Solitary Sands

Today was more about packing and shopping than birding. Tomorrow I head out for a few days of surveys off the Delmarva Peninsula.

As a result, expect no work on drawings of Pine Warblers, and no erudite elucidations on the bird life of Cape May for the next week or so, at least not from this Cusimaniac.

Today, between jaunts to CVS and the laundromat, I did however find three very dapper olive bespangled with white breeding plumaged Solitary Sandpipers (Not so solitary after all, are we, Eh?) and a first "summer" Bonaparte's Gull on a recently filled rain-pool at the Beanery. First Solitaries I've seen this year, and handsome little Tringines they are. Unusual spot for a Boanparte's too, and interesting to see him pulling up earthworms near the recently mulched and flooded cherry saplings.

If you don't see a post within a week, just assume we needed a bigger boat, and Hooper is now shark-chow....

bit by bit

So the little Pine Warbler on gray Fabriano paper is coming along nicely-though  there will, of course be ample opportunity to screw it up, as it is in its nascent stages.

When it's too rainy to go birding (and mercifully raining it is for the first time, like, this month. Thank Christ. The lack of precipitation was getting worrisome), well, then; make your own birds!

Some recent pics

It's too late, and I'm too lethargic to write this Saturday, but here are some recent snapshots from around Cape May.

Ahhh, photos-the blogger's wit...

A strangely cooperative Wilson's Snipe at the Meadows

Ditto

a female Fence Lizard- note the bars and spots

Another under-rated beauty. A fresh male Tree Swallow in Spring

 

a female Eastern Tailed Blue

a Glossy Ibis dispatching a Carpenter Frog

The red-orange of a male Oystercatcher's bill in April

a Piping Plover at sunset

Just admire for a moment the gleaming silvery incandescence of the primaries of a Forster's Tern in April

because Forster's Terns are fun

Knots, S.B. Dows, Black-bellies, and Dunlin on Nummy's Island

The Toadflax brightens

Gelochelidon & Good Nature writing

I was on a quest for Whimbrel this afternoon, and I found them in a fail-safe, "if Whimbrel are currently in New Jersey, this is where they will be" spot called Shellbay Landing, 9 miles north of Cape May Point, on the Great Saltmarsh.

(As an aside,  I never cease to marvel at how cool it is that there is a real, actual, place on the map called "The Great Saltmarsh", and that I live next to it.)

In addition to the Whimbrel (or more accurateley, Hudsonian Curlews, as the brown-rumped Nearctic variety is properly known) a few Saltmarsh Sparrows were giving their weak, sizzling songs. Like an anemic Seaside Sparrows, and not as "hot-wire thrown in cold water" sizzly as a Nelson's Sparrow.

But best of all, with its wings as angled and swept back as a Klingon Bird-of-Prey Ship, was perhaps my most favored of a favorite group of birds, the Laughing Swallow of the Nile. Gelochelidon nilotica, or more mundanely, the Gull-billed Tern. My first of the year, he was here hunting fiddler crabs. At times they hunt Frogs in ponds, at others they parasitize Common Terns, on the edges of whose colonies a single pair usually likes to nest. I have watched them get mobbed by pairs of Piping Plovers whose downy fledgelings they try to pick off from the sand, or pick off Whiptail lizards from dunes. Found on every continent but Antarctica,  yet common on none, Gull billed Terns are in the running with Swallow-tailed Kites, Snowy Egrets, and Long-tailed Jaegers for most elegant avian predator. At least in my book.

Meanwhile, this evening back at Perfidious Heights (ie, the Vogel Apartment) I was looking in the library for information on the fledging and egg-dates of American Woodcock, so taken was I with the sighting of the Woodcock brood at East Point Light earlier this week.

I started with Arthur Cleveland Bent,  and never really got any farther, for this is how the venerable, learned, Rabbi Bent begins:

This mysterious hermit of the alders, this recluse of the boggy thickets, this wood nymph of crepuscular habits is a common bird in our Eastern States, widely known, but not intimately known. Its quiet retiring habits do not lead to human intimacy. It may live almost in our midst unnoticed. Its needs are modest, its habitat is circumscribed, and it clings with tenacity to its favorite haunts even when closely encroached upon by civilization."

When did the convention in nature/scientific writing begin to favor the bland, boring, and banal above the descriptive and emotive? And more importantly, why?

Thumbing through Bent's Life Histories of North American Birds entry regarding the Woodcock (then known as Rubicola, not Scolopax, minor) I then hit upon this most remarkable entry by a most remarkable man.

"Audubon (1840) describes the actions of the anxious mother in the following well chosen words: She scarcely limps, nor does she often flutter along the ground, on such occasions; but with half exetnded wings, inclining her head to one side, and uttering a soft mumur, she moves to and fro, urging her young to hasten towards some secure spot beyond the reach of their enemies. Regardless of her own danger, she would to all appearance gladly suffer herself to be seized, could she be assured that by such sacrifice she might ensure the safety of her brood. On an occasion of this kind, I saw a female woodcock lay herself down in the middle of a road, as if she were dead, while her little ones, five in number, were endeavoring on feeble legs to escape from a pack of naughty boys, who had already caught one of them, and were kicking it over the dust in barbarous sport. The mother might have shared the same fate, had I not happend to issue from the thicket, and interpose on her behalf.

Um, Wow. Not only well chosen words, but a well placed heart from one so often characterized as a blood-thirsty bird shooter.

Like a Gull-billed Tern, Audubon can do no wrong in this writer's eyes. His actions and life were most deft, and again like those of a Gull-billed Tern, rarely misplaced.

Green Geese and Pink Gulls

Today at Heislerville WMA, in Cumberland county, I saw my first teeny olive and yellow Canada Goose hatchlings of the year, clearly fresh from the nest. That seems to have happened very fast, but I'm not complaining. Much derided though they are as adults (and unfairly so to my mind), there are few beings as sweet, innocent, endearing, and characterstic of a season as day-old Canada Goslings.

And on the exposed sand-flats of the Delaware bayshore, Laughing Gulls were arching their necks, bowing, and quite literally dancing in an effort to establish pair-bonds. One of the most ardent, and successful dancers was downright pink on the underparts. Not just a light bloom, as seen in the right light, with the correct squint, but pink. Much more intense than a Roseate Tern, but far less than a Roseate Spoonbill. I can only imagine he had more than his fair share of cartenoid-rich shrimp-like creatures to eat on the wintering grounds, and was just as fit as he looked and acted.

The Hereford Inlet neighborhood held far more shorebirds than is usual for the time of year. The numbers there were much more akin to what should be there in about three weeks, at the peak of Atlantic "beach-piper" migration. There were easily seven to eight thousand Dunlin, nearly a thousand Shart-billed Dowitchers, maybe 600 Black-bellied Plovers, 70 Red Knot, and more Ruddy Turnstones than I would expect. The nesting Willets and Oystercatchers were vociferous as usual, and the bright blue facial skin, peachy aigrettes, and floppy white coronal plumes of Tricolored Herons added a bit of color to the scene.

But the sounds were the most impressive: the raucous, maniacal din of thousands of bowing Laughing Gulls, the pill-will-willets of Willets, and best of all, the murmuring, whirring rush of a couple thousand Dunlin wings as they zoomed overhead, searching for higher ground as the tide hid their mud and dinner. One lane of the free bridge to Nummy's Island is closed, providing an excellent, and unusually quiet vantage point from which to scan the inlet. An added advantage to standing there, among the fragments of shattered bivalve dropped by clever Herring Gulls, is that the shorebirds are very close to one's head, and ears, as they whisk overhead.

That whir of wader wings makes the hairs on the back of one's nape literally stand on end. Even one with very jaded ears.

Next up

Now that the Yellow-throated Warbler is done, it's time to start again.

This is a preliminary sketch of a male Pine Warbler. Note the long tail, the full head and chest, and the substantial bill. This is intended to be a companion to the Yellow-throat, and will be on the same toned paper. Vamos a ver.

And since it's only been laying fallow for a few...um, years now, I think its is time to finish my little oil of a fledgeling Seaside Sparrow.

 It is about 75% finished. With luck it will be all finished soon. (Note Stella Luna on my architects lamp. She helps more than one could imagine.)

A fine hour at the Meadows

While this morning was largely a bust birdwise, from 6:30 to 7:30,  South Cape May Meadows failed to disappoint, as per usual.

A Marsh Wren rattled from the Cattails, terns bathed and the rich, throaty warble of Blue Grosbeak wafted from some Sassafrass scrub. He was easily found, and had nary a patch or fringe of out of place brown on his deep cornflower blue plumage. What a handsome thing.

17 Breeding plumaged Common Loons were roosting on the dead-calm ocean. Most in pairs, the steeper foreheads of the more robust males making them readily sorted. Striking as the checkered black and white and imposing proportions of Common Loons are, more surprising was a breeding plumaged Red-throated Loon. Even stranger in that this is the second such red-throat I've seen this spring-or at least the second view of the same loon. Usually they moult further to the north than New Jersey, and I can count on one hand the number of nuptial plumed Red-throats I have ever seen down this way.

A flock of 25 Chimney Swifts were twittering and circling, feeding with swallows of four species on a recent hatch of midges, and far less auspiciously, mosquitoes this evening.  While there has been a steady trickle this week, this is the first large flock, and they were clearly our local breeders, as a few minuted later, they spiraled down into certain favored clock towers and gables in the center of Cape May proper.

And last but not least, an American Bittern flapped heavily up out of the cattails at the meadows, just after sunset, and after gaining altitude, beat a bee-line to the northwest. I wonder where on the continent his breeding marsh may be? The possibilities are staggering.

Let them eat blossoms; and Jabba the Cardinal

This morning was just, meh. Few migrants, weather getting colder, and nothimg shocking to report. However, that doesn't mean there was not a whole lot of loveliness, and a chuckle or two to be found around Cape May Point.

If there are no birds, well why can't you eat flowers, or butterflies?

Beach Plums (Prunus maritimus) at Higbee's Beach

More Beach Plums at Higbee's Beach

close-up of Beach Plum blossoms

Henry's Elfin (Callophrys henrici) on Virginia Creeper

My left pinky finger to give a sense of scale. Blurry, but the you get the idea. That is one chilly Elfin to allow such an approach.

And the dunes have a dusting of lavender. Though I must admit, whenever I see it, I think of the nasty member of the Owsla at Sandleford Warren of the same name, who stole Fiver's cowslips. Pity, because it is a sweet little flower. And, it's purple.

Toadflax patches in at South Cape May

Banks of Toadflax

close-up of Toadflax flowers

And this Cardinal simply would not move this morning. I think his suspensors were stalled and the pleasure barge was in the shop. He clearly only spoke Huttese as a show of respect to his kind.

And there were warblers (and woodcock, and watersnakes, and Westerns, and buntings, and jaegers and...)

"For most birdwatchers, the coming of the warblers has the same effect as catnip on a cat"

ArlineThomas      

As I lowered my windows, dropped from 50 to a bird cruising speed, but before I silenced the car radio and turned down Pine Swamp Road (one of the most evocative, if not accurate road names I've ever come across) into the depths of Belleplain State Forest, a Worm-eating Warbler gave its insect- like trill. Then a Black & White Wee-see-wee-see-wee-seed, and an Ovenbird teacherTeacher!TEACHER!!ed.

Three "Year Birds" in one turn. This is going to be a good day I thought. And it was. Very good. Better than that even.

Belleplain did not disappoint. As I pulled to my favorite parking spot and got out for a walk, a Blue-headed Vireo was giving his mellow, sweet, yet otherwise Viresque in the phrasing song and plucking caterpillars from the new foliage. (Bent tells us that Lepidoptera larvae make up the vast bulk of the stomach contents of Blue-heads. My observations over the years tell me he is on the money with that one, as with most ones.) A Hooded Warbler was weta-weta-weTEE-O-ing from the Mountain Laurels beneath the White Cedars, just where he should be.

I was soon into the double digits for Worm-eating, Black & White and Ovenbird. A Wood Thrush or two was channeling the ether into the sylvan plane with Ee-o Leee...Ee-o Laaayyy.  And though busy with nesting at this point, nearly a month after their arrivals, Yellow-throated and Pine Warblers were still singing, though not nearly with the fervor of the newer emigres.

And it was only 7:15.

With a dramatic "Whooo-EEEK!!" a Pair of Wood Ducks came hurtling down the road, right at eye level, and right towards my face. Neat! I thought, they're using the road like a stream-right of way.

Then the desperation in their voices hit, and as they veered up, behind them the white flash of the underparts of a stalled/failed swoop/stoop of the Red-tail who was the cause of their panic ended his hot pursuit and in one deft motion aborted the chase, and landed on an oak limb, shaking his tail and shifitng his weight, cat-like in his desire to look nonchalant. Those weren't the ducks he was looking for. And besides, the kids prefer red meat to poultry. He didn't really want those Wood Ducks, anyway...

SWEET-SWEET-SWEET Prothonotaries sang from the lake edge, and CHEE-CHEE-CHEE-tittiWE-onetoomany came the Song of a Louisiana Waterthrush, delivered from on high, where one would never expect a ground dwelling Warbler named after a wagtail (he is Parkesia motacila to taxonomists) to want to sing. (Thanks Janet! He was right where you said he was this year.)

I hope from the descriptions of songs above you're realizing that I was actually seeing very few these critters. True to their Neotropical nature, they were much more readily heard than seen, and truth be told, I didn't try too hard. I was happy in just hearing the conversation of old friends.

Duskywings danced in the dappled dirt tracks, and effervescent Elfins; Brown, Eastern Pine, and Henry's, were just about anywhere I looked.

From Belleplain it was on to Heislerville, and this little guy stopped me on the way. 

 My first, and most likely only Spotted Turtle  (Clemmys guttata) of 2012. And while I am loathe to say it, this has got to be the dingiest, ugliest Spotted Turtle I've ever seen! He was in an area with heavily iron stained red-muddy water, and what should be an onyx black carapace was coffee stained, though you can still make out the solitary yellow-orange spot in each scute. And don't be fooled by his size, this is as big as they get. I say most likely my only, as Spotted Turtles are most active in Spring. They aesitvate in the heat of summer.

In stopping to get him off the side of the road, my good deed was repaid. A Black-throated Green Warbler, another first for the year, started singing from the woods right over head. Zee-zee-zee-zo-zee. Pines, Pines, sweet-scented Pines. What comes around...

And while the waders proper were a bust at the impoundments, the true highlight of an ever better day, and indeed a life sighting if not a life bird nevertheless came form the shorebird department.

Driving back from East Point Lighthouse, a hit the brakes and backed up, cause in the shadows was the distinctive, kiwi-like silhouette  of a Woodcock. What waited at the spot blew my mind. Not a Woodcock, but three still downy fledgelings with their dam. In 35 years of birding, I have never seen a baby woodcock, and never really expected too.

there are three baby American Woodcock in this photo

and a close-up

The proud mother

The entire family of four is in this one, one just the face at left.

 The family made a leisurely retreat, in their peculiar metronome gait. So I stopped to look.
 I assumed they would be long gone, but instead they crouched and trusted in their camouflage. And  now I know why.

Woodcock in defensive posture. Mother at left, chick immediately behind

crouching Woodcock chick

un-zoomed. The mother is just right of dead center, the chick behind. The other two babies are in this photo, but I've no idea where!

Close up of the crouching mother Woodcock

My day, my year could have ended right there, and I would have been a satiated birder.

But on to Bivalve where my first Indigo Bunting of the year sat in a low Groundsel Tree bush, like an animated bit of lapis lazuli from the great trunk road, lost en route to a mortar and pestle in some Venetian studio and determined to fly there and to ultramarine immortality in the virgin's robe, if that's what it took. By his color he had the chops, he did.

Fittingly such perfection eluded my little point and shoot. But pause for a moment  to admire a Field Sparrow instead.

Field Sparrow

Beaver Dam road revealed no frog-plucking Gull-billed Terns, yet, but My first Northern Parula and Northern Watersnake of the year were there in the afternoon heat.

Stone Harbor and Nummy Island turned up three Western Sandpipers, among the hordes of Dunlin, and increasing numbers of Short-billed Dowitchers and Black-bellied Plovers. Willets, faithful to their mates and their sites were already setting up shop, and two electric blue-billed, powder blue aigretted, and deep purple necked Little Blue Herons stalked mummichogs (killifish) in the Spartina. And while others of their number are sitting on or building nests elswhere onthe continent, a flock of ten clearly newly arrived Great Blues were resting where they apparently fell after their last water crossing. They must be headed far north indeed.

 a flock of ten Great Blue Herons s rests on the east side of Nummy's Island. Stone Harbor Point in the background. 

And as if a day of fifteen year birds and a life phenomenon were not good enough, sunset at South Cape May Meadows resulted in my first Parasitic Jaegers of 2012, somersaulting, barrel-rolling and flipping in the rips as they tried to steal an other's already stolen fish from one another, again and again.

Apologies for the long-windedness, but it is not every day that the Warblers come back.

Happy Spring.

Common reterns at Cape May

It can almost be said that Summer poked its head into Spring today. The first Common Tern was sitting on a moss-green Jetty at Cape May Point this morning. Glad to have you back, sir!

And better still, this means that Jaegers, the marauders who follow the lowing herds, can't be too far behind. Cool.

Otherwise today was more about finishing hats than birding (see the Yellow-throated Warbler below), though a 3rd summer type Lesser-black backed Gull bathing with the Laughers, Forster's Terns, and the odd Ring-bill or Bonaparte's Gull at The Meadows was a nice touch.

And then there were some nice pastoral scenes from around The Point this morning:

A pair of Ospreys against White Oak blossoms. Each with it's own breakfast, the female at left

A bushy Brown Thrasher basking in the balminess

Greater Yellowlegs at left, Eastern Willet at right. A nice comparison on Bunker Pond

Where there never was a warbler

It's signed and dated, but still on the drawing board, so it may yet be changed or get ruined by my over-eager left hand, but for the moment, I'm calling it done. While not entirely pleased with it, for a finger-exercise, it served its long-overdue purpose.

Yellow-throated Warbler, 8.5 x11, colored pencil on Fabriano paper