Greetings,

Yesterday my housemates (David y Cesar) had the good fortune of getting a few hours of birding in on company time. There was a mistake regarding the tide charts that someone had viewed, and thus when we went to look for birds while we waited for the water to recede.

Our banding site is at Thompson’s Beach, which luckily enough is only a ten minute drive from Heislerville Wildlife Management Area. We followed our supervisor over, and immediately upon pulling up we could see that one of the impoundments had its water levels drawn down to attract birds, and it did. In fact, there was somewhere around 5 to 6 thousand DUNLIN (Calidris alpina) present in the pool. Other shorebirds that were noticed in the pool, but in much lower numbers were Greater Yellowlegs, Willet, and SHORT-BILLED DOWITCHER. But shorebirds were not the only things in the pool.

A distant mudflat held around 100 gulls, of at least 4 species (Laughing, Ring-billed, Herring, and Great Black-backed). There was also around 7 BLACK SKIMMERS present in the pool. Most of the skimmers were observed resting on the left side of the mudflat with the gulls, but one was viewed well foraging along the water’s surface.

Right about the time that we were observing the Black Skimmers, we noticed some “old friends” that we had met at Jake’s Landing Road just two nights previous. They let us look through their scopes, which was very good for David and Cesar as it allowed them better looks at many new birds that they had not picked up. It also allowed me to find the bird of the day, a WHITE-FACED IBIS. Over the past few days there has been at least two WFIB present at Heislerville as previously reported. The only one that I could find was foraging at the back side of a flock of Glossy Ibis, which are nothing short of numerous here at the shore. The bird was viewed by the majority of those present, and most (not all) agreed on the identification. To me the bird did not show the fleshy pink around the bill as strongly as those depicted in most guides, but I feel that it was closer to the duller individual present in Sibley.

After viewing the ibis and all the various terns, sandpipers, and gulls, we turned our attention to another pool that was barely visible from the road. Someone spotted some herons in a small group of trees on a tiny island, and in that group of trees were Great Blue, as well as BLACK, and YELLOW-CROWNED NIGHT-HERONS. To me these birds are always nice to see as they represent a time when I first came to south NJ and Cape May. It was the first place that I have ever viewed them, and the place that I always hope to find them.

All in all it was a great hour of birding, for all of us. Many left with lifebirds, one left with yearbirds (me). After departing Heislerville we made our way back to Thompson’s Beach where we proceeded to take the next hour and and a half to sludge through mud while cutting vegetation to allow us to put up our nets in the next few weeks. The afternoon was cool fortunately, and it allowed us to work at a quick pace. We worked alongside Black-bellied Plovers, Forster’s Terns, and Osprey; and after viewing the Dunlin at nearby Heislerville as they whirled around in large flocks, it helped me to appreciate the scope of Delaware Bay for shorebirds, and of course the importance of the current project that I am working on.

Bird on,

~Chad