{"id":1208,"date":"2007-01-15T01:26:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-15T01:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/?p=1208"},"modified":"2014-10-01T03:36:56","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T03:36:56","slug":"duck-duck-duck-coot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/?p=1208","title":{"rendered":"Duck… duck… duck… Coot!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a> Hooded merganser<\/span>
\"\"<\/a> Northern shoveler<\/span>
\"\"<\/a> American wigeon<\/span>
\"\"<\/a> Coot!<\/span><\/div>\n

I had signed up for a bird walk this morning at Sandy Hook, but it was cancelled yesterday due to poor weather. Bummer. In all the years I’ve been birding I’ve never had a trip be cancelled because of the weather. Are birders going soft or something? It was barely even raining today, so I visited a few of the coastal ponds in the area looking for ducks. I found quite a few of my favorites, and even got to take a few of my signature fuzzy photos. The Wigeon are the prettiest, I think, and there were nice numbers of them. Wigeon<\/a> have a sweet call; the Cornell site compares it to a squeaky toy. Very different than the Long-tailed ducks<\/a> I saw last weekend at Sandy Hook. Clicking on the links will bring you to Cornell’s page where you can listen to both songs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most everywhere on these little coastal ponds are gulls, Canada Geese, and Coot. They’re funny birds, actually in the rail family, and I photographed this one among a group of twenty or so feeding in the grass beside a pond like a flock of chickens. I saw the Wigeon doing the same thing, which was a first, although I’ve read that they’ll do that.<\/span><\/p>\n

I stopped along the ocean on the way home, hoping to spot a loon, but the heavy fog and a lonely fisherman were all I found. Nice day, despite the rain.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hooded merganser Northern shoveler American wigeon Coot! I had signed up for a bird walk this morning at Sandy Hook, but it was cancelled yesterday due to poor weather. Bummer. In all the years I’ve been birding I’ve never had a trip be cancelled because of the weather. Are birders going soft or something? It … Continue reading Duck… duck… duck… Coot!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}