Category Archives: Birds

Birds, Snapshots, Wanderings

Jetty treats

13 Comments
I met MevetS (fellow NJ Audubon volunteer) and his photography group this morning at Barnegat Light. Aside from some equipment envy on my part, it didn’t feel much different than any other bird walk.

Bird geeks.

Camera geek

😉

Not much difference, huh?

Other than the lighthouse, the main draw at Barnegat Light is the sea ducks. The problem is the birds like to hang out way at the end of this jetty along the inlet. Scary stuff! If you haven’t already seen the link at Patrick’s blog, have a look at this story of a local birder who recently fell and was trapped out there in his quest for pics of the eiders that frequent the inlet.

Most people walk the jetty like it’s nothing, but I’m normally a trembling mess. I was ready to refuse outright today and walk along the sand, but went ahead anyway and found it okay. Maybe cause the rocks were dry and it wasn’t freezing cold. The birds make the walk worth it… nestled among the rocks are pretty harlequins and the inlet offered close looks at common loons in breeding plumage and courting oldsquaw.

Way out at the very tip, the jetty boulders were squirming with purple sandpipers… little dark birds that I like nearly as much as sanderlings.

Have a look at Steve’s pics from today… wow. (Camera envy.)

Birds, Garden, Snapshots

Robin invasion

10 Comments

We had near to a foot of snow finally; it blew into great drifts that swallowed Luka whole. The neighbor’s catalpa served as a staging area for the robins and cedar waxwings waiting for a turn to drink from our little fishpond. The deep end is free of ice thanks to a bubbler constantly churning the surface, the shallows a tea-colored slush from the oak leaves accumulated under the thin ice.

The holly tree out front kept a small army of robins fed today, their plump bodies colored for spring. I want to feel sorry for them out there in the cold and snow, but they seem content enough, even if they don’t look it.

Birds, In the neighborhood, Pastimes

The worst bird walk ever*

7 Comments

Is February an easy month to find birds anywhere?

Sandy Hook can be something like a wonderland of waterfowl at this time of year, but today it mostly wasn’t. There were a couple of distant loons, a speck raft of red-breasted mergansers, a long-tailed duck or two, an imaginary harbor seal, a nice flock of faraway snow buntings and great looks at the world’s largest gull.

Yawn.

We did get to see this great big boat heading out to sea though.

Despite the lack of birds, it was a beautiful day to be out, with a hint of spring in the air. Not really, but at least the wind wasn’t quite so biting for a change.

*Post title suggested by our field trip leader

Birds, Whatever

Feathered fashionistas

11 Comments

My brother shared this pic of a couple of his chickens on top of an old shed; he said with last week’s snow they just sort of poked their little heads out the coop and didn’t know what to make of it.

Silly chickens!

Not having much first hand experience, I’m not sure if I should believe those who say chickens are pretty smart or those who say they’re really dumb.

It’s pretty neat to see my brother understanding a bit more about bird behavior because of his chickens; he recognizes the peculiar sound the flock makes when they’ve spotted a hawk overhead and this winter he’s busy figuring out how to keep starlings out of the coop to steal the chickenfeed.

Anyone with suggestions on that?

He demonstrated some weird kind of chicken logic for me today. They react to particular colors he says… he called them “fashion police” actually, and brought out this shirt that he says they hate. Sure enough the flock scattered at the sight of it and were freaked out for the rest of the afternoon, clucking suspiciously at us from beneath the pine trees at the edge of the yard while we talked.

Silly chickens!

Birds, In the neighborhood, Snapshots

Crayfish for lunch: A hoodie story

11 Comments

I did the loop around Lake Takanassee as something of an afterthought on my way home from the bird observatory this afternoon. I wasn’t expecting anything new; hoping for a couple Canvasbacks maybe, or just a closer look at the couple Ring-Neck Ducks that are in the big lake since their more secluded spot is frozen over.

I’d finished sorting through the Coot, and the Canada Geese, the couple Brant and the sweet Wigeon, ready to drive away when a lone Hooded Merganser on the far side of the lake caught my eye. Mainly it was the Great Black-Backed Gulls harassing the Hoodie that got my attention. I’d read about this behavior in those big burly gulls, but had never witnessed it myself.

I didn’t know what I was seeing and misinterpreted it, of course. The gulls repeatedly lifted the Hoodie out of the water, as if to fly away with it for lunch, but then dropped it back in a splash. Horrible mean gulls! The Hoodie kept diving under the water to escape, only to be taken aloft again. Poor thing! At this point I was out of the car, finally remembering my camera and with murder in my heart.

😉

It wasn’t until I got home and enlarged my pics, that I figured out what I’d really seen. The gulls were scared off by something… me maybe… and the Hoodie swam close to shore to rearrange its hard won prize. What I’d imagined to be a mouthful of fishing wire and hooks or some such other horrible death for this duck, was instead a crayfish, I think.

Lunch.

That he had no intention of sharing with any gull.

😉

Click on this pic to enlarge… it’s hilarious!

Looking at these pics, I’m reminded of those I’ve seen of GB Herons and their ministrations when *handling* prey items that are a bit too big for them. But Hooded Mergansers? Who knew? See how he’s stretching out his neck to let it slide down?

Gulp!

This whole time, of course, I was convinced that my favorite duck in the world was choking and dying mere yards away.

😉

Hoodies can smile with their crests, I think. Can you see the relief on his face?

Once home I read that crayfish are a favored food for these ducks and that they have a special gizzard-type thing, like chickens I guess, to process the hard shells of crustaceans.

Something else I read said that they only eat the claws of crayfish, like us with their bigger cousins, but I have no idea how he actually managed to get that thing down his throat, if he had to shake away the body first, before swallowing the sweet bits.

Birds. Always something new to learn.

😉

Birds, In the neighborhood, Seasons

Winter playground

10 Comments

A couple iceboats on the river late this afternoon evicted the gulls from their usual loafing spots on the ice. Click on the pic to see how handsome he is – even for a sleepy gull.

😉

I’m waiting for more sun and the big boats this weekend…

Some nice pics from yesterday can be found at Red Bank Green. I stole a couple to include here…

I especially liked this silly dog chasing a skater…

and this wide view of the scene taken from mid-river.

Birds, In the neighborhood, Small truths

Hope, in feathers

6 Comments

There’s a kind of rightness and predictability in bird behavior that is almost comforting to me.

Knowing to expect that every last hooded merganser will take flight to the farthest edges of the pond when I raise my lens confirms to me that I know one aspect of this species pretty well.

Waiting for the local pair of osprey to begin setting up housekeeping in mid-March or the woodcock to twitter and spiral through an early spring dusk or merlins to streak low through the dunes in late afternoon looking for a meal to keep them through a night’s chill… all enhance my awareness of life’s insistent rhythms and set a pace for my own schedule in harmony with a larger, more universal system.

There’s also the realization that birds have important lessons to teach us; about being careful and its necessity for survival (hoodies are overly careful, I think) and about beauty and stirring the imagination (think of a flock of terns dropping from the sky into the summer blue bay or a scarlet tanager suspended in an oak) and also, they teach us about hope.

I found that hope looking me squarely in the eye a few weeks ago. Along an often-walked path through the local woods, I looked up a tree trunk one afternoon to find it looking back at me, in that magical way that owls have of appearing out of nothing. I’d stopped looking for screech owls along that path a couple years ago when their nesting box was vandalized, but this one had found a little hole in a nearby maple with which to frame his unblinking face. I think we both were somewhat shocked to be seeing one another, his face full of concentration at not being seen and mine one of pleasant surprise at learning that sometimes good birds are closer than we think.

What good birds have you found lately and what did they offer you?

😉

Birds, In the neighborhood, PSA

Collared

5 Comments

I’d rather it be a band on a nicer bird that I’m reporting, never having done this before, but I suppose I should think instead of the scientific or research value. How an understanding of this one mute swan’s behavior might help to protect less beautiful, but more endangered waterfowl species.

Click for a prior rant on mute swans.

😉

I’ve been bothered to notice mute swans on my local rivers lately. Every spot with open water that I visited today had a bunch of them. There were quite a few sleeping on the ice mixed in among the gulls, too. At least they’re mostly civil to the other waterfowl at this time of year and tame enough (big, too!) to pose for my camera.

My favorite complaint while chasing ducks is that the prettiest ones are the first to fly away. Not so with a mute swan.

Anyone else ever reported a banded bird? Do they really send a certificate, like they promise? Anyone else find this form long and overly intimidating?