Grateful for an overnight temperature drop from the 90s into the mid-60s, I headed to the Pole Farm this morning. The sky was overcast, with little sun to coax the birds out into the open.
I had walked nearly two miles without even lifting my camera up to shoot when I heard the buzzy call of willow flycatcher. There it was — maybe 20 yards away atop a stalk of grass, but I had no clear shot. A moment later it flew farther back off the trail.
I repositioned my stance, training my lens through a tunnel of tall grasses to focus on the bird. It had its back to me, affording me a view of its dark green feathers and wingbars. I shot about a dozen frames before it flew off, and none of them showed any bit of its head beyond the back side of it.
That was the only bird I focused on today — all the others were calling from deep in the grasses and back in the woods, clearly heard but otherwise undetectable. I did get a fair look at an Eastern kingbird flying overhead, but that was using my binoculars.
While the photo gods were not kind today, I’m hoping for better luck tomorrow, when Apollo’s chariot is expected emerge from the clouds. 🦅
For several weeks, I’d been puzzled that I had yet to log a sighting of an egret in 2025. Great egrets usually show up in spring in these parts, but here we are halfway through summer and I’d yet to see one.
I’d been seeing reports of great egrets and a little blue heron at the Dyson Tract area along the Delaware and Raritan canal, and I left work an hour early today to take my chances at spotting them.
Shortly after arriving, I found the little blue heron in the back end of the swamp. A short while later, I spotted an egret flying and landing in the pond on the other side of the trail that splits the two sides of the park.
I’ve shared two egret photos, and I’m holding off on posting the photo of what I’m reasonably certain is the little blue heron until I get confirmation.
UPDATE: I got the confirmation. Here’s the little blue!
Little blue heron searching for a snack in the swamp.
With the temperature in the upper 90s, I didn’t prolong my walk today. The weather is supposed to cool tomorrow, and I’m hoping to get out for a morning visit. 🦅
On a relatively quiet morning at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm, I approached a trail intersection near the old AT&T Building One site and spotted movement about halfway up some tall trees. Birds, undoubtedly, but what were they?
As one flew from one branch to another, I spotted its white breast and gray wings and head. My first thought was “chickadee,” but I got only a glimpse. There didn’t seem to be any black on the bird.
One of the gnatcatchers, in a moment without movement.
It wasn’t alone. I spotted three others like it flitting about that section of trees but couldn’t get a clear shot at any of them through my binoculars. I waited for at least five minutes, figuring I should move on. But an unusual pang of patience kept me stationary, camera at the ready, hoping one of the birds would come a little closer.
One hopped onto a clear branch, and finally I was able to focus.
What I was seeing were blue-gray gnatcatchers. They were moving so quickly that I don’t know whether I got photos of more than one bird. On the computer screen at home, I found several shots of tree branches sans oiseaux, but there were half a dozen frames with a bird in focus. I’ve included my two favorites here, and I’m pleased to present them to you. 🦅
For many birds, mid- to late-summer is molting season. As a result, you may see some odd-looking ones like the “bald” male Northern cardinal we’ve been seeing in our yard. His head is black; the red feathers have fallen off.
While looking out to the yard this afternoon, I was surprised to see a hairy red-bellied woodpecker that was, in a word, weird. I don’t know if it was a male or a female, but its head was mostly white, giving it a spectral aspect. Typically there’s black on top, with a red cap on the males.
I’ve seen a few house sparrows with feathers askew and a male house finch with a red feather sticking straight up from its back. Those feathers will soon fall away, making room for new ones that will carry the birds into fall.
Some of the looks are amusing. Others, like the bald cardinal, are jarring. No worries, though — it’s a natural cycle that repeats itself year after year among our (mostly) feathered friends. 🦅
A couple of times a year, I forget to stick the SD card back into my camera and discover the problem only when I reach the Pole Farm parking lot. It happened again today, and I was even more irritated to discover my backup card wasn’t in the car.
Rather than head back home, I decided to hit the trail with just binoculars and my iPhone. Without the heavy camera and lens, I found myself walking much more freely and quickly, a mild consolation for not having my trusty Canon on my shoulder.
In such situations, I worry that some rare bird or birds — a flock of extinct passenger pigeons come back to life, perhaps — will appear directly overhead or in front of me, and I’ll miss what would have been an Audubon magazine cover shot.
That didn’t happen this morning. I saw few birds that would have been in range to shoot with my long Sigma zoom lens. With few birds about, I turned my attention to the wildflowers poking up out of the grasses on each side of the trail.
They made for a cornucopia of color: pink wild bergamot, black-eyed Susans, yellow false sunflowers and white wild carrot. I especially liked the vivid red Allegany blackberries on the edge of the Lawrence Hopewell Trail. That photo tops this post, and the one ripe berry is no longer on the bramble branch. I ate that one! 🦅
Wild bergamot blooms brighten the landscape off the Pole Farm central trail. Black-eyed Susans mingle with the grasses.False sunflowers, with a few bugs.
While it didn’t quite rise to the nemesis stage, a broad-winged hawk had been one of the species I’d been itching to add to my life list. One of them has again taken up residence near an overpass on Interstate 295 only a few miles from my home.
My birding buddy Jim Parris had spotted the broad-winged hawk in that spot last year and found one there again within the last several days. Primed with his directions, I drove there Saturday morning but found only a crow perched in the dead trees along the overpass where the hawk has been hanging out.
Disappointed, I drove to Costco to gas up my car for a five-hour drive to Morgantown, West Virginia, where my friend Sheila McEntee was to hold a book signing late in the afternoon at the West Virginia Botanic Garden. After a nature walk led by a friendly and knowledgable naturalist, Sheila read two essays from her book, “Soul Friend,” and answered questions from the audience.
Sheila discusses her book in the botanic garden’s education center.
Sheila and I met up again this morning at the botanic garden, reclaimed from Morgantown’s original water reservoir, for some full-attention birding. After being doused in the parking lot by a passing shower, we headed down the main drive to see what we could see.
We were immediately serenaded by several red-eyed vireos and a chime of Northern house wrens. We stopped to take close looks at many of the trees, plants and flowers in the diverse habitats of the park. We had heard an Acadian flycatcher (a lifer for me) on the nature walk the day before.
Early in our walk today, we got dive-bombed by a tree swallow that flew within inches of my head and on a second pass skimmed the top of Sheila’s cap. We hustled along the Reservoir Loop Trail after that until out of harm’s way.
Farther along, Sheila spotted another lifer for me, a Louisiana waterthrush skittering in the understory along a creek paralleling the trail (as depicted at the top of this post).
Then a crazy thing happened.
Above us, a bird began calling or crying loudly. Whatever it was, Merlin lit up repeatedly and left no doubt that what we were hearing was … go ahead, guess! … a broad-winged hawk. We couldn’t spot it in the treetops, but we soon caught a glimpse of the big bird flying off.
The irony was obvious. I couldn’t find a broad-winged hawk a little more than three miles from my house, but I did find one about 24 hours later, 330 miles away.
Birding can be funny like that. Isn’t that marvelous? 🦅
One of the things I love about birding is its unpredictability. Some days birds abound, other days they hunker down. Then there’s a day like yesterday, when plenty of birds were out but only a few came into view for photos.
When I got back home from the Pole Farm, I took stock of what I’d shot: about three dozen frames of a brown-headed cowbird, an Eastern wood-pewee, a blue-gray gnatcatcher and an American goldfinch.
Under the dull gray sky, the lighting was poor. The cowbird and gnatcatcher were a ways off and high up in the same tree, and the pewee was in a densely shaded stand of trees. The goldfinch wasn’t close but his bold yellow feathers popped against the dark green leaves behind him.
In most of the shots, the finch was turned away from me, the focus wasn’t crisp or both. The shot shown here was the only one I considered worth saving. I decided that only after getting to work and doing a second check of my shots on the big monitor on my desk.
While disappointed that I didn’t have a better batch of images, I was still glad I had the shadowy, fuzzy shots of the cowbird and the gnatcatcher. I hadn’t been able to ID either bird at the park, even through my binoculars. I was thus able to add them to my e-Bird report, and I was glad of that, particularly with the gnatcatcher. While I see plenty of cowbirds, the gnatcatchers are more elusive.
I have no complaints from that outing. I heard lots of birds singing, had a good walk and inhaled plenty of fresh air, at least as fresh as New Jersey can provide.
Next up: I’m heading to West Virginia for an overnight trip. I’m hoping to see some new birds there and perhaps a few at stops in the Maryland panhandle. 🦅
Every once in a while, I experience a fleeting moment of bonding with a bird. This morning, for example, I was walking a trail in the northern section of the Pole Farm when I spotted a field sparrow on the ground, barely five feet in front of me.
The bird and I had a brief moment of eye contact, and I said, “Hello there, little fellow!”
Then the bird flew across my path and landed in some shrubs about 10 yards ahead of me. I took a few steps forward and it flew another 10 feet or so, settling on a bush for a few seconds.
Next it flew to the edge of the woods, almost directly across from me, and settled on a tree branch. At that point, I managed to snap a few frames, including the one atop this post.
We eventually went our separate ways, but I distinctly felt that the bird and I had shared some quality time together. Most of my bird shots are from a distance, shrunken by the focal length of my zoom lens. I was glad I came so close to this one, near enough to say hello. 🦅
Spring migration is over. As the days of summer pile up, bird activity appears to slow down. Plenty of birds are still about, of course, but the variety isn’t quite as wide now that the migrants have flown north.
I’m still observing plenty of species on my outings, but it seems the photo opportunities are diminshed. I was able to catch the red-winged blackbird topping this post as he took off from high up a tree at the Pole Farm the other day.
I went down to Trenton marsh over the weekend and was descended upon by many, many bugs. I thought that surely a blue-gray gnatcatcher must be about, but I didn’t spot any and took photos of just one bird, a Northern flicker, before hustling back to my car.
Northern flicker at Trenton marsh. Note the yellow shafts among its feathers.
At the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm yesterday, I briefly heard a blue grosbeak and thought I spotted it in the grasses off the trail. What I spotted instead was a juvenile American robin, speckled chest on full display.
Young robin at the Pole Farm.
Am I disappointed? A bit. But I do still hear plenty of birds singing in the woods: ovenbirds, red-eyed vireos, wood thrushes, warbling vireos, all of which I hear but rarely see.
Here’s a June 30 recording from the Pole Farm in which you can distinctly hear the “chip-chip-chip-chip” song of the ovenbird, with a bit of American robin and red-eyed vireo in the background.
Such song fills my heart, and I wish I could have captured for my readers the delightful “PEE-a-WEE” call of the Eastern wood-pewee. 🦅
We started the second half of the calendar year today, and I figured this would be a good time to assess how my birding adventures went in the first half. I’ve done OK.
My species total in New Jersey stands at 104, lagging a bit behind my total of 116 at the same point last year. Given that with knee surgery I wasn’t able to get out for about a month, I’m pleased with that total.
During the past six months, I added two birds to my life list: a horned grebe in one of my first post-surgery outings, and a yellow-breasted chat. I did not see the chat, but I definitely heard it many times over. Merlin left no doubt, and I finally logged it on e-Bird. That brought my in-state species life list up to 200.
On my last outing of the first half of the year, I was surprised yesterday to find the female orchard oriole topping this post in the grasses off the central path at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm. I also was lucky to get fairly close to an Eastern wood-pewee in heavy shade in the woods.
Eastern wood-pewee.
Today I started the second half by logging the usual suspects at home. Common grackles have descended on our neighborhood again, and they made short work of the suet cakes I put in the feeder. As I write this post late in the afternoon after a thunderstorm rolled through, the grackles are pecking away in our backyard grass. The brown-headed cowbirds that have been unusually scarce in recent weeks are making their own comeback.
Whether I’m out in the woods or just sitting at home, I’m grateful that so many birds fly in and out of view. They enrich my days, as I hope they do yours. 🦅
The Jersey Birder 