Without a car for a few days recently, I was unable to get to the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm, at least not without some difficulty. So I improvised and headed on foot through the Rider University campus near home to the Loveless Nature Preserve.
The preserve is a mostly wooded area that straddles the old Johnson trolley line that years ago connected Princeton, Lawrenceville and Trenton. From the back end of the Rider campus, you enter the preserve on the trolley path.
Each day, I could hear an indigo bunting chirping away as I entered and exited at that point. My Merlin app lit up, and for the first couple trips, I could not spot the elusive blue beauty.
As I headed into the preserve on what would be the final day of being without wheels, I figured if I was going to spot the bird, the time was now. On previous trips, I kept my eyes locked onto the cluster of trees from which the bird was unquestionably singing.
On this morning, I heard the bird and checked the trees, again to no avail.
Bird on a wire, of all places.
And then I looked up.
I was startled to see the bunting almost directly overhead, perched on a wire. It was almost as if the bird was saying: “OK, I’ve had my fun toying with you. Now get out your camera, take a few shots, and let’s both get on with the day.”
Grateful that the bird was so obliging, I got a few shots and moved on, reminding myself that looking not just straight ahead but up, down and all around improves one’s world view.
A note on the photos: the bird was so accommodating that after taking a couple of quick shots, I had time to focus again and notice the light behind the bird. I shifted my camera slightly to aim for a halo effect, which is in the featured image at top. The photo in the center of the text was a frame taken before I shifted.
The Eastern towhee was one of the first non-backyard birds that caught my attention as I started birding regularly at the Mercer Meadows Pole farm three years ago. I first heard the bright “twee!” call one April morning three years ago, and it would be a few visits more before I spotted one about 10 feet up in a tree. It was the first time I’d ever knowingly seen one, and I was thrilled.
Since then, I’ve heard hundreds of towhees in several locations and seen them often. But I struggled to take a photo that does the bird justice and makes me happy. It finally happened this afternoon, on a day off from work when I went to the park for a second visit.
I logged seven towhees on e-Bird on my morning walk, and I was ruminating then on how tough it is to get a good shot of one. The black hood on the bird’s head seems to suck all the light out of the sky, and in most towhee photos I take, the head is so dark that I can barely make out the bird’s eyes.
But photo fate smiled upon me this afternoon. As I walked over a pair of footbridges that are at a juncture on one of my regular trails, I heard a towhee clearly singing. (I swear the words to their song are, “E-Bird meee!”)
The woods at that point (maybe 50 yards from where I spotted my first towhee in 2019) are thick. The sky was partly overcast, and little sunlight penetrated.
I spotted Mr. Towhee on a thick branch about 10 feet above ground, maybe eight feet in from the trail. I bumped up the ISO setting on my camera to 3200 from 800 and shot about 10 frames before the bird flitted away.
I”m pleased that this photo came out so well.
Not expecting any result but the usual “dark shadows,” I was pleasantly surprised when I brought the images up on my laptop back home.
That’s not quite true. I was delighted!
The image at top and the one in the middle of this post were taken a split second apart, and I made only minor adjustments to optimize the image. I suppose it would be slightly better if the bird were turned a bit to the side to show more of its undercarriage, but I am quite happy to show the world my best Eastern towhee photo to date as is.
I also want to add that a fellow birder told me he had spotted a female towhee and said it was a brown beauty. I had assumed male and female towhees had the same markings (monomorphic is the term), but they do not.
I was lucky enough to spot a female last week, and the photo below will give you an idea of what she looked like, at least from behind. I’m hoping to get a better photo of a female. Check back in three years!
For the past several weeks, Dickcissels have been frequenting the grassland fields of the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm, and it has been a thing of wonder.
Initially, I wondered if I’d ever see the bird. My Merlin sound app kept hearing the bird, but I could never spot it. I’d see reports of Dickcissel sightings most days from the Pole Farm.
This visitor from South America is a rarity. Last year, for a few .days in the spring one of them took up residence on the Reed Bryan Farm side of Mercer Meadows. I caught only a distant glimpse of it singing from atop a tree far out in the distance.
This year, the Dickie bird has been much more accommodating.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve encountered several birders who pulled into the Cold Soil Road parking lot with high hopes. Over and over, I’d report having heard the bird but having no luck at seeing it, let alone getting one on camera.
But my luck changed a week or so ago, and I spotted one in one of the big Pole Farm fields, just off the paved section of the Lawrence-Hopewell Trail. I managed a fair shot that confirmed species identity, and it would be a few days more before I was able to get a better look, resulting in the photo topping this post.
I just missed the bird yesterday morning, as two fellow birders noted, and I went back late in the afternoon to try my luck. I went up the trail and fairly quickly heard the bird singing from the branches of a small tree. The photos I shot then would turn out to be disappointing, but I had better fortune on my return trip when I met up with a couple of friends hoping to find the bird.
He obligingly sang from a tree branch in roughly the same spot I’d been at earlier. Having looked at my shots later at home, I believe I saw two Dickcissels, the one a textbook yellow-breasted male and the other a duller brown with some yellow streaking.
One of the Dickcissels I spotted at the Pole Farm this week, not nearly as colorful as the other(s).
Some of the birders I know speculate that we have a breeding pair, and one photographer got a shot of three of the birds close together a few weeks back.
However many are here, they are welcome to stay as long as they’d like, continuing to enhance the wonders of our little patch of birding paradise.
Throughout time, Man and Squirrel have uneasily co-existed in a Hegelian dialectic battle for supremacy in controlling access to bird feeders. It is a noble struggle for both creatures, thesis and antithesis, with the fortunes of the birds hanging in the balance.
We first got serious about feeding the birds about 10 years ago when we hung a basic bird feeder from a shepherd’s hook near the picture window at the back of our first home in Lawrence Township. Not long after, the squirrels showed up and began chomping down the bird seed seemingly faster than we could refill the feeder.
We enjoyed the antics of these long-tailed rodents as they leaped and stretched and contorted themselves into position to gulp a few grams of seed while the birds kept their distance. Seen from a Marxist perspective, these antics showed the squirrels as the rapacious bourgeoisie oppressing the proletariat of sparrows and cardinals.
Revolutionary solutions were needed.
We discovered a bird feeder called the Yankee Flipper from the Droll Yankee company, and for many months we were satisfied with the results. The “Flipper” has a battery-operated motor that spins the perch, flinging the squirrels off. With the battery fully charged, the squirrels got quite a ride, to our great amusement. They always seemed to land on their feet.
But a couple of times the squirrels got a foot lodged in the perch and were spun around and around for several dizzying seconds before being sent off. We watched guiltily as, if drunk, they stumbled off into the bushes.
The feeder battery eventually wore out, and the replacement we ordered was expensive and never worked as well as the original.
Time for a paradigm shift.
A house finch cracks a sunflower seed she’s just extracted from one of the feeding ports on the Squirrel Buster Plus. Note the half-closed feeding port at left.
Five years ago, we switched to the Squirrel Buster Plus from Brome Bird Care, and it has proved a fantastic solution. The Squirrel Buster is a tube feeder with a perch suspended from a long spring inside the tube. When squirrels pop onto the perch, it drops under their weight, cutting off access to the feeding ports.
The tension on the spring is adjustable, and it takes a few days to get the calibration right. I bought a new Squirrel Buster a few weeks ago when the perch broke on our first one, and it took several days before I found the sweet spot at which the birds have full access and the squirrels have none.
Eventually, the squirrels give up and don’t even climb the pole. Occasionally some new squirrel will show up and try, but it, too, will get the message and content itself with picking among the morsels on the ground. The spring mechanism also thwarts grackles and other large birds who try to horn in on what we set out for the songbirds.
The Squirrel Buster has a large capacity, and I only need to refill it about once a week, although that schedule will vary with the seasons. The feeder is durable, as evidenced by the five years we had with the first one before the perch wore out.
A bonus: great customer service
When the new Squirrel Buster arrived, the packaging included notice that Brome has a lifetime guarantee with a promise to replace any needed parts. If I knew that when I got the first feeder, I’d forgotten.
I called Brome customer service and, just as promised, someone answered the phone and arranged to ship me a new perch free of charge. It showed up a few days later.
While the new feeder is taking care of the chickadees and thwarting the squirrels, I’ve yet to remount the old feeder. I’m going need another shepherd’s hook and I also have to call Brome for another replacement part.
I’d left the original feeder on the patio, and some critter gnawed a chunk off one of the plastic parts of the spring mechanism.
Comrades, I suspect a rampaging capitalist squirrel did the damage.
A week ago last Sunday, I was walking on a paved portion of the Lawrence-Hopewell Trail through the main fields up from the Pole Farm parking lot when I stopped to snap a photo of a song sparrow. But something was odd about it.
When I brought the photo up on screen at home, I was puzzled that the bird showed no tail feathers and no legs or feet. It seemed as if he had been grafted onto the branch on which he was perched.
My first photo of Tailless Joe, May 29, 2022.
Two days later in the same area, I spotted a bird that did have legs and feet but was missing tail feathers. It was undoubtedly the same bird I had seen two days earlier, and I snapped a few more pictures, one of which tops this post.
I wasn’t sure if the bird was male or female, but I dubbed it Tailless Joe, a winking reference to Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy, the U.S. senator from Wisconsin for whom a shameful era of American history is named.
But there’s no shame for Tailless Joe, and I fell hard for him. I worry about him. Do the other birds bully him? How did he lose his tail, and how will he survive? Can he fly OK? Will he find a mate?
Tailless Joe singing on June 4, 2022
I’ve seen Joe twice more, yesterday and today in the same area. There’s no doubt he’s surviving and is able to fly. He sings beautifully, lustily even, so I hope there’s a mate awaiting him if he is not already betrothed.
We see so many birds, and it’s a rare occasion to identify one individually. It happens occasionally at our feeders, when a house sparrow with a feather askew or a cardinal with molting problems returns for a day or two.
It’s all the rarer to spot a single, uniquely identifiable bird in the wild over a period of days.
It’s a rare occasion when my work life and birding hobby converge, but that’s what happened last month when I covered a group of Princeton University students competing in New Jersey Audubon’sWorld Series of Birding.
I had met two of the members of the team on a bird walk they had arranged through the student birding club, and I learned then that they were going to participate in the World Series on May 14.
That was too good of a story to pass up, so I volunteered to write one and take photographs as well. The story is on the university’s website, proudly touting that the five undergraduates and one graduate student of the Princeton Tiger Shrikes won the competition.
The Tiger Shrikes in action at Coral Avenue Beach, Cape May. The cameras and microphones are from a film crew doing a documentary on the World Series of Birding for HBO.
If I were much younger, I might have ridden along with the team during their 24-hour, marathon birding session. But instead I chose to meet them in one spot, at the Coral Avenue Beach at the southern tip of Cape May. The students were there for 15 minutes, enough time for me to take some photos and a little video of them birding from the observation platform. I caught up with the students later by phone and text after they learned the next day that they’d won the competition.
The students on the Tiger Shrikes are remarkable young people who care not only for birds, but also for the greater natural world. I’m glad to know that they and others like them will be heading out into the world, making it a better place for all of us.
The Princeton Tiger Shrikes look for birds at Coral Avenue Beach, Cape May.
For the last three weeks or so, every time I set foot on a particular trail at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm, I’ve heard a yellow warbler. And I do mean heard, not seen.
This bird, and I suspect it is just the one, has continually frustrated me because I have not been able to see it. Most of the trees along the trail, which branches off the paved path that begins at the lot where I park, have fully leafed out, providing lots of green cover for the yellow warbler.
No matter that I’ve seen black-and-white warblers, a brown thrasher and countless catbirds in this same cluster of trees, the yellow warbler has taunted me with its song, which sometimes seemed to be coming from directly above my head.
Yesterday in the same area, I spotted a willow flycatcher accommodatingly perched on a nearly bare branch, in easy range for my camera.
Finally this morning, the yellow fellow emerged, temporarily positioning itself on on a branch high up on one of the trees. I got a few shots there and a better one as it dropped down to a another branch.
I’ve learned and grown to appreciate that birding is equal parts visual and audio observation. My listening skills have improved, but I still enjoy my avian encounters most when I see what I’m hearing.
The yellow warbler atop a tree. The lighting in this shot differs from the banner image due to my changing positions on the trail, with the sun thus highlighting the bird differently.
Because of work commitments, my time in the woods and fields has been limited of late, so I’m extra appreciative when new birds come into view.
I spotted my first blue grosbeak on May 17 at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm, and the bird seems to be hanging around as fellow birders spotted it this morning in the same area. That’s just off the Cold Soil Road parking lot, at the turnoff to the alley of trees that’s part of the Lawrence Hopewell Trail.
The blue grosbeak was too far away for me to get a good photo, although my fuzzy frames were sufficient to confirm the identity. I had better luck yesterday, Saturday, May 21, when I spotted just off the trail back to the lot a mid-size brown and yellow bird perched on a stalk of grass.
I didn’t recognize the bird, so I went to my camera first and snapped a few frames. I fumbled with my iPhone to open the Merlin sound app, then took a few more shots. Merlin confirmed a bobolink, which gave me great joy.
Last fall I had spotted a couple of male bobolinks in the same area, identifiable through binoculars but too far out of range for my camera. The bird I spotted yesterday presumably was a female. She’s a beauty, as you can see from the image topping this post.
My friend Laura had alerted me that chimney swifts have been zipping above the historic parts of the Princeton University campus, and I happened to catch a few above Prospect House and the art museum construction site 10 days ago.
Whether I’m seeing a species for the first time, or for the first time in a new setting, it’s always a treat. That bobolink brought me to 100 species spotted in Mercer County this year, and I can’t wait to discover what (f)lies ahead.
This was my first year of formal birding on Global Big Day, and I’m pleased to report that I logged 45 species at five locations and added four birds to my life list.
I started the day at my favorite spot, the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm near home. I counted 28 species on a gray morning memorable more for what I didn’t see than what I did. My Merlin Sound app heard a few warblers I never did see, so I did not include them in my count.
Wood thrushes were in full voice at the Pole Farm on May 14, 2022. This is one of the several I heard in the woods.
The most exciting, and ultimately disappointing, part of the walk was having Merlin key in on a black-billed cuckoo, followed shortly by my taking a photo nearby of what I was pretty sure was the one. Even fellow birder Andy figured it was a cuckoo when he looked at the fuzzy image on my camera back. Alas, upon further review on the home computer, my cuckoo was actually a brown-headed cowbird stretching out for a morsel off a treetop.
But the day would bring rewards.
After some observations at home, I drove two hours to the southern tip of New Jersey at Cape May. On Global Big Day each year, Cape May is the epicenter of East Coast bird migration. This has not been a strong May for migration in the Garden State, and the day on the cape dawned heavily with fog and rain. The rain cleared when I arrived at mid-afternoon but the fog had barely lifted.
The trip to Cape May was principally for work, as I would connect there with a group of Princeton University students taking part in the World Series of Birding, sponsored by the New Jersey Audubon Society. The students were in and out of our shoreline rendezvous in about 15 minutes, and I’ll write more about that later.
Three least terns turn their attention to the shoreline at Coral Avenue beach in Cape May.
Few birds were at the rendezvous point, but I was able to log sanderlings (banner photo) and least terns as lifers. Afterward, I stopped at Lake Lily, where a pair of mute swans were close to the edge on their nest, caring for an adorable cygnet.
The fluffy mute swan cygnet sits on the nest at Lily Lake.
As I was heading out of town, I pulled over late in the afternoon at the Nature Conservancy’s South Cape May Meadows preserve. I only walked a third of a mile into the preserve before turning around to head home, and I added short-billed dowitchers and Forster’s terns to my life list.
I only scratched the sand, so to speak, in Cape May County, and I aim to return someday soon.
One of the joys of my first year of the COVID epidemic was discovering a pair of killdeers that nested in a creek a short walk from my back door. It was a joy again a few days ago to see that another killdeer couple has set up housekeeping in the same area, along the 12th-hole fairway of the golf course that our modest property adjoins.
I was on a late-afternoon walk, returning home, when I spotted movement in the rocky creek bed, just to the side of a culvert connecting to a retention pond. I pulled up my binoculars and made a solid ID on a killdeer.
Momma killdeer gives me the eye as I approach her nest hidden among the rocks of Cobblestone Creek, April 22, 2022.
The bird soon turned away from me, fanning out its tail feathers. I thought — mistakenly, I would learn — it must be some sort of courtship maneuver. But no other bird was nearby.
Knowing that killdeer make their nests on the ground, I always keep a fair distance when I see them in the creek. I moved in slightly closer to snap a few photos but quickly moved on.
Before I reached home, curiosity got the better of me. I did a Google search from my iPhone on why a killdeer would fan its tail feathers. The answer came up quickly on the website of Northern Woodlands magazine: killdeer fan their feathers as a diversion to keep predators away. The article, from 2016, is a great read on the protective measures many bird species take. “If they gave out Academy Awards for bird performances,” the article says, “the killdeer would win for over-acting.”
Having been profiled as a predator, I’ll be sure to keep a good distance from killdeer from now on. I saw enough bird twerking that day to last me a good while.
A killdeer walks along the edge of the retention pond on the golf course near my home May 4, 2022. The retention pond is across the fairway from the culvert where the killdeer nest is.
The Jersey Birder 