Easter Specials!

We were not able to be out and about as much as usual this week.  It rained and was generally gloomy some of the days and we were waiting at home for those infernal never arriving workmen some of the week.  We were out for a bit on Sunday and Thursday and Friday.  They were good days just because there is a spring migration in progress.

Sunday we tripped around Allaire and Manasquan Reservoir and found little to be interested in.  The birds were sleeping or they were not there.  On the tip of Rob Melone we caught a red throated loon on Lake Como.  The wind kept the loon moving in the waves - getting even a bad picture was hard.  And then to add insult to injury the loon blinked!


On Thursday we took our first ever trip to Garret Mountain.  What a treat that was for us.  The ridge was alive with kinglets, yellow rumped warblers and gnat catchers.  The Towhees were in abundance and flickers kept appearing.  I was not able to catch the flighty little kinglets for a picture but we did get a gnatcatcher, flicker and towhee.

It was a cloudy day when we went to Brigantine on Friday morning.  We saw a wood duck on the way into the park.  We found the areas around the parking lot very quiet but since we had driven all the way down we headed through the marsh.  With the cloud cover we were seeing only Great egrets and snowy egrets. Then the sun broke through the clouds and the marsh became alive with whimbrel, dunlin, yellowlegs, black bellied plover, and willet.

We saw Canada geese.  One goose family of three goslings crossed our path near the end of our drive.  The best bird of the day is shown above.  It is a Blue Goose, a dark morph of the snow goose and a life bird for both of us!