A horned grebe does not disappoint

Reports came in Saturday on the Birding in Central New Jersey GroupMe chat channel that a horned grebe was hanging out with the Canada geese at Mercer County Park. More sightings were reported this morning, and I thought, why not? I’d never seen a horned grebe, let alone one near home. This was likely as good of a chance as I’ll get.

I drove over to the park’s West Picnic Area after lunch and saw hundreds of geese clustered in an inlet near the Lake Mercer marina and along a sheet of ice paralleling the trail that follows the lake shore.

I also spotted two women looking out onto the water and thought they might be birders who’d spotted the grebe, an unusual visitor to Mercer County. They were looking for bald eagles and weren’t aware of the grebe, but we got to chatting and started looking for the grebe.

I wandered up the trail a bit and turned around once I reached the end of the ice sheet because no more birds were in sight. When I walked back, my new friends excitedly pointed to a small gray and white bird making its way in the water. To our delight, it was the grebe.

I fired off a few hasty shots, all of which were fuzzy, and the grebe dove into the water and went out of site. Meanwhile, a hooded merganser showed up and occupied our gaze for a while.

Horned grebe floating on lake.
Horned grebe afloat.

I decided to go back up the trail to see if I could spot the grebe again, and I found it floating in the water just off the end of the ice sheet.

I took a few shots before heading back to alert my new friends. They walked back with me to where the grebe was, and it put on quite a show. It dove, stayed underwater a short while, then popped back up, repeating that pattern for several minutes and giving us time to take several photos.

Horned grebe dips its beak into the water.
The horned grebe dipping its beak into the lake, moments before diving back into the water.

It was kick to add the horned grebe to my life list, and sharing that experience with others made the day even more special. 🦅

Hooded merganser floating on lake.
Here’s the male hooded merganser. No offense to the grebe, but this bird took the best photo of the outing.

Getting up close to a Northern harrier

Over my many visits to the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm, I’ve seen scores of Northern harriers flying overhead and perched on poles or trees. Rarely do I see them relatively close by, as whenever I approach they scram.

Today was different. As I was walking up the central path to the woods, I spotted a harrier sitting on the ground at the edge of a path recently cut through the tall grasses in the big field the trail bisects.

Close-up of Northern harrier illuminated by the sun.
Thanks to a zoom lens and the bird facing toward the sun, I was able to get this close-up of the harrier.

Approaching slowly and as quietly as I could, I stopped a few times to take photos of the bird, a female. As I drew nearly even with the bird, approximately 25 yards away, I took a few more shots, then decided to check my camera settings.

After about 20 seconds of fiddling with my camera, I looked up to see the bird had flown away.

As I headed up the trail, at the next swath of cut grass I was surprised to see the harrier swoop in and sit near another female harrier. They were farther away than my previous encounter, and they sat for a minute or so before taking off simultaneously and flying away from me.

While I’ve taken a few photos of airborne harriers in the same frame over the years, this was the first time I can recall seeing two parked in close proximity. On a cold morning, it was a cool way to start the day. 🦅

Two female Northern harriers sit in the grass.
A pair of harriers in the grass.

A return to the Pole Farm, and a surprise at Colonial Lake

Since knee surgery last month, I’ve been itching to get back out with my camera at my favorite birding spots. Having weaned myself off a walker and a cane thanks to terrific medical care and physical therapy, I chose this morning to venture out.

My first stop was the Pole Farm (above), where I took a short walk over about half an hour and saw only four birds: one mystery bird that crossed my path as I got out of my car, a turkey vulture circling overhead and two song sparrows foraging on grass near the parking lot.

I was disappointed with the low bird count, which I attributed to an 18-degree thermometer reading and a bitter wind. I took only a few photos of the song sparrows, then decided to head to Colonial Lake a couple of miles away.

I hoped to find some water birds there, and I did. I estimated 40 ring-billed gulls were flying about, floating in the water and parked on ice sheets. I perked up when I saw common mergansers on the far side of the lake, so I walked along the shore to get across from them.

The wind was brisk, and I had to stand firm to steady my camera and lens against it. I took a few shots of the mergansers and gulls before driving home.

Female common merganser floating on lake, with head feathers blown back by the wind.
Female common merganser.

The mergansers were a bit out of sharp focus range, but I liked one shot of a female common merganser whose head feathers were fluffed up wildly. I saved one photo of one of the males, initially thinking it was a common merganser. But I was mistaken — it was a red-breasted merganser!

I’d seen e-Bird reports of red-breasted mergansers on the Delaware River and near Trenton the past few days, and this was probably one of those birds. They are rare in Mercer County, and this was my first sighting of one here.

For my first birding outing in a few weeks, the red-breasted merganser was a special treat. I look forward to more in the days and weeks ahead. 🦅

Male red-breasted merganser floating on lake, with wet feathers spiked behind its head.
Red-breasted merganser floating on Colonial Lake, with spiked feathers at the back of his head.

A good omen for the Eagles in the Super Bowl

My wife and I were having lunch at the kitchen table when she looked up and saw a bird coming in for a landing on the golf course that adjoins our yard. It was no ordinary bird. On this Super Bowl Sunday, a bald eagle paid us a call, and I consider that a good omen for the Philadelphia Eagles.

While the bird sat in the rough on the 11th hole, I went to fetch my camera. I had to put a fresh battery in and reinsert the SD card, and at that point the bird took off, flying toward our house and to my left. I couldn’t get the camera up quickly enough, and the bird continued through the trees and away.

My wife looked out from the front porch to see if the eagle had landed in a tree, but she found no sign of such. A couple of minutes later, I looked out the back windows and was startled to see the eagle standing in the middle of the retention pond on the 12th hole, roughly 100 yards away.

Bald eagle sitting in a retention pond and taking a sip of water.
Not sharp, but you can see the eagle taking a sip from the pond.

I took one shot through the window, then cautiously stepped out the back door, hoping to avoid any of the ice remaining from an overnight storm. I snapped a couple of shots before the bird took flight. It flew along the 10th fairway, and I had only a partial view of it as it passed the trees between us. It head west to the edge of the golf course and turned south, toward Philadelphia.

The best shot I got was the one topping this post, with the bird flying past the second-floor window of one of the condos on the golf course.

It’s always a thrill to see a bald eagle, even better when one pays a call in your neighborhood. Add to that the presumed good omen for the Eagles, and this became one extra special sighting.

Go birds! 🦅

How to tell downy and hairy woodpeckers apart

I wrote Sunday about the relatively rare appearance of a hairy woodpecker in our yard. But there’s more to the story!

First off, after the male hairy woodpecker appeared in the morning, I looked out the window during lunch to find a female hairy woodpecker on the feeder. That gives me hope that a breeding pair may have moved into the neighborhood.

But a short while later an even more remarkable sight appeared. As I looked out to the feeders, I saw the male hairy woodpecker on the suet feeder again, and beside him on the tube feeder was a downy woodpecker.

What good fortune! Telling those two birds apart is difficult, especially when they are each seen in isolation. But now I was seeing one of each species clamped onto our feeders, about two feet from one another.

I grabbed my camera and started shooting. At one point, the downy — as they often do — popped over to the post holding up the two feeders. The bird moved to the far side and eventually came around to the right, in profile. I just missed getting the two birds back to back. But I did get the photo below showing the downy spreading its wings to get back to the tube feeder and its nyjer seed.

The photo topping this post gives a clearer picture distinguishing the two species, the smaller downy with its wee beak and the larger hairy with its protruding beak.

A while after I put the camera down and finished editing my photos, I looked up to see a red-bellied woodpecker stabbing at the suet.

Who knows? Maybe someday I’ll have three species of woodpeckers snacking on those feeders simultaneously.

I’ll probably faint. 🦅

Downy woodpecker with wings outstretched flies off center pole while hairy woodpecker continues pecky at suet feeder.
The downy takes off back to the tube feeder while the hairy keeps poking at suet.

The eagles are back, and not just at the Super Bowl

The Associated Press has a terrific story out today on the resurgence of the bald eagle, and I’m quoted in it. Having headed several AP bureaus and served as a university spokesperson, I’m accustomed to speaking with reporters.

But this is the first time I can recall being quoted as an individual, in this case as a birder familiar with bald eagles in New Jersey.

Trenton-based AP reporter Mike Catalini found this blog and contacted me by email several days ago, looking for a birder to comment on the improving fortunes of our national bird. We had a nice conversation by telephone.

Riffing off the Philadelphia Eagles’ Super Bowl appearance this weekend, Mike wrote a fine story that includes a concise history of how bald eagles, nearly wiped out by DDT, have rallied in the last few decades to shed their endangered status.

Here’s hoping the Eagles will follow with a few rallies of their own this weekend. 🦅

A hairy woodpecker pays a rare call

Sometimes it takes a while for the bird recognition neurons in my brain to kick in. That happened this morning as I was looking out the windows toward our backyard feeders.

I’d watched a female downy woodpecker fly onto the suet feeder and munch a while before flitting off. A few minutes later, another woodpecker arrived, this one with the red cap at the back of its head. Ah, that must be the male, I reckoned.

I watched the bird peck away for a minute or so when it dawned on me that the bird was about as tall as the suet cake, much larger than the female that preceded it. Then I took a hard look at the bird’s bill. It wasn’t the stubby bill of a downy but longer and proportionally larger relative to the bird’s head.

Then the neuron fired — hairy woodpecker!

I popped over to my camera and blasted off several shots of Mr. Hairy. To help others and to reinforce the identifying cues in my brain, I’m posting below a shot I took last January of a downy woodpecker on the suet feeder. Note how it’s not as tall as the suet cake or the cage. In contrast, the head of the hairy woodpecker in the photo atop this post is even with the top of the cage, and its tail extends below the cage.

Downy woodpecker at suet cage.
Male downy woodpecker at the suet cage, January 2024.

Here’s another shot of the hairy woodpecker for comparison purposes. 🦅

Hairy woodpecker on a suet cage feeder.
Hairy woodpecker on the suet cage.

Wings clipped, I can still do some birding

Last week I had knee replacement surgery, and it will be a few if not several weeks before I can get back out into the fields. Even though I’m largely homebound, I can still partake of the pleasure of watching the birds through the windows that frame our backyard and the golf course beyond it.

Yesterday was sunny, and a Carolina wren that was snacking at our suet feeder was my cue to pick up my camera and stake out a spot on a chair near the back door.

I blasted off several shots of the wren and also aimed at a few dark-eyed juncos, mourning doves, house sparrows, a downy woodpecker and a squirrel. Some were photogenic than others, and I have chosen accordingly for this post. 🦅

Female downy woodpecker clings to the side of a tube feeder.
Female downy woodpecker on the tube feeder.

‘Wingspan’ is a great game for birders and birders-to-be

Even if you aren’t a birder, you very likely will like Wingspan, a popular board game released in 2019 that challenges players to develop bird populations in forest, grassland and wetland habitats.

If you are a birder and haven’t yet played Wingspan, you probably will soon, either at the invitation of a friend who has it or you decide to buy it yourself.

I first played it with my daughter and her family last year. One of my sons sent us our own game ahead of a recent visit to help out while I recover from knee surgery.

From a birder’s perspective, the game is a delight. Cards for 170 birds in the main edition are beautifully drawn and list details about each bird’s characteristics such as diet and habitat.

The object of the game is to score more points than your opponents, and you do so by accumulating and placing on the board birds with varying values. Some birds can be placed in multiple habitats while others are limited to one.

To get the birds onto the board, you have to provide their proper foods — berries, grain, rodents, etc. Bonus cards get you extra points. For example, one time I played I got extra points for birds with geographical references in their names, as in Canada Goose or American tree sparrow.

You can also score points by laying and accumulating eggs placed in multiple nest styles.

Over four rounds, your fortunes shift. As with many modern board games, the play is complicated, and it can take you a few rounds to get the hang of strategy.

As each bird card is revealed, I get a small rush of recognition — “I have photos of that one!” or “Ooh, I’d love to see one of those!”

There a couple of international editions of Wingspan if you’re looking for additional challenges.

Win or lose, you pick up new facts about our feathered friends each time you play. You might also get a friend or family member interested in doing some birding. 🦅

A cold morning for sparrows

We’re at the front end of a cold snap that will bring temperatures down into the single digits Fahrenheit for a few days. We had two to three inches of snow fall yesterday, and I pulled on my Muck boots to head to the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm.

It was slim pickings for birds. I saw a couple of sparrows flash past me as I started up the trail. Without a cloud in the sky, the sunshine nearly blinded me as I tried to focus on one of the sparrows perched on a stalk of grass.

In such intense sunlight, I had to nudge my hat into a cockeyed angle to shield the viewfinder. I wasn’t sure if I’d even get a shot fair enough to identify the bird.

After shooting several frames, I moved on and spotted a Northern harrier flying along the tree line nearly half a mile away. She would not come any closer.

Off the trail in a small tree, I spotted a plump sparrow sunning itself. In tough sun again, I was able to focus more easily than on the first sparrow. The bird in tree was a Savannah sparrow, and it’s the bird shown in the top photo on this post.

That first sparrow I shot? Of the 20 or so shots I took in its direction, half missed the bird entirely and I got one reasonably clear shot that established its identity as an American tree sparrow.

American tree sparrow, with it’s bi-colored beak and rufous cap. I’m happy that my camera was able to get this shot while I was shooting blind a good distance from the bird.

It’s a rare day when I only report three species at the Pole Farm, and I feel lucky at that because the harrier was the only ID I knew for sure.

I should add that I only walked a quarter mile up the trail and returned, a much shorter jaunt than my usual mile or two. But it was cold out, and I had to get home to shovel my sidewalk.

I’m warm now, pondering whether I should venture out again. At mid-morning, the light is awesome … 🦅