Three Weeks

 [Green Heron flies over Cape May Point, NJ this morning, an arriving bird seen from one of the dune crossovers. Click to enlarge photos.]

Yeah, so, it's been three weeks since I last blogged and I hope people are still checking this site now and then.  I didn't die or anything, it just feels that way a little bit when you can't be out doing what you love, meaning birding and naturalizing and even just soaking up the spring sunshine.

It's all about to bust open, too.  We spent the first part of the morning watching birds arrive in Cape May from Delaware, looking south from the dunes as egrets crossed the bay and swallows swept past.  A jaeger or two hunted in the rips, some fancy looking Bonaparte's gulls passed, gannets offshore, &c.  Then we poked around Cape May Point State Park, where a Prairie Warbler sang and the yellow-rumpeds thronged with Palm Warblers and looked especially sharp in their breeding plumage. 

I feel as though I ought to have some conclusive remarks about a three week absence from the field.  A lot changes in three weeks in April.  That's about as conclusive as I've got right now, that and a commitment not to miss three weeks in spring anymore. . .

[Flock of Short-billed Dowitchers fresh from Delaware, Cape May Point today.]

[Fancy Yellow-rumped Warbler in breeding plumage, Cape May Point State Park today.]

Luck

 [Eurasian Tree Sparrow, Cape May Point, NJ, April 6, 2014.  Originally found by Rob and Lisa Fanning a couple weeks ago, this was a rare NJ lifer for me.]

"Well, I finally got the damn sparrow," I told Mike Crewe and Glen Davis, meaning no disrespect to the Eurasian Tree Sparrow that seems to have found its way to Cape May Point under its own power and was discovered there a couple weeks ago by Rob and Lisa Fanning.  Everyone's been seeing it, everyone but me it seems like, but only because I hadn't taken the time to look.  Today I did look, and got lucky.  Very lucky, because I have no patience when it comes to staked out feeder birds, and lo and behold I walked up and the bird was at the feeder for me to see and photograph. Tick. It seems to me this bird will likely be accepted as a "natural" vagrant from the St. Louis population by the NJRBC; see Mike Crewe's excellent discussion of the bird here.

The Pine Warbler photo below was also a bit of luck, in that I set up to photograph it as it fed on a Cape May Point lawn, and lo and behold once again, the bird fed its way toward me, eventually giving me full-frame photo ops.  I'll take it.

[Pine Warbler, Cape May Point, NJ this morning.]

Comfort in the Familiar

[American Robin at the National Conservation Training Center, West Virginia. I've always loved the intricate patterning on American Robins - which most people never notice.  But look at the fine markings on the face and throat.  This is one special bird.]

As alluded to in my previous post, there hasn't been much time for birds, birding or blogging of late, but this afternoon I emerged from the classroom at the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia determined to see some nature, and was not disappointed. Four species of woodpeckers - Downy, Red-bellied, Pileated and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker - foraged right outside my room, and an Eastern Phoebe sang cheerfully from the eves.  A Red-shouldered Hawk called angrily when a Red-tailed Hawk flew overhead. "Only" the American Robins posed for photos, but that was okay.  I love robins.  A passing classmate in the training I'm taking shared the sentiment, and we paused together to watch the robins forage on the roadside lawns for a while. 

I remember talking with a geologist friend once about how we go about orienting ourselves to new or strange places.  For him, it was the rocks, the folds in the earth, and the commonality of processes that made them.  For me, it's always been the birdlife, whether watching egrets and herons in an unfamiliar African wetland or robins and woodpeckers doing what they do at a North American location.  What would we do without robins, woodpeckers, phoebes, hawks. . .

Here It Is

[Ring-billed Gull, Norbury's Landing, NJ, March 23, 2014. Click to enlarge.]

Here it is, the one bird photo I took this weekend.  I suppose I could challenge you to think of all the reasons this isn't a third year Herring Gull or a Mew Gull, for practice, but I won't.  I think breeding plumage gulls are stunningly beautiful, common or not, which is why this Ring-billed Gull that cooperated so nicely at Norbury's Landing, NJ merited a photo.

Only one photo for a whole weekend seems to indicate a poor weekend, and birding wise it was.  Worse, I'm coming into a serious period of what will be bird-deficit-disorder (BDD) circumstances, involving three weeks worth of training, and a week of regular work, and not  lot of time or place to dally with the birds. I'll try to keep things up here at the Freiday Bird Blog, but it's going to be tough, so I ask your forbearance and encourage you to ride along until things are right again. We might be looking at this gull together for a little while, and not much else, longing for free times with arriving spring migrants to share with each other.

Wordless Wednesday: Oystercatchers

[Stone Harbor Point, Sunday March 16, 2014.  Click to enlarge.]