Birds and Other Nature Sightings

     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...