Back to the Pole Farm I went this afternoon, hoping to see more short-eared owls and Northern harriers flash about as the sun set. The cloud cover was heavy and the light low, not ideal for photography. Nonetheless, the Cold Soil Road parking lot was packed again (a sure sign of owl fever) as I pulled in just before 4 p.m. I had to improvise a spot on the edge of the lot.
First to appear were the Northern harriers, including two “gray ghost” males, giving me the best looks at them in a long while, even as they were flying back by the observation deck. Eventually, around 4:30 p.m., a couple of shorties emerged, darting among the harriers high in the sky, well out of the range of my camera. But I got some good views through my binoculars.
Several photographers bailed as the light dimmed, but a couple of us stayed planted. We were rewarded with views of owls and harriers that flew closer to us.
I don’t have any photos of them worth sharing, so I decided instead to top this post with a shot of the center of an impressive murmuration of hundreds of birds that flew in the distance, roughly following Keefe Road. It’s impossible to get proper IDs, but starlings, grackles and red-winged blackbirds were likely in the mix. I’d seen at least two other big flocks at the park in the last week, but this one was the largest.
While we birders spend most of our time trained on single specimens, it’s also a thrill to zoom out and get the wide view of hundreds of birds in a flock flying en masse.
The Jersey Birder 