2014 December » BirdQuiz.net

A New Jersey winter ritual

Dec 292014

Today I decided to take advantage of my location and partake in one of the winter rituals for all birders here in New Jersey: a visit to the Barnegat Lighthouse jetty. This decision was based on a quartet of factors; the temperature was predicted to reach a relatively comfortable 42 degrees, the wind was calm, Razorbills and Dovekies appeared in multiple locations along the Jersey coast yesterday, and my impending trip to Florida later this week put me in the mood for sampling our winter birds. In other words: all systems go. I was worried that the trip would be fruitless when I arrived at the inlet to the sound of gunfire coming from a boat containing four hunters in the middle of the inlet, but thankfully they soon moved into the bay and out of sight. Birdlife along the jetty was relatively quiet while walking out (argh…hunters!!), but along the beach by the old 8th St. jetty I sat on a well-placed bale of hay and lost track of time while scoping through a flock of ~300 Common Eiders in every plumage possible. After all, time is a meaningless concept when Eiders are feeding nearby and the surf is providing the sonic backdrop on a warm day at an empty beach. A hen King Eider was reported to be in this location for the past few weeks, and indeed, I was able to find her twice, although she eluded photo documentation. What a pleasure to find her though; the bill of a King Eider appears to form an exaggerated Joker-like grin, so it was as if she was smiling at me upon being detected. Or maybe I was in the sun too long. Either way, I need to work on speeding up my digiscoping technique.

The regular species that make this jetty such a delight to visit in winter were all present, and many allowed close approach. Harlequin Ducks, Ruddy Turnstones, Purple Sandpipers, Dunlin, Ispwich Savannah Sparrows, Great Cormorants, Black Scoters, Long-tailed Ducks, Common Loons, and Red-throated Loons were all present. Alas, Dovekies and Razorbills were a no-show, or perhaps I spent too much time with my eyes peeled to the scope enjoying the Eider flock. I don’t mind. Here’s a sample of photos from today.

The view from near the end of the jetty looking back towards Ol’ Barney. Walking on the boulders can be dangerous if you’re not careful, as I found out today.

Part of the large flock of Common Eiders feeding just south of the Barnegat jetty.

A trio of male Harlequin Ducks, the highlight species for most birders at the jetty.

A pair of Ipswich-type Savannah Sparrows that was actively feeding in the wrack line alongside the jetty.

Ruddy Turnstones are reliable winter residents, usually feeding on rocks at the surf’s edge.

My 2014 birding highlights

Dec 252014

As 2014 draws to a close, it seems like an ideal time to look back at the highlights of the past birding year. This was my first full year of birding after retirement, so I was able to spend far more time in the field than in previous years. According to eBird I accumulated a respectable total of 263 species in New Jersey in 2014, with the vast majority of these species being seen while becoming acquainted with the new local patches here in Ocean County. Unlike the previous ten years which each featured a bird-themed vacation, this year was so filled with exploring the new local patches that it never seemed necessary to travel to more exotic locations. The result was only two new life birds, both seen in Cape May. Maybe I’m getting lazy. Maybe I’m becoming weary of the importance placed on numbers. Or maybe I’m becoming wiser. Because somehow I don’t mind the minimal extensions of the life list; the year still was filled with memorable outings and meeting new people, which is far more important to me these days. Here are my personal top 10 birding events of 2014.

10. Sedge Wren. An enjoyable late fall outing to Franklin Parker Preserve didn’t turn up the hoped-for Pine Siskins or Common Redpolls, but it did result in finding an unexpected Sedge Wren, apparently the first ever seen at that location. Isn’t it the surprises that make birding so enjoyable?

Sedge Wren at Franklin Parker Preserve 11/23/2014.
Photo by Lisa Ryan.

9. Garrett Mountain in spring. Garrett Mountain can be amazing on a good spring day, and this May when driving down Rte 80 from a three-day scouting excursion to northern NJ on an overcast and drizzly day, I decided to stop in at Garrett Mountain despite it being past noon. Well, after 5 minutes I went back to the car to get my camera because I could see that is was going to be ‘one of those days’. Birds were everywhere and there were few people around. Wow.

8. Audubon exhibit NYC. Its not exactly being in the field, but this year brought the second installment of the New-York Historical Society’s three-year exhibit of Audubon’s original paintings. I can vividly recall the elevator door opening and nearly gasping as a wall full of Audubons greeted me. The next few hours were spent with a magnifying glass in hand, examining the details that simply don’t appear in any reproduction. Who could have imagined a super day in April in NYC seeing nary a bird across the street in Central Park?

Gallery from ‘Audubon’s Aviary part 2’ exhibit at New-York Historical Society April 2014

7. A Snowy and Red-necked winter. In contrast to the winter of 2012-2013, which was a great year for Red Crossbills, the winter of 2013-2014 turned out to be an unprecedented banner year for both Snowy Owls and Red-necked Grebes in our area. Snowy Owls were seen in every county of the state, and seemingly every trip to the coast turned up yet another Snowy Owl in the dunes, with my personal high of six seen in one day. If it wasn’t for the Snowy Owls, the abundance of Red-necked Grebes would have been the top bird story of the winter here. When you see five Red-necked Grebes at one time at close range in the Shark River, you know it is a good year for them. We apparently can thank the abundance of lemmings and the nearly frozen Great Lakes for this double blessing. What will the winter of 2014-2015 bring us?

Barnegat Snowy Owl April 16, 2014

6. Tundra Swan T207. I reported a banded Tundra Swan in Whitesbog last winter, hoped that she would return, and indeed, this November she appeared back in NJ for the 5th time in the last seven years just 5 miles away from Whitesbog. The search for T207 no doubt will become an annual ritual for me.

5. Whiskered Tern, Cape May. I don’t chase rarities often these days, but it was mid-September and a mega-rare Whiskered Tern appeared for only the third time in North America (each time in Cape May), and it was lingering. Even if we didn’t see the tern, September in Cape May can be great. And it was.

Whiskered Tern, Cape May 9/16/2014

4. Northern Shrike in Whitesbog. It was early November and I was wondering if the Tundra Swans returned to Whitesbog. While driving around the dikes a sleek robin-sized bird caught my eye in the top of a tree. Northern Shrike! According to eBird it was only the second Northern Shrike found in NJ this year, and the only one for the winter season. I returned several times, re-finding it perhaps six times over a period of ten days for others to see, but it remained cautious and mobile and evasive. What a great bird.

Location of shrike sightings (marked with an ‘S’)

3. Cape May in fall. This was my first time staying overnight in Cape May in fall, sharing a house in mid-week for three marvelous days of good company, good weather, and good birds. The images are flying past me now: experiencing morning flight at Higbee dike, raptors constantly overhead, Rufous Hummingbird, 3 Eurasian Wigeons, huddled in back of the Northwood Center watching their backyard warblers. I’ll be back again next year.

Group photo on the porch at Cape May 10/10/2014

2. Boating tours of Barnegat Bay and Eared Grebe. One of the advantages of being retired is that it provides an opportunity to share my enthusiasm for birding with others. In July I became involved with the volunteer program at Cattus Island County Park, and more specifically their Early Bird Ornithology Tours, which provides access to seeing the birds of the bay from the comfort of sitting in a pontoon boat. The birding was good right through to our last outing at the end of September, when I spotted and photographed an Eared Grebe, which is on the NJ review list. It was the first time I had to fill out a report for the NJ bird records committee. Leading the boat tours was a wonderful experience that I look forward to continuing again in 2015.

Capt. Diane on the ‘Betty C”, our boat for the Barnegat Bay Birding Tours.

1. Canoeing the Sedge Islands. Starting on July 23 and continuing for eight trips scattered through Nov. 5, I was fortunate to explore the Sedge Islands of Island Beach State Park by canoe. Each of these trips had its own surprise, highlighted by sightings of up to 100 Brown Pelicans, seven Marbled Godwits, two Black Terns, dozens of Tricolored and Little Blue Herons, Caspian and Royal Terns, Red Knots, Piping Plover, American Bittern, Great Cormorant, and out-of-season Common Eider and Red-breasted Merganser. The birds were relatively tolerant of us, so we enjoyed seeing high-quality birds on each trip with relatively close access. Who could ask for more? The 2014 canoeing trips were weekly events beginning in late August; in 2015 they will begin in May or June when the shorebirds are present in breeding plumage. Hey, I’m looking forward to 2015 already.

Juvenile Royal Tern and Black Skimmers on the sand flats in Sedge Islands.

Black Skimmers and immature Royal Tern on the sand bar in Sedge Islands.

New photos and new quizzes

Dec 242014

There has been a flurry of new additions to the BirdQuiz collection as we end 2014. First, I have been busy sorting through backlogged photos and received submissions from other photographers, so many new photos are being added to the quizzes, resulting in higher quality photos and additional species to the North American-based quizzes. Second, I was able to create a new Birds of Ecuador quiz, featuring birds from the eastern slope of the Andes. Combined with the two previous quizzes on Western slope and central highland birds of Ecuador, it is a great introduction to the species that can be seen in this birding hotspot. Finally, I haven’t been to Europe often (and when I have been there it typically wasn’t a bird-oriented vacation), but I was able to start a new slideshow quiz containing photos of Birds of Europe. Enjoy these additions, and check back for further expansion of the collection in 2015.

Inca Jay, a species seen on the eastern slope of the Andes in Ecuador.

Eurasian Jackdaw, one of the species in our European Birds quiz.

Banded Snow Goose: from Nunavut to New Jersey

Dec 082014

Continuing on my recent theme of following up on sightings of banded birds, today’s story comes to us via Nunavut, Canada. One week ago, while scanning through the Snow Geese at the Brig portion of Forsythe NWR to see if a Ross’s Goose might be mixed in with the flock, a cacophony of voices from behind alerted me to new arrivals. If you’ve never heard a large flock of Snow Geese arriving or leaving, it is quite a thrill….one of those moments when everybody present simply gets quiet, listens, and smiles.

After the newcomers settled in and I returned back to scanning, I noticed that one of the birds had a neck collar. Just a week previously I spotted a banded Tundra Swan, and found out that she was banded on the north shore of Alaska and was returning back to NJ for at least the fifth year (see the previous post for details).

Banded Snow Goose; sighted at Forsythe NWR NJ, Dec. 1, 2014

Having such a rewarding experience with reporting the Tundra Swan, I jumped on-line and submitted the sighting of Snow Goose TJ21, hoping to learn more about their travels. Today the response arrived, and indeed this bird also is a long-distance traveler. Snow Geese breed in the Arctic, and can belong to either the Lesser Snow Goose or Greater Snow Goose sub-species, although the two sub-species are essentially indistinguishable in the field. Snow Geese seen in the US can breed in coastal locations anywhere from Siberia to the far northern coasts of Alaska and Canada, and eastward to Greenland, but they tend to migrate fairly straight southward, not across the continent (unlike the Tundra Swans that winter in eastern US but breed in northern Alaska, traveling across the continent). Some Snow Geese winter as far south as Mexico. The Lesser Snow Goose predominates in Western and Central Canada, whereas Greater Snow Goose breeds in eastern Canada and Greenland. TJ21 is a female that was banded in August 2013, and in agreement with the geographical distribution of Snow Goose populations, she is a Greater Snow Goose. The banding site was 2,333 miles away, on Bylot Island (73.13333, -79.83333) in Nunavut, Canada, which is west of Baffin Bay. If you’re like me, you have little idea of where Bylot, Nunavut, or Baffin Bay are (other than that its somewhere between NYC and Santa’s home), so the following map should help. A quick look at the map shows that, consistent with the expected migration pattern, she bred in eastern Canada, and traveled nearly directly southward ending up on the New Jersey coast.

It’s 2,333 miles in a straight line from Bylot Island to Forsythe NWR.

I’d love to know if she was ever re-sighted elsewhere, but that information was not provided. Apparently Snow Geese migrate quickly, with few stopovers. And are all the Snow Geese at Forsythe Greater Snow Geese, or is there a mix of Lesser and Greater? Has anybody documented banded Lesser Snow Geese here in NJ?

The Return of Tundra Swan T207

Dec 032014

Note: this post is from 2014. For the more recent 2016 update, click here.

This morning I spotted a Tundra Swan that was banded with a neck collar. But this wasn’t just any swan; it has a history.

Let’s start the story by going back in time. In November 2013 I became aware of a Tundra Swan with a neck collar that was seen at Whitesbog. Bill Elrick spotted this banded swan but was unable to identify the band number. I went back the next day and was able to read the band identification number through my scope and get documentation photos. After reporting the sighting and photo to the Bird Banding Lab (https://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbl/bblretrv/index.cfm), I learned that this swan, T207, was banded about as far away as you can get from New Jersey and still be in North America. This swan was a female that was hatched in 2005 or earlier and was banded in July 2006 20 miles from Nuiqsut on the far north shore of Alaska, which is ~150 mi east of Barrow, and only ~8 miles from the Arctic Ocean. This was the fourth time that this bird was re-sighted since she was banded, with all sightings being concentrated within a small region of New Jersey. In addition to our Nov. 2013 sighting at Whitesbog, she was spotted in Nov. 2011 near Forsythe NWR (38 miles from Whitesbog), in Nov. 2010 ~6 miles from Whitesbog, and the first sighting that I am aware of was by Bob Cunningham in Whitesbog in Nov. 2008. In other words, if we make the reasonable assumption that she is returning to the site in Alaska where she was hatched and banded, then she is traveling ~6,700 miles round-trip between Alaska and NJ, perhaps each year.

T207 traveled at least 3,323 miles from her banding location in Alaska to her winter locations in New Jersey.

It’s 3,323 miles from T207’s banding location in Alaska to her winter locations in New Jersey.

Locations in New Jersey where Tundra Swan T207 has been sighted.

The wonderful thing about submitting information such as a banded bird, is that you are drawn into learning more about that species. I learned that Tundra Swans that breed in Alaska travel southwards in either of two patterns. A population that breeds in western Alaska heads southwards towards British Columbia and then travels further south along the Pacific coast, primarily wintering in California, while a second population that breeds on the north shore of Alaska heads eastward from British Columbia, migrating across Canada and the Great Lakes region to the east coast of the US, with most wintering in the Chesapeake Bay region and the North Carolina coast. Tundra Swans are known to live up to 24 years in the wild, but average a 15-20-year lifespan.

I was wondering if T207 would return back to our area, so when the swans returned again in November, I drove through Whitesbog occasionally, scanning through the flock of up to ~90 Tundra Swans, hoping to see her again, but to no avail. Did she decide to go elsewhere? Was it too early in the season for her to return? Did she meet an early demise? (although by the aging criterion described above, she is still a youngster). Today I decided to look elsewhere, and finally, in a flooded bog ~ 5 miles away from Whitesbog (39.90260, -74.54057), I saw a distant bird in my binocs with a neck collar. Could it be her, or another swan visiting from the arctic? After quickly setting up the scope, I was happy to see the identifier T207 on a powder blue neck collar. She arrived back again in NJ for at least the 5th time in the last 7 years, and remarkably returned to within ~5 miles of where she was spotted in 2008, 2010, and 2013. Somehow it shouldn’t be surprising that birds have the remarkable ability to travel more than 3,000 miles and then navigate back to the same location, but I’m still amazed. And I’m thrilled that we have her back again here in New Jersey for another winter. I’ll be looking for her again next year.

Tundra Swan T207 Dec. 3, 2014