Heron Day!

During our final 12 mile run before our half marathon in 2 weeks, Kim and I saw at least 4 Great Blue Herons at Gring's Mill today. Even better, we saw a Green Heron as we crossed the Mill bridge. He was a beautiful specimen in the morning sunlight.

Cape May One Last Time!

Jen and I drove down to Ron and Yvonne’s place on Friday afternoon. We ordered dinner from “The Depot” and sat around drinking Cavet’s Pinot Grigot until almost 10 which is late for some of us :-)

In the morning we started out at Higbee’s Beach which was very productive and yielded several species of birds including:
Eastern Kingbird
Great-crested Flycatcher
Carolina Wren
Carolina Chickadee
Gray Catbird (Ralph, the Obligatory Catbird)
Indigo Bunting
American Goldfinch
American Redstart
Tree Swallows
Song Sparrow
Blue-gray gnatcatcher
Downy Woodpecker
Northern Cardinal
Blue Jay
Field Sparrow
Rufous-sided Towhee
Laughing Gull
Common Grackle
House Wren
American Robin

Jen was a great help with ID’ing by ear.

After Higbee’s, we headed to Sunset Beach, the Meadows, and the point where we saw shorebirds and more:
     Greater Black-backed Gull
     Least tern
     Common tern
     Herring Gull
     Osprey
     Turkey Vulture
     Sharp-shinned Hawk
     Red-winged blackbirds
     Great Egret
     Snowy Egret
Great Blue Heron
     Fish Crow
     Mallard
     Black Duck
     Canada Goose
     Mute Swan
     Rock Pigeon
     Mourning Dove
     Belted Kingfisher (at the pond by the CMBO)
     American Crow
     Starling
     Greater Yellowlegs
     Lesser Yellowlegs
     Great Blue Heron
     Glossy Ibis

After lunch at my favorite place in Cape May (Cape Orient for Curry Roma Tofu, of course), we headed up to Brigantine. Lots of egrets, gulls and ibises, as well as…
     American Oystercatcher
     Semi-palmated plover
     American Bittern (Jen spotted this one! What a great find!)
     Dunlin
     Sanderlings
     Northern Harrier

Add to these the House Sparrows at Yvonne’s house and the total species count is 52. We ended the day with dinner at my second favorite restaurant at Exit 0, Gecko's!

Sadly, this will probably be my last trip to Cape May for a while. I must here pay tribute to my good friend Yvonne who has been my host, my birding companion, and my friend these last 7 years. Although we won’t be close enough for a short jaunt together on weekends any more, I know there are many good birding adventures in store for us, i.e. lots of Western birds for our life lists :-)