Category: Information

Not much danger of that these frigid days in New Jersey.

This week found us visiting Sally and Shelby on Long Beach Island, an early New Years celebration and a chance to do a little bit of truly coastal birding: there’s nothing east of that barrier beach than lots of ocean and Portugal.

It’s been cold here recently, and yesterday afternoon’s winds were ferocious as we walked out the beach to see the ducks at Barnegat Light.

The sand was in constant restless motion, creating miniature dunescapes behind every shell and little rise and intent, it seemed, on erasing everything out there, living or dead.

This ill-fated red-breasted merganser was still on top of the sand when we walked past it on our way out to the water. Not quite as much, though, on our return.

Believe it or not, this was the first (reasonably) fresh merganser I’d ever seen in (more or less) the flesh, and it was fascinating to get an in-hand look at a bird familiar but often stand-offish.

Most wondrous of all was the tongue, big and fleshy and lined with recurved barbs nearly as stout as the sawteeth on the bill.

We finally committed the bird back to its sandy grave and turned to search for live ducks. The small common eider flock — a feature of Barnegat Light for, what, nearly twenty winters now — held three bright peach-breasted, green-headed drakes, and closer to the jetty, five or so harlequins fed with long-tailed ducks and Atlantic brant while common and red-throated loons fished the inlet. The best bird of the day by far, though, was a lovely little Ipswich sparrow playing around in the rocks, a find that almost — just barely almost — made us forget the howling, grit-laden wind scouring our faces as we returned to the car.

Today dawned just as cold, but the wind was down to a breeze, and when the sun burned away the early clouds, it was a beautiful winter’s morning. We devoted it to the southern tip of the island, nearly deserted in the cold but for birds.

Photo by Sally

Sanderlings played on the water’s edge, and vast rafts of greater scaup and smaller numbers of black and surf scoters gathered just offshore. Passerines were scant, though they included half a dozen myrtle warblers and, hurray, two Ipswich sparrows perched up in the bayberry.

And there were owls.

We walked the edge of the dunes rather less than a mile south from the parking area, seeing three different snowy owls up on the sandy expanse.

At least two more were farther down towards the inlet, according to the few other brave birders we ran into. But even if it was warmer than yesterday, it was still not exactly warm, and after drinking our fill of the great white birds, we turned back to lunch, leaving the owls to look over the frozen bay and dream, no doubt, of their own.

 

Winter is falcon season here in northern New Jersey, when our resident peregrines are joined by migrants of that same species, merlins, and American kestrels. For the most part, these fierce little bird-eaters manage to stay out of each other’s way. But not always.

Wednesday dawned dim and dull, and that was pretty much how I felt that morning while I sat in the Trader Joe’s parking lot waiting for something to be bought that should have been bought the day before. Things brightened considerably, though, when I saw a merlin powering in from the south; the bird paused briefly, then knocked a small passerine — a house finch or a house sparrow — out of the sky. Suddenly a peregrine appeared, probably a local bird from the Highway 3 bridge. Distracted, the merlin chased the bigger bird, which wheeled to defend itself. Wisely, and uncharacteristically, the merlin opted for the better part of falconid valor and sped off, while the peregrine turned a leisurely victory circle before sailing back towards the east. That little bit of feathered breakfast is probably still lying, uneaten, on the roof of the Ticktock Diner.

This morning’s show, though less dramatic, was far more puzzling. The monk parakeet nest at Mill Creek Marsh had a bird perched atop it when I arrived — not a parrot, though, but a little male American kestrel. As I watched, the kestrel fluttered down twice to briefly perch at what I assume were two separate entrances to the mass of sticks; apparently finding no one at home, or at least no one in reach of those tiny talons, he swooped back to the marsh and started to harry the much bigger female kestrel that may or may not wind up sharing the winter territory with him. When I checked again half an hour later, two parakeets were perched next to the nest — but not on it — and it wasn’t hard to imagine the green birds worrying just a little bit that there might be a feathered fury waiting for them inside.

Was the kestrel really hoping to snag a parakeet? (Hats off to his ambition if so.) Or was he simply exploring, perhaps having caught a mouse-like rustling from inside? Or did the chance of finding some warmth in that bushel of tightly packed twigs and branches exercise another appeal on a chilly fall morning?

Ideas?

Seventy-two years ago today, northeast Oregon’s first record of the sweet little Ross goose was obtained when I.S. Surber shot a juvenile in Wallowa County. Reporting on the remarkable find, Stanley Jewel noted that

recent known occurrences of the Ross Goose outside of its regular winter range have been few and far between and should be placed on record.

Fast forward three quarters of a century: How many counties in the United States have not recorded the species?

How things change — and sometimes for the better, at least from the point of view of certain tiny white geese.

(The photo is from central New Jersey — ho hum, almost.)

On the five hundredth birthday of what one has come to think of as the start of the Reformation, a letter from the birds of Wittenberg to Martin Luther:

We, the Thrushes, Blackbirds, Finches, Linnets, Goldfinches, and all other righteous and honorable Birds wishing to migrate over Wittenberg this autumn beg to inform you that as we have ourselves been credibly informed, a certain Wolfgang Seyberger, your servant,  has undertaken to purchase several old worn-out nets at considerable expense, in his great hatred and anger at us, in order to create a finch trap, to deprive not only our dear friends the Finches but all of us of our God-given freedom to fly through the air and to collect seeds from the ground, and that he is plotting against our lives, though we have caused him no harm and done nothing to merit such severe and ill-considered actions on his part.

Because all of that is, as you yourself can imagine, poses a great and dangerous burden to us poor free Birds, who have neither houses nor barns and no possessions, our humble and amiable plea to you is that you will discourage your servant from such presumptuous actions, and if that is not possible, then urge him to spread grain on the ground for us in the evening and then to stay away from the trap before eight in the morning, so that we can elude him.

If he refuses, then we shall pray to our Lord God that his traps capture nothing but flies, midges, and slugs, and that at night he is so plagued by mice, fleas, lice, and bedbugs that he forgets us entirely and does not deprive us of freedom and flight.

Why does he not direct his wrath and efforts against Sparrows, Swallows, Magpies, Jackdaws, Crows, Mice, and Rats, which do harm you by stealing and robbing wheat, oats, barley, and so on from the buildings? We do not do this, but merely seek tiny crumbs and single dropped seeds. We submit our case to all righteousness and reason to determine whether it is not unjust that we are so severely persecuted by him. We hope to God that as so many of our brothers and friends have escaped him this fall that we too can fly through his lax and rotting nets that we saw yesterday.

Given this day at our sky seat in the trees and under our common seal of feathers.

Suppose Luther showed this letter to Seyberger?