Birds and Other Nature Sightings

     On Sunday, I left home at 4:30 in the morning for Cape May to join a 12-hour pelagic trip aboard the American Star.  It was cold, about 35 degrees, but for mid-February in New Jersey that is not bad.  I go out on pelagics whenever I can because there are birds and other sea life out on the ocean that you just cannot find on land.  My previous pelagic trip last month was windy, colder with snow flurries.  Weather conditions this time were better, and my expectations were a little high.  This winter has been exceptional for alcids along the northeastern Atlantic, from New York to North Carolina.  I knew leaving home that this was an opportunity to see maybe five different alcids:   razorbill , dovekie , Atlantic puffin , common and thick-billed murres .  For the day, we scored four of the five; only missing a thick-billed murre.  The tally for the day was 282 razorbills, 55 dovekies, one puffin and one common murre, plus s...

      Today my wife and I took a drive along the beach at Island Beach State Park in New Jersey.  I drove to the end of the park's road and entered the beach as only allowed by four-wheel drive vehicles with sport fishing permits.  There was a mild south to southeasterly wind, and I was hoping to find some shearwaters or storm-petrels close to shore.  I drove to the terminus of the park at the north side of Barnegat Inlet.   For a while I scanned the ocean on both sides of the inlet, but there were no pelagic birds that I could see.  There were no new migrants, just many of the expected locals.  An eBird list for the spot was filled with the usuals:  great black-backed, herring and laughing gulls; common terns, osprey, double-crested cormorants, American oystercatchers, black-bellied plovers, sanderlings, ruddy turnstones and semipalmated plovers and sandpipers.  I took a slow drive north up the beach, occasionally sc...