Sooty Shearwaters' last stop
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...