Barnegat Pilgrimmage

 [Harlequin, where else but at Barnegat Light, yesterday.]

Somehow I managed to book myself for back-to-back talks this week, talks I've never given before, which meant a beautiful Saturday was squandered indoors compiling photos, writing, &c. [If you're interested, it'll be "It's Not About the Camera" at the Cape May County Library in Cape May Courthouse this Wednesday, 7 p.m., and "How to Identify Birds Like an Expert" at Delaware Valley Ornithological Club in Philly on Thursday, 7:30 p.m.]

Sunday, thankfully, I'd made plans to meet Tim (my son, not to mention ecologist and keen birder) up at Barnegat Light. Two elements, beyond the company, determine a great visit to Barnegat. The first is the wind - the less the better! Windchill can be mediated with clothing, but waves and swells cannot, and if half of what you're looking for is going to be sitting on the water, you want calm. We didn't quite have that, but 8-12 mph west winds weren't so bad.

The other thing you want at Barnegat is a falling tide. All that food sweeping out of Barnegat Bay attracts birds, and the lower water exposes the intertidal zone on the jetties, attracting sea ducks, shorebirds, and a zillion gulls. It makes one realize just how rich Barnegat Bay still is, despite its many problems, and how important it is to birds. The volume of birds at Barnegat Inlet greatly exceeds that at Townsend's or Hereford Inlets.

There were a LOT of birds at Barnegat today, thousands of gulls, well over 100 Red-throated Loons, about 100 Common Eiders, 18 or so Harlequins, 100's of Long-tailed Ducks, a mixed raft of scoters out at the end of the jetty.  Two different Razorbills fed actively (and were thus elusive) where the inlet meets the ocean, a small-billed first winter and an adult.

 [85 Red-throated Loons, actual count, foraged in Barnegat Bay as seen from the lighthouse. Many more were in the inlet itself and offshore. I don't recall seeing this many RTLO in the bay, must be something going on food-wise.]

The people on the jetty provided as much food for thought as the birds. Most of them, including the many birders, seemed disinclined to talk or even make eye contact, kind of weird. Tim remarked at one point, "I hate New Jersey!" Not entirely fair, but we resolved to get people to say hello, and eventually succeeded at least with that. But most people seemed too serious or busy to smile and chat.

A couple parties of birders we did talk to got me thinking about observation powers, or maybe it's better put, "observation intensity." Folks we met mentioned seeing "a gannet," or "a Red-throated Loon" or "some Common Eiders." Yet Northern Gannets were in view anytime you looked, at one point over 50 got into a plunge-fest just north of the north jetty that had me wishing I was over there with a surf rod, and several sailed right over our heads on the south jetty. Red-throated Loons, as mentioned, were all over the place, as were Commons, and although most of the eiders were far, they were there. I wonder sometimes how people look and what their expectations are. Sometimes you have to stretch your eyes, just a little.

 [A lone Black-bellied Plover occupied the jetty.]

 [Several birders said they hadn't found Purple Sandpipers, perhaps because the tide was still up when they were out there. It was about 2 hours to low in the late afternoon on Sunday, and the Purples were easy to find with Ruddy Turnstones.]

 [Eight zillion gulls, and do you think we could find a rarity like an Iceland Gull? Noooo. Makes me think more about observation powers - mine. You know there were good ones to be had.]

[This Red Knot has been hanging out on the jetty for several days, apparently.]

Wordless Wednesday

Rare and Hurt and, What Do Birds Mean to You?

 [Incredible: a Black-legged Kittiwake (top) well up in Delaware Bay today, at "Miami Beach" in the Villas. Forster's Terns in the foreground (not so usual in January, either), Bonaparte's, Ring-billed, and Herring Gulls in the middle.]

When the text message from Larry Scacchetti came through, "kittiwake with gulls at miami beach," astonishment mixed with disbelief, and not just because I'd been there an hour earlier and seen the adult Black-headed Gull that's been on the bayshore for several weeks, but no kittiwake. The tide had fallen and a bunch of gulls and Forster's Terns had accumulated on the spit there, and the Black-legged Kittiwake was with them.

Kittiwakes come to shore rarely, and in the bay? Sibley's Birds of Cape May says this: "One record in bay: 14 Jan 1979, Reed's Beach, 3 immatures."

Driving to Miami Beach, I thought, "Something's probably wrong with it." Kittiwakes are pelagic when not nesting, normally found miles offshore in winter, but not from land. Never ON land.

It's easy to see Black-legged Kittiwakes if you go where they live - I've seen a whole bunch offshore and on nesting cliffs in Newfoundland and Alaska - but I made a point of chasing this one down. It was a great find by Larry.

I got back to "Miami Beach" in the Villas as quick as I could, and encountered Larry plus Sam Galick, Vince Elia, and  Dan Poalillo, who gave me the thumbs-down - the bird was gone. Nuts! But they said the bird had flown and landed a couple times. Vince mentioned it had "something going on" with its left side, probably an injury so perhaps it wouldn't go far. So I hung in, and sure enough, quickly re-found it.

And now we get to what birds mean to you. And me. Delight in finding the kittiwake got punched in the gut when it lifted its wings and showed the wound that drove it to shore, and up the bay, seeking a place of safety, with food, and a chance to rest and recover.

["Something's wrong with it." The Black-legged Kittiwake at Miami Beach in the Villas.]


There's been a fair bit of scuttlebutt over the NJ birding airways (on jerseybirds, the state listserve) regarding a Dovekie found on the beach at Sandy Hook that eventually succumbed to whatever ailment it suffered. Should the finders have tried to save it? Could they have? Was it immoral for bird "chasers" to race to check the bird off on their year or life list, even though it was bound for the immortal?

There are several competing interests here. The lowest comes from the rules of listing. In case you didn't know it, there are in fact rules about the countability of birds, promulgated by the American Birding Association, and Rule 3 states: "The bird must have been alive, wild, and unrestrained when encountered." The rule goes on to explain that "Eggs are not counted as live birds," along with other deep and meaningful clarifications. Like:

B. “Wild” means that the bird’s occurrence at the time and place of observation is not because it, or its recent ancestors, has ever been transported or otherwise assisted by man.
(i) . . . Physical contact between an observer and a bird does not automatically preclude a bird from being counted, as there are situations where wild birds have learned to eat from outstretched hands, or have used people as temporary perches.

and,

C. “Unrestrained” means not held captive in a cage, trap, mistnet, hand, or by any other means and not under the influence of such captivity. A bird is considered under the influence of captivity after its release until it regains the activities and movements of a bird which has not been captured.

and,

(iii) A wild bird that is injured, sick, oiled, or otherwise incapacitated, but which retains a reasonable freedom of movement, may be counted.

The upshot is, if someone picks up that bird to take it to a rehabber, it can't be counted. I've never seen a Dovekie in NJ. So freaking what. If that's all that's stopping you, please pick the bird up.

Except: should man interfere with the doings of nature? We do it all the time, for evil and good, so if we can help a poor stranded Dovekie, why not? One VERY good argument why not is that picking the Dovekie up might make it worse off. Dovekies don't like people - okay, I've never asked one, but I'm pretty sure about that - and picking one up is going to stress it out. Taking a bird to the best licensed rehabber (the only place an orphaned or injured bird should ever go) might not be helping it. This is the main reason I tell people to leave birds they find alone. Their best chance is in the wild. What I don't say, but do think, is that if they die, they will feed something - which is what is going to happen to them in the end anyway.

Baby birds, a whole 'nother subject, should virtually always be left alone. Most of them are not "orphans;" baby birds routinely fall out of or wander away from nests and parents routinely continue to feed them when this happens.

But leaving distressed birds alone hurts. At least it hurts me. Most of us feel for wild creatures, deeply, even though animals die all the time. There's one out there somewhere dying right now. In fact, there are chunks of a dead animal in my crock pot of venison chili right now, too, one that I personally and respectfully sent to its next life.

I'm glad most of us feel this compassion, it is probably what will save wildlife in the end. But I still say, leave it alone. I have a final reason for this: in healthy wildlife populations, individuals don't matter. Dovekie is the most abundant alcid in the North Atlantic, with a world population of at least 30 million birds (albeit few breed on the North American continent; most of "ours" likely come from Greenland, where they are abundant). 1 divided by 30 million is . . . very close to zero.

This might be a good time to consider 1 divided by 6,989,449,838.

I don't want to diminish the work of rehabbers. These are fine people and their work has an important education component and in the case of very rare species may make a difference to populations. I just don't think we want people to believe that the way to help wildlife is to help a Dovekie here, a redtail there. We need to invest our resources in protecting healthy habitat. Want to help Dovekies? Work on ocean and climate change issues.

So he says. I once rescued an injured catbird and (illegally) nursed it for several weeks before releasing it. What difference did it make to catbirds that I helped just one of the zillions of them?

Well, it made a difference to the one I helped.

I'm glad the Miami kittiwake didn't give us a choice. It was later seen flying towards the mouth of Delaware Bay, back where it belongs.

[Nothing wrong here - 4 of the 8 Horned Grebes that foraged in Hereford Inlet yesterday. With them were 4 Common Loons, 3 Red-throated Loons, Long-tailed Ducks, Red-breasted Mergansers. . . Good habitat. Good birds. Good for birds. Viewed from the North Wildwood seawall.]

Wordless Wednesday

Defining Moments

 [Bald Eagle shepherds some of a 5,000+ bird flock of Snow Geese over the Cohansey River, northern Cumberland County, NJ today.]

Did you ever notice how a day, or even week, of birding can come to be defined by a single sighting? It's something I became aware of leading tours and day trips. You'll bird along, taking in good views of more or less usual things, some more important than others ("important" often relating to rarity). If you're on a guided trip, your leader is not yet satisfied. They are looking for the one bird, the one sighting that will make the trip, after which they know they can relax. Everything after is anticlimactic. A trip can turn on a dime, from good (because a bad birding trip is rare indeed) to extraordinary. You don't always find that dime, but that makes it sweeter when you do.

Our birding day today would have been cumulatively extraordinary with or without the scene of 5,000+ Cohansey River Snow Geese pouring straight over our heads under hunting Bald Eagles, and simply being out alone with my daughter defined the trip well enough. But. . .well, my goodness, it's fine to drop a jaw now and then, to see wonder on a college girl's face (Becky's), to hear a dog whine to be let out of the truck so he can watch, too. If it had been a birding tour, well, the folks got their money's worth.

 [Above, "White-belly 1," or second life year: this young Bald Eagle has two generations of flight feathers, the longer ones left over from its first year plumage, the short ones replacements. The result is a jagged trailing edge to the wing. Below, "White-belly II," or third life year - the flight feathers have all been replaced, and are all the same length. This bird also shows more white on the head. One year to go to adult-like plumage. Both flew with the Snow Geese over the Cohansey today.]

Becky was helping me cover the Cohansey for the mid-winter Bald Eagle Survey. We found at least 22 different eagles, over half adults. Something like 10 or more eagle pairs nest along the Cohansey, which weaves a path of u-shaped bends south and then west from Bridgeton, so more eagles were certainly present than what we could detect in a day's looking.

I'm drawn to the Cohansey, for the marshes that attract abundant waterfowl and raptors in winter, the sparrow flocks of Dix WMA, the river's curving and curling pattern, and the roll to the terrain on the north side of its watershed. A good place. We had a dark Rough-legged Hawk today, a couple Cooper's Hawks, 14 Red-taileds, both yellowlegs, Belted Kingfishers, Northern Pintails, Hooded Mergansers, Bufflehead. . .a good day with a defining moment. I'll be back next week for the Winter Raptor Survey focused on harriers and Short-eared Owls.  Spring migrants and breeders here probably merit more investigation than what I've given them  - perhaps more daunted by warm season insects than I'd care to admit. Mostly, it's the drive. Seems like the Cohansey is 2 hours from everywhere.

 [One of four Killdeer north of the Cohansey today, my FOY (first of year.)]

[22 eagles, but this was the one lonely American Kestrel, a male - but at least there was one.]


We began our day with a dawn stop at Jake's Landing on the way up to let the dog stretch his legs. An utter lack of wind mediated the 17 degree temperature, with warm sun lighting the frosted marsh. Magical. A few harriers were up, a Red-tailed Hawk perched in the sun at the edge of the woods, just where a red-tail should be, and the insistent dog ferreted out a Clapper Rail.

[Clapper Rail, Jake's Landing this morning. My dog Boone gets an assist. Many more Clappers remain during winter than are detected - like all birds, they're quieter in the cold months, but not silent. Try clapping at dawn or dusk to set off a chorus of grunts.]

Sunset - and Sunrise - Sunday

 [Above, Garden State Parkway tonight. Below, Forsythe NWR one morning last week.]

Golden Eagle Ruminations

[Those familiar with the Wildlife Drive at Forsythe will recognize this aerial view of the West/Vogt pool. I was at the tower at Gull Pond when scanning revealed a suspicious raptor high and waaaaaaaay out, two miles out as calculated using Running Map.]

I didn't have a lot of time Saturday morning, but before heading home from Forsythe NWR (to shop for a new refrigerator, oh, yay), I made a quick check on the immature Little Blue Heron that spent the week near the Leed's Eco-trail Boardwalk (it was not present), then swung out to the Gull Pond Tower for a quick scan from the truck. A micro-dot (nano-dot?) soared far to the north, well beyond the North Dike, but it stopped me. At first there was no thought process beyond, "Golden." A presumptuous assertion on a bird perhaps two miles away.

It's got to be huge or I couldn't see it that far away.

Ohhhh (I think I said it out loud) - it just came up into a dihedral. (It was really windy and that messes with raptor shapes. This bird was in a slight glide a lot of the time, taking in the sails as it were, but periodically the wings would flatten out and the wing tips would come up, and stay up.)

It's holding it, can't be a bald.

Wingbeat's not right for a bald. Stiff, doesn't flex down, shallow. Rapid upstroke at the end of a series of beats (kind of like a Sandhill Crane's upstroke) and stays up.

It's dark, hard dark, colder than a bald.

A second bird came in and joined it. Flat-winged. Sometimes flexed downward. Not as dark.

I was in the truck this whole time, elbows propped on the door jam, looking through Zeiss 8's. Finally enough was enough, and I hopped out, grabbed the scope and quickly set it up on the tailgate. I could only zoom to 40X because of the wind and distortion, but 40X showed a short-headed (short necked might be more accurate) eagle, flashing light on the nape (even at 1.5-2 miles), discrete white patches on the wing, and an obvious white band at the base of the tail. Slimmer of wing next to the Bald Eagle, which had  an obvious big, long head/neck.

The mystery is that before all the calculations I knew what it was. Which means what? Not that I'm anything special. Just that I've been birding long enough to finally see enough Golden Eagles to recognize one.

No smarter than my dog, who knows what my truck looks like.

Housekeeping: About the New Gadget, and On Commenting

First, on leaving comments on this blog. Please do! But if you leave a comment, be aware that it will not appear immediately - I have the comments on filter to make sure no whackos leave inappropriate material. Thus far, nothing like that has happened.

You may have noticed the new feature on the right side of the blog, right under the Twitter feed: a "gadget" displaying bird sightings from Cape May County and nearby. This cool gadget was created using code developed by Zachary DeBruine, who was recently featured as the eBirder of the month. Here's what it does:

The left hand "sightings" tab displays all birds reported to eBird in the last 7 days in Cape May County and nearby. Use the scroll bar in the gadget to go through them (on an iPhone, the whole list is displayed).

What I did (with help - thanks BC!) is create a circle wide enough to encompass the whole county plus most of the "good stuff" in Cumberland, i.e. places like Heislerville and Turkey Point, and punched the lat/long of the center of the circle, with its radius (35 km) into Zach's gadget.

The center tab, Rarities, displays all the rare birds reported anywhere in NJ in the last 7 days. The right hand tab displays the same birds as the left hand tab. The idea would have been to create a filter for the left hand tab so on that you wouldn't have to scroll past Canada Goose and starling to find more interesting species, but that apparently isn't possible right now. It also isn't possible to re-order the birds, for example taxonomically.

With those two pitfalls, it's still a pretty cool gadget for the south Jersey birder, because you can scroll through to find sightings of interest, and then, if you hit the little green arrow pointing right of the sighting, you'll get a map of where the bird was seen along with who saw it (and if you click on the map, it will open a new tab with a larger map). Click on the sightings tab to return to the species list.

One other note: the gadget does not update instantly as new checklists are entered into eBird. I'm actually not sure how fast it does update, but it seems to at least within a day.


Enjoy!

Wordless Wednesday - New Yard Bird

In Theory and In Practice

[The four winter gulls: Ring-billed, Herring and Bonaparte's in the foreground; a Great Black-backed in the distance. Miami Beach - the one Delaware Bay, not Florida - on Sunday.]

It seemed like a good plan, in theory. Dress in warm camo clothes, nestle into the edge of a dune where the falling tide exposes a sand spit projecting into Delaware Bay, and wait for gulls to congregate on the spit at point blank range, camera at the ready to document all the rarities that appeared. . .

In practice it was a great way to watch gulls floating and flying way out in the bay, and occasionally catch the distant wailing of courting Black Scoters.

That was Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon, I had another theory. I like being at the mouths of inlets as the falling tide nears low.  The theory is the tide sweeping out of the inlet sweeps with it food that might attract fish, and birds that eat fish. Also, if the inlet has a jetty, the falling tide exposes the intertidal zone, the food-encrusted rocks where sandpipers and gulls can pick and probe. For birds that dive, the food on low tide is that much closer to the surface, a shorter dive to the lunch table.

The afternoon theory worked better. I hiked down to the Cold Spring Inlet, the southern terminus of Two Mile Beach, where the Cape May Canal enters the Atlantic. A small but diverse foraging "frenzy" had formed near the tip of the Cold Spring jetty, with 60 or so Bonaparte's Gulls dipping and swooping over a dozen Red-throated Loons, a few Common Loons, and, finally, a Razorbill. The birds were far, and time was short to make my very cautious way out to the end of the jetty, a trek not to be taken lightly, this jetty is way more treacherous than the one at Barnegat Light.

So I passed, contenting myself with scoping the distant birds and photographing the closer Ruddy Turnstones, which did indeed accumulate on the exposed rocks, along with a few Purple Sandpipers and several hundred "large gulls," which in our neck of the woods means almost all Herring Gulls. There were the usual Great Cormorants at the inlet, and a dozen or so American Oystercatchers on the mud at the entrance to the Cape May Harbor. All three scoters were represented, including a somewhat unusual flock of 12 White-winged Scoters with a few Surfs mixed in.

[A bird that could be used in the definition of the adjective "harlequin" - Ruddy Turnstone, Cold Spring jetty on Sunday.]

Sunset Sunday

 [Villas, NJ water tower, Saturday January 7 2012. Believe it.]

[Proof. . . the last sunset I watched in 2011, December 30, Norbury's Landing, NJ.]

An Egret From the Bronx

 

With the help of Jim Wright of the NJ Meadowlands Commission, I found out where the banded Great Egret we saw on last weekend's Cumberland Christmas Bird Count was banded - and hatched. As Jim posted in his blog, "Susan Elbin of NYC Audubon says: 'DX was banded in the Bronx, NY, as a nestling on 15 June 2011. The nesting colony is/was on South Brother Island in the East River. South Brother is due west of Rikers Island.'"

The youngster was still pretty close to home; hopefully it survived the recent cold snap, and/or opted to continue to a more likely wintering ground for Great Egret - like Florida!

 

Wordless Wednesday

Sunrise Promises, Hope Delivers. . .and Learning Shorebird Calls Helps

 [New Year's Day sunrise at Turkey Point, Cumberland County, NJ. There may be a better CBC territory on Earth, but I doubt it.]

 Stillness plus birds. You have to love that combination. New Year's morning, so perfectly still, it felt like you could cover the entire 15 mile diameter Cumberland County, NJ Christmas Bird Count circle from a single location with a tuned ear and a quiet body, let alone our area between Dividing Creek and the Delaware Bay. My first hour's quiet half mile walk, alone down Turkey Point Road, yielded 40 species, with Hermit Thrushes singing and Brown Thrashers chuffing at daybreak, Marsh Wrens tcheking (Sedge Wrens, of which there were none, say tchup) . . .one of the best mornings of my life. We found some pretty fancy birds later, but the morning was the best. My list for our Turkey Point territory is at the end of this blog.

 [Hermit Thrushes , including this one, were SINGING Sunday morning, winter or not, the best song of all birds anywhere.]

[In case you doubt pishing works, this hedge on Maple Ave., near Dividing Creek, filled with Northern Cardinals and White-throated Sparrows withing one minute after some screech-owl whistles and Tufted Titmouse alarm imitations: schpusssh, shcpusssh, SCHPUSSH, SPUSSSH! We lured 15 male cardinals into a single tree!]
 

[At least 8 Brown Thrashers called at my dawn site in Cumberland Sunday, which leads me to wonder, what is different about Gray Catbirds, of which I had only one (this one) all day? Both are winter half-hardies, yet thrasher was much more evident at Turkey Point.]
 

 [I've often wondered, with the abundant gulls concentrated on NJ's Delaware Bay Shore, why aren't there more of the northern, "white-winged" species? This Glaucous Gull, near the Maple Avenue Impoundments at Turkey Point, was an exception on Sunday.]

On learning shorebird calls: experienced birders often stress the need for a scope when birding shorebird sites, which is a real need and focuses attention on how visual shorebirding is. Yet rare shorebirds can often be detected by sound, which is why the series of seven whistles (as in, the 'seven-whistler' of market-gunning days) stopped our party in our tracks, not believing we'd heard a Whimbrel on New Year's Day in Cumberland, NJ, a species that should be no closer than the far southern U.S., and normally farther south than that. I stood frozen, waiting to hear it again. Beth, seeing me stopped, asked "What was that?" Pete said, "Sounded like a Whimbrel!" I said, "It sure as hell did!" But a heard-only record of this kind wouldn't do - luckily we spotted it, flying with Greater Yellowlegs.

 [It was indeed a Whimbrel, top right. That call froze me one January 20 years ago - on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where even there it is rare in winter. This will probably be the "rarest" bird I see in 2011 - there are a scarce handful of winter Whimbrel records in NJ.]

 ['Peek' calls drew our attention to this flock of Long-billed Dowitchers, the more common of the two dowitchers in winter.]

 [Black "wing pits" + 'peer-a-wee' call = Black-bellied Plover, another of our wintering shorebirds. Turkey Point, on Sunday.]

 [Dunlin are our most abundant winter shorebird,  calling 'jeeerv' as they pass. This group foraged over a cut and flooded salt hay farm in Cumberland.]

 [Greater Yellowlegs taking deep wingbeats against a strong wind Sunday afternoon.]

 [Sign of a warm winter: Snowy Egret on January 1!]

 [Legs of a Great Egret on Sunday, one of 27 (!) we found in our territory in this mild (until now) winter. I reported the band code to the USFW Bird Banding Lab, and will report if I learn where this bird was from.]

[Fish that passed through a River Otter, leaving only scales - Turkey Point on Sunday. Lot's of water = lots of fish and other fauna, whether otters or birds. A big part of the equation explaining the great birding in southern NJ.]

Turkey Point, Cumberland, US-NJ
Jan 1, 2012 6:45 AM - 3:15 PM
Protocol: Traveling
6.0 mile(s)
Comments:     Cumberland CBC; first hour alone then with Pete, the Robs Jr. and Sr., Linda, Beth. Beautiful, still morning, clear and 27 degrees. Wind picked up in p.m.,high in the 50's. All water open. Salt hay farm had been cut and was flooded, great shorebird habitat. These numbers are just what I saw, not for whole party.

78 species

Snow Goose  10000
Canada Goose  250
Mute Swan  25
Tundra Swan  6
Gadwall  40
American Black Duck  250
Mallard  75
Northern Pintail  40
Green-winged Teal  30
Bufflehead  80
Common Goldeneye  4
Hooded Merganser  60
Common Merganser  2
Ruddy Duck  2
Great Blue Heron  25
Great Egret  27     actual count. one color banded with blue-gree DX on left leg, USFWS metal band on right leg.
Snowy Egret  1     photo
Turkey Vulture  10
Bald Eagle  15
Northern Harrier  16
Sharp-shinned Hawk  2
Cooper's Hawk  3
Red-shouldered Hawk  1
Red-tailed Hawk  12
Merlin  2
Peregrine Falcon  2
Clapper Rail  6
Virginia Rail  1
Black-bellied Plover  25
Greater Yellowlegs  50
Whimbrel  1     heard first, saw well, distant photograph, flying with GRYE
Western Sandpiper  5
Least Sandpiper  2
Dunlin  3000
Long-billed Dowitcher  25     Heard and photographed a flock of 10 in flight, later i.d.'d 20+ foraging near Beaver Dam
Ring-billed Gull  20
Herring Gull  350
Glaucous Gull  1     first cycle, photographed
Great Black-backed Gull  20
Mourning Dove  10
Eastern Screech-Owl  2
Great Horned Owl  4
Belted Kingfisher  6
Red-bellied Woodpecker  5
Downy Woodpecker  6
Hairy Woodpecker  1
Northern Flicker  15
Blue Jay  10
American Crow  10
Carolina Chickadee  15
Tufted Titmouse  8
Carolina Wren  15
Winter Wren  5
Marsh Wren  6
Golden-crowned Kinglet  2
Ruby-crowned Kinglet  3
Eastern Bluebird  10
Hermit Thrush  39     careful count for day using clicker
American Robin  1000
Gray Catbird  1
Northern Mockingbird  3
Brown Thrasher  15     8 were calling at dawn at jct. of maple and turkey point road
European Starling  10
Yellow-rumped Warbler  150
Eastern Towhee  12
Field Sparrow  1
Savannah Sparrow  7
Fox Sparrow  8
Song Sparrow  15
Swamp Sparrow  6
White-throated Sparrow  250
Dark-eyed Junco  5
Northern Cardinal  30
Red-winged Blackbird  150
Rusty Blackbird  10
Common Grackle  10
Boat-tailed Grackle  15
American Goldfinch  10

Sunset Sunday

[Turkey Point, Cumberland County, NJ - Sunday, January 1, 2012.]