Birds and Other Nature Sightings

     The year of alcids continued this week when a Common Murre was found at Manasquan Inlet along the border of Ocean and Monmouth counties.  Common murre is a difficult bird for Ocean County, as well as much of New Jersey.  It is considered rare, and most sightings are pelagic.  As such, common murre is a NJ Bird Records Committee r eviewable species for land-based sightings.  The last common murre for Ocean County was at Manasquan Inlet in February 2011.  If accepted by the NJBRC, this would be the second latest date for a common murre in New Jersey ( http://njbrc.com/documents/ARL.pdf ). This alcid was discovered late Monday afternoon.  I was already in for the day and chose not to go for it.  It was still around on Tuesday, but I had family obligations and could not get over to the inlet.  However, since a few people reported seeing the murre after sunset, I felt that was a good sign it would stay around for at least another ...

      A week after a 12-hour pelagic out of Cape May, my friend Jason and I took the seven-plus hour drive to North Carolina’s Outer Banks for a one day pelagic.  The company there is a leader of east coast pelagics, attracting participants from around the world.  Captain Brian normally operates his Stormy Petrel II vessel out of Hatteras during the spring and summer.  This trip ran out of Oregon Inlet in Nags Head, shortening our commute by better than an hour each way.  The drive took us through iconic Outer Banks towns like Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills.  Many think of Kitty Hawk as the place where Orville and Wilbur Wright made aviation history with the first flight, but that actually occurred in neighboring Kill Devil Hills.  My first thoughts of the latter location are where the Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore brought live updates of approaching hurricanes. The Wright Brothers National Memorial, N. Croatan Highway in Kill Devil Hills...

     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...