birding trip post #2

Apparently nobody is into guessing around here. Or into a bit of detective work. I’m pretty sure there’s enough information in my last post to make for a good chance of getting it right.

Anyway, my morning balcony experience wasn’t misleading. By day’s end, I had tallied 17 new species for my life list. In addition to the five of the morning, I identified Boat-tailed Grackle, Black-necked Stilt, Blue Grosbeak, Glossy Ibis, Piping Plover, Seaside Sparrow, Willet, Snowy Egret, Black Rail, Clapper Rail, Chuck-will’s-widow, and Saltmarsh Sparrow. Aren’t bird names cool? Who would name something ‘Chuck-will’s-widow’? A lot of the names are appropriate, though: a Blue Grosbeak really is blue, a Black-necked Stilt really does look like it’s on stilts, a Boat-tailed Grackle really does have a boat of a tail, …

In the evening I went to an isolated spot on one of the creeks that runs through the extensive salt marshes in the area. This turned out to be a remarkably unearthly experience. I was miles from any other people in the middle of thousands of acres of marsh grasses with the sun having set and it rapidly becoming dark. But what made it most weird was the bird sounds. Birds usually sing the most during the early morning hours but there are a few species that call after the sun sets and I was hoping to find some of those. And I did. But I hadn’t anticipated (a) how much of a chorus there was going to be and (b) how utterly bizarre it was going to sound. Basically none of the calls were ones with which I had any previous acquaintance. But it wasn’t just a lack of prior familiarity. These species just sound weird like they’re from some other planet. Listen for yourself: Clapper Rail, Black Skimmer, Willet, Marsh Wren, and Seaside Sparrow (clicking on the links will take you to audio samples from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology). These were the species that provided a constant backdrop of sound. In combination, they made for quite the orchestra.

I don’t have proper equipment for bird photography, but here are some pictures from the day. This is a picture of one of the most famous birding spots in the country (among others, Alexander Wilson, John James Audubon, Roger Tory Peterson, and David Sibley birded here). I counted 44 species in this area.

One of the things this place is well-known for is as a breeding site for Least Terns. These have quickly become one of my favourite birds. Think swallows dipping over a field in the summer and then transpose the birds to white and the field to a beach. They’re really cute when one member of a pair returns to the nest with a gleaming little fish, lands near the nest, and then takes little, mincing steps towards the mate before offering the fish. Anyway, there are at least half a dozen nesting Least Terns in this photo—good luck finding them!

Seeing birds on their nests or with their young is one of the lovely aspects of birdwatching this time of the year. Here’s a Mute Swan with four cygnets:

And here is an American Oystercatcher on it’s nest:

And here’s it’s mate annoyed that I’m in the vicinity:

One of the things I had not expected to find in New Jersey was prickly pear cactus:

Another surprise was the size of the horseshoe crabs all over the beach. For some reason I always thought of these as small creatures. But this one was pretty near two feet long with its tail, which makes for a bit of fearsome looking creature:

Finally, a picture of two Laughing Gulls, which you may remember was the first addition to my life list yesterday morning. It turns out that they are very common around here, as in this is the species of gull that you’ll see on every store parking lot around here. But in Ithaca people get very excited about seeing one of these (there has been quite a bit of chatter on the email list-serve about one that showed up in Ithaca yesterday). Anyway, I think these are one of the more dapper-looking gulls. It’s too bad that my camera can’t quite do them justice.

Sydney