Southern NJ - August 25th/26th

A non-birding trip to the Atlantic City area led me to (inevitably) add in some visits to the Brigantine Division of Forsythe NWR and a quick look around Cape May.

I started the 25th on the beach at Longport NJ, which is at the south end of the Atlantic City island and not a specific birding location.  Nevertheless there were good numbers of Sanderling on the beach and a few Semipalmated Plovers mixed in - not really the bird you associate with feeding at the surf line but a reminder that on migration these birds do get everywhere.  A local Peregrine Falcon and an Osprey kept the shorebirds moving around.

At Sunset Beach in Cape May (aka the Concrete Ship) there were no pelagics, but instead a handful of terns - Common, Forster's, Royal and with three Black Terns in the mix.  A few shorebirds on the beach were Sanderling, Ruddy Turnstone and one Semipalmated Sandpiper.

At the Cape May Migratory Bird Refuge (the place that I always call South Cape May Meadows - its former name) had a few shorebirds on the ponds (Least/Semipalmated Sandpipers, Lesser Yellowlegs) and quite a few flyby terns - mostly Forster's and one Gull-billed over the preserve and Royal Tern seen flying up the beach.  A juvenile Peregrine Falcon spent a little time scaring things on the pond (including Green-winged Teal) but there were few passerines in evidence.  Two Ruby-throated Hummingbirds were seen migrating through.

At Brig over the two days I had basically the same birds on both visits: huge numbers of Tree Swallows (with some Barns) over the marsh, a typical assortment of shorebirds (Semipalmated Plover, Semipalmated and Least Sandpipers, Ruddy Turnstone, Dowitcher sp, Black-bellied Plover), Egrets, Herons and Ibis and the usual raptors: Osprey and Peregrines.  The first Northern Harrier for the colder months was over the marsh.  The tide was very high for the first visit which led me to see a Clapper Rail sprinting across an open channel between the flooded saltmarsh.

Nothing unusual or unseasonal on this trip, although the Black Terns were my first for the year.

Parasitic Jaeger and Brown Booby (in NJ!)

This has been quite the year for life birds, including exotic ones (Rufous-backed Thrush, Black-vented Oriole, Laysan Albatross, Short-tailed Albatross, Gray-hooded Gull), so when a Brown Booby turned up in Cape May I doubted my luck would run so far as to have it stick around.

Instead I headed for Bombay Hook NWR (Smyrna, DE) in the morning to look for shorebirds, and apart from the belated year bird American Avocet and some Blue Grosbeaks wasn't all that blown away by things. Checking email I saw that the Booby was still being seen, so I made a 2.5 hour "sprint" across the southern tier of NJ to Cape May, where I saw the Brown Booby perched on a distant marker just before 1pm. Since there was a 1:30 sailing of "The Osprey" I called them up while looking at the Booby through the scope and hopped on the boat to take a closer look. And a closer look it was, with the Booby seen from perhaps 50 feet away.



What's even more remarkable is that it was an adult - usually only juveniles go way out of range. Notably other Brown Boobies had been seen very recently in Massachusetts and Maine - a mini invasion of a Caribbean bird that only breeds in the USA on the Dry Tortugas.

Also seen from the tour were several Whimbrel, a Marbled Godwit and a few Black Terns amongst commoner species. After the tour ended I braved traffic to go to the "Concrete Ship" at Cape May Point. I hadn't even put the 'scope down when a Parasitic Jaeger flew by (a dark-ish juvenile). I had been extra-conservative about Parasitics despite seeing two in Avalon over a decade ago, and "seeing" one or two on pelagics, but this was getting silly so I decided to add it to my life list after all. Also at the Concrete Ship were lots of terns (Common, Forster's, more Blacks, Least, Royal), a lot of Laughing Gulls, with Sanderling and Semipalmated Sandpiper on the beach. I couldn't pull in any Storm-Petrels out over the ocean but it was windy and murky by this point. I headed home through a line of strong storms flash-flooding the roads in places.

Ivory Gull in Cape May, Nov 28th

Recovering from a late night the previous day I made it down to Cape May in the afternoon in search of the immature Ivory Gull that had been present for 2 days in Cape May harbor. I saw it even before I locked the car, at the Bree-Zee-Lee yacht basin along the north side of Cape May harbor. It flew around almost constantly during the few hours I was there, perhaps searching for scraps on the high tide, although it had been seen feeding on a fish that same morning. I grabbed more than a few snaps, of which six are at http://www.catharus.com/gallery2/v/gulls/ivory_gull/ .

(Edit: still present as of Nov 30th, first discovered Nov 27th)