Reed's Beach Houses - high tide
Our main house is behind the blue-grey house on the right;
the second house is out of view on the opposite side of the road.Shorebirds
May 12th to June 2nd
Back again!
As I write this at the end of the first week there is a Carolina Wren singing heartily outside this window not 2 metres away. It is late afternoon. His loud and musical twidgaloo, twidgaloo, twidgaloo, twidgaloo, is ringing in my ears. This is a very common sequence from this bird and I remember it from last year so it may in fact be the same individual. Regular as clockwork he will give it at dawn from a scraggly bush just below the window beside my bed and he seems to be the first bird I hear just on first light. Often it takes 200 repeats of this four note sequence at the start of the day before he switches to another song and maybe a third if he does not move along to another song post beforehand. A Willet is calling in the distance. Fascinating!
Gathering Turnstone near the house at Reed's Beach and wind blown spume
My Carolina Wren
Mockingbird in song at Reed's Beach
I started off a week ago when I headed to Sydney to stay the night with Kate, Iain and Rohan in Erskineville before taking a United Airlines flight across to Boulder (actually to Denver) via San Francisco. I then stayed the night with David, Tracey and James before heading on to Philadelphia. My flight out of Denver was held back because of air traffic problems at Philadelphia caused by high winds following severe storms along the east coast over the past weekend. However, this did not matter to me as I was originally due to arrive some 3 hours ahead of my other Australian colleagues who were due in at about 7pm. Clive Minton, Susan Taylor and Prue Wright came in from Melbourne via Los Angeles. As it happened we arrived at different parts of the terminal and there are several baggage halls to make matters more complicated. Humphrey Sitters eventually found me and, along with Dick Veitch and Larry and Mandy Niles, we all headed to Reed’s Beach. It was raining! We are back in the same two cottages as before and we soon settled in for the first night.
Week one – 12th - 19th May
High winds and stormy weather during the week before our arrival has left some very visible signs. The view from the back of the cottage on the first morning was unusual. The marsh was flooded at high tide to an extent that I had not seen before. There was nowhere for secretive marsh birds to go and the rails were wandering along the roadside or were heading to any other high ground they could find.
Remarkably there are few Horseshoe Crabs to be seen this first week. The high tides, wind, rough water and cold conditions seem to have prevented spawning along most of the beaches we normally work on. It takes more than a week for me to see a live horseshoe crab!
By the time we arrived two catches had already been made at Reed’s Beach by Larry’s local team. On the 7th they caught: Ruddy Turnstone 10 (2); Red Knot 5 and Sanderling 77(2) a total of 92. Then on the 10th they made another catch: Ruddy Turnstone 72(7); Red Knot 93(12) and Sanderling 59(3) a total of 224. Figures in brackets are retraps.
We get off to a good start on Tuesday 13th with a small catch just south of the Nordberg’s house, which is about half way along Reed’s Beach road on the Bay side. We process: Ruddy Turnstone 68(6) and Sanderling 20(1) for a total of 88. Then things begin to get frustrating. Difficult conditions including wind and rain and early and late tides add to the fact that we simply cannot find any Red Knot on the usual beaches in sufficient numbers. Our only concentration at first seems to be at Stone Harbor where up to 3000 seems to be gathering at high tides but an all day effort on 15th at Stone Harbor ended in no catch being possible.
Panorama of Red Knot at Stone Harbor
Red Knot
Tightly packed Red Knot roosting at Stone Harbor
Red Knot in flight at Stone Harbor
Sanderling at Stone harbor
Red Knot flock at Stone Harbor
Luckily by the 16th we had found Red Knot on our local beaches at Cook's and a catch was possible that day with the following numbers being processed: Ruddy Turnstone 25(4); Red Knot 150(13) and Sanderling 48(12) giving a total of 223. Condition of the Red Knot was remarkable with heavy birds in a reasonably normally distributed spread of weights averaging 140g. This looked good for the birds and confirmed what we had seen at Stone Harbor suggesting that many of the Red Knot looked fat and healthy judging from body profile.
Processing in foul weather at Cook's
Two more catches at Reed’s Beach on the 17th and 18th gave us the following numbers processed: 17th: Ruddy Turnstone 34(10); Red Knot 1 and Sanderling 26(2) for a total of 71. 18th: Ruddy Turnstone 39(8); Red Knot 38(5) and Sanderling 103(8) for a total of 188.
Red Knot
Shorebird viewing platform at North Reed's Beach
Bird observations can be summaries as follows. Most of this week we have concentrated on trying to find catchable shorebirds and this has limited our exploration to the Reed’s Beach area and Stone Harbor. However, on the 18th in the afternoon a small group of us visited Belleplain for some birding. We heard Prothonotary Warbler and Red-bellied Woodpecker and saw a Louisiana Water Thrush and a singing Wood Thrush but best of all was a male Yellow-throated Warbler gathering food with a female sitting tight on a nest nearby. Unusually, the nest was at about 4 metres above ground level along a branch and outside a cabin! We also had splendid views of Eastern Towhee and Hooded Warbler and saw a Black-and-white Warbler and a Common Yellowthroat. Eventually we headed up to Heislerville when it began to rain more heavily. At Heislerville on the main pond we saw, despite the fact that it was much fuller than at this time last year, good numbers of shorebirds. A spectacular gathering of at least 3000 Short-billed Dowitchers, lots of Dunlin and Semi-palmated Plovers, good numbers of Semipalmated Sandpipers, several Black-bellied Plovers (c 10) and at least 2 Least Sandpipers. There was a roosting flock of at least 300 Black Skimmers and we spotted a number of other interesting birds including Osprey, Turkey Vultures and a Bald Eagle. The best bird, however, was a superb full summer plumaged Curlew-Sandpiper. It was (as we had half expected) in the same general area that we had seen one using the previous year! Probably the same individual we suspect.
Curlew-Sandpiper
On the 20th we took the morning off to go to Higbee’s on Cape May Island and then on to the nearby Rea Farm. Specially interesting sightings included a Red-bellied Woodpecker, several Indigo Bunting and a male Blue Grosbeak for comparison. We saw several Northern Cardinal, a male Rose-breasted Grosbeak, a splendid Yellow-breasted Chat, some Field Sparrow, together with sightings of Orchard Oriole, American Redstart and American Goldfinch and a couple of male and a couple of female Brown-headed Cowbirds.
Northern Cardinal
Male Brown-headed Cowbird
Yellow-breasted Chat
Carolina Chickadee
Indigo Bunting
Tortoise
There have been a few small groups of Brent Geese about the place during this first week but I suspect we are soon to see the last of them. Mostly they have been seen at Stone Harbor or nearby on the Spartina marshes. Three Red-breasted Merganser late in the afternoon at Stone harbor on the 14th were nice to see and an adult male Long-tailed Duck was also seen in the area a few times but not by me. Other waterfowl have not been noteworthy. I have only seen one Common Loon at Stone Harbor flying over along the ocean side. Groups of Double-crested Cormorants have been seen here and there – mostly at Stone Harbor or flying over at Reed’s Beach, often in flocks of 25-50. Small numbers of Great and Snowy Egrets have been seen here and there with an occasional sighting of a Black-crowned Night-heron and one or two Great Blue Herons. However, we have seen several small groups of Glossy Ibis. A Northern Harrier was seen a couple of times quartering the marshes at Stone Harbor but no other diurnal raptors have been particularly noteworthy. I have the impression that so far I am not seeing the numbers of Osprey that I would expect, particularly on the road across the marshes to Stone Harbor. This may be due to the windy overcast condition that prevailed for much of this first week. Clapper Rails have been seen along the roadsides a few times, but no doubt this was due to the high tides flooding them out of the marshes!
Other noteworthy comments about shorebirds would be that Piping Plovers lost a many nest in the gales and high seas a week ago but several sites made it through and relaying is now under way. American Oystercatcher followed the same pattern. This is mainly at Stone Harbor where we most often seen these species. I have not seen many Killdeer Plovers so far this trip and Willet have been remarkably undemonstrative up to now but again conditions have not been very favourable for them. The Laughing Gulls have lost their first attempt at laying and despite being raucous and conspicuous everywhere they have rarely been concentrated on the beaches. I saw only one Least Tern feeding in the Bidwell river mouth on the 20th and few Forster’s Terns were established at the regular sites although they were beginning to do so by the end of the week. Common Tern arrived in some numbers by 15th when about 20-30 were roosting on Champagne Island at Stone Harbor. Other gulls and terns were not noteworthy although I have seen both Herring Gull and Great Black-backed Gull in some numbers, mostly sub-adults on the beaches. Ring-billed Gull and Royal Tern have been scarce. I have seen Gull-billed Tern once.
A Yellow-billed Cuckoo was seen at Higbee’s on 20th along with a Ruby-throated Hummingbird and a Belted Kingfisher. A few Chimney Swift were also seen on 20th.
Several Great Crested Flycatchers were seen either at Belleplains or Higbee’s along with Eastern Wood-Peewee, Eastern Kingbirds and Acadian Flycatcher and of particular interest was the finding of up to three or more Willow Flycatchers at Higbee’s on 20th. Also calling loudly at Higbee’s was Carolina Chickadee and Tufted Titmouse.
Fish Crow again seem to be the only crow to be found on Cape May itself. Purple Martin were active at some ‘martin houses’ near our base camp at Reed’s Beach but apart from the fact that Northern Mockingbirds have been in full song during warmer and less windy periods, including a very persistent songster near our base that has occasionally sung for long spells during the nights, there has been little else to comment upon from amongst the jays, wrens, warblers, blackbirds and sparrows seen up to now. Boat-billed Grackles certainly have been noisy in display on calmer days at Reed’s Beach and much the same can be said for Red-winged Blackbird. I have seen few House Finches or House Sparrows. Common Grackles have been few in number but when seen have been along the roadside at various places. Song sparrow have not been obvious to me but I have had a few pointed out to me on the marshes.
Participants this year include (apart from those already mentioned): Claudio Moraga and Jose Cabello (from Chile – they work in Tierra del Fuego. Claudio studies Guanaco); Laura McKinnon and Cedrik Juillet (from Quebec – they work on Bylot Island where Laura is studying Baird’s and White-rumped Sandpiper breeding success); Mark Peck and Jerry from Toronto (Mark is from the Royal Ontario Museum); Angela and Barrie Watts (also from Toronto); Graham Harrington, Sue Rice and Rosemary Gibson. Allan Baker and Patricia Gonzales are based with Ron Porter at Stone Harbor and Steve Gates mostly works on his own and concentrates on flag re-sightings. There are others in the team that concentrate on swabbing and collecting blood samples for avian diseases. This avian disease team is also radio tracking Turnstones and Sanderling during the time the birds are in the bay area this May. David Mizrahi from the Cape May Audubon Research Centre is continuing his studies of Semi-palmated and Least Sandpipers with daily catches when possible.
Boat-tailed Grackle
Willet
Ruddy Turnstone squabbling over food resources
Sanderling
Laughing Gulls
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