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 ...

     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...