Alpha, Warren, Trenton - Jan 23rd

I started at Oberly Road in Alpha, at the central-western edge of NJ, around 9am and found very little. No snow to push the birds to the roadside, and in any event two people walking down the road would have undone all of that. I saw a few Eastern Bluebirds and one or two Horned Larks and that was it. An inauspicious start to the day.

Heading east, I stopped off at Hoffman (Farm) Park - this is a site I've regularly seen Bobolink and Grasshopper Sparrow in during summer, but it was also very quiet in winter. I stayed there less than 30 minutes and there was a dearth of sparrow activity.

In danger of getting skunked I went 25 miles further east to Glenhurt Meadows (aka Warren Green Acres). Around the parking lot there were two singing House Finches, a few Song Sparrows and a couple of Swamp Sparrows. Northern Flickers milled around. I hiked down to the river - much of the standing water here was frozen although there were dramatic sound effects as it was slowly melting and crashing. En route to the Raritan River I came accross a Common Grackle flock with a Red-winged Blackbird and two Rusty Blackbirds within it, just passing down the edge of the powerline cut. And then after a little searching I did come up with two Red-headed Woodpeckers - one adult and one unseen. Red-bellied Woodpecker was also present. Although not epic in activity it was a good find after the dearth of birds at the other two sites. One especially vocal Blue Jay was doing a very good Red-tailed Hawk impersonation.

Finally I tracked back down to Princeton and went to Hamilton-Trenton Marsh, ostensibly for more Rusty Blackbirds - which I didn't find. However the water was only partly frozen so there was a decent number of waterfowl, including Mallard, Gadwall, Am. Black Duck, Northern Pintail, Northern Shoveler, Green-winged Teal, Common Merganser and numerous Ring-billed Ducks. Most of the waterfowl were on the most westerly lake viewed from the wet woods. They were also not entirely happy to see me with quite a lot of vocal nervousness even without me reaching the edge of the tree line. Of the several crows present most of them were American although two let out Fish Crow-like calls - however American can do a pretty good impersonation of this as well. A few White-throated Sparrows rounded out the day.

In more forgiving conditions (less ice) I think it's possible to hike along the southern bank of the Raritan here back as far as the arboretum.

Directions to Warren Green Acres / Glenhurst Meadows (since I often have time finding them): I-78 at exit 36, south on King George Rd perhaps half a mile and then left (east) on Mountain Ave just before the road heads uphill. Mountain Ave curls over the interstate, passes Wagner Farm Arboretum, past 3 houses and then there is an unmarked driveway on the left (north side of the road) opposite a small pond. This is the parking area. Street address is 178 Mountain Ave but on the north side of the road (Google marks is to the south).

Link to google maps.

Pole Farm - 1/17

Just before the rain hit on Sunday I made a quick run to Pole Farm (Mercer County Park Northwest) to survey the activity and to look for sparrows. The success for the morning was American Tree Sparrow, fairly reliable here. Also present was Song Sparrow, Red-bellied Woodpecker and a single American Kestrel.

What was absent, however, was any trace of Northern Harrier and this is probably an indicator of a slow year at Pole Farm. The mowing patterns were a little different, which might displace them a little, and this might be either gratuitous or intelligent management of the grasslands. In any event in the year with many Harriers and multiple Short-eared Owls you could hear the rodents scurrying around in the grass. This year it appears to be deathly quiet.

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.

Wild gull chase - Mew/Common Gull in Brooklyn - 1/10

A little tired after the Texas trip I nevertheless made a run to Brooklyn to find the Mew/Common Gull that has been reported there. People are leaning toward the European subspecies for ID. I think this was only my second Larus canus for the US, the other one was on Long Island many years ago. This bird took a little time to turn up, so I amused myself by finding my first Purple Sandpipers for NYC, a few other year birds, and scrutinizing the metric tonne of Ring-billed Gulls that were hanging out there. Finally the Mew/Common Gull turned up and was about as tame as a gull could be, with the exception of the first winter Ring-billed that almost jumped up on my foot.

The gull appears to have a slight deformation of the bill, but is otherwise healthy.

Very out of area - Texas

To leverage some of the vacation time that PU gives me over New Year's I made a trip to Texas fron 12/29-1/6 to cover the usual Rio Grande spots plus rarities. Car rental at San Antonio was much cheaper than Houston (have they jacked the prices there?) and I found a cheap flight via American. Best birds were the long-standing Northern Jacana at Choke Canyon State Park and the Bare-throated Tiger-Heron at Bentsen Rio Grande State Park. The former was one basis for making the trip, the latter was a pure bonus and the first US record for this species.

Trip report under edit, to be linked here in due course.

Spotted Towhee, Palmyra, Dec 12th

I decided to do a little morning birding at Palmyra Cove, where the shortest route for me was actually through PA (Cottman Ave exit off I-95). From the parking lot a flock of Snow Geese were overhead - probably migrating south on the north wind. Sparrows were the target of this trip, and there were quite a few Fox Sparrows present, including at least one singing. At the junction of Saw Whet and Red-winged Blackbird trails - the anointed location for the towhee - there were more Fox, White-throated Sparrows plus Junco, but the towees were elusive, calling every so often from deep in the phragmites. Moving into a better light angle, I found a female Eastern Towhee after about an hour at this place, and then another birder found the Spotted and I re-found it about 15 minutes afterward. Not, as it turned out, the most spectacular experience [I may be a little jaded, currently] and not even a year bird but at least moderately exotic for NJ.

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)

Mixed feelings about raptors

Returning from South Amboy, I was unloading the wood I'd bought from the car when I noticed a Chickadee alarm call and something moving in my spruce patch. After grabbing the binoculars I was able to watch an adult Sharp-shinned Hawk eat a sparrow (probably White-throated) it had apparently just caught. Took it about 10-15 minutes to get most of the way through it.

Such is the nature of feeders - I attract birds and the small passerines attract raptors. This is the first raptor actually *on* the property, so it would be helpful if it was just passing through since I wasn't planning on maintaining a raptor feeding station. The feeders have yet to become very active, perhaps in part because of the warmer weather, but probably also because of the better seed crop this year - at least judging from the number of acorns littering my back lawn.

Black Brant, Western Grebe at South Amboy

Disinclined to chase the Pink-footed Goose on Long Island, I decided to try and find the Western Grebe that has been hanging out in the Raritan Bay the last few winters, preferably in NJ waters. So I made one of my periodic trips to Raritan Bay Waterfront Park in South Amboy.

First thing I did find was an adult Black Brant in the ball fields amongst a flock of Atlantic Brant. While getting bad photos if it (e.g. http://www.flickr.com/photos/phil-jeffrey/4125442731/) I bumped into Tom Burke and Gail Benson who told me where the Western Grebe was (1/2 mile west of the park) so after the Brant left for more distant fields I spent the next hour or so scanning the water for the grebe and not finding it. I left for a while to look for Kittiwakes at Sandy Hook (not found) and returned to look for it again, when I found it within 5 minutes in the early afternoon.

Not much else on the bay, a few Bufflehead, one Red-breasted Merganser, both loons, and a few fly-by Cormorants.