Needing to burn some vacation time, I took the day off and headed east to the New Jersey shore. The drive was mostly a straight shot along Interstate 195, which stretches from Trenton to Belmar, and took me less than an hour.
The Shark River Inlet is where the river meets the Atlantic Ocean at Belmar Beach, and I was hoping I’d see some waterbirds that I don’t normally find on my side of the state.
I walked onto the breezy beach and was initially disappointed that I saw no birds on the water’s edge. Only a few gulls flew by offshore, too far out to identify.
The inlet, shot with my back to the ocean and looking back toward the town of Belmar.
My luck changed as I approached the inlet. A couple of birds were floating in the ocean waves, and I’d only discover from looking at my photos later that they were common loons and a long-tailed duck.
A common loon floats on the ocean, just outside the inlet.
Once I walked on top of the jetty, I spotted several brants on both sides of the inlet. Brants aren’t uncommon, but this was only the third time I’d recorded seeing them. The first was in 2019 while walking the perimeter of Liberty Island on a visit to the Statue of Liberty, and the second was at Barnegat Bay in 2022. The common denominator of the three sightings was the shore.
One of the brants floating on the inlet’s water.
A few song sparrows sang in the trees I passed as I made my way back to my car parked off Ocean Avenue.
While disappointed that I didn’t see much else, I still count the trip a success. 🦅
At last, the long winter appears to be abating, and the birds are singing and otherwise are more active than they were during the long stretch of cold weeks we had in New Jersey and the Northeast.
I went to the Pole Farm on Saturday, which started with fairly thick fog. It started lifting as I finished my walk, and I was able to get a few fair shots. We had more fog today, and I had fewer photo opportunities. But I do like the shot topping this post of a Northern cardinal perched on a tree against a gray sky.
I went back out to the Pole Farm this morning. In the afternoon, I made brief stops at the Plainsboro Preserve and at the Millstone River Impoundment in Princeton. The temperature reached 69 degrees and I was able to shed the windbreaker and walk the last stop in just a T-shirt.
Here are a few more photos from the weekend.
Red-shouldered hawk at the Pole Farm.Mallard at the Pole Farm — not a common sight.Bluebird pair in the fog at the Pole Farm.Bald eagle in the golf course retention pond behind our house.Great black-backed gull at left and (I believe) a herring gull on Lake Carnegie, Princeton.
The Nor’easter blizzard that blew into the East Coast last weekend put a crimp in my birding for a few days, but I was able to get back out this weekend as the calendar transitioned to March from February.
My friend Jim and I headed to Abbott Marshlands on Saturday hoping to find some waterfowl. Spring Lake remains iced over, but the marsh itself is mainly flowing freely. One of the highlights was getting to see a few wood ducks across the water from us, as the photo atop this post proves. Human-averse as they are, the wood ducks did not come close. We had to content ourselves with watching them through binoculars. My only decent shot was of a drake and hen, which tops this post.
This morning, I went back to Abbott Marshlands and saw a few more wood ducks, which immediately flew off once they sensed my presence. I also got a surprise shot of one while shooting a male common merganser flying across the water. As you can see below, there’s a wood duck — also flying to my right — at the bottom of the frame.
Common merganser above, wood duck directly below.
Earlier today, I visited the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm. Few birds were in sight, but there were a few minutes on one of the trails through the woods when the calls of several erupted. A pileated woodpecker cackled in the distance, and then I heard the raucous call of a common raven that flew overhead. Next up came a chorus of blue jays and one insistently calling white-breasted nuthatch.
I’d be remiss if I did not share what might be my favorite bird photo the year to date, one I took Saturday last weekend at the Trenton sewage ponds. A pine warbler, no doubt attracted by insects hovering around the sewage, showed up and sat still long enough for me to capture it digitally. It’s a beautiful bird.
The pine warbler at Trenton on Feb. 21.
I can’t recall if I’ve ever gotten a shot of a pine warbler before. I’m very happy with this one. I was lucky to find it, and I look forward to seeing more warblers once Spring migration begins in earnest. After the snow and cold we’ve had, migration can’t start soon enough! 🦅
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 eagles as seen from the main trail. I started walking to the back of the park for a closer look at them but eventually turned around. The snow-coated trails slowed me down and I didn’t think the walk would be worth the effort, with no guarantee the eagles would still be there.
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.
The male house/purple finch. Note the snow in the background.
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.
The ice-fishing guy, as seen below one of the footbridges at the park.
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 wind is howling, the thermometer is at 10 degrees, and I’m sticking close to home. Fortunately, I filled the feeders yesterday and today, and the neighborhood birds are flocking to them.
My wife and I looked up from our cheesesteak lunches to find a beautiful Northern flicker perched on one of the shepherd’s hooks. The bird’s yellow tail feathers shone brightly in the sun. Intermittently, gusts of wind fluffed up other feathers, reminding us of the wind-chill effect, at -9 as I write this sentence.
Norther flicker illuminated by the sun.
The flicker didn’t seem to mind the chill, nor did the dark-eyed juncos clustered on the ground plucking the nyjer seeds dislodged from the tube feeder. I did watch a white-throated sparrow seemingly tuck down into the snow below one of our shrubs as a wind gust blew in.
In the back corner of our lot, a red-bellied woodpecker hammered insistently in one of the trees below where a branch had been sawed off.
The red-bellied woodpecker takes a breather. Shooting from far off through a window, I was pleased to get a catch light in his eye.
We also had a surprise visitor, the first American goldfinch of the year. It appeared to be a male in winter plumage. It chomped nyjer seeds from the tube feeder.
American goldfinch having a snack.
I’m glad these birds are hardy enough to withstand the bitter cold. I’m grateful that they found sustenance in our yard and wish them well on this, likely the coldest weekend of this winter. 🦅
We’re in a long stretch of frigid weather, and it was 6 degrees when I headed off yesterday morning for a birding jaunt with my ace birding pal Jim. Our first stop was a new one for me: the Trenton sewage ponds.
Yes, the cement-framed pools at the Trenton sewage treatment plant near the edge of the Delaware River are a birding hotspot. As Jim explained, the ponds are warm year round and attract bugs, which in turn attract birds. As we walked up the driveway to the plant, through the gated fence we immediately saw a couple of swallows (ID undetermined) fly up and then back down toward the dark water in one of the pools.
Lovely setting for birding, no? The sewage ponds as photographed through a gated entrance to the plant.
It wasn’t a busy morning for birds. We saw a handful of yellow-rumped warblers and watched as a Merlin flew overhead with something in its claws. We trudged back to the car and took a look at the Delaware, which at this spot appeared frozen solid. There were even drifts of snow atop the ice.
We took the “Trenton Makes, The World Takes” bridge over to Morrisville, Pennsylvania, and drove to the north end of the levee along the Delaware. There we spotted two female goldeneyes swimming with a female common merganser in a small channel of open water. About 100 Canada geese snoozed nearby.
After a short stop, we drove up to Patterson Farm in nearby Yardley, hoping to catch site of the Lapland longspurs that have been hanging out near some humpback piles of mulch. As we approached the mounds, we saw cars parked on a curve, which was where the stakeout was.
While we spent close to an hour at the spot, we never spotted a longspur. That was a small disappointment, because I was able to see my first horned larks. I estimate there was a flock of 50 of them feeding on the snow-covered fields.
The birds were close to where we parked, feeding in one spot for a few minutes and then taking off to another. The larks kept returning to where we were, no doubt because somebody or somebodies had strewn seed out on the snow (as seen in the photo topping this post).
At one point, a peregrine falcon swooped in over the fields and spooked the larks. The peregrine made a big banking turn and headed off, flying so quickly I didn’t even think about taking a photo. I did take a lot of photos of the horned larks and kept a few favorites, including this one.
Horned lark stopping on the snowy fields of Patterson Farm.
Even with the cold weather, it was fine day of birding. How often do you get to say you went to a sewage treatment plant, crossed the Delaware and recorded a lifer? 🦅
The big storm that cut a wide swath across the country left about 8 inches of new snow on the ground at our home. The storm didn’t seem to bother the dark-eyed juncos and three varieties of sparrows that fed virtually all-day long at the feeders.
I expected the house sparrows and wasn’t surprised to see a couple of white-throated sparrows and a few song sparrows chowing down. What did surprise me was the number of juncos that swarmed our yard. I estimate that at least 20 of them were visiting at their peak, many more than the handful we normally see.
The juncos and sparrows seem to be in cahoots when it comes to feeding at our place. The house sparrows take the lead in perching at the main feeder, stuffing themselves and sloppily dropping seeds to the snow below. That’s where the juncos and white-throated sparrows hang out, plucking seeds off the snow. Song sparrows occasionally appeared on the perch but mostly stuck to ground feeding.
On the nyjer tube feeder, I often saw a single junco clinging to the side while four or five of its mates were eagerly plucking at however many of the little black seeds the one up top scattered on the ground.
Snow fell most of the day, flakes for the first several hours and then pellets in the afternoon and evening.
Every time I opened the front door, I flushed two or three juncos that were on the porch, evidently taking a break from the storm.
As I was shoveling snow and using my light-duty electric snowblower, the juncos kept feeding from the small cage feeder we have in our front yard. As I looked up at the feeder, I was struck by how much one of the juncos’ two tailfeathers (white underneath) resembled icicles.
I’d like to think that because I talked to the juncos (everybody talks to birds, right?), they relaxed and didn’t worry about the man in the Princeton parka with the noisy blue machine belching white powder. Even when I pushed the blower only a few feet from the shepherd’s hook holding the feeder, the juncos stood firm and munched.
Once back in the house, I was amused by a song sparrow waiting its turn for the main feeder out our dining room window. The bird (in photo topping this post) waited patiently while the house sparrows sparred with each other and hogged the seed ports.
The birds that come to our yard charm me each day, and I’m grateful for the performance they put on during yesterday’s storm. We’re in for an extended cold spell, and I hope they continue to come calling. 🦅
The Mercer Meadows Pole Farm is a beautiful place in all kinds of weather, but I find it extra special after a decent snowfall. We had back-to-back days of snow over the holiday weekend, and I was able to get to the park Monday.
Annoyingly, the gates at the Cold Soil Road parking lot were closed, as always seems to be the case whenever we get more than a dusting of the white stuff. With at least four inches of snow on the ground, I drove over to the ungated lot on Keefe Road and started my walk from there.
The park looked spectacular. From a clear blue sky, the sun shone brightly on the snow-covered branches of the trees. The sun was so bright that the Transition lenses on my glasses darkened so deeply that I couldn’t see through the viewfinder of the camera. [I later figured out my glasses weren’t the problem.]
A song sparrow foraging. Thank goodness for auto-focus, as I had taken off my glasses and aimed the best I could.
Sans glasses, I took several wing-and-a-prayer shots. Relatively few birds were making their presence known, but I did get one surprise. An Eastern towhee, usually a Spring arrival, was calling “twee!” from the woods along the trail. I couldn’t find the bird and turned back toward my car.
Throughout, I never got a clear shot of a bird amid the snowy branches. My favorite shot was of a blue jay, a long way off, on a tree top. 🦅
Unexpectedly, I had a transformative experience while birding in the woods today. I had intended to drive to Trenton marsh but mistakenly took an early exit off Interstate 295 and decided to drive to Veterans Park in Hamilton.
Once there, I skirted Martin’s Lake and headed onto the trail that runs along the lake’s south end. I spotted plenty of Canada geese and a dozen common mergansers on the water, but nothing special appeared. I followed my usual path on the lake’s edge and crossed over a cement bridge at which I usually turn to the right and head back on a paved path that connects with the levee path on which I entered the park from the western entrance parking lot.
I noticed a slender path beyond the bridge that I’d never taken before and decided to follow it. What a good decision that was. I didn’t realize how far back into the woods the trail would take me, and once I passed the lake I was walking along Pond Run. Several mallards were plying the waters, and although I spooked a few I managed to grab a few shots.
Mallard and its shadow on the backwaters of Pond Run.
After a short while along the trail, I came to a clearing. I spotted a large number of birds flitting about the trees and foraging on the ground. A red-bellied woodpecker (depicted in the setting atop this post) drew my interest, flying from tree to tree.
Red-bellied woodpecker
In short order I spotted a yellow-rumped warbler, a white-throated sparrow and a couple of chickadees. There were also several tufted titmice, flitting about the smaller trees and foraging on the ground.
As common as tufted titmice are in central New Jersey, it’s rare for me to spot more than one or two in an area. But there were at least five and probably more at this spot in the woods.
I took several shots but only a few would be in focus as the birds were moving rapidly, in the air, in the trees and amid the leaves and logs on the ground. At one point, I trained my camera on a pair of titmice that flew into one of the larger trees about 50 feet away. One of the birds cooperatively came to my side of the tree at eye level, giving me my favorite shot of the day.
The tufted titmouse, clinging to the side of the tree.
The photo almost seems like an overhead shot, but it was straight on. The bird tilted its head so I could pinpoint focus on its left eye, and I’m happy with the image.
American robins also flew into view, and as I walked a little farther on the trail I spotted several dark-eyed juncos. I turned around and went back to the clearing where I’d seen the titmice and decided it was time to head home.
As I returned to the lake, I checked my iPhone and realized I’d lost track of time. I’d been in the clearing probably 20 minutes, with my thoughts immersed in the presence of the birds.
I had lost all sense of the usual thoughts running through my head — work obligations, how my new knee is holding up, stuff to do at home. It all disappeared as I inhabited the birds’ space as a quiet interloper. What a treat that was. 🦅
I’ve had a lot of fun reviewing the bird photos I took in 2025, and it took me several passes to sort out the top 10. Weirdly, on my first ranking, I discovered that a few of the birds that made my 2024 top 10 were included in my ’25 list.
Was I playing favorites with Eastern meadowlarks, common mergansers and great blue herons? Not so, but I reconsidered. At the top of the list I chose the one above showing a female common yellowthroat in full-throated exclamation. It’s one I hadn’t posted here previously. I took it June 21 at Mercer Meadows, although I can’t recall precisely where.
I admit freely that common yellowthroats are among my favorite birds. I have plenty of shots of them, mostly males, in profile or three-quarter views with their beaks open in song. Looking at the female, I can’t help but interpret the bird’s seeming rage as a metaphor for the divisive political climate of the United States. I shall make no further comment on that and leave us all to the beauty, joy and occasional humor that birds bring us.
For my second choice, I’m going with a double-crested cormorant just about to ingest a fish on Oct. 4 at Veterans Park in Hamilton. This may be my best image of the year, and — not unlike the fish depicted — I flipped and flopped over whether to designate it No. 1. It is the most dramatic and wild image I took.
2. Down the hatch!
While No. 2 shows the harsher side of nature, my third choice brings out its beauty. This Savannah sparrow was perched atop a plant with wine-red berries at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm, and the light was warm. When color and light converge, the odds of a memorable image increase.
3. Savannah sparrow on red berries.
I know you’re here for the images, so I’m going to ease off on the narrative and let the photos and captions carry you the rest of the way.
4. A ruby-throated hummingbird floats by a red plant at Acadia National Park in Maine. Flecks of nectar can been seen by the bird’s back.5. A bald eagle surveying the land from a tree top.6. An Eastern towhee stands in the sun.A green heron perches on a log at the Dyson Tract swamp near the Delaware and Raritan Canal.8. A yellow-warbler takes flight at the Dyson Tract.9. An upside-down blue-gray gnatcatcher snips at a tree branch.10. Northern harrier flying at sunset at the Pole Farm.
Thanks for following my blog, and I hope you enjoyed seeing these photos. (The gnatcatcher shot is also first published here.) 2026 is underway, and I’m looking forward to sharing more of my birding adventures in the months ahead. 🦅
The Jersey Birder 