I made two visits to the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm today, and it was full of surprises. On a longer than usual three-mile walk in the morning, I finally added a red-headed woodpecker to my e-Bird reports. It was a lifer. Or was it?
I’ve been hoping to spot a red-headed woodpecker since I began birding seriously the last few years. I am reasonably certain that I saw red-headed woodpeckers in my neighborhood growing up, but I’m also aware that what we called red-headed woodpeckers in suburban Cleveland may have been red-bellied woodpeckers.
The red-headed woodpecker (or were there two?) that I spotted this morning didn’t have a red head. It was gray, signifying a juvenile. But the black and white pattern under its wing — as clearly shown by the photo topping this post — told me it really was a red-headed woodpecker.
My first? Who knows. But it’s the first on my official life list, which now totals 202 in New Jersey and 237 worldwide.
As I was looking at the red-head, a red-bellied woodpecker, a downy woodpecker and a Northern flicker were in trees close by. Then a pileated woodpecker flew in, making it a woodpecker party. Only a hairy woodpecker was missing.
The redhead wasn’t the only surprise of the day. I caught a thrush in a tree as I was heading toward the northeast corner of the park, thinking it was either a wood thrush or a hermit thrush. It turned out to be a Swainson’s thrush, one I had not seen lately.
I ran into my birding buddy Jim at some point, and he told me that the video he had posted on Facebook of some 30 common nighthawks he had seen at sunset yesterday were at the Pole Farm.
I went back about an hour before sunset and soon found Jim and another birder. The three of us walked up the Lawrence-Hopewell Trail and stopped short of the entrance to the central woods. We were in an ideal spot to see the nighthawks if they were to return,
While we were waiting, we watched a merlin harass an American kestrel and then spotted two Northern harriers, my first of the season. American crows and red-winged blackbirds flew overhead, but we never did see a nighthawk.
Such is birding: a few surprises and a disappointment, all in the span of 12 hours. 🦅
The Jersey Birder 
A “woodpecker party”?I get a pileated in the sassafras outside my kitchen now and then, but it never sits long enough for a photo. I’d be head-over-heels excited to spot a red-headed woodpecker. Reading about your juvenile sighting makes me hopeful I’ll get the chance.My recent early morning Pole Farm walks were quiet too — felt like the birds were laughing at me from the thickets.
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Bravo on IDing the red-headed, Dan! Yay! That species is close to my heart. We have seven woodpecker species in West Virginia. Same for you in NJ, probably. We have the five you saw, plus the hairy and yellow-bellied sapsucker. Lovely thrush photo. Too bad about the nighthawks!
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