It’s been a funny old sort of day. I hardly know where to begin. As I was driving home this afternoon counting or rather avoiding the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike I was thinking what to label this blog post.
As both of my avid readers well know I like to head out to Barnegat Lighthouse State Park this time of year to photograph the Harlequin and assorted duck species that winter along the Barnegat jetty. I had set the alarm for 4:30am but Fuzzy, one of the Four Kittens of the Apocalypse woke me up at least 1/2 an hour before the 4:30 alarm wanting food. I normally leave very early but this year had a slightly different twist as I was going on a twitch to try for a Red-flanked Bluetail, the first for the US East Coast. It’s been in a private housing development in the middle of the New Jersey Pine Barrens since December 5th. This obviously created a major twitch or whatever they call a horde of hairy arsed rabid birders over here. I was certainly slightly interested but the location and potential numbers put me off until now. A private development, New Jersey, the Pine Barrens. I’ve watched the Soprano’s on the box, the Pine Barrens are where they bury the bodies. I fully expected shotgun wielding home owners to be carrying shovels and reports of loads of missing birders. That was not the case according to the eBird reports, apparently the residents were very accommodating.
As the weather forecast looked good and the bird was being seen regularly and only a few miles off my route I went for it. I got there and walked the 100 yards or so to the house I found 5 old fogey birders sitting on the home owners side porch waiting for the bird to show. Harry Riker the homeowner who found it had provided seating for the birders and his wife even came out with homemade cookies! Awesome! Not only that the RFB and its sidekick the Hermit Thrush showed up a few minutes later and put on a show! It showed on and off for the next hour before I had to head off to Barnegat Jetty.
It wasn’t as cold as previous visits and the Westerly wind although quite strong had pushed the ducks further out towards the end of the jetty. My old bones consider the last few hundred yards of wet slimy , seagull crap and seaweed covered rocks a no go area plus her indoors would kill me then divorce me if I fell and hurt myself. My rock hopping days are long gone, I even make use of a pair of trekking poles when I’m on the jetty these days!. The Harlequins for the first time ever in all my previous visits were too far for me to dare risking it. I had to make do with the Long-tailed Ducks, Purple Sandpipers, Ruddy Turnstone and Sanderlings instead. I had almost given up on seeing the flock of Snow Bunting but they made an appearance right at the lighthouse end of the jetty. Nice!
The Jetty at Barnegat Lighthouse is potentially deadly, there’s a true story of a guy/bloke who fell between the huge rocks and got his head stuck as the tide was coming in. Luckily he managed to reach his cell phone to call for help before he drowned. This morning two old ladies wanted to see the Harlequins. On my way out along the jetty I warned them to be extremely careful as it was highly dangerous. A good while later heading back along the inland side trying for the Snow Bunting flock I saw one of the old ladies frantically waving from the jetty. Her friend had fallen between the rocks and couldn’t get out. As I was the other side of the high tide pool on the land side I was unable to reach them but I waved to this young couple 100 yards further along the jetty to come and help. They managed to drag her out shortly before 3 assorted rescue trucks arrived along with a 4 wheeler and even a Fire/Police Rescue launch arrived at the scene. If her head had been submerged she would have drowned without a shadow of a doubt. Turned out she wasn’t badly hurt but rather shook up as you can imagine.
Well as I wrote earlier a funny old sort of day but a very successful civilized twitch, I’ve now seen Red-flanked Bluetail on 3 continents!