Rarely has a Jersey girl caused such a fuss. Since she was first spotted in the Delaware River on Thursday, a harlequin duck — believed to be the first ever recorded on e-Bird in Mercer Counry — has had birders flocking to observation points on the river banks in Trenton and Morrisville, Pennsylvania.
While I was out for a solo walk this morning at Reed Bryan Farm, my friend Laura texted, asking if I’d like to chase after the harlequin. Laura and I had gone harlequin-chasing two years ago at Barnegat Lighthouse State Park on the New Jersey shore. This was an unusual opportunity to drive only a few miles to see one.
And see one we did. Following locating tips from other birders, we headed south along New Jersey 29 in Trenton, only to overshoot a construction area pulloff and instead end up on a toll bridge that took us over the river into Pennsylvania. Knowing that other birders had spotted Ms. Harlequin from the Morrisville levee, we headed there and immediately spotted several birders up on its walkway.
The first birder we encountered confirmed that the harlequin was present, and he pointed us down the path toward a couple of other birders who he said were at a better vantage point. A short while later, one of those birders pointed exactly to where the bird was floating and diving. He fixed his scope on her so we could get a better look than what our binoculars could give.
We then discussed with the birder whether it was proper to report the bird from the Morrisville hotspot when the bird was far across the river, much closer to New Jersey than Pennsylvania. Laura and I agreed with him that the report should come from the area where the bird was, not where the observers were.
So we walked back to my car and returned to New Jersey, drove North on highway 29 and turned around to find the construction pulloff on the southbound side. We pulled in, and the bird was practically right in front of us, albeit a couple of hundred yards out in the water.
We could see the bird and her markings clearly through Laura’s scope, and I was able to get a few photos to back up the observation. Although we could see a couple hundred gulls across the river, we saw no other birds near the duck. She was floating solo. A few Canada geese were up the path on our side of the river, so we noted them in what turned out to be a mere 2-species e-Bird report.
We had no complaints.
The Jersey Birder 