Day 224: August 11th – Seven Bridges Road

Overcast with occasional showers and thunderstorms

       The overcast skies have resulted in slightly cooler temperatures (low 80s), and yet it still feels warm and muggy, even immediately after a heavy shower.  And heavy showers is what we’ve been experiencing the past 24 hours.  Still, in the calms between the storms, we’ve had some nice birds showing up in Jersey. 

       Today, we ventured down to a locale we used to bring our two children when they were young…..the Tuckerton area of what we then called “Seven Bridges Road.”  Today, it is part of the Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge and is called Great Bay Boulevard Wildlife Management Area.

       The birds were abundant, but they could not hold a candle to the hordes of Green-headed and Deer flies.  Much of our birding was done from the relative safety of the RAV.  When we were forced to lower the windows to afford us a decent photograph sans glass, the word went out and we were inundated with the little biting beasts.  As soon as the windows went back up, we spent the next several minutes decorating the interior of the vehicle with insect entrails.  Nonetheless….

       The shore birds are on the move and we had nice looks at a variety of waders including this Greater yellowlegs.  He was among a good number of the birds we could actually see, so God only knows how many were skulking back in the high grass.

       Great egrets were around in large groups, something we usually do not see, (see image above)

and even this peeps were around in such numbers that I was able to photograph this little guy wading in a puddle formed from one of those downpours I mentioned earlier.

       The two sightings of the day were without question this shot of a young Black-crowned Night heron which was hunting from a piling and then moved to a more advantageous position at the water’s edge.  We’ve been seeing more and more of the young birds and it is just another sign that Mother Nature is surely taking care of her own.

       The most rewarding view of our Seven Bridges Road trek was a bird perched along the side of the road on a utility pole.   At first sighting, Sharon said we had an Osprey up on the pole, but as we got closer, the markings were clearly a bird much nearer and dearer to our hearts, the Peregrine falcon.  There was no need to leave our safe haven to photograph this bird.  We drove right up under it and opened the sun roof.  The images of this beautiful hunter poured into the RAV as quickly as the green-heads, but we gave the flies little acknowledgement as we relished the views of the falcon.  Eventually, the bird tired of us and took flight.  The flies never did tire of us, however, until we showed them a less than hospitable welcome and quickly dispatched them as rapidly as Sharon could deal the death blow with her birding notebook.  Hopefully, we will return to the Great Bay and Little Egg Harbor in the future when the flies have finally left the scene.  Until then, we will remember this trip more for the falcon than the flies.