With around-the-clock above-freezing temperatures in the offing, this weekend was likely my last chance to try for shots of birds in the snow. It was not to be.
My friend Jim and I hit multiple spots on Saturday, starting at the nearly bird-less Pole Farm. Not a great start for the Great Backyard Bird Count.
We made brief stops at three other locations before heading to the Watson Woods section of Abbott Marshlands. Finally, we saw some interesting birds in Watson’s Creek.
Common and hooded mergansers and ring-necked ducks were floating and diving on the water. American black ducks, mallards and a green-winged teal were swimming nearby. Jim also pointed out a female goldeneye. Did I get any decent photos of these critters? Nope. We had to shoot through a tangle of branches to focus on the birds in the water, and the dozen or shots I took fell short of mediocre.
Today, I headed up to the Plainsboro Preserve, hoping that the change of scenery would bring me some new birds. I walked the snow-covered main trail for a while, taking a turnoff to the lake at the center of the park. Not finding any birds on the mostly frozen lake, I scanned the trees with my binoculars and found a pair of bald eagles far across the lake.
The preserve visitor center has a big deck from which to observe birds dining at several feeders. I was seeing the usual suspects when the Merlin app alerted me to a purple finch. I scanned the trees and spotted one high up. He flew down into a tree just off the deck, perching inside the branches and giving me some tricky opportunities to catch him.
E-Bird now lists the purple finch as a house/purple finch, which surprised me. I didn’t know the bird had been reclassified. Another surprise: I discovered from the visitor center staff member that the Plainsboro Preserve is no longer affiliated with New Jersey Audubon. The town manages it, and in fact has done so since 2022. Another memo I missed!
On the way home, I stopped at the Millstone River Impoundment and was astonished to find a man ice-fishing on the big pond. I’ve seen a lot in Princeton but I never expected to see anyone ice-fishing. With the temperature rising into the 40s yesterday afternoon and today, this likely is the last day for ice-fishing around here.
There’s one other thing I learned over the weekend. With the brilliant glare of the sun on the snow in recent weeks, I’d been having trouble seeing through my camera viewfinder in my usual Program setting that I use for birding. I thought — mistakenly, it turns out — the problem was caused by my Transition eyeglass lenses darkening.
Wrong.
I had forgotten that my Canon R-7 has an electronic viewfinder, essentially a small video screen instead of the clear glass optical viewfinder on my previous cameras. The bright snow was turning the view through my viewfinder black, From Microsoft’s AI Copilot agent, I learned how to change a setting in the camera menu to override the normal viewfinder setting. I now have a custom setting on the camera that I can dial up whenever such bright winter days return. 🦅
The Jersey Birder 
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