Saltmarsh Weekend

I've spent most of the last two days in salt marsh, yesterday posting refuge boundaries at Forsythe via airboat (and seeing more salt sparrows in one day than I have in a lifetime of looking); today, completing my third SHARP secretive marshbird survey at Tuckerton, where the Saltmarsh Sparrows are feeding young, some of them, anyway. Tuckerton was even more riddled with herons than usual, including 2 Tricolored, one Little Blue, a half-dozen Great Blues (post breeding dispersers, I guess), and many Black-crowned Night-herons.

If all goes well, tomorrow will be saltmarsh day 3 - the kayak's loaded in the truck, as is the waterproof (I hope) camera bag. Hope to get there at dawn, well before the crazies and their jet skis. . .

 [Glossy Ibis hunting Tuckerton high marsh. I love the color of Spartina patens in mid-summer - make that colorS. Ibis colors ain't bad, either.]

[The saltmarsh is riddled with Seaside Dragonlets now, by far the most common dragonfly of saltmarsh and the only one that breeds in saltwater.] 

[One of those little changes you notice only by repeat visits to a place. There haven't been Tree Swallows to speak of at Tuckerton (Great Bay Boulevard) on my previous visits - no nest boxes there, or none that I've seen. But the two top left and third from top right are juv Tree's, accompanied by parents that have moved them to good feeding grounds. Barn Swallows have been there all along - down here, they ought to be called dock swallows, since they're nesting under docks. The bottom left is a juv Barn, the second from top right is an adult female Barn.]

Almost Wordless Wednesday

After 25 years of working in nature centers, answering calls from people complaining about some woodpecker banging on their house. . .

[. . . I finally got one of my own. Several actually, apparently a brood of Hairy Woodpeckers. At least it's a quality species! Note the red's in the "wrong" place - in many woodpeckers, juveniles of both sexes get some red on the crown.]

Tern Tips + The Word from the Forest

Before my mind was clouded on Saturday with, um, pork, yeah, that's it, pork (beer had nothing to do with it, it was all the pig roast. . . ), I took some time at Cape May Point State Park to recalibrate on terns. If you don't get to look at them every day, and even if you do, Common (top) and Forster's Terns can be annoyingly similar. When you do see them regularly, you can get fancy and special and talk about the Common's more narrow-based wings, buoyant flight, smaller bill, rounder bottom. . . all true, but all relative. Less relative is grayness of adults in summer - Common's are, Forster's aren't, they're white. For perfect views, close photos, or in the hand, check out the pattern of the outer tail feathers of these two - Peter Pyle's I.D. Guide, Part II, has a great set of illustrations on page 717. Dark outer web on Common, dark innner web on Forster's. This Forster's, by the way, is a bit nasty in that the primaries are very worn, with little pale "bloom," and thus are showing about as dark as you see on the wingtip of this species. Compare the Forster's Terns in the "Worldless Wednesday" post below.

Both photos above were taken Saturday afternoon. Did you notice the color band on the Common's leg?

At the pig roast, Vince Elia commented to me that he drove through Belleplain the other day and heard not an Ovenbird - remember, I was clicking 80+ there in May (check the archive). Those OVEN's are still there, in fact more of them, since not only the adults are present but their young of the year, too. They're just quiet, and busy - molting. We banded 2 young-of-the-year Ovenbirds in Bear Swamp, Cumberland County today - not to mention a young Kentucky Warbler. We also caught an adult female Worm-eating Warbler with a brood patch showing no sign of receding - perhaps a bird involved with or recently finished with a second nesting. The adult Black-and-white Warbler pictured below was in heavy molt, a major reason why the forests are so quiet in late summer. Molting takes energy, lots of it.

This is not to say nothing's singing - we heard pretty much every expected species in full song from 5:30 a.m. to 5:45 a.m., including both Summer and Scarlet Tanagers. Then most everybody shut down, with only intermittent vocalizations thereafter.

[Sorry for the dark blurry phone-pic, but note the molt going on in this adult male Black-and-white Warbler's wing. The outer 3 primaries are worn and dull after a year's worth of use; the inner ones are new or still growing in. He's missing most of his wing coverts, too. Virtually all adult songbirds undergo a complete molt after breeding.]

[Feed me! Feed Me! Feed ME! Eastern Kingbird fledglings beg from their parent (second from left) along Bayshore Road Saturday.]

Wordless Wednesday

Summer Things

[I paused before work last week to watch the Purple Martin colony at Forsythe - one of the best, if not the best, in the state. I'm not sure this Eastern Comma butterfly would agree . . .though martin watchers create traffic jams at Forsythe's entrance.]

There are pros and cons to this summer thing in south Jersey.  The crowds and traffic . . . ugh. At least we have Greenheads to keep the tourists at bay. Not many migrants to be had, though yesterday we paddled around the Green Creek marsh on the bay side and not only got away from the crowds, but flushed a couple Spotted Sandpipers (presumed migrants). A more interesting flush was the immature male Northern Harrier, which rocketed from a dense patch of phragmites at close range and was immediately set upon by Red-winged Blackbirds, which relentlessly pursued this bird until it was out of sight, escaping at high speed by beating its wings as rapidly as a Sharp-shinned Hawk, in fact, I might well have called it one at distance. The marsh is riddled with Clapper Rails, and we glimpsed a dingy youngster with traces of black down sticking through the feathers.

Then, the fireworks. They float this barge every year off the west end of the Cape May Canal, near the ferry terminal, and spend what must be a bargeload of money on the pyrotechnics. Call me a guilty envionmentalist - all that smoke and fire can't be good for the atmosphere, and I'm not sure the local avifauna, bats, etc. are so thrilled by the explosions, either. But I go watch them anyway.

"I'm glad you have a plan for this," she said. yeah, I had a plan. It went like this: Stop at WaWa for iced coffee in our travel mugs (no paper - the guilt thing), then the liquor store for Frangelica, and drive as close as we could get, not very, to the festivities. Drop a pin on the iPhone's map and label it TRUCK so we can find it again, pour Frangelica into cups, and start walking and sipping. Buy a hot dog along the way. . .

 [North Cape May Fireworks Sunday night.]

[Fireworks in my own backyard. . .who needs explosions and smoke?]