Archive for Birding New Jersey
Bird the Jersey Shore: Free Trip February 20
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The shore ponds and beaches of Ocean and Monmouth Counties are famous for their wintering waterfowl, seabirds, and gulls. We’ll work our way north from Point Pleasant to Belmar. Dress for the cold, and bring notebook, pencil, and lunch.
Meet at Twilight Lake in Bay Head at 9:00 am; we’ll be finished by 3:00 pm. Carpoolers can meet at 7:00 am in the Pet Smart parking lot at the intersection of Highway 23 and Willowbrook Boulevard.
Sorting
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s what we birders do most of the time, sorting the bird from the non-bird, the “good” bird from the ho-hum. Naturally, most of what we see when we’re sorting is the expected, but you can’t find the scarce if you don’t look.
So this morning at Newark’s Weequahic Park I looked. I sorted through the American Coots to see Gadwall and Ring-necked Ducks, and I sorted through the Common Mergansers to see Hooded Merganser and Ruddy Ducks. And I sorted through more than 1,500 Canada Geese in search of anything different.
Difference, fortunately, comes in lots of flavors, especially when it comes to geese. This flock included one “black-cheeked” Canada, a ghostly white leucistic Canada, and the two banded birds above; one sported a very tight orange collar around the neck, inscribed with the yellow characters “F0F0.” I’ve submitted the number to Patuxent; we’ll see what they can come up with.
And then of course the gulls had to be sorted. I almost wish I hadn’t.
Just what this is I’m not sure, but in size, structure, molt timing, wing pattern, tail pattern, and upperparts pattern, the best fit to my skeptical eye was, ack, Thayer’s Gull.
Maybe it’s just a tiny, molt-retarded, pale-winged Herring Gull (like the great hulking bird in front of it), but I’d be surprised.
This is the second individual Thayer’s-like gull I’ve seen this winter in New Jersey. I’ve submitted documentations for both to the NJRBC, and can only hope that the committee’s response is polite.
The Meadowlands in Winter
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Winter isn’t very wintry lately here in northern New Jersey. The dog and I spent a couple of hours at the Meadowlands on a warm, windy afternoon yesterday, and it could have been early spring.
With all the water open, Greater Yellowlegs weren’t that much of a surprise, and the Canvasback raft–now up to 235 birds–was pretty much expected, too.
The real surprise, though, was a ticking, tail-wagging Western Palm Warbler in the phragmites. That’s a rugged parulid if ever there was one, but even so, it should have been in Florida palms at this time of year, or at least hanging out in the relatively tropical climes of Cape May with all the other half-hardies.
Full list at eBird.
Nobody Doesn’t Know the Harlequins
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I’ve made three trips to Barnegat Light this past week, each of them a lot of fun: how can it fail when there are Purple Sandpipers and Common Eiders, and, yesterday, Razorbills to enjoy?
And Harlequin Ducks, of course.
This odd and beautiful little sea duck has been a reliable target for birders at Barnegat Light since at least the mid-1980s, when I first started visiting the flock there; but something has changed in recent years.
In the 80s and even just a decade ago, fishermen and jetty walkers used to stop and ask me whether I was looking for whales or watching ships. My answer: no, just watching birds. Oh, they’d say, and that was that.
Nowadays, I can hardly get out of the parking lot without having someone ask me whether I’m going out to see the Harlequins. And once I’m out on that treacherous jetty, everyone I meet is eager to point them out, to talk about them, to ask whether they’re in yet.
It’s a great thing, this overwhelming popular consciousness of a rare and inconspicuous bird, but I wonder where it came from. Was there a series of newspaper articles, a special on public television, a poster competition in the public schools? Whatever did it, it’s heartwarming (and a little mysterious) to find non-birders, honest-to-goodness normal people, proud of these fine feathered visitors.
Your Birding Ancestry
Posted by: | CommentsOne of the most interesting questions in modern birding is that of intellectual heritage: How and by whom are birding knowledge, culture, and ethics passed down?
Help me think about this by answering two easy questions:
1. Who was your birding mentor?
2. Who was that person’s birding mentor?
You may need to talk to the answer to the first before you can answer the second. But it will be worth it.
