Monday, October 3, 2011

Rainy start to October has been excellent!

Well with yet ANOTHER camping weekend being washed out, Deb, Ron, and I were bummed out a bit. But, Deb and I decided to get some birding in anyway yesterday, even in the rain. The morning started well, as I was checking the weather we had this Cape May Warbler visit our stream/pond out front!
Having done Cape May, Brig, and Donio park a million times in the last month, I decided to go to one of my spring herping/birding routes to see what I could come up with. So we hit Jackson Road and Cedar Lake first. 2 Cape May Warblers and 2 Yellow Rumped Warblers were the highlights here amongst a modest flock of migrants.

Then Heislersville WMA. Rain coming down. Not much in the impoundments. So we decided to call it quits. On our way out, In a pretty steady rain, we ran into a very large flock of migrants, and while trying to keep the rain off our lenses, we started calling out lots of birds!
Baltimore Oriole, Redstart, Magnolia, Waterthrush, Yellow, B+W, BTB, Yellowthroat, Parula, Palm, White Eyed Vireo, Red Eyed Vireo, Phoebe...Bald Eagle above!

So in about 3 hours of birding we ended up seeing 63 species!

So I decided today I would do my usual lazy route: Donio, then the backyard.
Donio was loaded with great shorebirds. 13!! Pectoral Sandpipers! Semipalmated, Least, L Yellowlegs, 27 Killdeer, and a solo Spotted Sandpiper.

The house was even better...12 migrating Ospreys, Merlin, Chestnut Sided Warbler, Tennessee Warbler, Magnolia Warbler, Redstart, Yellowthroat, Cape May Warbler, RE Vireo, House Wren, 5 Indigo Buntings.

So even though we didn't camp, we got our fair share of birds!

Milestones:
Yard Bird #115 - Tennessee Warbler
Atlantic County Bird #222 - Northern Waterthrush
Cumberland County Birds #166-168 - N Waterthrush, BTB Warbler, Magnolia Warbler

No comments:

Post a Comment