A Few Things. . .

 

 

 [Hermit Thrush, my first of fall, along the Cape May dunes this morning. Click to enlarge photos.]

Today frankly wasn't as good a birding day in Cape May, NJ as I hoped or predicted, but there were a few things around - more kinglets, a few warblers, jaegers still out in the rips, and a few hawks, especially earlier in the day. I bounced from Higbee to Cape May Point to the state park, where my favorite bird of the day appeared. While I was walking along the dune trail at the state park, this medium sized bird flushed from the dunes but proved to be a decidedly non-dune species, a Hermit Thrush that perhaps had come in off the water and taken shelter in the first available vegetation. The state park also had a couple of Swainson's thrushes and 10-ish species of warblers, and the male Eurasian Wigeon was showing nicely in Bunker Pond, as did an American Bittern for a little while. I wound up with 81 species in about 2.5 hours at the state park, not too shabby.

If you're wondering, by the way, why this blog is all of sudden getting more posts than usual, it's the government shutdown - it's furlough day 8 for me, and with nothing to do but bird, take pictures, and blog about it, well, that's what I've been doing. I'm sure this is not what the republicans have in mind. . .of course, I'm not getting paid, either, so all is not sunshine and roses. Especially given the forecast, which has rain and east winds ahead, not exactly an idyllic forced vacation.

 

[This female Black-throated Blue Warbler's face is stained with pokeweed berries - the purple stems are pokeweed - though she found a caterpillar as well as berries in this patch.]

[Blue-faced Meadowhawk along the Cape May Point State Park trails this afternoon, a very cool bug.]