I’ve never had a better May for birding than this one. By spotting three double-crested cormorants in a tree at the Millstone River Impoundment in Princeton today, I logged my 100th species for Mercer County.
The numbers are all well and good, especially since I had an eight-day stretch in which I didn’t have an opportunity to got birding. But what mattered more are the end-of-the-month highlights that came Saturday. My friend Jim pointed me north to Hunterdown County and the Lazy Brook Greenway near Flemington. Objective: bobolinks.
The greenway features a wide open grassland bisected by a wood fence. Jim and I took the trail from the parking lot to the fence. We soon heard and saw bobolinks, lots of them.
The wind was strong — my baseball cap was blown off my head, and Jim’s followed about 10 minutes later — and the grasses waved beneath a beautiful blue sky.
The bobolinks zipped about, hovered briefly in the stiff wind, and dove into the grass. I tried shooting them as they flew overhead, but that was tough going. Even shooting as they were sitting on the fence was a challenge. The wind made my long lens wobble.
I logged 30 bobolinks, one of which tops this post. I also noted several red-winged blackbirds, a grasshopper sparrow and a Savannah sparrow that perched on a fence post not far from us and belted out its song.
As we turned toward home, Jim suggested that we stop by the Old Mill Greenway in Pennington, which adjoins Rosedale Park. For several days, a female hooded merganser with a dozen chicks had been reported there in Stony Brook, which flows through the park.
We crossed the bridge that spans the brook and walked to the edge of the water on the far side without spotting the mergansers. On the way back over the bridge, Jim suddenly stopped and said he’d found them — on a small island of dirt poking up from the brook.
Most of the babies were asleep but started stirring after a few minutes. Then plop, plop, plop, they scooted into the brook. A great blue heron was stalking nearby, and as it approached the mergansers, Mama led them back to the little island.
We had two other surprises. First was a muskrat that appeared to be preening itself on the edge of the brook.
The other surprise came as we walked back to my car. Low in the grass under the trees lining the brook we saw a flash of yellow. It turned out to be a gorgeous female orchard oriole. She flitted about, mostly obscured in the grass and low-hanging tree leaves. She popped out for a few moments, long enough for me to leave you with this shot of her. Not a bad way to end of the month of May! đŚ
The Jersey Birder 