Rough-legged Hawks, Bedminster (Feb 16th)

Between being somewhat jaded (see: AZ trip) and bona fide tired, I did very little birding on this past weekend and went on one specific trip to look for Rough-legged Hawk in Bedminster.  I parked up at one end of Rattlesnake Bridge Rd adjacent to some grassy fields and there was a pretty good group of raptors almost immediately: American Kestrel, Northern Harriers, several Red-tailed Hawks and a distant Bald Eagle.  The conditions were pretty windy but I could sit in my car and get a good scan of two adjacent fields.

I saw one Rough-legged Hawk-ish bird hover briefly and skip down an adjacent hedge row.  While talking to some other birders that turned up it emerged that "the" Rough-legged in the area was a dark morph, and the RLHA-candidate that I saw was a light morph.  Odd.  Five minutes later a well-marked (likely immature) light morph Rough-legged came up over the tree line to prove my initial suspicions correct.  It gave decent albeit distant views and all the raptors were pointing away from the car since the wind was from the north.  Eventually a little patience was rewarded by the dark morph Rough-legged turning up over the same field.  There's been a good showing of inland Rough-legged this winter, not by any means unprecedented in NJ but probably also because of the effects of Hurricane Sandy killing a large chunk of the coastal rodent population.

I watched both birds to circuits for some time and left when a hunter turned up to walk the fields - they're owned by some hunting organization so assume this is legit, but wasn't aware that hunting was legal in NJ on Sundays.

A pass through the nearby Great Swamp NWR after this didn't net anything of note.

This little trip did make up for not having enough time to track down Rough-legged at the San Rafael Grasslands in AZ when I was there the previous week (and where Rough-legged are significantly rarer).

Meadowlands and Central Park - better luck in February

Back when NJ Transit had more reasonably priced tickets I used to take the train into Manhattan, but since they jacked the round trip prices by 50% it barely makes sense to give up the flexibility and pay $35 for parking+ticket to get to NYC. So, I drove in and parked on local streets. The upside of this is that I had the chance to go to the Meadowlands early before I went into Manhattan.

In contrast to the previous Sunday, I found a light morph Rough-legged Hawk moving from one landfill dome to another, giving good looks but it was not a bird I refound. Northern Harrier and Red-tailed Hawk were also around. Near the old ballfields I also saw an immature White-crowned Sparrow, but attempts to refind it were stymied by a birder who stopped right in front of where the birds had retreated into the phragmites after a Harrier fly-over.

But not a bad start, so then I went into Manhattan. On the walk up Cedar Hill I saw a Yell0w-bellied Sapsucker, then into the Ramble. I failed to find the Varied Thrush, despite looking around its old locations quite carefully. However the feeders gave good birds - Black-capped Chickadee, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Brown Creeper, Pine Siskin. In a strange moment the Brown Creeper was feeding at the thistle feeder.

Apart from the feeder birds the Ramble was quiet, Turtle Pond was frozen over (the Varied Thrush was seen by others at the west side of it), so I wandered south toward Sheep Meadow. In some places the footing was treacherous with ice, but after the little trek I was rewarded by views of the immature Red-headed Woodpecker on the south side of Sheep Meadow. And now being in the south end of the park I went off to the 59th Street Pond to look for the reported Wood Duck. Most of the pond was frozen, but in the open section there were 120-150 Mallards taking advantage of the people feeding them. In the time I was there they were fed at least 4 times, so despite the high numbers of ducks there really isn't all that much of a food shortage, at least on weekends. Mixed in was a clearly hybrid Mallard, a fairly typical American Black Duck, and two male Wood Ducks. The Wood Ducks, despite being smaller than the Mallards, were fairly vocal and fairly aggressive, and did manage to get a decent share of the bread being thrown.

So not a bad day, in total, at least measured in terms of finding the desired target species.

Rough-legged Hawk at Griggstown

As part of my Failure to Find Photogenic Fall Foliage loop trip up the D&R canal on Oct 30th I stopped in at Griggstown Preserve and birded from the parking lot - because I was unwilling to strap on orange to avoid some hunter shooting me. The terrestrial birds around the parking lot were: Eastern Bluebird, Palm Warbler, Song Sparrow. The fly-bys were far more interesting:

• Multiple flocks of American Pipits, of which the first one was 60++ birds
• Palm Warblers, seen apparently moving as diurnal migrants
• Yellow-rumped Warblers, probably just local boys flying around
• The expected local raptors/vultures: Red-tailed, Black V and Turkey V
• Rough-legged Hawk, pale morph

I was more than a little surprised at the latter. Although they sometimes do winter at Pole Farm (Lawrenceville) which is probably no more than 20 miles to the south-west, I don't encounter many uncommon raptors away from the hawk watches. The D&R canal is a modest raptor corridor as they follow the river for a little while on their way south, but the terrain is flat and not given to generating uplift like the hillier environment of (say) the Delaware River to the west. There was also a small falcon with it, even further west of me, so small that although I thought it was Kestrel I couldn't rule out Merlin.

Florence and Pole Farm: Jan 20th, 21st

While waiting for FedEx Ground to screw up a delivery I birded Florence (NJ) and the Mercer County Park NorthWest (i.e. Pole Farm).

At Florence I arrived to find a lot of ice on the Delaware River at the boat ramp park. This stretch of river heads east-west and of course such is the curse of Florence that the river view overlooks the large Tullytown landfill on the Pennsylvania side. The upside, of course, is that landfills attract a ton of gulls and many of these loaf on the river.

The moment I arrived at the boat ramp park a Great Cormorant flew by and helpfully circled back around to help me clinch the ID - it was starting to molt into breeding plumage so the white flank patch was partially formed. There were quite a few Common Mergansers on the river - probably frozen out further north and from interior lakes. But the main deal is the gulls, many thousands of them, most of them Herring and Ring-billed: there were relatively few Lesser Black-backed Gulls, perhaps less than 10 seen on the entire trip, but I found a pale immature Iceland Gull on the second pass through the flock, and then a second one that kept flying around that was a little darker - towards pale coffee color. After scanning the flock multiple times I went west (i.e. downstream) a few blocks to River's Edge Park where there were very few gulls but luck produced a fly-over third Iceland Gull.

Back at the boat ramp the gull flock had taken flight and moved upstream, so I went to neighboring Roebling and at the park along Riverside Ave I scoped through the chain link fence at the more distant gull flock, (re-)finding two Iceland Gulls and Lesser Black-backed but no Glaucous. I hadn't birded Roebling before but in line with the whole Florence experience the park there overlooked an EPA Super Fund site along the river and seemed to be next to an abandoned manufacturing center. The dilettante nature of birding seems somewhat at odds with the gritty nature of these two towns.

Back at Pole Farm in Lawrenceville a mid afternoon visit yielded the usual suspects: Northern Harrier (2 females, at least one of which was immature), Red-tailed Hawk, a female American Kestrel, American Tree Sparrow and a Short-eared Owl that put in an appearance at a relatively early 3:30pm. Around that time two Eastern Meadowlarks zoomed overhead. Lets hope all these species can hang on for the snow thawing toward the end of the week.

The following morning at Pole Farm I pulled up to find a hovering Red-tailed Hawk, then panned to what I thought was another one before realizing that it was a pale morph Rough-legged Hawk. Possibly the same one that has been in the area for several weeks. I watched this bird for a while as it hunted the field, catching at least one rodent, before it circled high into the air and headed north. I suspect these Rough-legged Hawks cover quite a lot of territory in one day, whereas the Harriers (1 male, 1 female on this visit) seem to cover more limited ground.

(Thursday 22nd: both pale morph and dark morph Rough-legged Hawks were at Pole Farm, with the dark morph showing some aggression toward the light morph. Also there was the female American Kestrel, a single Northern Harrier, Red-tailed Hawk, Dark-eyed Junco and American Tree Sparrow. The Kestrel showed signs of food caching, something I hadn't observed before.)

(Friday 23rd: one apparent male pale morph Rough-legged seen well at Pole Farm, with what appeared to be a second adult female pale morph seen just before I left - it appeared different with a solid black breast band but was only seen at a distance)

Jan 2nd - Mercer County Parks

To start the year out, I decided to head to Florence NJ to view the gulls in the river that accumulate there when the dump was in operation. Of course, on Friday the dump wasn't operating at all and there were very few birds to be seen, only the three species of gulls, and in the light snow not a great deal else.

While contemplating this debacle I decided to visit Mercer County Park in Lawrenceville/Hamilton to see if I could at least find a Common Merganser. I did, almost immediately, and there were a few small flocks flying around. Most of the lake was frozen but at the marina a decent size Canada Goose flock had accumulated. In the midst of it I found a Cackling Goose - classical in petite structure with a paler and pale-fringed mantle. Then while looking for more of them I came across a Greater White-fronted Goose in the same flock. After I returned with my scope I couldn't find the GWF but finally tracked it down after the flock decided to leave the lake and feed on the ball fields behind the ranger station near the marina. Two nice geese and not a bad consolation for Florence.

Near home I decided to check out the other version: Mercer County Park North West i.e. Pole Farm. The snow had stopped and the weather was starting to clear as I made it to the park. Almost immediately I saw a pale phase Rough-legged Hawk - rather unexpected - and then a few Northern Harriers (including two males) and an American Kestrel. A rather nice mix of raptors, padded by one of the local Red-tailed Hawks. After sprinting home to get the camera to see if I could get photos of the Rough-legged I returned just to watch the pale phase decided it had had enough action for one day and perch on the far side of the field. The icing on the cake was a dark phase Rough-legged that flew over the park toward dusk, ultimately ending up roosting on the far side of the other field I was monitoring.

I waited around until dusk and after the sun went down the final bird of the day was a single Short-eared Owl. Not as prolific as last year in terms of owls, Pole Farm still has some nice birds hunting the grassland this winter.

Interesting invasion patterns related to food supplies in northern wintering areas: last year was a Short-eared Owl invasion year, at least at Pole Farm but also in general; this year the numbers are low but in turn Snowy Owls and Rough-legged Hawks are having some of the best invasion numbers in years. I'm always conflicted about this - I love these birds but invasion years always correspond to years in which food supplies crash and the birds are starving. Many will not make it to return to breeding grounds.

Catskills boreal invasives (NY)

A brief foray into the southern edge of the Catskills in search of winter boreals netted some excellent looks at Pine Grosbeak in Grahamsville but unfortunately the civilized start time led to us missing feeder birds like Common Redpoll. The day was frigid (low 20's at most) with a brisk wind. So a visit to Shawangunk NWR near Wallkill in Ulster County was especially invigorating while scanning the fields for Short-eared Owl. While developing the early stages of frostbite we did see 4 Rough-legged Hawks including one dark morph and one that looked more intermediate than pale morph. That and several Northern Harriers dominated the field and we did not manage to wait out full darkness before retreating to the car to thaw out.