Cape May Ducks

I've been a bit busy lately and haven't been able to go birding as much as I would like to (which, in case you don't realize, would be every day), and this past weekend was no different. Sure I was down in Cape May, but for other reasons that did not involve birding.

The standard lighthouse pictures. Cape May, NJ. By Damon Orsetti

So instead of running around with others on the two-day course on sparrows, I managed to grab an hour to go birding around Cape May Point to enjoy the raptors and ducks. Now, the raptors are neat but hard to get pictures of (and they aren't quite my thing), so after seeing some Yellow-rumped Warblers I knew I had to get into the winter frame of mind. I concentrated on the ducks.

Nummy Island in Early Summer, a Photoessay (with words!)

Cape May, New Jersey is full of fun places, but right nearby is a bunch of really good birding places as well. One of them is Nummy Island.

Nummy Island is an odd place, but I've been been there before and so I knew what to expect in terms of bugs and the fact that it really is just walking along the side of the road. I say that because many people just stay in their car with their binoculars, but those people are missing out! Sure there are bugs, but just wear long sleeves and long pants (thin because, you know, summer) and you should be fine (I eschew soaking my body with anti-insect chemicals).

So, on one of the earliest light days of the year, I set my alarm clock for 4:30 a.m., got up and drove down from my in-laws' house to Nummy Island.

(as always, all pictures by Damon Orsetti....please don't steal them)

Damon's New Year in Cape May, Part 2 (Two Mile Beach to Stone Harbor)

New Years in Cape May happened. I previously wrote about the morning section of the day with a count of 62 birds. How many more birds could I get? Would I get anything to top the Painted Bunting and White-winged Dove? Could I keep up the pace of Paul in Texas? Was the day awesome?

Well, the day certainly was awesome, and as I finished my lunch of Wawa Italian Hoagie and sliced apples and let my phone charge some more I scanned over the dunes of Two Mile Beach, even though it was only Yellow-rumped Warblers around. But I knew some things we were going to see because others in the parking lot had already let out that there was a Snowy Owl just down the beach.

Damon's New Year in Cape May, Part 1 (Trip down and Cape May Point)

I knew that Paul was going to start his new year in South Texas. Damn, that's hardcore birding. Really, if you think about it, where would else you want to start your bird list? There are few other choices; maybe South Florida or Arizona? It was a power birding move, well disguised as "being invited to present at a symposium", and one that would lead to Paul having dozens of birds that neither he nor I would otherwise have any chance of getting. How could I even hope of competing against that? I had no other choice.

Cape May.

Damon's Birds for the Weeks of August 4 - August 17

Previously I mentioned that birding was slow up in the Philly region so I headed down to Cape May, and boy am I glad I did! I spent every morning for the week getting up at 5:30 so I can head down and put a good many hours of birding before my family was even awake. The best way to not feel guilty for spending so much time birding while on vacation with your family? Sacrifice sleep! Ok, I did go to be early every night, so my sleep didn't suffer.

Birding Nummy Island, New Jersey

The summer drags on and any serious birder would have gone to other parts of the country by now to get new birds. Now, I am a serious birder, but I am also a father of three, so my options of birding migration are limited. Luckily, I live very near Cape May, New Jersey and can go visit relatives in the area fairly often. So I did!

Shorebird migration is in full swing, and even though we get some peeps around here and even an occasional larger shorebird, the real fun is happening in New Jersey. So when I went down to Cape May and went on a couple birding walks with the Cape May Bird Observatory I made sure to ask about where good places to go to find stuff on my own. I was directed to go birding on Nummy Island.

Damon's Birds for the Week of June 30 - July 6

Ok, we are back to normal programming, and I am back to not being shutout!

So after not seeing any new birds the previous week, despite desperately searching for both local cuckoos, I knew I had to change tactics. And by "change tactics" I meant "take another weekend trip down to Cape May"! Oh, let me tell you, Independence Day is not the time to go to the shore. Yeah, I've been there many times over the years, but I've never had traffic quite that bad down there as this year's fourth of July weekend. It was bad.

But it wasn't bad when  you get up early in the morning to go driving to Cape May. The first day down there was the Friday after the 4th so there were no birding walks in the morning, so instead I just wandered around Cape May Point by myself. And, oh the terns!

Damon's Birds for the Week of June 16 - Jun 22

I am very happy because today is one of those summer days where those great loud thunderstorms come through. They always make me feel like home. Not that we didn't have storms like this in Kentucky, and Arizona certainly did have their monsoon storms blow through, but the east coast summer storms that can pop up through any afternoon are just somewhat different. Maybe it is the feel in the high humidity, or maybe it is the way the thunder rolls through the sky, but it reminds me of listening to it bounce off the buildings through my courtyard facing window in college.

The storms were moving in from the west, not south, so it is unlikely that they would bring many birds with them (I can always hope for a raven blown in form Appalachia though). But I always look outside, just in case we have some different visitor bird hunker down in my yard after the winds pick up. And I did find one! Ok, after watching for a few minutes I saw it was just a Song Sparrow, but it is always good to challenge yourself to find a bird that at first is only some leaf movement.

The tree of the Song Sparrow just minutes after I saw it

Also the Song Sparrow was moving and flying a bit differently than they normally do, so it got me hoping that it was some fun exotic bird. I guess the sighting of a Tropical Kingbird in Philadelphia gets me thinking like that.

Yeah, about that Tropical Kingbird? I am totally going to go and try to find it, but I heard about it on Saturday morning and then I was gone in New Jersey until today and then worked today. Now whether to get up early and try to beat the traffic or wait until my youngest takes a nap?

Damon's Birds for the Week of May 26 - June 1

A nice little week I had! I'm all moved in and I took a trip over the Memorial Day holiday to South Jersey where I got a whole morning to myself to go birding. I bookended a birding walk with trips to Cape May Point, and was rewarded with some birds that I was going to eventually get anyway as well as a Black Scoter and Oystercatcher.

I'll tell you, going to Cape May Point around 6:00 a.m. is a wonderful experience. There are only a couple people around (a couple of people fishing and one jogging) so the birds like the Oystercatcher aren't scared off like later in the day when there are hundreds around. The water is a beautiful dark blue only punctuated by an odd black duck with orange on its head or the many seabirds flying around. Now, these seabirds were all gulls and terns, but there are many of those that I don't have! Sadly, they were all too far out for me to get a good look (especially with my binoculars), except the obvious Herring Gulls and Laughing Gulls. I did get a good identification of Common Terns later in the day from the same spot.

Day Trip to Cape May: A Photoessay

As I have mentioned before, one advantage I have over Paul is that I live on the east coast of the U.S. and frequently visit family in southern New Jersey. Last weekend I took a day trip there.

Birding Equipment

When I get time to go out birding, I don't want to waste a whole bunch of it gathering stuff up and thinking about what I should bring, so I have a back pack ready to go. It isn't anything big and full of stuff, but something I can just grab and pick up and know everything I need is already in there.