Terns & More

Terns species sought after by birders were returning to their nesting grounds on the keys near Fort Jefferson. - Brown Noddies are flying close to the surface, Sooty Terns higher ...

Both species appeared fully engaged in courtship (bringing food for a potential mate) ...

Sooty Tern

Sooty tern

Brown Noddy

Brown Noddy

 Elsewhere around the island, there were a variety of pelagic and shorebird species. A sampling ...

Willet

Royal Tern

Black Skimmer

Good Birding ! !

Water Off a Duck's Back, et al

A sojourn in Philadelphia provided a couple of opportunities for birding: Heinz NWR & Cape May Point State Park. Waterfowl were abundant in both locations, though often at a distance. Most of the two days were overcast, so light was not good for photography. Even so, birding was good. A few samples ...

... Mallard demonstrates the origin of "like water off a duck's back" ...

Mallard

Around the main impoundment at Heinz NWR there were at least ten Great Blue Herons ...

Great Blue Heron

 In both locations, Yellow-rumped Warblers were abundant ...

Yellow-rumped Warbler shows its "butter butt"

The shore at Cape May Point State Park hosted a flock of roosting Black Skimmers ...

Black Skimmer

 Sanderling carries a meal ...

Sanderling

 At the Hawk Watch platform, the heavy skies kept most raptors from taking flight. But good entertainment was provided by this Golden-crowned Kinglet which gleaned bugs from spiders webs along the railings ...

Golden-crowned Kinglet

Any day outdoors with binoculars and a camera is a day of Good Birding!

Birding with Mudman

Note: For many years I have posted my weekly column on Saturday. The column is now monthly and appears in “The Commons” (see link on right). From time to time I will dip into my archives and post an old column. The archival dipping begins today.


Mudman is an occasional birding companion who does not like to talk with other people when he is birding, especially other birders. He’d rather find birds himself, and he distrusts the attitude of other birders. With some good reason.

Black Skimmers

Several years ago, we were birding along the salt marshes near Cape May. Other birders were scattered on the berms on either side of the road, intently scanning with their scopes. A car stopped and disgorged several intense young men. “Seen anything good?” the apparent team leader demanded.

“There’s a flock of Black Skimmers out by the sand-bar,” I replied. Mudman and I were both accustomed to seeing only one or two of these unusual birds on the northern New England coast, so we were excited about seeing over thirty at one time.

Tricolored Heron

There was no verbal response, but the facial expression and body language from this group of young men was one of sneer and contempt. “Seen a Tricolored Heron?” another asked.

“All the herons except that one,” I responded.

He turned to his companions. “Listen. Let’s not waste our time here. Let’s go someplace good.” They piled back in their car and sped off.

I won’t repeat what we muttered to one another, but you can imagine. I can tell you that we were both deliciously satisfied when, within five minutes of their departure, we saw their desired Tricolored Heron.

Least Bittern

That kind of snobbish attitude among some birders is a definite turn-off. But unlike Mudman, it does not prevent me from talking with other birders. The next day we were birding through the old cow meadows in Cape May (now a migratory bird refuge owned by the Nature Conservancy). A group of women stood in an intent group by the side of the trail. Mudman avoided eye contact and quickened his pace. I stopped to ask what they were looking at. Before I could say anything, a woman stepped away from her scope, whispered, “Least Bittern,” and signaled me to look. Mudman joined us and we spent about fifteen minutes watching the bird until it slowly stalked into the reeds. “Thanks for talking to them,” Mudman said. “That’s a new bird for me.”

There’s the dilemma in that question: “Seen anything good?” How do I know what is “good” to another person. Five species of warbler in one bush is “good” to me, even if I have already seen all five individually on that same day. But often the questioner really means (without saying it): “Have you seen a bird that hasn’t been seen around here ever?” And on the off chance that you have, he won’t believe you. The question is a Catch-22. However you answer, you lose.

When asked the question, “Seen anything good?” - I usually respond, “If I’ve got a bird in my binoculars, it’s good.” And then in as friendly a manner as possible, I ask the question which I think should have been asked, “What have you seen?” Sometimes I will risk posing the question as: “Have you seen anything unusual?” - hoping that the person I am asking will tell me about rare sightings.

Most birders I know are journeyman birders like me, and we don’t need to be subjected to the arrogance of those hot-shots who think they know everything. But we do need to receive information, and in turn share it. We simply enjoy the birding experience.

By stopping to talk with that group of women in the cow meadows at Cape May, I made it possible for Mudman to see an elusive bird for the first time in his long birding career. His high from that experience floated him over the marshes for the next hour. That was good!

Blue Grosbeak

And then near the end of the day ... when our eyes were beginning to cross and our minds were turning to mush from long concentration and intensive searching ... and when I suggested he scan the field one more time, concentrating on a particular bush .... and when I was able to say, “That blue bird is not an Indigo Bunting .... and he said, “Blue Grosbeak!?” .... and I said “Yes.” .... and it stayed in that bushing singing while we put a scope on him for a long close look ..... and I said, “First sighting for me in a long time” .... and Mudman said, “Life bird for me!” - now that was great!

Good birding!

Black Skimmer

The Black Skimmer is an odd relative of the terns; its lower mandible is much longer than the upper. It feeds by "skimming" the water with its lower mandible until it touches a minnow, then snapping shut and capturing its prey. When I began birding in Cape May 30 years ago, the skimmer was rarely seen. This flock was resting and feeding along the beach opposite the beach hotels.

Black Skimmer - an Oddity among the Aerial Waterbirds

If you can get a close look at a Black Skimmer, you might think it has been mutated by some toxic soup. Its beak looks deformed. The lower mandible is noticeably longer than the upper mandible. Clearly the bird is incapable of picking up food. So how does it eat?

That was a question asked by one of the earliest European observers of the Black Skimmer. In the early 1600s, Samuel de Champlain voyaged to Cape Cod, briefly dropping anchor in what is now Nauset Harbor in Orleans. His “Voyages” describe one of the birds observed:

“We saw also a sea bird with a black beak four inches long and in the form of a lancet; namely, the lower part representing the handle and the upper the blade, which is thin, sharp on both sides, and shorter by a third than the other, which circumstance is a matter of astonishment to many persons, who cannot comprehend how it is possible for the bird to eat with such a beak. It is of the size of a pigeon, the wings being very long in proportion to the body, the tail short, as also the legs, which are red; the feet being small and flat. The plumage on the upper part is gray-brown, and on the under parts pure white. They go always in flocks along the seashore, like the pigeons with us.”

The gray-brown upper part described by Champlain suggests that the flock was dominated by juvenile birds who had perhaps wandered northward from breeding grounds along the mid-Atlantic coast. Old natives of Cape Cod knew the skimmers as “them cutwater or shearwater birds used to be with us summer times.”

By the mid-1800s, however, Audubon reported that the Black Skimmer was known in Massachusetts and Maine “only to such navigators as have observed it in the southern and tropical regions.” Along the southern coasts and Gulf of Mexico Audubon found winter roosts with thousands of Black Skimmers.

On a foul day in late October, I drove Beach Drive in Cape May, New Jersey. The promenade/seawall hid the beach, but I briefly glimpsed long-winged birds circling low against the gray sky as they descended to the sand. I parked, climbed to the promenade and descended to the beach. On the open sand, about seventy-five Black Skimmers were roosting in a tight group, all facing into the bitter ocean gale. Wind-blown sleet needled into my back as I inched closer to the roost. A couple of Laughing Gulls were nervous at my presence, but the skimmers seemed remarkably passive.

Older naturalists always included the “economic benefit” of the species they described. Forbush writing in the 1920s, for example, notes that the skimmer’s plumage was of no value to the millinery market and that its flesh was not valued as food. However, “its eggs were prized on account of their large size. As Skimmers deposit their eggs without concealment on the open sands, the same fate overtook them along the northern coast of the Middle States, where they have been extirpated within recent times.”

Thirty years ago when I began birding, I never saw Black Skimmers in southern New Jersey. I saw one at the Chincoteague NWR in Virginia, but it was years before I saw another. Protection programs have allowed the skimmers to reestablish breeding grounds along the New Jersey coast, and they are now quite common. That bitter day a month ago when I watched them huddle close, occasionally taking short flights, and coming back together, was a delight. Had the weather been more agreeable, I would have spent more time.

On a delightful, warm, sunny day last May, I spent an hour watching Black Skimmers as they went to and fro from their roost in a coastal impoundment to forage in a nearby estuary along the Delaware Bay. Skimmers feed by flying just above the surface of the water. Their long, lower mandible cuts the surface of the water. The beak is open. When the lower mandible touches a fish or crustacean, the prey gets swept up, the upper mandible snaps shut, and the bird eats.

Apparently Champlain never saw the bird foraging, since he wondered how it could pick up food to eat. With an upper mandible much shorter than the lower, the skimmer can’t pick up food without exceptional contortions. But, it doesn’t need to pick up food , once it has learned how to skim the water’s surface, grabbing food.

Parent skimmers feed their young by regurgitating food. Young skimmers, like the young of many species, are often sloppy eaters. They can pick food from the ground, since the projecting lower mandible does not fully develop until they can fly.

There are only three species of skimmers in the world; the Black Skimmer is the sole representative in the western hemisphere. Skimmers often forage at night and have keen night vision. Audubon regarded them as almost exclusively night feeders: “They spend the whole night on wing, searching diligently for food. Of this I had ample and satisfactory proof when ascending the St. John river in East Florida, in the United States schooner Spark. The hoarse cries of the Skimmers never ceased more than an hour, so that I could easily know whether they were passing upwards or downward in the dark.”

Skimmers also forage at dawn and dusk when prey is closer to the surface, and during during the day when the tide is low. In the day time their large pupils, adapted for night vision, close to a narrow slit, much like a cat’s eyes, protecting the eye from bright sunlight and glare from the water. They are the only birds with such an eye adaptation.

I finally inched too close to the Black Skimmers for their comfort and they swirled into the air, long wings lifting them easily and gracefully into the gale winds. Buoyant and strong, the flock twisted and turned and wheeled in unison around me, but soon settled again at a slightly more comfortable distance from where I stood.

Birding on that nasty October day was limited to my brief venture onto the beach to see the Black Skimmers. But that was enough to qualify for Good Birding.

Birding Cape May

Birding on Monday continued in the afternoon in and around Cape May. Highlights were Marbled Godwit near Stone Harbor, and an guesstimated two or three hundred American Oystercatchers, but both species were distant through the scope. Sanderlings were chasing wave on the Stone Harbor beaches



Nothing unusual about this Ring-billed Gull, but I love the way the wind has ruffled its feathers.

The ponds and wetlands around the state park were full of ducks - Black Duck, Gadwall, Northern Pintail, Green-winged Teal, Northern Shoveler, Mallard, and American Widgeon.

Have to take time once in a while to just enjoy the place.

Tuesday was a foul day, cold, windy, and rainy. I made a couple of brief excursions, including visiting the Cape May beach where a flock of Black Skimmers were roosting.