The Jersey Birder

A bird’s gotta eat

I’m delighted to be able to get back out onto the trails again, and I’ve been building back my stamina. This morning, I did a nearly 1.5 mile loop out at the Pole Farm, and at my slower pace, I’m learning to enjoy how it brings me unexpected pleasures in birding.

The photo atop this post is a prime example. I drove over to Colonial Lake Park just a couple of miles away here in Lawrence Township, knowing that I could park close the lake and not have to overtax myself in walking. The park also has benches that I can park on whenever I need a break.

I had scanned most of the lake for what few birds were on the water. As I looked toward the end of the lake that’s close to U.S. 1 Business, I spotted a great egret plying the shallows near the lake’s edge. I wandered down toward it, being careful not to spook it by making any sudden movements.

I stood back from the bird about 50 feet away, propped my cane against my leg and brought up my camera. Paying me no obvious heed, the bird kept strutting in the shallow water, taking aim at whatever was stirring below. I took several shots of the bird stalking, and then — bang! — it struck. I blasted away, not knowing what the egret had plucked from the muck.

In my fully mobile days, I probably would have taken a few shots and walked on. But since I’m sporting a cane these days, I decided to stay a while to increase my odds of a good shot.

That’s what happened. Once I got home, I pulled up the image to discover that the egret had snagged a tadpole, one that will never grow up to be a frog.

Another day I headed over to Veterans Park in Hamilton, where the lake attracts lots of geese and ducks. My friend Laura and I had gone there to see if we might catch site of a rare-to- Mercer-County dunlin that other birders had been seeing the previous few days. We did get to put the dunlin on our life lists, and we also managed to catch a double-crested cormorant in the act of catching and eating a fish.

The fish put up a fight, or maybe the cormorant just liked thrashing it about. In any event, the struggle lasted long enough for me to get a couple of illustrative frames.

Those back-to-back episodes of birds getting their protein quotient reminded me that critters prey on other critters, a basic tenet of nature.

For contrast, while walking at the Pole Farm this morning, I was able to shoot a few frames of a yellow-rumped warbler snacking on berries. There was a lot less drama in that scene, and I enjoyed it.

Yellow-rumped warbler having breakfast at the Pole Farm.

Adventures of a three-legged birder

Medical challenges rudely interrupted my summer, but thanks to excellent care and support by doctors, nurses, therapists and my family and friends, I’ve been able to return to the parks and fields for the fall.

One major difference: because of a balky knee, I now must walk with a cane, and I can’t tramp around as far as was I able to do three months ago. But by making sure I plant my feet stably, I can still see sharply through my binoculars and fire away with my camera, even with the lens zoomed at its maximum.

This morning, I made my first venture back to the Reed-Bryan Farm side of Mercer Meadows park. It was here on July 17 that I aborted my visit after getting out of the car and feeling less than my best, beginning what would be a long exile from birding.

Today, I pulled into one of the handicapped spots and put up my temporary disabled parking pass. I was immediately greeted as usual by squawking European starlings, and I could hear blue jays shrieking in the distance — in other words, all was normal.

A Savannah sparrow perches on a branch Oct. 8 as fall color begins to show itself.

I then headed past the big red barn by the gates to the main trail and did a slow, three-legged stroll with my cane downhill. I was thrilled to hear and see a few Savannah sparrows flitting about in the tall grasses. The vegetation was close to shoulder high, probably double what it was when I was last at the park in July.

I hoped I might see a Northern harrier, as they have returned to Mercer Meadows/Reed-Bryan/Pole Fam in recent weeks. I wasn’t that lucky in my brief walk, a quarter mile down the trail and then back to the lot. But I was pleased to spot a Northern mockingbird in a tree along the trail, the same area where I typically find them much of the year. Passing birders pointed out three American kestrels perched on a distant tree, out of camera range but still a thrill to see.

Northern mockingbird hanging out along the trail.

I made a couple of short walks at the Pole Farm side of the park in previous weeks, and I’m working on building up my endurance each time I go out. I’ve had good photo opportunities at Colonial Lake in Lawrence Township, where the lake is close to parking, and benches are nearby for when I need to take a break.

I hope to resume seeing my birding buddies on the trails (I saw one this morning) as I build up my stamina. I’ve missed that camaraderie along with the birds these past few months. But I’m back out there, as shown in the selfie topping this post that I took this morning, feeling healthy, happy and grateful.

A double-crested cormorant spreads its wings on Colonial Lake on Oct. 1.

Inspiration from a goldfinch with a disability

Since I am dealing with temporarily limited mobility and walking with a cane, I felt a kinship with a male American goldfinch that came to our nyjer seed feeder this afternoon.

On a beautiful late summer day, I couldn’t resist parking in a chair on our patio, hoping to spot a wide variety of birds, from the regulars to, with luck, a warbler transiting my part of New Jersey.

It was breezy, so other than a gaggle of jabbering house sparrows, few birds showed up during the 45 minutes I was on watch. The highlight came when a male goldfinch, nicely lit by the sun, arrived and perched atop the nyjer feeder. I got a nice look at him through my binoculars, and I zeroed in on his left foot.

Something wasn’t right.

While his right foot clamped him atop the feeder, he held the left foot up. It appeared mangled, almost pancaked. The bird surveyed the area without wavering, and I wondered if he’d be able to grab onto the feeder tube and have a bite to eat.

Not to worry. The little guy flew down onto the tube and ate heartily. I didn’t have my Canon camera with me, so I tried my best by zooming in with my iPhone. If you look carefully at the photo topping this post, you can see him left and slightly below center, roughly on a line with the bottom of the suet feeder to the right. The sun was shining through the feeder, throwing a shadow, which explains the black band below his neck.

I was impressed at how this little creature with a handicap was adapting and making his way through the world regardless.

That’s an inspiration for all of us living with handicaps, temporary or permanent.

Thanks, little bird, for showing me the way as I regain strength on my left side.

Chasing a nemesis bird with birding author Julia Zarankin

If you are reading this post, you’re either already a birder or taking your first steps on the path to becoming one. Even if neither of those situations applies, I recommend that you read a wondeful book on discovering the joys of birding: Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder: A Memoir, by Julia Zarankin.

Julia is a Toronto-based writer and lecturer and an avid birder. I happened onto her book in the most serendipitous of ways.

Several weeks ago, I received an out-of-the-blue email from Julia, who had seen one of my Mercer Meadows reports on e-Bird. The blue grosbeak is a nemesis bird for her, one that maddeningly has eluded her view, even with her high-quality Zeiss binoculars.

I saw plenty of blue grosbeaks at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm last year, and as spring wore on this year I was hearing them and wondering when I’d see one. I finally spotted one high up in a tree on the Reed Bryan Farm side of the park one morning, and Julia spotted that report.

She was coming to the Princeton area to visit friends and asked me for pointers on where to spot one of the grosbeaks. I wrote back with my best instructions and offered to meet her at the park when she got to town.

On a Saturday morning, we met in the parking lot and headed down the trail. While we saw plenty of birds on our walk (her affable husband, Leon, joined us), we didn’t see or hear a single blue grosbreak.

Darn.

But if you read Julia’s book, you’ll know that missing your target bird is part of the birding game. Appreciate what presents itself to you in the moment.

As we walked back to our cars, we traded notes on people we knew in common at Princeton University, where I work and she had gotten her Ph.D. That’s how I found out Julia is a writer (widely published in Canada) and asked if she’d written any books.

That’s when she mentioned “Field Notes,” which I ordered on Amazon later that day.

Julia is as delightful a writer as she is a person. The book isn’t just about birding. She writes about her upbringing in Ukraine during the late years of the Soviet Union, her years as an immigrant in Canada, the breakup of her first marriage, finding new love with Leon and their ambitious travels.

Julia is a wonderful storyteller. I found a lot of commonality between her early experiences at birding and my own, including feelings of inadequacy from misidentifying or not recognizing birds in front of other birders (like the time I thought what might be something exotic turned out to be a male house finch).

The book recounts with good humor some of her misadventures netting and banding birds and camping out in wilderness areas for birding research. Julia also notes the joy of discovering the abundance of birds near home. I’m itching to drive to Toronto to visit some of her favorite spots.

To me, Julia represents the best of birders: a kind and caring advocate for birds, curious and eager to see more of them and appreciate their magnificence, and willing to share her knowledge (without resorting to “birdsplaining”).

Take my advice: get the book. You’ll meet a new friend in Julia, and maybe you’ll be fortunate enough to meet her some day in the wild as I was.

These dutiful parents must be exhausted!

From my indoor perch I’ve been watching a pair of house wrens hour after hour making furious sorties from the birdhouse suspended from our larch tree, in search of food for what I presume is a brood of wee offspring.

The parents are relentless in their mission, darting in and out. I figure they resemble any human couple getting a handle on a round-the-clock feeding schedule for their newborn.

My wife and I know how tiring that loving challenge can be, and we salute Mr. and Mrs. Wren for their devotion. We also wish them a good night’s sleep!

Back to backyard birding

Some medical adventures have temporarily knocked me off the birding trails, and in my recovery I am reacquainting myself with the joys of backyard birding.

I’m often parked in my recliner, facing a wall of picture windows offering a visual gateway to our modest yard and the golf course adjoining our property.

Ever since my wife restocked the feeders, we’ve been beset by swarms of common grackles, one of which tops this post.

With my camera nearby, I’ve managed to take a few shots.

I would have had one of a cardinal, but I was so busy watching him check out one of our herb planters that I missed the opportunity.

Right now, I’m more concerned with savoring these visits than I am with snapping them.

Falling out of the nest

On Monday the week before last, I didn’t feel right when I stepped out of the car at Mercer Meadows. I felt out of whack and decided to drive home, and called in a rare sick day at work. Later that morning, I tumbled out the back door onto our patio.

This birder was grounded. I will spare you the medical details, but I made visits to two emergency rooms at hospitals, was admitted at the second, and I’m writing from a third, a rehab place where I’m undergoing physical and occupational therapy. I’m improving steadily, and the only birding i can do is by looking out the windows. While in PT yesterday, I spotted a gray catbird outside, which was reassuring.

I will undergo several more days of treatment before I can get home and back out with my binoculars and camera. I miss the birds, especially the common yellowthroat topping this post, who often sings me a morning song at the Pole Farm.

There’s never a bad day birding

No photo tops this post because on my last birding outing I took no photos of birds. In fact, in my 30-mile drive south to Palmyra Cove late this morning, I only saw three of the meager 14 birds I observed across seven species.

That’s it. Two cardinals in flight, and a third bird (probably a red-eyed vireo) that was tantalizingly close in a tree right in front of me. I couldn’t focus my binoculars quickly enough before it flew off.

It was hot and humid. I was sweating profusely and dragged a bit on the back end of a two-and-a-quarter mile walk. Not even a single gull flew by.

A bad day, right?

Wrong!

There are no bad days in birding.

Even if I had neither seen nor heard a bird, I had the privilege of walking through wooded paths and strolling along the sandy beach of the tidal Delaware River, the Philadelphia skyline in view — on Independence Day, no less.

I’ve made a few afternoon trips out to Mercer Meadows Pole Farm and found so few birds that I returned to my car and didn’t log the visit on eBird.

But those days are rare, and although they are a little disappointing, I still appreciate them because they bring me outdoors.

I have lived my life in cities and suburbs, and I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be “outdoorsy.”

I’ve become that over the past few years, with the gear to prove it: trail shoes, hiking boots, hunting boots, floppy hats (one with a havelock), a rain hood for my camera, and more.

For my transformation, I credit the birds. They enrich every day, even if only a few of them reveal themselves to me.

Is this dickcissel the loneliest bird in America?

For the past two weeks, a male dickcissel outside his normal range has been visiting the Reed Bryan Farm section of Mercer Meadows park, singing throughout the day to attract a mate.

So far, no females have replied, at least according to the dozens of birders who have come to the site to see this unusual visitor.

Dickcissels migrate from the Northern tier of South America through Central America and breed in the American Midwest, although some pass through sections of the East Coast.

Two years ago, one dickcissel showed up at the Reed Bryan Farm, drawing lots of birders to see what eBird lists as a rare bird for this area. Last year about this time, several dickcissels spent several weeks on the Pole Farm side of Mercer Meadows, and I was pleased to see them.

The bird most often sings from the bare branches at top right.

When the one arrived this year, I quickly went out to spot him, and he did not disappoint. He was easily seen and even more easily heard from the Reed Bryan parking lot, clinging to his favorite perch in the bare branches atop a big tree beside the lot.

I spotted him again this morning but he flew off into the fields before I had a chance to photograph him. The light was poor, and I needed to walk back to my car at the Pole Farm lot, so I didn’t stick around either to wait for him to come back or to seek him out in the fields.

Looking for love on a Sunday afternoon, July 2, 2023.

Knowing that the bird has been spotted many times in the afternoon, I kept a wary eye on the weather and headed back to Reed Bryan about 4 p.m. It’s only a 10-minute ride from home, and the moment I opened the car door after parking, I heard the bird’s clear, insistent song. He was atop the tree as expected, and I took several shots, including the one topping this post.

After a few minutes, he stuck to his pattern and flew off into the field on the opposite side of the parking lot. It took me a few minutes to spot him, eventually finding him straddling a branch about 30 yards away.

He flew off again, I believe to the field to the right of the trail that heads downhill from the parking lot. I milled about for a few minutes until a rain storm blew in, and I made a short dash to the shelter of my Subaru.

The dickcissel probably will stick around another week or two. If you’re looking for him, I hope you find him. And I hope he finds a suitable companion, because all of us need love.

I know you’re out there somewhere. The dickcissel seeks a mate.

Having an extra set of eyes makes birding better

Most days when I’m out birding, I’m a loner. I’ll stop to chat with passing birders, of course, sharing tips on what I’ve spotted and hoping they’ll share something I’d like to see. But I enjoy my own company, if you will, and I’m perfectly happy to pursue my birding in solitude.

But then there are mornings like today, when my friend Laura joined me on a visit to Mercer Meadows, on the Reed Bryan Farm side opposite the Pole Farm. Our mission: to make sure Laura spotted the well-traveled dickcissel that’s been hanging out at the parking lot for several days, singing up a storm.

The moment I opened the door to the car, we heard the bird. The little Pavarotti was predictably perched near the red barn at the head of the trail, singing loudly from bare branches at the top of the tree.

The instant find took a bit of drama out of the trip, but we were perfectly fine with that. We also noticed the gathering of European starlings in and around the big tree, and then Laura spotted something new. High up in the trunk of the tree was a round hole where starlings were nesting, with the parents flying in and out.

A starling in the nesting cavity, above the Reed Bryan Farm parking lot.

I’ve parked in that lot scores of times and seen hundreds of starlings in that tree, but I’d never noticed a nesting cavity. Score one for the eagle-eyed Laura, who was just warming up.

We walked downhill from the parking lot on a path bisecting two large fields. At the bottom of the hill is a footbridge over a small creek, and after crossing it you must turn left or right. We stopped at the intersection, looking around, hemming and hawing on which way to go.

A maple tree towers over the intersection, and at some point I spotted a yellow-breasted bird that flew into its branches about the time our Merlin sound apps lit up with “great-crested flycatcher.”

I can’t recall exactly how things played out, but it seemed there were two flycatchers coming in and out of the tree. Then Laura spotted a round opening in a dead spur of the trunk, about three-quarters of the way up the tree.

A nest!

Mom or Dad Flycatcher, perched on the edge of the nest.

The flycatchers were coming in and out to feed their young. They flew off in a couple of directions to our right and would be gone a few minutes before reappearing and popping into the cavity in the tree. We couldn’t see the little ones, but it was obvious that the parent birds were carrying food and stooping down from the edge of the nest to feed their brood. I took several hilariously terrible photos of the back half of the body and the tail of one of the parents, but I’m quite pleased with the photo at the top of this post. You can see the crest on the bird’s head as it emerges from the nest.

Would I have spotted the flycatcher nest on my own? Almost certainly not. Impatient sort that I am, I would have been wondering what the yellow-breasted bird I’d seen was as I moved on, hoping to catch a glimpse down the trail.

The same went for the starling nest. Most times, I glance up at the tree, do a rough count of the starlings, enter it in eBird and head off in search of birds uncommon and more colorful.

The lesson here is obvious. Four eyes are better than two, especially when the extra set is peering through a pair of high-end binoculars. Just as my friend Andy helped me find a scarlet tanager nest, Laura was the one who spotted the two nests today.

Even without the nests, strolling together, straining to hear a wood thrush and tapping each other on the arm to say, “Is that a …?” makes the outing more enjoyable.