Birds and Other Nature Sightings

     After seeing my first cave swallows last weekend in Point Pleasant, I went to Island Beach State Park hoping to find one there.  I actually have been keeping an eye out for cave swallows at the park all month.  That would be a new patch bird for me, and I was anticipating that the recent influx of cave swallows along the eastern seaboard would give me the best chance of spotting one.  I figured the bathing beach area would be the best spot to look.  There are open beach, dunes and large pavilions.  Plenty of areas for swallows to forage and roost.  I met my friend Alex on the beach.  We scanned the area for a while with no luck.  There were no alerts coming in from any of the locations that had been reporting them from Rhode Island to Delaware.  No cave swallows. We turned to sea watching since the only real activity was on the water.  The fishermen were up and down the beach chancing the striped bass that were feedin...

     This past Sunday I was pretty much just hanging around the house when I received an early afternoon text from my friend Scott.  He was birding Island Beach State Park and had found a sedge wren .  He asked if I needed one for the park.  I immediately answered, “Yes.”  I gathered my camera and binoculars and set out for the park.  Luckily for me the park is only a ten to 15 minute drive away. Scott is a great birder and often leads birding walks at the park.  We try to help each other out by alerting the other if either of us finds a personal new patch bird there.  Except for the crazy accidental birds or locally extirpated species, there are not many birds that the two of us have not seen there.  Sedge wren was a new one. Sedge wren, July 2023.   © S. Weiss Sedge wrens were once breeders in New Jersey but are now considered rare throughout the state.  A few are encountered annually, mostly as migrants in the fall and ...

     The past few weeks I have been seeing reports of multiple cave swallows both to the north and the south of me.  The Rhode Island GroupMe has been alerting to the rare swallows as has the Cape May Bird Observatory GroupMe.  Cave swallow had yet to make my life list.  I have been looking for them knowing that any swallow flying around now would be a great candidate for cave swallow.   On Saturday I got a late afternoon text that a cave swallow was reported in Point Pleasant.  I have not been chasing birds lately, but this was one that I needed.  It was almost 3 o’clock and I had to be somewhere at 4:30.  I did the math in my head: about a half hour to get there and about a half hour to get to where I needed to be later.  That would give me about a half hour to look.  Off I went.   I arrived at the reported location at the boardwalk and walked up and down a few blocks each direction, north and south.  No luck and my...

     Last Thursday I drove the beach at Island Beach State Park hoping to pick up a few fall birds that might be passing through the area, particularly an American golden-plover .  AG plovers (for short) are considered rare for us here in New Jersey, but fall is the best time to find one since their return migration route usually takes them down the eastern coast.  The northbound migration route for these arctic breeders is across the central United States, making them an even rarer find in the spring.  I have been successful the past years finding at least one AG plover by traveling the beach in September and October and scanning flocks of black-bellied plovers .  AG plovers usually associate with the more common and similarly looking black-bellied plovers (BB plovers, for short). The first plover I came upon yesterday was by itself, and it immediately caught my attention.  My first take was that this is a good candidate for an AG plover.  B...

     This past Friday I drove down to Cape May for a 24 hour pelagic trip.  This was my third attempt for an overnight trip this year.  The previous two were cancelled due to weather and there were two other trips which I was unavailable.  This one was set to sail, and we left at 9 pm.  We reached our destination, Spencer Canyon, about 80 miles out, sometime after 5:30 am Saturday.  The day started out rather slow with some Wilson’s storm-petrels scattered around the area.  Action around the boat didn’t really start to pick up until later in the morning. The first interesting sighting was a small group of young Atlantic spotted dolphins .  They were young enough to not yet bear their namesake spots, which delayed their initial identification.  Until they start showing spots they might be confused with bottlenose dolphins .   These dolphins had a tricolored body and white-tipped beaks to help differentiate them from the bottlen...

     This past weekend my wife and I traveled to the Tampa area of Florida.  We spent nearly a week there to visit some family and to just get away.  It was no surprise to us that it was going to be hot, but damn, it was very hot.  I did not get in much birding, so I only added a few new year birds during this trip.  A few weeks earlier, when Hurricane Debby passed, I likely could have seen sooty terns , brown noddies and other tropical specials that had been pushed in along the coast.  While we were there, two South American rarities returned to the Sunshine State: a large-billed tern and a gray gull .  I had to pass on both birds because Florida is as big as it is hot.  From our hotel, the tern was at least a three-hour drive to the south, and the gull was at least a six-hour drive to the north. All the other birds reported on eBird in my general area were already on my life and Florida lists.  This trip I was intent on finding...