Thoughtful Thursday: Look Closely

[Sanderling, Avalon, NJ Oct 30 2013.]

“Look closely at the present you are constructing:
it should look like the future you are dreaming.”
― Alice Walker

Wordless Wednesday: Woodies

Swainson's Hawk and Other Cape May Happenings

 [Dark juvenile Swainson's Hawk at the Cape May Hawkwatch today. Full disclosure: the bird had just been banded and released.]

I'm still more than a bit dubious about counting the Swainson's Hawk that was captured, banded and then brought for release to Cape May Point State Park today. I suppose you could argue, and people did argue, that if it hadn't been trapped and banded I might have seen it in a more free-flying way. I don't know, because I didn't have a choice or a chance to find out. It was a neat bird to see, anyway, with or without bling on its leg.

I am counting the two Lapland Longspurs that flew by the walk I was co-leading at the Meadows this morning, getting by before I could even open my mouth and heading towards Cape May City. Somewhere out there someone may be wondering why I didn't send out a text message to Keekeekerr about these, and the answer is I was busy leading a walk, and also that they weren't exactly chaseable, headed to parts unknown as they were.

Yet another rare bird seen today was the Eurasian Wigeon, or I should say Wigeons, since there was a male on the plover pond in the Meadows this morning and a female, nicely brown-headed, in Bunker Pond by the hawkwatch this afternoon.

Counting, schmounting. By far the best show of the day was provided by magically swirling and landing Tree Swallows, descending to feed on bayberries and then rising en masse, only to do it again and again, holding me and the whole group spellbound.

[Tree Swallows on Bayberry, this morning at the South Cape May Meadows.]

Wordless Wednesday: Kinglets

Finally, a Lincoln's

[Lincoln's Sparrow, Higbee Beach WMA, NJ on Saturday, October 19, 2013. As I wrote in a previous blog, "a bird of the Song Sparrow ilk but more delicate, with fine crisp streaks, especially on the breast, with a softly buffy breast and malar and a peaked crown and an eyering."]

Patience trumps stringing (see post below about stringing) and the proof is in the Lincoln's Sparrow that finally appeared and even posed for the camera at Higbee Beach WMA, NJ this morning. Actually, it didn't just appear, it was a gift from Virginia Rettig, who knew Beth and I needed Lincoln's for the year and texted us about the one she found in a corner of the "tower" field at Higbee. Virginia even hung onto the bird until we got there, not simple with the slightly skulky Lincoln's. We in turn handed the bird off to a couple other folks. Nice when things work out, finally.

10 species of sparrows eventually populated our Higbee list in only an hour of birding, not bad at all. That's 10 counting towhee and junco as sparrows, which they are, so it's still fair. It really was a fine morning of birding, with activity seemingly everywhere, stuff like Black-throated Green and Nashville Warblers still around, many Eastern Meadowlarks as flyovers at Cape May Point.  I'm taking a risk not being in Cape May right now, since a Swainson's Hawk was discovered on Nummy Island this morning and that bird and who knows what else are both likely to show in Cape May while I'm home doing yard work 10 miles north of the Point. Oh well, I'm enjoying all the Yellow-rumped Warblers and White-throated Sparrows in the yard.

[This hatch-year White-crowned Sparrow was one of the 10 sparrow species at Higbee this morning.]

[Nashville Warbler gets a good scratch in, also at Higbee Beach WMA.]