Birds and Other Nature Sightings

        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 ...

 This past weekend my friend, Captain John, invited me on another fishing trip for tuna.  Based on the successful trip we had two weeks ago; I was excited for another day out on the ocean.  The offshore weather forecast for Sunday called for light winds and two-foot seas meant a smooth and quicker ride.  The fishing reports indicated that schools of larger yellowfin tuna, in the 80-pound range, and bigeye tuna, which run twice that size, had moved into the area.  The weather forecast, the fishing reports and my own hopes of seeing some summer pelagic birds, had my anticipation levels heightened. We left the dock by 1:30 a.m. and headed northeast out of Barnegat Inlet.  We arrived at the fishing grounds just before sunrise and the seas were light as had been forecasted.  However, we would spend about the next six hours searching for tuna.  The closest thing we caught was a false albacore .  False albacores are not considered tasty.  It is...