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| Black-bellied plovers |
When we visited Brigantine National Wildlife Refuge last week, we had no idea what was lurking around the corner. Our visit was on a warm, sunny, calm day where the worst inconvenience was the presence of green flies. Even those little tyrants were a minimal nuisance as we worked our way around the wildlife drive. The plan was to head out to the back side of the refuge as soon as we arrived to take advantage of the sun's eastern position in the morning sky. Lighting is at a premium in the morning and you want to seize the moment when the soft light is at your back. On the way out, however, we ran into some welcome "roadblocks"....namely a fine Clapper rail running across a mudflat out in plain sight and three juvenile Yellow-crowned night herons out foraging the flats. We carefully examined each heron in an attempt to determine whether or not these were indeed Yellow-crowns and not the much more common Black-crowned variety. Careful examination through the scopes and later looks at the photographs proved our initial assessment that they were in fact the more prized Yellow-crowns. The dark thick bills, the tiny spots along the wing edges and the large orange eyes. A nice find....
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| Juvenile Yellow-crowned night heron |
Along the back side of the refuge, we found a good number of Black-bellied plovers many still in breeding plumage. All in all, our total was 51 species for the day. Several days later, the area was buried in a torrent of water as Hurricane Irene came ashore. Mother Nature has a way of taking care of her own, however, and the recent reports are that the refuge survived quite nicely and is back in operation, less than 3 days after the deluge. It seems that nature has a more resilient way of dealing with these natural disasters than do we humans!
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Short-billed dowitcher
Semi-palmated plover video
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