On Tuesday a couple of scout purple martins were checking out the housing opportunities in our backyard. That prompted us to make the martin houses ready for new tenants between rain showers. We took the returning martins as a sign that there would also be warblers in the woods.
On Wednesday we headed up to Sandy Hook to take a look around. The weather man predicted sun and windy conditions and it was colder than we like but we went to our warbler place to see if the birds had returned. There was a blue gray gnat catcher but he refused to sit still for a picture. Disappointed we continued toward the back of the park. As it turned out the hawks and vultures were in full force. We saw a great number of turkey vultures and black vultures. There were hawks circling everywhere. We caught a couple of red tail hawks and a sitting turkey vulture. The Osprey is on a nest in the chimney of one of the old buildings near the back of the park. We think you will agree that the turkey vulture is the ugliest bird ever.
Even on a terrible weather day, we see brant at the little park across from 7- eleven in Point Pleasant while we drink our coffee.
Knowing that we should be seeing the pine and palm warblers we went out to Manasquan Reservoir and Allaire State Park almost every day this week. Today that trip paid off big time when we caught the pine warbler ground feeding at the feeders at Allaire. The bluebirds and phoebes were apparent too.
We also took a little side trip to Manasquan Greenway on West Farms Road. This is a new favorite spot for us and we saw bluebirds, goldfinches, tree swallows, red tail hawk, field sparrow and song sparrow there.
Nice work, Joan. That Osprey looks like a cartoon character! However did you get it? Nice light on the hawk. The wings look transparent! I’m not familiar with Manasquan Greenway on West Farms Road, but I’ll have to check it out. Thanks for the tips!
ReplyDeleteRob, We saw that osprey building a nest in the chimney in one of the buildings near the back of Sandy hook. Steve drove right up close to the house and from our big blue Jeep bird blind we started shooting - he kept looking at us but did not fly. And when he looked at us dead on he looked like Roadrunner after one of Wiley Coyote's tricks. We are just lucky.
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