Fri-D: Female Redhead

You'd be tempted to call the right-hand bird a female Ring-necked Duck, since the bird on the left is a fairly obvious male Ring-necked Duck. But. The female bird is a bit bigger, has a rounded crown that is almost flat on top, slightly bigger bill, has no eyering, no white at the base of the bill, is a fairly pale soft brown (the back is certainly not dark). That's a long list of features to rule out female Ring-necked Duck. A scaup? Nope, no pale area behind the bill, too pale overall, and there's a bit of a pale line behind the eye that scaup don't show.  So what is it? What's left? A female Redhead, that's what, one of two that have been pleasing birders at the entrance pond to Edwin B. Forsythe NWR, NJ since November 29, 2013.

Snowstorm Tabulation: 26!

Maybe you're sick of reading blogs about Snowy Owls or maybe you're not, but regardless I'd pay attention, because this is an event that may not repeat in our lifetime.  Here's a tabulation based on eBird and hearsay of the approximate number of snowies present in NJ right now:

NJ Meadowlands - 1
Newark Airport - 1
Liberty State Park - 1
Sandy Hook - 2+
Sea Bright - 1
Jackson - 1
Cedar Creek - 1
National Park - 1
Barnegat Light - 1
Holgate - 2-5
Forsythe NWR - 2
Ocean City - 1
Corson's Inlet - 1
Avalon - 2 (may have moved on)
Stone Harbor - 4 (as determined by Mike Crewe's examination of plumages)
Two Mile Beach  - 1
North Cape May - 1
Currently undisclosed Cumberland County location - 2

That makes 26! Some of these may be duplicates, but on the other hand in some places there may be more than indicated. As Rick Wright points out in his blog, it's not yet on the order of the 1926-27 flight, but it certainly is exciting stuff!

Thoughtful Thursday: Landing

"There's a historical milestone in the fact that our Apollo 11 landing on the moon took place a mere 66 years after the Wright Brothers' first flight."
- Buzz Aldrin

Wordless Wednesday: Snow

Snowy Owl Movement in Perspective

[Snowy Owl at Stone Harbor Point, NJ, November 30, 2013, one of two that were there. Digiscoped from a very respectful distance with an iPhone. Please, please don't harass these birds. I really struggled with whether or not to report these birds, but one had been reported there before and I knew people were looking, and had met some that had missed it already that morning, so for better or worse I banked on the good sense of fellow birders. And fellow photographers.]

If my calculations are correct, there are at least 13 different Snowy Owls in New Jersey right now, based on what's been reported to eBird (this link will take you to the fall 2013 Snowy Owl report), jerseybirds, or to me by word of mouth. The word of mouth bird is one apparently on Holgate, which so far I have not seen show up in electronic reports. From north to south:

Liberty State Park - 1
Sandy Hook and environs - 3
Island Beach - 1
Barnegat Light - 1
Holgate - 1
Edwin B. Forsythe NWR - 2
National Park - 1
Corson's Inlet - 1
Stone Harbor - 2

Thirteen is a lot of Snowy Owls, and I thought this was the most in my lifetime of living in NJ, but the "big black book," Birds of New Jersey (Walsh, Elia, Kane and Halliwell 1999) states there were 13 in 1991-1992.  More interestingly, it further notes:

"Probably the largest influx of Snowy Owls was in 1926-27 when at least 150 birds were shot and many others seen from Long Island to Northern New Jersey (Bull, 1964). Only 15 birds were documented in New Jersey during that flight, but far fewer observers were afield 70 years ago than are today." (p. 331)

Many other Snowy Owls are being found in other northeastern states, and I will be very surprised if more snowies are not found in NJ - e.g. Cumberland County in the southwest and the northwestern counties of the state have been silent so far with this flight, and there certainly is plenty of habitat in both places.