Category Archives: Birds

Birds, Pastimes, Wanderings

Yes… I can do this!

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I was writing this post in my head yesterday as I sped down the parkway to Island Beach State Park and expected to have to title it, “How Not to Lead Your First-Ever Field Trip”. First on the list was to be, “Be on time for once!” but I was already late when I’d thought of my post title.

Anyway… you might remember me mentioning here that I’m now responsible for planning field trips for my local audubon chapter. It’s gone well so far, but I couldn’t find anyone able to lead our November trip to Island Beach. I was even almost begging near strangers at the hawkwatch in Cape May two weeks ago. Remember Lloyd? Yeah.. he said no, too. I never found anyone, so short of canceling the trip I thought I’d make a go of leading it myself and hoping no one showed up.

😉

The weather was awful… rainy and foggy… so zero participants seemed like a real possibility. It turned out there were seven people waiting on me to get there, and thanks be, all were beginning birders, as is typical for these field trips. Beginning birders are easy to please and, luckily, don’t know gulls any better than I do. We just agreed at the outset to ignore them! We saw some of my beloved sanderlings on the beach and I struggled with some terns that were lazing among the fiishermen, but I decided they were Forster’s and (laugh) they all believed me!

Being *the leader* imparts a certain authority that I’m not entirely comfortable with, but other people who lead trips have told me that pretending confidence is half the game. Whatever. Here is the second of three shorebirds that I can identify in winter. Funny how Black-bellies are so wary compared with the sanderlings… I had to stalk this guy up into the dunes for a pic.

We spent some time scanning Barnegat Bay and came up with a couple groups of Bufflehead and a couple Loons, but that was it. Island Beach is a barrier island and has a wonderful maritime forest like Sandy Hook; we found some Kinglets and Yellow-rumps, but ended up watching the feeders at the nature center to escape the rain for a bit and actually be able to study some common birds. The beginners liked that, I hope, plus I got my first Junco of the season.

The show of the day was the Northern Gannets in a feeding frenzy just off the beach. What cool birds! Sadly, I don’t think Gannets are easy for beginners to appreciate. They all kept asking me, “How can you tell they’re not gulls?” I guess their crappy little binoculars didn’t help any. I remember feeling the same way the first time I saw Gannets… the field trip leader pointed out back then that the Gannets were refrigerator white and pointed at both ends, so I just repeated that back to the group. Plus, the way they drop like arrows into the water is just the coolest thing and unique to Gannets, maybe.

Have a look at this video I found on YouTube to see what I mean. The music is pretty annoying and its filmed on a boat, but pelagic trips are where one expects close views of Gannets. On lucky days they’re close to shore, but I’ve not ever seen them feeding as close as my little group of beginners got to see yesterday.

I also got to ramble on about the huge stand of beach heather that Island Beach has, plus all the other nerdy stuff I know about plants. Nice to have a captive audience, I guess. Reminds me of being in the classroom in front of a group of sleepy 20 year-olds. Anyway… I’m encouraged and think I might be able to do this again sometime. In a pinch anyway.

😉

Oh! This is especially for Susan. There was an older couple with us who are world travelers… going to Borneo to bird in a couple weeks then to some other exotic-sounding place. We got to talking about spring warblers and they said that THE place to be is Magee Marsh in early May. So I believe you now, Susan. Ohio’s on my list for someday.

Birds, Travels with the flock, Wanderings

Birdy post

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Just like last year’s Autumn Weekend, I only got one life bird this time. Most anything is more exciting than last year’s Rusty Blackbird, but this year’s was an especially good bird… one I’ve missed so many times. It wasn’t a really satisfying look, but I finally got a Golden Eagle at the hawk watch on Monday! It seemed to get much birdier after everyone had left for home… there was a Bald Eagle, too, and a Peregrine that put on a nice show and some Sharpie’s and Cooper’s Hawks and a Harrier also. In year’s past I’ve spent most of the weekend just hanging out at the hawk watch in the state park; most everyone shows up there at some point and it’s a nice place to catch up with friends and see what hawks happen by.

All of the birds we saw this weekend were common ones for me, but birding with people from out of state makes me appreciate even more what NJ has to offer. It’s occurred to me in the last year that if I hope to ever see new birds, I need to travel. Of course, there’s plenty of life birds just waiting for me offshore, but there’s that whole fear of seasickness thing that keeps me from ever doing a pelagic trip.

😉

Anyway… here’s some pics that I’m not too embarrassed to share. Something else that’s occurred to me from this weekend… I have serious camera envy and need to come up with some way of managing better bird pics.

Further evidence of my on-going love affair with the ubiquitous sanderling… even sleepy ones. I have so many pics of Sanderlings. They’re such fun to watch, the sweet way they run ahead of the waves and sleep on one foot and hop away on one foot if you wake them. Sunday night there was a lone sanderling that kept us company while we watched the sunset. I guess they’ll feed at the ocean’s edge even past dark.

Not a common bird by far and always nice to see… a Peregrine that had been enjoying a meal on an osprey platform somewhere in the middle of the intracoastal waterway. I thought Susan might wet her pants when we spotted this one on our boat trip… her first *wild* Peregrine. I’ve learned to look for them in what counts as high places here at the shore; bridges, water towers, the tall casinos at Atlantic City, the railings on lighthouses.

Imagine that some people get excited about Great Black-Backed Gulls! Hi Lynne! I was excited just to get most of it in the pic.

A Snowy Egret that was nice enough to show off its golden slippers as it fed in the muck at low tide.

A Great Egret, sans the yellow slippers, being difficult and shy. I hear that there’s places where these birds don’t automatically fly off whenever you point a camera lens at them, but I don’t believe it. I love this pic anyway.

Ah. A Common Loon… one bird that I was excited to see and Lynne was bored with. She gets to see them in the summer when they’re all pretty and spotted nicely. I was glad to see just the remainders of their beautiful breeding plumage. In the winter they look so darn gray.

Part of the flock of Black Skimmers that rests on the beach somewhere between the Convention Hall and the Second Avenue Jetty in Cape May in the fall. I love walking the beach to find them. It was neat to watch them feeding in the ocean with the terns; closer to home they feed in the bay or course along the quiet creeks and usually I see just a couple at a time.

I almost got all of a Brant in this pic, our winter sea goose. They’ve just begun to arrive in the last couple weeks from their breeding grounds in the Arctic and I love to hear their peculiar barking call across the water because it means that all the pretty winter ducks will be arriving soon, too.

Oystercatcher! I never get enough of seeing these guys… there were a couple dozen feeding with Dunlin and Black-bellied Plovers on a sandbar. We had really nice looks (and the chance to listen to the sweet music of a mixed flock of shorebirds) while our boat’s propeller was snagged on a crab trap in the marsh.

Lynne’s favorite birds were about in full force this weekend… we even tried to turn one perched on an osprey platform into a Bald Eagle. I was surprised to see Turkey Vultures in the salt marsh, but I guess they like the sweet smell of rotting vegetation, too.

😉

Have you not read EVERYWHERE how I love the smell of a salt marsh? My flock friends thought that smell was unpleasant. Pfft! Smells like home to me. You Mid-Westerners can keep your pure air.

By the way, if you don’t have occasion to read Susan’s blog, please stop by for this post, at least, and a video of what was probably the funniest moment of the whole weekend.

A nice group of Forster’s Terns hangs out with the Skimmers and Sanderlings at the beach. Funny that I have trouble recognizing them in their winter wardrobe when it changes every year. We never found any Royal’s or Caspian’s, but I’m sure they were around somewhere.

I wish I had pics of that Golden or the Scoters at the Sea Watch at Avalon to share; maybe someday my camera envy will get the better of me and I’ll cave for a point and shoot with a really powerful zoom.

Birds, I like to make lists, Snapshots, Travels with the flock, Wanderings

9

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Maybe you’re all waiting for the telling of silly stories (check with Susan) or fabulous bird pics (check with Lynne) or tips for identifying sparrows (check with KatDoc) or maybe just Delia’s straight-forward way of saying things (which cracks me up because she’s such a hoot in person!), but if you’re looking for any of that tonight from me… well, I don’t even know where to begin, but to say that it was a fabulous couple of days for this member of the flock.

I’m still amazed with how easily near strangers can come together and feel so comfortable with one another. I don’t guess I should be anymore, but I am. Meeting other bloggers face to face makes me really aware of how much we tell of ourselves with the little things we share here. Anyway…

KatDoc was a life bird-blogger for me and, no surpise here, she was THE serious member of the flock. She had her moments, of course, but she made it obvious that the rest of us were just *social birders* out for a good time. KatDoc means business when it comes to adding birds to her life list. She was smiling here, on our boat trip around the back bays of Cape May yesterday, happy that she’d tallied a few new birds for her list.

These two, Susan and Delia, old friends of mine now. 😉 It feels really nice to say that. We first met at last year’s Autumn Weekend and once since then. We only had a day with Delia this time; time for an owl prowl, birding in the rain (again!), breakfast at Uncle Bill’s and a dinner with a whole gang of people that were in town for the weekend before she had to leave for home.

Susan and me. (Laugh.) I feel almost like we’re opposite sides of the same coin, if that makes any sense. She often knows what I’m thinking and’ll say it in that way that only Susan can. I love her for that and the way she can make me laugh until my belly hurts.

Meeting Lynne… well, I think I’d have recognized her as a friend at first sight even if I didn’t *know* her from her blog. I couldn’t resist hugging her any chance I got. 😉 Of course you all know it, but she is just the sweetest person in the world and funny in a quiet way that just tickled me. I think NJ was something of a culture shock for her and I’m just hoping that she won’t be scarred for life.

I’m hoping that everyone’s home safely by now and sorting through their own pics and memories. Really, I’m as anxious as you are to hear what stories need to be told first. I love stories.

Stay tuned…

#9 in my 38 by 39.

Birds, Snapshots, Wanderings

Great Bay Marsh

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God I love a marsh in October! I’ve been known to purposefully *get lost* and find myself there just when the low sun is lighting it with these beautiful late afternoon colors.

The DH was the latest victim of my subterfuge, but I didn’t plan things well enough to remember my big lens and have a chance at that bird-shaped blob there in the center. Yes, it’s a Tri-Colored Heron and yes, that would have been a pretty pic, but oh well. A nice find at any rate because they’re not so common here in NJ.

The signs of civilization marring the view there in the distance is the southern part of Long Beach Island, btw. Great Bay is said to be one of the least disturbed wetland habitats in the Northeastern US and is a great place to get lost and find birds.

Birds, Small truths, Wanderings

Just ducky

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I’ll let you all in on a little secret, so long as you promise not to take too great an advantage from it:

Ducks are the way to my heart.

Stand with me beside the bay on a freezing winter day, face streaked with tears from the biting wind, ducks bobbing in the distance and you’ll have found a friend for life.

If it’s June and there are no ducks to be had in NJ, find an excuse to be in ND and coast with me along deserted roads, bordered by great puddles filled with all manner of breeding ducks and I’ll think you the best birding-buddy a person could find.

And if it’s late September, when only the earliest of Northern Pintails can be found on some secret shallow marsh, go with me to the decoy show and let me anticipate the arrival of my most favorite class of birds.

Humor me as I agonize over which decoy I’ll bring home.

Try not to be too impatient with me as my questions elicit yet another story about how an ex-insurance broker came to carve shorebirds and paint lighthouses in his retirement. Or how another came to copy the great carvers who made their living from decoys in the days of market-gunning.

Don’t be embarrassed when I (too loudly) compare the antique animal traps at the taxidermist’s “display” to barbarian torture devices. Be proud, in fact, that I don’t back down from his smart-ass response to overhearing my comment.

This is a decoy and gunning show, remember.

And I’m a duck-watching, tree-hugging, dirt-loving fool.

For all that pains me about it, there is almost nothing that I don’t love about the heritage this show represents. Historically an impoverished area of the state, the baymen who made their living there did so in cycles, commercial fishermen in season and boat builders or electricians or decoy carvers in winter. Cranberry and blueberry harvesters or chicken farmers on the side.

Collectible decoys are an artifact of tools that have outlived their usefulness. The draw for me is the workmanship; the finest of floating sculpture that was designed to be tossed in salt water and into the line of fire. Gone, mostly, are the days when decoys were used to lure ducks and shorebirds to the hunter’s gun and then on to restaurants or the millinery trade.

The 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act put an end to the commercial hunting of wild birds and so we’re left with a piece of history. A piece of that heritage remains in the decoy, more sophisticated now than the early carvings meant just to evoke the likeness of a bird and thereby bring the real thing into the sights of a hunter’s gun.

Of course it’s those primitive-style decoys that I prefer. I think it must be partly because they remind me of the way I experience ducks as a birder; old style decoys are all about field marks: cheek patches and tail shape and bill color. There’s no time to see the fine-feather detail on the flanks of a Bufflehead as they bob like little rubber ducks in the frozen bay, anyway. Too much detail distracts my eye, makes me keenly aware that what I’m seeing is, after all, a decoy.

The Ocean County Decoy and Gunning Show continues tomorrow in Tuckerton.

Birds, In the neighborhood, Pastimes

Fields of gold

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The open fields glowing with goldenrod and the wooded trails of Tatum Park were the backdrop to Monmouth County Audubon’s first field trip of the season this morning. This late summer flower, together with the asters, keeps the honeybees in business now and the sight of it will be a welcome memory to anyone walking these same fields come the dark days of December.

Our group of twelve enjoyed the restless voices of Robins and Catbirds in the woods, had a nice look at a Cooper’s Hawk gliding through a swarm of Tree Swallows high overhead and had a demonstration from our field trip leader of the explosive seed dispersal technique of jewelweed after a brief glimpse at a hummingbird feeding among its flowers.

We ended our walk puzzling over the identity of a quickly departing flycatcher while a fawn of the year emerged from the jewelweed and goldenrod at our feet. Two Common Yellowthroats and a Downy Woodpecker were found feeding in the same area. While there didn’t seem to be many birds present today, the warm sun and all that goldenrod made up for the lack of migrants.

Birds, Wanderings

Skywatching for hawks

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I know it’s a Raven, but it’s the best bird pic I got today during a couple hours spent at the Montclair Hawkwatch. The hawkwatch site is NJ Audubon’s smallest sanctuary and the second oldest continuous- running hawkwatch in the country, second only to Hawk Mountain in Pa.

Finding hawks at a ridge site, as opposed to a coastal watch like Sandy Hook or Cape May, is really difficult and requires a lot of patience and much better eyesight than I have. We were looking at speck birds for most of the day! I did get to see a few kettles of Broadwings way up in the clouds (yesterday they counted 4437 Broadwings), some Osprey and Sharpies, a couple Kestrals and had a nice look at a Peregrine.

We had to be glad for all those clouds in the sky cause they gave us landmarks to help locate the birds soaring high above. A fun day, but I prefer coastal hawkwatching that doesn’t require quite as much imagination!

I met this guy there who has some fantastic hawk pics on his Flickr site.

Visit here for more Friday Skywatch posts.