It's fair to say that our Winter Specialties two-day workshop started a little slowly, but it certainly built up to a fine finale! Our pre-determined start point was a frozen-up Cape May Point State Park which, though it had a nice selection of sparrows tucked away, was not going to help us with our duck identification, so we quickly moved on elsewhere. Beach replenishment work at St Peter's allowed us to work our way through the four regular gull species to be found here in winter, from a chunky first-winter Great Black-back right down to the dainty Bonaparte's Gulls picking surface food from the water. A feeding American Woodcock allowed us to watch from no more than 20 feet away - a real treat in broad daylight! - before we headed out to the ponds at Two-mile Beach, where open water ensured that we enjoyed the duck species that we had hoped for at the state park.
We rounded off our first morning with a little bit of a twitch, to see an unexpected Grasshopper Sparrow that had been found by Jim Dowdell that morning. With the help of Karl Lukens who was also looking for the bird, we did manage to get a look at it - though in typical Grasshopper Sparrow fashion, it didn't hang around as long as we would have liked. After a warming-up session at our Center for Research & Education at Goshen and a slide show to learn more about identifying those trickier wintering ducks, sparrows and shorebirds, we finished our first day at Jake's Landing, where we found at least 12 Northern Harriers and three Red-tailed Hawks hunting the marshes.
Day 2 started on the coast with a walk around Stone Harbor Point. Two flocks of Snow Buntings entertained us and plenty of Sanderling and Dunlin were around for comparison. The biggest highlight of the weekend came next, as we spent time watching the fabulous seaduck festival at Avalon. Rafts of Black and Surf Scoters were busy feeding and chasing around, their almost haunting whistles filling the air. Long-tailed Ducks, Common Eider, a super male Harlequin Duck and a female Greater Scaup were among them and we also enjoyed Red-throated and Common Loons and a close Horned Grebe. It really was pretty spectacular!
Finally, at Tuckahoe WMA, we drove slowly through a mostly frozen landscape, lit up by a cloudless blue sky and found 32 Tundra Swans, plenty of Northern Pintail, two Wood Ducks (a nice surprise) American Tree and Swamp Sparrows, a male Ring-necked Pheasant just three feet from the car and a glorious adult Bald Eagle.
Many thanks go to all members of the group who made this a really enjoyable week-end of birding. A full list of species seen by us during the two days follows:
Snow Goose
Brant
Canada Goose
Tundra Swan
Wood Duck
Gadwall
American Wigeon
American Black Duck
Mallard
Northern Shoveler
Northern Pintail
Green-winged Teal
Greater Scaup
Common Eider
Harlequin Duck
Surf Scoter
Black Scoter
Long-tailed Duck
Bufflehead
Hooded Merganser
Red-breasted Merganser
Ruddy Duck
Ring-necked Pheasant
Red-throated Loon
Common Loon
Horned Grebe
Double-crested Cormorant
Great Blue Heron
Black Vulture
Turkey Vulture
Bald Eagle
Northern Harrier
Cooper's Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk
Black-bellied Plover
Killdeer
American Oystercatcher
Ruddy Turnstone
Sanderling
Purple Sandpiper
Dunlin
American Woodcock
Bonaparte's Gull
Ring-billed Gull
American Herring Gull
Great Black-backed Gull
Feral Rock Dove
American Mourning Dove
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Blue Jay
American Crow
Carolina Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
Carolina Wren
Hermit Thrush
American Robin
Northern Mockingbird
European Starling
Yellow-rumped Warbler
American Tree Sparrow
Savannah Sparrow
Grasshopper Sparrow
Fox Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Lincoln's Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Snow Bunting
Northern Cardinal
Red-winged Blackbird
Common Grackle
Boat-tailed Grackle
Brown-headed Cowbird
House Finch
Pine Siskin
American Goldfinch
House Sparrow
