In High Point

Vesper Hill

On Vesper Hill waiting for sunrise.

At the Great Swamp NWR

Getting coffee!

2010 Lagerhead Shrikes

A Word About Our Sponsor

The Lagerhead Shrikes and all members of DVOC thank Nikon Sport Optics for their continued support of the team. Nikon covers the entrance fee, the rental vehicle and various incidental expenses. We appreciate Nikon Sport Optics and we hope everyone will consider Nikon products when purchasing optics and cameras.

http://www.nikonsro.com/

 

By Nikon sponsoring us, 100% of money pledged or donated to our Conservation Fund is distributed to our conservation cause.

http://www.dvoc.org/WSB/WSB2010/2010WSB_PledgeForm.pdf

 

The Lagerhead Shrikes

A Needle in a Haystack

In almost exactly 24 hours from now our team will be at the Heislerville impoundments in Cumberland county looking at HUGE flocks of sandpipers.  Most will be common species, but somewhere in there will be rare birds be need to find.  It's problematic to pull these rare birds out of so many birds and the tendency is to stay too long.  Our team is pretty good at knowing when to say "Go!" whether we get the bird or not.  These pics were taken there a few hours ago, the one shows a flock of several THOUSAND shorebirds (the haystack)  and the other is a Curlew Sandpiper I found among them (the needle).  Amazing sight!  I'm going to take a nap now before the event.  I think we're as prepared as we can be and time will tell if we have what it takes to win this year.  I know we will be doing our best.

Cheers,

Mike

Mowing the Grass....hopper Sparrows!!!

When teammate Zach called me last minute and said they were a bit shakey in the North on Grasshopper Sparrows I figured no problem I have a field right along the route with over a dozen males on territory.  I went there this morning to check it out and while watching the sparrows a tractor pulled up and started to mow the field!!  How unlucky can you get?  I watched the sparrows flying away from the mower (how sad) and went to look for a new field of these hard to find birds.  I did find another nearby though, so hopefully it isn't mowed this afternoon...

Mike

The Day Before.......

                This is a day of final scouting and then dealing with logistics. Right now Zack and Paul are up in north Jersey nailing down the northern route. Bert and Mike are in the south doing the same. Sometime around noon Paul (and Anita) and Zack will drive back to Paul's house in Montgomery County PA, scout along the way, leave the vehicles used during scouting at the Guris's  and pick up the rental van. Mike and Bert will do last minute scouting in the south including checking information from last night's swap meet. Late afternoon Bert will get up to Mike's house for what has become a tradition. Pizza, one beer and lots of looking at the Delorme Atlas of New Jersey.

                Early evening Paul and Zack will bring the rental van to a rest stop on the Garden State Parkway. Mike's wife Jeanne will drive Mike, Bert and the food and beverages up to the same rest stop. We should meet about 8-9 pm. This will be the first time the team has been together since last year's event!

                "Stuff" will be moved from vehicle to vehicle. If all goes well, about 9 pm the team will be in the van heading up to Great Swamp. Scouting stories will be swapped, friendly insults will be exchanged, and a stop at Starbucks will be made.

                Midnight will find the team standing at the edge of a marsh in Great Swamp NWR. The event begins!

 

Bert

Flipflop at Brig...Bar-tailed Godwit!

Thursday I went to scout Brigantine in the morning to convince myself it wasn't worth going there this year since reports were so dismal.  Well,  I ended up doing just the opposite.  In short order I found both Bitterns, 2 Ring-necked Ducks, BW Teal, Caspian and Gull-billed Tern, and both Harrier and Peregrine and that was BEFORE the good stuff.  As I started down the South Dike I had 2 adult White-faced Ibis right along the road (see pic) and a bit further along I found a large flock of shore birds with 5 White-rumps and a real prize of a Western Sandpiper.  They are very rare in Spring here and this bird was mostly in alternate plumage.  Between the Peregrine Tower and the end of the South Dike a spotted what I assumed was gonna be a Marbled Godwit, but it didn't seem right.  It seemed short and had an all dark bill, and no streaks on the flanks and breast.  The breast was a uniform rich chestnut and I jumped out of the car for my scope.  I had a life bird!  I figured it was a Bar-tailed Godwit, so I called my friend Michael O'brien (who wrote The Shorebird Book) to go over the ID details.  While talking to Michael the bird took off and I could see the white tail and the white extended up the back in a wedge.  It also had white under wings, ID confirmed!!  Suddenly Brig wasn't so bad after all....  Picture (so-so) attached of the Godwit.

Oh yeah,  I also found a Wigeon and 2 Willow Flycatchers on my way out.  

Mike

Near Death Experience

Late last night while doing night scouting and having been out birding for 18 straight hours I almost met my maker.  I was running the usual "Cumberland Count Wildlife Gauntlet" which last night was 6 Opossum, 18 deer, and a Skunk in the road, when I rounded a sharp bend at an undisclosed high rate of speed and saw this tree had falen across the entire road!  I managed to stop just in time and the front bumper was actualy touching he tree.  I took this photo when my heart started back up and moved enough of the tree out of the way to get to Turkey Point where I heard almost nothing worth while and no black rails.

MIke

Sharing Information

It is traditional that on Thursday evening before the World Series teams meet at CMBO in Goshen to share information. This helps level the playing field for teams that cannot devote lots of time to scouting.
Bert

The scouting gets serious..

A roseate tern showed up and then the birders showed up.

Bert

Where are they?

For several years Cattle Egrets were quite common in New Jersey. They have declined dramatically in the past several years.
This year there has been one seen up in Salem County. Down here in Cape May there are about 5 or 6 of them. They appear in a field for an hour or so and then are gone. There is no pattern to the time of day but there are only a couple of fields they favor.

We will have to be very, very lucky to see on Saturday. We could miss Cattle Egret this year.

 

 

<< Bert >>

 

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Getting Hot!

After a slow, cold, depressing morning trying to find good birds I stopped for a coffee.  With the vulture of death (see pic) looking over our route I decided to spend the afternoon along the beachfront where i know the spots pretty well and hoped to find some positives.  The bad weather and rain made for good seabirding and I quickly hit the jackpot and had in quick succession all 3 Scoter,  dozens of Gannets, C. Loon, Purple Sandpiper, 3 RB Mergansers, C. Eider, Long-tailed Duck, 2 Lesser Black-backed Gulls, 2 Great Cormorants, a N. Harrier, Red Knots, Tri-colored Herons, Little Blue Herons, Peregrine, and several other needed birds!  Wow.  It got better fast and I was now confident again that we had what we needed to win, so I met Bert at Lucky Bones for a beer and some strategy talk for Wednesday.  Such is the ups and downs of scouting...

Mike

p.s. The young Eagle in the first pic (taken through my sun roof) tried to eat a Swan chick at Heislerville.  Big mistake as the adult Swan's beat the living daylights out of him!  It was fun to watch, but I was routing for the Eagle this time... 

Cold then Hot day of scouting

Too much scouting by teams involves going to established spots to reconfirm what's already been reported.  "Real" scouting involves endless stops at little visited spots to try and discover new things.  Unfortunately that takes a lot of time and can be very depressing when you repeatedly find nothing interesting at each stop.  I spent the first half of today doing " real" scouting and it was really depressing.  I felt I had nothing to show for it, but actually I found some really nice areas for the future and had some good finds to go with it.  It didn't help that it was unseasonably cold and birds were pretty quiet.  See my pics of how cold and some Purple Martins too cold to even open their eyes let alone fly!

Mike

Bert's C. Eider gets around

Today I was at JFK Bvd. in Sea Isle and I was able to see the Common Eider at least a mile to the South toward Avalon.  It goes to show how far these birds range from day to day or hour to hour and how we miss even well "staked out" birds.  A half hour later I was at the Townsend's Inlet Bridge and I saw the same Eider floating with the incoming tide, went under the bridge inside the bay and sat up on a sod bank and fell asleep.  See pic of him about to go under the bridge and go to sleep.

Dots and Connections

The first few days of serious scouting are concerned with finding locations for species. These are "dots". The second part of scouting is finding a route that makes it feasible for us to get to as many places as possible. These are the  "connections".

 

The dot phase is winding down and now we are trying to connect the dots. Here in the south Mike Fritz in the master of time and distance. First comes up with a plan. Then he announces that we cannot possibly make that plan work. Then he announces that we are going to try it anyway. And then on the big day he manages to make the plan work. We never have the time to do a "dry run" of the route so we count on Mike's sense of time and distance.

 

Bert

Red-headed Woodpeckers

Some birds are found pretty much over all of New Jersey (Titmice, Mourning Doves, Mallards, etc). They pose little problem for World Series teams. But other species only occur in small pockets. One such species is the Red-headed Woodpecker. There are only a few pockets of them and it is difficult to route any one of the places into a state wide run.

 

One small colony of these woodpeckers occurs at a campground in southern New Jersey. The managers of the property, each year, allow teams to access the campground and see the birds. The week before the event teams scout the place in preparation for the big day. I made my annual scouting trip today. It was great to see the birds and also great to see the managers again. All teams that take advantage of this place are grateful for their hospitality.

 

Bert Filemyr

Tools of the Trade

Yes, your optics are certainly important in all your birding, but for World Series, it's tough to overstate the importance of other tools like a laptop...


Or the Weather Channel...
Here's hoping we don't see conditions like these on game day. I've done the event in heat, cold, wind, and/or rain, but never in fire. I guess there's always a first...

Anita is Scouting Topless!

And she looks really happy doing it...

Wantage Grasslands

I spent Monday morning covering the Wantage Grasslands and the surrounding area. Vesper Sparrow was singing before 5am which means I will have to wake-up even earlier tom. Pheasants, White-crowned Sparrow, Raven and Bobolinks were around.

I then spent some time at Lewisburg Marsh which held a Least Bittern and 5 Common Moorhens (I hear that there is also a coot and pied-billed grebe!).

I ended my morning in Stokes State Forest enjoying multiple Blue-headed Vireos, Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, and Cerulean Warblers. Additionally, a Kentucky Warbler continues to sing along Grau Rd. in Stokes.

(Sleep is a limited commodity, so I will try and catch-up posting tom.)

Zach Baer

Atlantic County

I spent the entire day scouting a possible route change through Atlantic County and since it's an area we don't usually scout it meant I had to check out every little corner of the area.Some things turned out pretty well, and Peaslee WMA had lots of Summer Tanagers, several Prothonotorys, Blue Grosbeaks, and a territorial Coopers Hawk.  I had two nice bonus birds along a powerline cut today that won't be there for WSB but were a nice surprise.  There was an Olive-sided Flycatcher perched atop a dead pine and I had a very late Palm Warbler when I got out of the car to look at the Coopers Hawk.  In the town of Dorothy (what an odd name) I found a Red-headed Woodpecker that came out of it's nest hole and quickly went back in because it was only 39 degrees out.  I saw 2 others flying by in the area, so there are lots around there.  

I tried to scout the Atlantic City Airport at Pomona for Upland Sandpiper that I know is there, but in this post 9/11 world it isn't even legal to stop along the road there!  I'd imagine they would shoot to kill if I looked through a scope.  I was not happy about it because I know there are at least 2 pairs there and we might be driving right by them.  I have seen them right from the terminal area years ago before all this paranoia... 

Last stop was a quick spin around Brigantine in the still 40mph wind gusts.  Right away I had 12 Gull-billed Terns, 2 Caspians from the Gull tower and 4 Green-wing and 2 Blue-winged Teal.  Great start, but it got real slow after that.  I did see a distant Am. Wigeon and had some Bobolinks (we need a spot for that one) as well as a couple of Blue Grosbeaks.  Overall it was really pretty dreadful there.  Very few shorebirds and those were specks.  The worst part was that the single (injured) Snow Goose hanging on there was eaten the day before by a Bald Eagle, so now we have no Snow Goose.  There are too many Eagles around nowadays when all your linger waterfowl keep getting eaten.  Bert and I ended the day talking strategy (and had a beer) while we waited to see what time "Chuck's" and "Whips" would call.  We had a bonus calling Barred Owl while we waited, nice way to end the day.

Mike

Birding at Dusk and an Eider

After scouting separately today, Mike and I met at dusk to nail down a spot for Chuck-will's-widows and Whip-poor-wills. The wind was blowing but we managed to hear "chucks" nearby and distant "whips".  An unexpected bonus was a Woodcock that vocalized once and a Barred Owl that called several times.

 

The picture above is a Common Eider that was at 8th Avenue Jetty in Avalon today. All his friends have headed north by now. Will he stay around until Saturday? It would be nice if he does but we often say "ducks will break your heart"! They always seem to leave right before the event.

 

Bert

Sunday in the Walpack Valley

The pond on Thunder Mountain Rd. (part of Peter's Valley historic village) use to have lots of flooded brush and vegetation for Pied-billed Grebe. It looks like the Beavers have been too successful for us, and there doesn't seem to be enough cover for this species anymore. There is, however, some nice wet spots that are custom made for this Green Heron, a bird we've highly suspected as a breeder here in the past.

On the way out late today, Anita and I found this little scene from the downstream side of the Old Mine Rd. bridge that crosses the Big Flatbrook. The nearby area where this stream empties into the Delaware River has been a winner for this species for years.