Birds and Other Nature Sightings

     On Sunday afternoon I took my wife for a ride to Island Beach State Park.  Except for an abundance of common loons and a half dozen razorbills, it was a blasé day for birding along the beach.  However, a little change up greeted us when we reached the beach end at the inlet jetty.  A couple hundred gulls, mostly herring, gathered there, many on the water and many on the jetty.  Almost immediately, I spotted an all-white gull, amongst the white-and-gray gulls, sitting on the water near the jetty.  I pointed it out to my wife and then identified it as a Glaucous gull .  I explained to her that it was one of the two white-winged gull species that can show up this time of year, the other being Iceland gull .  I pointed out the difference that these gulls lack the black wing tips that all the other gulls around us had.  It was 13 months since I last saw a Glaucous gull.  My wife was with me that day too when we saw one flying a...

     I spent today like I often do, driving along the beach at Island Beach State Park.  I am intrigued with the amount of alcids in our area and I want to see them as much as I can.  Any day they could just pick up and move out of sight.  It might be years before such incredible numbers occur again.  Today I counted 136 razorbills.  Much of the time all I needed to do was find a loose flock of Bonaparte’s gulls fluttering over the water.  Soon enough, a razorbill, or several of them, would pop up and the gulls would try to get some of the food that the submariner brought to the surface. Flotillas of razorbills off the beach.   © S. Weiss Along the way I also found 18 dovekies on the water.  Dovekies are rare here from shore.  In past years, it was a lucky birder to get one.  Needless to say, this is a personal high count.  Unfortunately, two of the 18 did not survive the day.  I watched one of these tiny bi...

   Yesterday was a pleasant fall day, a perfect day actually to spend on the beach.  One of my favorite activities is taking a leisurely drive along the beach at Island Beach State Park and with the day to myself, that’s what I did.  Inland birding was rather slow, and an earlier walk at Reeds Road, one of the park’s birding hotspots, also did not produce many bird highlights.  So, as a sports fishing beach buggy permit holder, I entered the beach at the Gilikins entry point at the park’s northern section.   Now that the summer tourist season is over, the bathing beaches are open to beach buggy vehicles, and I can drive the beach for nearly seven miles to the north jetty at Barnegat Inlet.   After a short lull the last couple days, the sea duck and bird migration flight along the Atlantic corridor was back in action.  Waves of scoter flocks were traveling south, each flock containing probably anywhere from 50 to maybe 200 birds each.  I conse...

   Since the start of October, I have turned my birding attention to mostly Island Beach State Park.  My years of birding there have shown that October is the best time to find local rarities like American golden-plover, Baird’s sandpiper and lark sparrow, or fall specials like jaegers.  This October has not disappointed me because not only did I find all of these species so far this month, but I also added a black-headed gull to my park list. Back on October 3, I found a pair of lark sparrows in a grass field just outside of the park’s main gate.  This field hosts a weekly farmer’s market during the summer, but in the fall, sparrows enjoy the vacated lot.  In past seasons there have been clay-colored sparrows, dickcissels and meadowlarks occasionally mixing in with the regular song sparrows, white-throated sparrows, chipping sparrows and dark-eyed juncos.  The lark sparrows, along with a clay-colored sparrow, lingered at the field for several days to ...

        For five days since last Saturday, New Jersey had been in the grip of a Nor’easter, battered by persistent 20-plus mile-per-hour northeast winds (stronger near the coast) and rain.  Finally, that system pulled away, and winds lightened and swung around out of the northwest Wednesday night, setting up a bird migration flight.  It was something to look forward to since, despite my efforts, sea watching in driving rain and strong winds yielded nothing.  I wasn’t expecting a banner flight of songbirds, and waterfowl movement is still to come.  But there are some second-chance birds (those that I missed on spring migration) to look out for, and a big push of sparrows has yet to occur.   I spent a couple of hours walking the trails and driving the beach at Island Beach State Park and although I logged over 60 species of birds, the activity waned as the day progressed.  Sparrows had moved in, but I did not pick up anything new for ...

     While having my coffee this morning I watched a decent amount of bird activity in my yard.  This cued me to head over to my favorite spot, Island Beach State Park, to see what last night’s favorable northwest winds brought there.  As I was gathering together my binoculars and camera, I received an alert that a Kirtland’s warbler had been found in Cape May.  I was pretty sure that this was a first state record for New Jersey, and it was.  For a minute I thought about changing my route and head down to Cape May for what would be a new life bird for me.  But I rationalized that the bird might not stick around for the time it would take me to drive the 80 miles to get to it.  So, I continued to Island Beach. The first bird I saw when I started my walk at the park was a Connecticut warbler.  This in itself is a rare migrant in Ocean County.  There is a small window of time in mid to late-September that this plain-looking, ground-for...