King Eider - Avalon

I did a quick coastal run on Christmas Day, in particular to see the breeding plumaged male King Eider at Avalon. Avalon is most of the way down to Cape May (it's actually in Cape May Co) so it turned into a long loop trip.

A quick start at Barnegat Inlet turned up pretty much nothing in the inlet, relatively few Bonaparte's Gulls in the bay, so I decided not to rock hop 500 times to reach the end of the breakwater and headed south to Avalon.

At the 8th Street jetty there was an "Ipswich" Savannah Sparrow, a few close fly-by Gannets (one oiled, sadly), and a couple of loons. Not much to distract from the sea duck flock: Black and Surf Scoters in decent numbers, lots of Common Eiders and one King Eider. The King Eider was really in full-on breeding plumage - search Flickr to get an idea what I mean - although the orange plate at the forehead (base of the bill?) wasn't quite as large as it can get. All the King Eiders I've seen in recent years (2003+) have been the drab females including the two from this year, although my first few - Rhode Island, Montauk in 1999-2001 were all males.

On the way back I took a little spin around Brigantine/Forsythe NWR and saw a totally predictable set of species - raptor numbers down from earlier visits, Pintail numbers subsiding, but the Snow Goose flock was putting on a good show. Birds would feed out in the saltmarsh and then fly across the dike to the pool to bathe, then return to the saltmarsh. There was pretty much a constant stream of Snow Geese in the air. Being Greater Snow Geese there were very few "Blue" Goose color morphs (Lesser Snow Geese have proportionally more), and I didn't see a Ross's despite keeping my eye open for it.

Christmas Eve - Rufous Hummingbird and Dickcissel

Manhattan on the last shopping day before Christmas ? Madness. However I decided to take a little photo/birding trip into NYC in search of two rarities: Dickcissel and Rufous Hummingbird.

The Dickcissel was significant because I've seen very few Dickcissels in general (my first being one at Jones Beach in 2001), certainly not annually, although 2011 was a bumper year for them by comparison: one in FL; the ones at Negri-Nepote in late spring; singing birds in TX; and now this one. This Dickcissel was spending time in a large (30+) House Sparrow flock, as often is the way with Dickcissels. The flock was very skittish so it took a while to find the bird even though it had enough yellow (immature male) to stick out from the crowd once you found it. I saw a Dickcissel in Central Park in 2008, the only other one I saw in NYC.

Hummingbirds are another story: I've seen quite a few Rufous this year, mainly on the Pacific Northwest trip but also in Yonkers in November. A Yonkers Rufous Hummingbird in 2001 spawned my first web page and I've pursued a mini project of photographing NYC hummingbirds. This Rufous is an immature female and was found on December 14th. It's on the north side of the American Museum for Natural History - i.e. the cold side - with no direct sun but some reflected sun. Perhaps the micro-environment has kept the hardy plants flowering on which this Rufous is depending on for it's short-term survival. A lot of vagrant Rufous in this area make it into the first few days of January but disappear soon after, so I will try and see it again on Jan 1st.

Barnegat Inlet - epic

This Saturday I made no mistake about spending most of my time at Barnegat Inlet instead of pushing on elsewhere - I was out there for about 4 hours starting shortly after dawn. Fishermen abounded on both the breakwater and in small craft, so once more there was little in the inlet itself - a group of three White-winged Scoters hugging the breakwater (injured?) being the exceptions.

In the bay there was a flock of Bonaparte's Gulls with a few Laughing Gulls but no Forster's Terns this time - the cooling weather might have pushed them south. Out at the far (Atlantic) end of the breakwater there was an immense amount of activity out on the ocean. The entire time I was watching there were always Red-throated Loons at mid-altitude headed south in small loose flocks (max=14) which means there must have been pushing a thousand migrating during that time. There were also some at sea level. I saw all of two Common Loons. Sea ducks were also numerous - mostly in one huge mixed flock just south of the inlet; Common Eider; all three Scoters; Harlequin Duck; Long-tailed Duck. Eiders themselves numbered in the hundreds (one report from there logged it as 350). If you scoped further out into the ocean there were sea ducks further out as well (scoters, mainly) so there were one to a few thousand oceanic ducks milling around the area. Most of the inshore scoters appeared to be immature/female birds, with disproportionately few males but there seemed to be more males further out in the fairly strong swell off the breeze.

With the Red-throated Loon movement there was also a smaller Northern Gannet movement southward, always in small flocks and mostly adults or near-adults. There were also more flocks of Bonaparte's Gulls north of the inlet. And just as had been reported the previous weekend, this attracted the Parasitic Jaegers. The Jaegers were behaving as a combination of sea gull and Peregrine, hugging the ocean until they saw something they wanted to follow and then accelerating to chase it down - something that was quite visible even at range. Mostly it was the Bonaparte's Gulls but sometimes they chased each other. I had about 8 sightings, which could have been anywhere between two to eight actual individuals (one birder saw 4 at once). The sheer number of birds was impressive, but it was the Parasitics that were particularly special for me since I'd only added them to my life list (conservatively) in late summer. Now I've finally seen more Parasitics than any other Jaeger (I've seen 5 Long-tailed, for example) although none of the views were especially close.

Other birds included the typical four shorebirds: Sanderling; Dunlin; Ruddy Turnstone; Purple Sandpiper. Two Peregrines were soaring together over the breakwater. An unusual bird for Barnegat was a Northern Harrier, probably a late migrant headed south down the barrier beach. Passerine activity was minimal, a few Yellow-rumped and some standard suburban birds, all at the state park.


After Barnegat I did go again to Brigantine/Forsythe NWR but the results were identical to the previous weekend and not noteworthy.

Cackling Geese

I found singles of Cackling Geese at North Branch Park and Dukes Island Park in Raritan on Sunday morning amongst flocks of Canada Geese, as had previously been reported. I didn't find the Greater White-fronted Goose at Dukes Island (I was there before it was reported) but there were enough Canada Geese milling around in the air that it might have flown in after I left.

En route home for this short birding day I stopped at the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed property off Titusville Road to check out the pond trail. The pond itself held four Mute Swans, several Canada Geese and a few Mallards. The area around the pond looked promising for sparrows but held only a few White-throated Sparrows - their numbers have been low this winter and it would not surprise me if they have stayed further north courtesy of good food crops and mild temperatures this November. Once the snow comes perhaps they will drift south.

Barnegat, Tuckerton, Brig/Forsythe

I did a fairly conventional coastal route on Saturday morning - starting at Barnegat for something of a quick "coverage" visit, I found the state park closed (opens 9am these days?) and a lot of fishermen on the jetty and elsewhere. There was also a lot of boat traffic heading out of the inlet, so there were no birds in the inlet itself. However there were a lot of birds in the bay - recent warm weather undoubtedly contributed to the presence of Forster's Terns, although they are quite hardy. Also present was a substantially less hardy first winter Common Tern. Bonoparte's Gulls were particularly numerous and it seems that this species (along with sea ducks, Gannets and Red-throated Loons) have been on the move in large numbers this past week. There were actually relatively few loons in the bay. I took a look out toward the ocean from the end of the concrete walk and could see several groups of Northern Gannets headed south - surely meaning that thousands were on the move.

I left Barnegat pretty quickly - something that proved to be a mistake since both Western Tanager and Ash-throated Flycatcher were reported from the state park later that morning.

Great Bay WMA at Tuckerton was pretty quiet and I saw none of the Sharp-tailed Sparrows that I had gone there to look for. Boat-tailed Grackles and Black-bellied Plovers were the only birds of note.

Finally, then, to Brigantine division of Forsythe NWR where Tundra Swans have moved in, along with a much larger flock of Snow Geese than on my last visit here. Yellow-rumped Warblers and a heard-only Eastern Phoebe were enjoying the warm temperatures, but as usual with Brig in late fall it was mainly about ducks: Northern Pintail, Mallard, American Black Duck and Green-winged Teal were plentiful and supplemented by Ruddy Duck, Bufflehead, Scaup sp., Hooded Merganser. Raptor sp. were mostly Northern Harriers with one or two Peregrines and a single immature Bald Eagle.

Snowy Owl, Merrill Creek

There's a well-known Snowy Owl at Merrill Creek Reservoir that I went to see on Thanksgiving morning, although I had actually seen it the week before. Although I usually have reservations about "advertising" owl locations this bird has been present for a while and the location is widely disseminated.

Merrill Creek have closed the section of trail that runs down the east side of the southern dam, and the ranger I talked to indicated that this was to protect the owl roost location since people were getting too close. And in fact the Snowy was roosting next to a small rock ledge right adjacent to the closed path. It wouldn't surprise me if the bird had regularly been spooked of it's roost by the overzealous. The ranger indicated that the owl has probably been eating the gulls that roost there in considerable numbers late in the day.

Birding at Merrill Creek was otherwise quite slow - a single Bald Eagle, Horned Grebe, Belted Kingfisher and little in the way of land birds apart from Eastern Bluebird (heard) and American Goldfinch at the boat ramp parking lot.

Great Horned Owl in suburbia

Periodically I entertain a fantasy of finding a Screech-Owl or a wintering Long-eared Owl amongst my spruces, but it was a pretty big surprise to realize that I was hearing a Great Horned Owl hooting in my own neighborhood.

It was close enough and with enough low frequency that I could get a faint hint of it at 3am even with the windows closed, and I wandered outside to see if I was simply hallucinating or if it was by some miracle in my yard. Neither - it was a single bird, presumably wandering looking for a mate, and it was about two rows of houses over. There was no reply, and I've never thought of my neighborhood as having a quite dense-enough habitat to attract a Great Horned.

Still, it makes my yard 'B' list for things heard/seen from the property.

"Rufous" Hummingbird, Lenoir Preserve

Vagrant western hummingbirds are what spurred my whole web site development in the first place. My first home page was a precursor to what is now located at philjeffrey.net/Hummingbirds.html and was prompted by the first Rufous Hummingbird I saw at Lenoir Preserve in Yonkers in November 2001. That was the same year as the Fort Tryon Calliopes.

So it was natural that I wanted to go check out the latest hummingbird vagrant at Lenoir, even if Yonkers is a lot further away from home than it used to be. It took me a little while to find the Selasphorus sp. hummingbird, but it was probably sleeping or torpid before the sun started hitting the trees and butterfly garden. Once things started to warm up I saw it spending most of its time insect catching in the trees and the garden as the sun started to hit it. It spent some time in the Salvia Pineapple Sage at the edge of the garden, and a small amount of time at one of the feeders. From plumage the bird was an immature female, but this hummingbird was fairly shy and I didn't get anything remotely like a tail spread shot. The consensus is that it is a Rufous Hummingird (now apparently confirmed), although the staffer at the visitor center indicated that there was a suspicion that it was an Allen's and would be caught to determine which.

I'm pretty much invariably against capturing vagrant hummingbirds out of pseudo-scientific curiosity because it's not part of any systematic research plan and these birds are under enough stress attempting to survive in alien habitats in deteriorating weather. The cost to the bird is significant, and it tells us almost nothing.

There's a proposal to close Lenoir Preserve visitor center being considered by Westchester County - you could email the County Executive (Robert Astorino, ce@westchestergov.com) to express your opposition to this plan. The budget vote is apparently Dec 27th 2011, so sooner is better than later. (Updated to reflect the fact that it's apparently the staff that are getting fired rather than the preserve closed to all access).

Bryant Park on Nov 6th

I decided to pursue the Yellow-breasted Chat at Bryant Park in the city on Sunday morning, staying clear of Central Park because of the NYC marathon. The main body of Bryant Park is full of pop-up micro stores hoping to make it big for the holiday season and an ice-skating rink sponsored by Citibank, which makes it all the more remarkable that the park was loaded with White-throated Sparrows. Also there: one American Robin, one Ovenbird (my new late date for Ovenbird), a few Hermit Thrushes, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. I finally found the not-especially-tame Yellow-breasted Chat out front of the library at the same location as the previous year's Prothonotary Warbler. But it did not pose for pictures like the Prothonotary did and was singularly obsessed with hunting down food. This has been an outstanding year for the normally rare Yellow-breasted Chat in NYC but it's also interesting that Bryant Park hosted another Chat in 2002 which put it on the map for birders.

Unfortunate footnote to this trip was finding three dead Red-winged Blackbirds - all males - on the sidewalk just west of Bryant Park. Probably window strikes.