Carolina Chickadee

Sometimes it is the "easy" birds that are the most difficult.  A friend from Massachussets, John Mitchell, was down in the area on business and wanted to do birding trip with me a week ago Friday.  Prior to the trip, I sent him the NJ Bird List and asked him to identify what species he wanted to see/photograph.  Based on his Target List, I decided we would start our trip at Barnegat Light, then drive down to Cape May for a few hours and then hopefully have enough daylight left to finish off the day at Brigantine (Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge). It was a great day of birding, with good weather and mostly very cooperative birds that allowed us to hit all 3 birding locations. Out of the 71 species we saw that day, 16 were on John's Target List including at least 3 lifers. Although most species were very cooperative (one mixed flock of Dunlin and Purple Sandpipers actually landed at John's feet as he was photographing some nearby Harlequin Ducks), it always seems that one lifer species just will not cooperate. For John that day, it turned was the Carolina Chickade! Although, both Carolina (south) and Black-capped Chickadee (north) are common here in New Jersey, there is only a narrow band in central New Jersey where their ranges overlap. The Carolina Chickadee, especially down in Cape May, should have been an easy bird to find and then photograph.   

                               Carolina Chickadee

                         Black-capped Chickadee

Long-tailed Duck

The jetty at Barnegat Lighhouse in winter is one of my favorite birding locations. With temperatures rising into the 40's and winds out the west-northwest, weather conditions yesterday and today were nearly perfect (a little windy) for trips out to the end of the jetty. Here Harlequin Ducks, Purple Sandpipers and Dunlin can be so tame that it is almost guaranteed that you will have great, almost at your feet, looks at all three species. Other species (including all 3 Scoters, Common Eider, Long-tailed Duck) are also usually seen but rare are they as cooperative. However, today was was one of those rare days when Long-tailed Ducks nearly stole the show away from the Harlequins. This Long-tailed Drake was especially cooperative.

American Woodcock

Two Snow Storms in the last week have dropped at least three feet of snow here in South Jersey, which has had a significant impact on our local birds especially ground foraging species.  One of these species is the American Woodcock, normally a very secretive species. Under normal conditions, I would either locate an American Woodcock too late in the day for a decent photograph or only see it as one explosively took off close to my feet. However, knowing that American Woodcock have been forced out of the woods by the deep snows, I drove down to Cape May today hoping to get some decent photographs of one. It seemed like just about any bare patch of over a few square feet harbored some birds, mostly White-throated Sparrows and American Robins, with a few Fox Sparrows, Northern Cardinals, and/or Yellow-rumped Warblers mixed in. Then with just a little more effort, I managed to locate two American Woodcock. 

"Rare" Gulls

Just before I needed to head back to the Duluth Airport last Monday, we visited Canal Park at the entrance to Duluth Harbor to scan the Gull flock for rarities.  I was hoping for an opportunity to get my lifer Iceland Gull (missed) and/or to photograph a Thayer's or an Adult Glaucous Gull.   Unfortunately the gulls were too far off to photograph.  Although, I did relearn an important lesson.  One of the first gulls I noticed was a juvenile Great Black-backed Gull. To me no big deal, Great Black-backed Gulls are common all year round here at the Jersey Shore, so I continued scanning the flock to locate the juvenile Glaucous Gull my guide had just spotted.  However for my guide, it was the Great Black-back Gull that was the rare visitor to Duluth, to him the Glaucous Gulls were relatively common.  I had traveled out to Duluth and then braved their sub-zero temperatures to see birds that were very rare back home, but had forgotten that what I considered to be a common bird back home just might be the real rarity in Duluth.

Juvenile Great Black-backed Gull

Juvenile Glaucous Gull

Pine Grosbeaks

One of my reasons to travel out to Duluth this past weekend was to photograph winter finches. At a length of 9", the Pine Grosbeak is the largest of these finches and is one of the most colorful. Fortunately for me, we found a flock of at least 20 very cooperative Pine Grosbeaks at one of feeding station setup close to the road in the Sax-Zim Bog Area.  Definately a species worth my braving Subzero Temperatures (-15 one morning) to photograph.

Male

Female

Juvenile Male