Island Beach State Park 6/20/22

 After a week's absence, I took a drive to one of my favorite places at the Jersey Shore, Island Beach State Park.  I spent Sunday, Father’s Day, with family.  Late in the day I saw that a couple of white ibis were reported there in the morning, and in the afternoon my friend, Chris, texted that he had seen and photographed a Manx shearwater off the end of the Barnegat Inlet jetty.  Both species, from where they were reported, are rare.  White ibis sightings in New Jersey are becoming more and more frequent and, as such, they had been removed from the NJ Bird Records Committee’s list of reviewable birds.  The Manx shearwater is a pelagic species, not uncommon in NJ waters, but rare and reviewable when seen from land.  This small shearwater could easily be missed by many birders, but Chris is an experienced pelagic birder and is very familiar with them.  It was too late in the afternoon when I saw the reports, so I decided to wait until morning to head down to the park.

I have seen white ibis at Island Beach in the past, most recently last year.  Manx shearwater, on the other hand, would have been a new location bird for me.  I knew it would be a long shot for the bird to still be in the area, but I would have been more upset if it were seen again and I didn’t even try to find it.  If there were any great shearwaters still around, then there was a chance for a shearwater of a different sort to pop in too.  Well, to get to the point, I did not see any shearwaters today.  Nor, despite my effort and those of two other birders, a father and his young daughter, were any white ibis at Spizzle Creek.  I came away for the day with 45 bird species, including my first white-rumped sandpipers of the year, but nothing uncommon for Island Beach this time of year.

I did have a couple other sightings worth sharing here.  Bottlenose dolphin were plentiful off the beach today.  One playful pod was relatively close to the beach, just beyond the surf.  While I was out on the north jetty looking for shearwaters, or maybe a roseate tern, I noticed some colorful clouds in the sky.  They looked like rainbow clouds.  I found out later that they are called, scientifically, circumhorizontal arcs or cloud iridescence.  Colloquially, they are called fire rainbows.  Apparently, they are rare.  They are caused by diffraction and a set of specific conditions that is probably easier for anyone interested to just Google.

Bottlenose dolphin playing in the surf.  © S. Weiss

Fire rainbows, or rainbow clouds, over Barnegat Inlet.  © S. Weiss

While walking along the back of the inlet, I came across a large gathering of laughing gulls and semipalmated sandpipers, and a few white-rumped sandpipers, foraging along the waters edge.  I’ve seen this before when other gulls and peeps are feeding on horseshoe crab eggs.  I don’t know how late in the season these ancient arthropods deposit their eggs, or maybe some were unearthed or hatched.  When I walked near an area that the birds had been gathered I was able to scoop some up to see what they were eating.  The eggs were very tiny and some looked like they had hatched.

White-rumped sandpipers (front and back) with semipalmated sandpipers

  (the three in the middle).  © S. Weiss

 

Left, horseshoe crab.  © S. Weiss  Tiny horseshoe crab eggs.  © S. Weiss

The dark eggs appear to have hatched.  The green egg at top left does not.  It must take so many eggs to satisfy just one bird.  A horseshoe crab lays multiple clutches, each containing thousands of eggs, all part of nature’s balancing act.

As I walked farther along the narrow shoreline, I came across a sullen sight.  A dead seal was decaying, a corpse rotting into the marshy beach.  I do not know how death came upon this pinniped, or how it came to be in that spot.  I took pictures for documentation purposes, but will spare their grotesqueness here.  However, a closeup of its mouth gives insight as to how these predators catch their fish prey while on the swim.  The carcass will feed some birds, crabs and a host of other organisms, and life around it will continue.

Mouth and teeth of a seal.  © S. Weiss

Another reason not to get close to an adorable seal.

 

Seaside pea.  © S. Weiss

Left, seaside pea in fruiting stage.  Right, seaside pea in flowering stage.  The seaside pea makes up much of the vegetation along the north jetty wall, leading west to the jetty's end.

Fiery skipper resting/feeding among the seaside peas.  © S. Weiss