Cardinal  1

Orchard Oriole  1

Baltimore Oriole  4

Red-winged Blackbird  12

House Finch  1

Colliers Mills 3/30--Prairie Warbler

The forecast was for showers all morning and into the afternoon, but that was wrong and by 8:30 conditions were just overcast. Needing a walk, I thought Colliers Mills would be the most productive area close by.

Not that I won't see them eventually in county, but I was hoping for a Tree Swallow or an Eastern Towhee today, neither of which appeared there. The burnt fields were full of robins, blackbirds, and cowbirds; bluebirds weren't hard to find and they are now hanging around the nesting boxes scattered throughout the WMA.

Field Sparrow

The only bird I got a picture of was a Field Sparrow, which I first heard singing in the big field off Success Road. Because of the recent snow and generally colder than usual weather, these fields aren't coming back as fast as they usually do. The only reason I mention it is because this area is one of the few remaining, reliable areas for Grasshopper Sparrow in a couple of months and if the grass doesn't grow back high enough soon enough, we'll be SOL with that species, just as we seem to be with Red-headed Woodpeckers this year. I've searched all the usual spots the last couple of months and none seem to be around. I did get one surprise though.

Walking down Hawkin Road as I circumambulated Turnmill Pond, I was thinking that soon I'd be finding Prairie Warblers along that stretch. "Soon" turned out to be about 15 minutes because I found a nice looking male in the same area as I had Pine Warblers and a Yellow-rumped Warbler. I guess this bird must be in the vanguard because eBird flagged it as rare. I have no doubt as to my i.d., which is only reinforced by the habitat where I found the bird.

27 species
Canada Goose 31
Mallard 2 CM Lake
Bufflehead 3 Turnmill Pond
Turkey Vulture 9
Mourning Dove 6
Red-bellied Woodpecker 4
Northern Flicker 3
Eastern Phoebe 3
Blue Jay 10
American Crow 2
Fish Crow 1
Carolina Chickadee 2 Heard
Tufted Titmouse 3
White-breasted Nuthatch 2
Carolina Wren 2 Heard
Eastern Bluebird 7 In fields
American Robin 85
Northern Mockingbird 1
European Starling 1
Pine Warbler 4
Yellow-rumped Warbler 1
Prairie Warbler 1 Yellow breast with bold black stripes on flanks.
Field Sparrow 1
Dark-eyed Junco 2
Northern Cardinal 1 Maintenance area behind parking lot
Red-winged Blackbird 25
Brown-headed Cowbird 10

The weather was going back to drizzle, but just for the heck of it, I drove up the road to Prospertown Lake. I was still hoping for a Tree Swallow, and finally, after find a cormorant, waxwings, and more yellow-rumps, I heard the tittle twitter (I don't think it's an accident that the social media's logo looks like a swallow) and above the lake I finally had my Ocean County Tree Swallow.

Now I'm waiting for an Eastern Towhee to appear in our backyard, where they have nested every year we've been here.

Jackson 3/18--Pectoral Sandpiper, Chipping Sparrow

Pectoral Sandpiper, Patriots County Park
Photos: Peggy Cadigan

Today was the 2nd of the 5 Jackson (the Jackson 5?) trips that Mike is leading. Seven of us convened at the Jackson Memorial HS then headed down the road to FREC, where Mike & I had been just yesterday. I'd said yesterday to Mike it would be interesting to see if anything new flew in overnight and the very first bird we saw and heard (and hearing here is important) was a new one for me for the year: a Chipping Sparrow.

Chipping Sparrows,  per se, are no big deal; in a couple of weeks there might be 10 of them hopping around on my lawn. But so far this year, I've had no luck with them, and I usually get them much earlier. Once earlier this year, we had an odd sparrow at our feeder that I couldn't quickly identify before it flew off--looked like a chippie to me. Turned out to be a female House Sparrow. We hardly ever get House Sparrows here. Then, a couple of weeks ago I had a sparrow with a rufous cap beneath the feeders. While my photos weren't perfect for a chippie, I couldn't think of anything else that would be likely in our backyard, so I listed it as such. An eBird reviewer corrected me and of course, once I looked at the pictures again I could clearly see that it was a Swamp Sparrow. The first Swamp Sparrow we've ever had in the backyard in the 5 1/2 years we've been here. The habitat of our backyard is all wrong for Swamp Sparrow, yet, there it was.

So, when we saw this sparrow in the murk & distance in a tree at FREC we couldn't quite figure out what it was until it sang. If singing is what you want to call a little whir that sounds a miniature machine gun. That made it a positive id of Chipping Sparrow and now I probably won't stop seeing them until November.

The good idea behind Mike's course for the Jackson Community School is to visit the same location 5 times late winter through late spring to see how the bird life changes: what goes, what arrives, in what habitats and why. So today we bounced from location to location on our circuit: FREC to Butterfly Bogs, Lake Enno (which was closed because someone "forgot" to open the gate), a stop at the Wawa on County Line Road, Jackson Mills Pond to Prospertown Lake and finally a run through Colliers Mills.

However, "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," and since two very unusual birds for Jackson were reported yesterday on the soccer fields of Patriots County Park we took a run over there even though it really isn't in the "curriculum." It was only about a 5 minute drive from the exit of Colliers Mills and once we found the right field (#5) Mike quickly got some Wilson's Snipes plus a Pectoral Sandpiper in the scope. The fields are closed for the winter and with the recent snow and rain, there are wet areas--just perfect for both shorebirds. Pectoral Sandpiper is rare this time of year (though I have seen them in winter out in New Egypt in the magic cattle fields) but there was no mistaking the bird with its diagnostic "vest" ending abruptly at the belly. Plus, we were fortunate that Peggy Cadigan was on the trip with us and she has kindly provided the photos documenting this entry. (Clicking on a photo will enlarge it.)

Wilson's Snipes, Patriots County Park
(note how different they can appear depending up stance)

Hairy Woodpecker, FREC

Brown Creeper, FREC

My list for day totaled 45 species. Others had more, others had less.

32 Canada Goose
7 Tundra Swan --Colliers Mills
3 Wood Duck--Colliers Mills

6 American Black Duck
8 Mallard
28 Ring-necked Duck
6 Bufflehead
7 Hooded Merganser
10 Common Merganser --Prospertown Lake
1 Pied-billed Grebe --Butterfly Bogs
2 Great Blue Heron
15 Killdeer--Patriots County Park 
1 Pectoral Sandpiper
2 Wilson's Snipe
2 Ring-billed Gull
8 Herring Gull
4 Mourning Dove
1 Belted Kingfisher --Colliers Mills
4 Red-bellied Woodpecker
2 Downy Woodpecker
1 Hairy Woodpecker
1 Merlin --Colliers Mills
3 Eastern Phoebe
9 Blue Jay
2 American Crow
5 Fish Crow
8 Carolina Chickadee
5 Tufted Titmouse
3 White-breasted Nuthatch
1 Brown Creeper
2 Carolina Wren
3 Golden-crowned Kinglet
33 American Robin
1 Northern Mockingbird
28 European Starling
1 Chipping Sparrow
1 White-throated Sparrow
2 Song Sparrow
1 Eastern Towhee
3 Northern Cardinal
17 Red-winged Blackbird
2 Brown-headed Cowbird
1 House Finch
2 House Sparrow 

Jackson 5/21--Gray-cheeked Thrush

This morning was Mike's last session of the Birds of Jackson, where we travel, over the course of the late winter and early spring, to more or less the same spots in Jackson Township (100 square miles) and survey the changing bird life. It's been a cold spring and today was no exception; the weather was cool and cloudy and just as we were ending the trip, coming out of Colliers Mills onto Rt 571, it started to rain.

Between 8 and 12:45 we accumulated around 60 species in the 9 spots (including the County Line Road Wawa) that we surveyed. Our one rarity (though they aren't so rare anymore in the county) was a Common Raven we saw as we were standing the in the Wawa Parking lot. The one new bird for the year, for me, was the Gray-cheeked Thrush we found in the woods along the Toms River at FREC. I've been looking for a Swainson's Warbler all month; Gray-cheeked is harder to find, so naturally that's the bird we come up with. The killer bird we saw today was the Hooded Warbler in those same woods. That was my second Hooded Warbler in 2 days and that's never happened to me before.

Our route today in Jackson: Jackson Memorial HS, FREC, Butterfly Bogs, Lake Enno (closed, so we just stood outside the gate for a few minutes) Wawa on County Line Road, Jackson Mills Pond (pretty much empty) Progress Road, Prospertown Lake, and Colliers Mills.

I listed:

Canada Goose

Mallard

Great Blue Heron

Mourning Dove

Yellow-billed Cuckoo

Black-billed Cuckoo

Chimney Swift

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Belted Kingfisher

Red-headed Woodpecker

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Northern Flicker

Eastern Wood-Pewee

Eastern Phoebe

Great Crested Flycatcher

Eastern Kingbird

White-eyed Vireo

Warbling Vireo

Red-eyed Vireo

Blue Jay

American Crow

Common Raven

Northern Rough-winged Swallow

Purple Martin

Tree Swallow

Bank Swallow

Barn Swallow

Carolina Chickadee

Tufted Titmouse

White-breasted Nuthatch

House Wren

Carolina Wren

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

Eastern Bluebird

Gray-cheeked Thrush

Wood Thrush

American Robin

Gray Catbird

Brown Thrasher

Northern Mockingbird

European Starling

Cedar Waxwing

Ovenbird

Black-and-white Warbler

Common Yellowthroat

Hooded Warbler

Pine Warbler

Prairie Warbler

Chipping Sparrow

Eastern Towhee

Red-winged Blackbird

Common Grackle

Brown-headed Cowbird

Orchard Oriole

Baltimore Oriole

House Finch

American Goldfinch