Saturday, August 27, 2011

August 27 - Pine Island

Out with Simon K. today for some birding before the rain. At Skinners Lane we had a half-dozen American Golden Plovers, a Wilson's Snipe, and sandpipers of Least, Semi-Palmated, Spotted, Killdeer, and Lesser Yellowlegs.

Later at Oil City Road we had the White Ibis flyover both NY and NJ territories

Monday, August 22, 2011

August 21 - Booby time

Today brought upon a successful chase, although it got off to a tough start when I overslept. This meant my buddy Simon had to wait at our meeting spot for an extra 30 minutes. Sorry friend!
Once we got back on track it was smooth sailing. Just before reaching Cape May we caught up with our other friends' car, so we were all able to get on the Brown Booby together  !

Since these views were fine for a scope but we desired more, the group took a boat ride on the Osprey to get closer looks, and we were rewarded handsomely.



Here's the motley looking crew after getting the closeup views:


Finally we visited Brigantine and had the following sightings:  Black-Bellied Whistling-Duck, Marbled Godwits, Terns of Least, Forsters, Black, Gull-Billed, and Caspian, Sandpipers of Least, Semi-Palmated, Western, White-Rumped, Stilt, Pectoral, Turnstone, both Yellowlegs, both Dowitchers, Whimbrel, Semi-Plover, Oystercatcher, Black-Bellied Plover.

Saturday, August 06, 2011

August 6 - Beach Haven for the Hooded Crow

Since I missed out on the Hooded Crow when it was on Staten Island, NY in June, I took the fact that it had been re-found in Beach Haven, NJ as my second chance..and I did not want to miss it.  Fortunately I was able to see the bird after a half-hour or so of looking for it.

 This photo was taken by Sam Galick.




It was nice to see some long-time friends here too, and I enjoyed the beach walk with Ed B. of Bayonne.  As luck would have it I ran into him a bit later at Brigantine and got to spend more time with him while we took a drive on the auto-tour along with Jim Z. who regaled me with stories of his past rarity chases.  It always interesting for me to listen to those with more experiences than I do.
Unfortunately Brigantine did not yield any of it's recent rarities, so I'll have to hope that more roll in later this month!