Barnegat Light 1/23

I took a day off from work to travel to Barnegat Light State Park with Rick Wright on a free WINGS trip. The main targets were Harlequin Duck, which is as close to a 'given' at Barnegat as birding allows, and King Eider which can be a tricky bird to find in the bobbing groups of Common Eider just offshore. While I have seen King Eider here on my own, I knew going with a group led by an experienced birder would increase my chances.

The trip down with Rick was full of great conversation about birding, classification, and some great places in Arizona I hope to visit in a few weeks. We left the rain in North Jersey and arrived to cloudy skies but no precipitation.

The group of six moved slowly out towards the ocean. Along the we we found the usual ducks and seabirds. There was a good group of Ruddy Turnstones and Purple Sandpiper as well. Mixed in with the Purples was a lone Red Knot, my FOY, that has been hanging around for a while. A pair of Black-bellied Plovers were also FOYs. The Harlequin Ducks showed themselves as well, about fifteen in all. From a North Jersey perspective, a trip to Barnegat is a must to see these birds. No place in New Jersey north of the inlet usually has the species.

Photo by Rick Wright

Once we arrived at the beach we quickly scanned and enormous gull flock and then turned to the rough surf on the outgoing tide. About forty Common Eider bobbed in the waves. Here I must offer a description for those who have not experienced this kind of birding. These ducks appear for a mere second on the crest of a wave before being hidden by another crest in the foreground or dipping into a trough. Sometimes they dive to avoid incoming waves or to feed. The result is that a bird you see for literally a second or two may disappear for three or four seconds and reappear a dozen feet from where it started (or never reappear at all).

The search for female King Eider has the added difficulty of having to differentiate between the very similar Common and King females in these conditions at a distance of dozens or hundreds of feet. Despite the challenge Rick was able to locate a female King Eider and pass the scope off to me just long enough to see the bird. I was able to get another quick glimpse before returning to me own scope. It would be the better part of an hour before we refound the bird. In that time the tide fell, revealing an old jetty around which the divers were feeding from. Black Scoter, Long-tailed Ducks, a Surf Scoter, and a Harlequin Duck joined the Eiders in an amalgam of rewarding ocean ducks. A female King, now in calmer and shallower water, revealed itself at the end of this jetty and was more easily seen by the group.

Satisfied with our looks at the ducks our attention returned to the gulls. A member of the group picked a Kumlien's Iceland Gull out of the two-hundred or more gulls on the beach. Kumlien's is the darker, western subspecies of Iceland Gull that forms a cline with Thayer's Gull on the Pacific coast. Being a 'cline' means that the population show physical characteristics that are intermediate between two extremes, in this case Iceland (pale extreme) and Thayer's (darker extreme). It's genetic identity has been debated and at times has been included in either of these species or has been given full species status itself. While it was my second Iceland Gull after the bird seen on the pelagic last week, it may be the first adult I have ever seen.

I was quite satisfied with the trip an the four new year birds. I am now well within my goal range of 115-125 species and looking forward to seeing what my total will be by January's end.

NJ - 120

ABA - 120

World - 120