Barnegat, Brigantine

Saturday was sunny but breezy, and I headed out for a fairly traditional coastal route.

First, Barnegat Inlet (Barnegat Light) were at 7:44 the breakwater held a lot of people - mainly fishermen - out of all proportion to birding opportunities. The wind was already fresh, it was relatively cold, and there was a dearth of birds in the inlet itself so I went into quick scouting mode. Perhaps this was not totally unrelated to the extensive small boat traffic. Of interest was a fly-by immature Great Cormorant, and several small groups of Bonaparte's Gulls. Last winter there weren't many Bonaparte's Gulls around in general, so these were actually my year list ones. This winter there's a bonanza of them.

In search of more productive areas I went south to Brigantine (or if you want to be formal, the Brigantine Division of Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge). The wind had risen and was quite strong here, so there was little chance of finding a Cave Swallow. I did two tours around the impoundment and found decent numbers of ducks, a good flock of Tundra Swans (also a year bird) and Green-winged Teal and some shorebirds, a few of which were Western Sandpipers making for an implausible three year-bird day in late November. Northern Harriers were around in numbers, terrorizing the Teal again, but the Peregrines did not seem to be present or at least not hunting. A fuller list follows (Brigantine unless noted):


Snow Goose
Brant
Mute Swan
Tundra Swan (50-ish)
American Black Duck
Mallard
Northern Shoveler
Northern Pintail
Green-winged Teal
Long-tailed Duck (Barnegat)
Bufflehead
Hooded Merganser
Red-breasted Merganser
Red-throated Loon (Barnegat)
Pied-billed Grebe
Double-crested Cormorant
Great Cormorant (Barnegat)
Great Blue Heron
Northern Harrier
Red-tailed Hawk
American Coot
Black-bellied Plover
Western Sandpiper
Dunlin
Savannah Sparrow
Eastern Meadowlark

Barnegat Inlet, 1/16

A nice sunny day persuaded me to kill my morning headache with a few aspirins and head out to Barnegat Inlet where I encountered the expected swarm of humanity. En route I stopped briefly at Florence on the Delware River to check for gulls and found very few of them, but a consolation prize of 2 Common Mergansers, my first for the year.

At Barnegat the tide was low, the action at the bay side of the jetty was very slow, so I ended up hiking all of the way out. There was a gaggle of photographers clustered around some tame Harlequin Ducks and a few Long-tailed Ducks. Dunlin, Ruddy Turnstone, Purple Sandpipers and one Black-bellied Plover were the shorebirds rock-hopping along the jetty. Further out at the inlet, and mostly on the far side were Great Cormorant, Black and Surf Scoter, Common Eider, more Long-tailed Duck, Common and Red-throated Loons - good scoter numbers but nothing else was at spectacular levels. A pretty good day under fairly mild conditions.