Finally Found My Nemesis Bird 4/14/2023

     A few posts ago, I talked about finding one of Ocean County’s ghost birds, the Pileated Woodpecker.  Well, Friday I finally found my nemesis bird for Island Beach State Park, the otherwise ubiquitous Tufted Titmouse! Yes, tufted titmouse; pretty much common across New Jersey, but actually rare on barrier islands.  I see at least two every day in my yard, but not a one at my second most birded spot.  So, on my 1,315th checklist for Island Beach since 2001, it got got.  Since I rarely submit multiple checklists for the park for the same day, the math says that equals to roughly three-and-a-half years of daily lists.

When I saw a small bird moving in the upper half of a pitch pine, I raised my binoculars to see what it was.  Instantly my inner voice said, “Oh my, it’s a titmouse!”  I lowered the binoculars and switched over to my camera to fire off some documentation photos.  I texted a pic to some friends who know what a bane this bird has been for me at the park.  It felt like a “drop the mike” moment:  nothing else to add, just walk away.

Tufted Titmouse, Island Beach State Park, 4/14/2023.  © S. Weiss

I once asked my friend Scott, a naturalist and one of the most knowledgeable birders I know, why is it that I always see chickadees, some nuthatches, but no titmice?  After all, they always seem to be seen together everywhere else.  His answer was that titmice are rare on our barrier islands.  Through online research, I found that this is true not only in New Jersey, but all along the Atlantic seaboard.  Despite this, there are several reports of titmice every year for the park.  Some of the good birders I know have never seen titmouse at the park or, at best, have seen only one or two over the years.  For the majority of the rest of the reports, I have to call them out as erroneous or fallacious.

Shortly after finding the plain gray bird, I also sent a picture of it to Scott to let him know I finally got the patch bird.  In a crazy coincidence, he replied that he had also seen a small flock of them at Sandy Hook, Monmouth County (the northern starting point for barrier island on the east coast) on the same day.  They were the first he had seen there in years.  For me, as my other friend, Larry, always says, "You only need one."  Thus, my bird species number 281 at Island Beach is officially in the books.


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