Feeder Birds, Primarily

[If only Common Grackles were 6 feet tall and carried snow shovels. Del Haven yesterday, click to enlarge photos.]

If Mike Crewe hadn't been so busy of late shoveling and dealing with lack of power, he would have posted his photos of the two Eastern Meadowlarks at his feeder, undoubtedly driven out of the Cape Island fields of Higbee/Hidden Valley. They are my pick for the "best" feeder birds on Cape Island born of the recent storm - sad though it is to see birds challenged so.

Michael O'Brien and Louise Zemaitis have had a couple nice feeder/yard birds on Cape Island similary storm-forced, with Eastern Phoebe and Chipping Sparrows included yesterday.

CMBO-CRE in Goshen is finally plowed and shovelled out, and hosted Brown Thrasher, Gray Catbird and Eastern Towhee at the feeders today.

Truth is, other than Mike Fritz's report of a nice mixed bag of alcids off NJ (but north of Cape May) while mackeral fishing pre-storm, the only non-feeder reports coming in have just a few roadside birds - including poor American Woodcock, all around the Cape, how they will survive I don't know, especially in light of another snowfall forecast for tomorrow.

In other news, the Cape May "team" - birders collected at one of the few houses Sunday that had both functioning electricity and cable - garnered a meager 10 bird species during the Superbowl, including Peregrine, Red-tailed, and some sort of vocalization flashed in the background of a commercial (yes, these are TV birds we're talking about) that was part Indigo Bunting, Yellow Warbler, or maybe something completely different. . .can't say our senses were at full faculty at the time. . .

[Fox Sparrows dig vigorously, and may manage better than other sparrows in snow -especially if bird feeders are augmented with handfuls of seed cast out regularly during snow events. This one paused at length near the feeders on Sunday.]

Riding the Storm

As of Monday evening, my advice for would-be visitors to Cape May Point is - think twice before making the journey, at least over the next couple of days. The snow might look pretty but there's still a lot of homes with no power at all after three days (including ours!) and some streets in town still have power lines down across the road. The blizzard that hit us on Saturday looks like it was the worst in living memory and - on top of that - another similar day of bad weather is forecast for Wednesday.

At present the CMBO Northwood Center remains closed; this morning we managed to fight our way in, sadly discovering that a number of our Red Cedars that line the entrance steps had succumbed under the weight of snow and snapped in two. We had to cut a couple to get in.

Birds seem to be riding the weather reasonably well. I've not heard of any signs of birds being found suffering from starvation, though the local American Woodcocks may well be the first to succumb - I saw several wandering aimlessly on Sunset Boulevard today. There are plenty of feeders in the area and it's important - now that we've produced an artifically high bird population by feeding - that we maintain all feeders as best we can.

Stay warm and stay healthy and we'll keep you posted on how Wednesday develops.

Jackson Street, Cape May - typical of the conditions in town at present.

CMBO's Northwood Center - two feet of snow and fallen trees block the entrance to the store.

Believe it or not, this was the entrance to the Northwood Center this morning.

CMBO CENTERS CLOSED

CMBO's Northwood Center will be CLOSED today due to the heavy snow and power outage, and will be closed tomorrow in accord with normal winter hours. Be sure to check here or call ahead if you plan to stop by Northwood this week to make sure we've been able to reopen. Northwood's normal winter hours are Wednesday to Monday 9:30 to 4:30, closed Tuesdays.

CMBO's Center for Research and Education is open Tuesday through Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., closed Sundays and Mondays. We're busy shoveling and the plow truck has gotten itself stuck in the parking lot at the moment, but we currently anticipate being able to open as usual tomorrow.

What Would Witmer Think

[Fox Sparrow, Del Haven (10 miles north of Cape May on the Bay) today. "This, the largest of our sparrows, seems to be a regular transient in March and November while a varying number remain through the winter." (Stone, 1937) Click to enlarge all photos.]

20+" of snow fell, and it falls still. Birds rained on the feeders today, and, now that the power's back on, we can let Witmer Stone cast wise light on the scene. A re-read of his 1937 classic was overdue - what better for a birder to do in a Cape May blizzard, in between laying on the floor and poking the camera's nose out the dog door towards the feeders?

[Cape May birders profit from those who came before - Wilson, Stone (here), Peterson, and more modern giants.]

[White-throated Sparrow this morning. "This large plump sparrow is a regular winter visitant to the Cape region and a more abundant transient in autumn. . .The brilliant coloration of the old males with their black heads, and conspicuous crown stripes is in strong contrast to the duller females and young males. . ." - (ornithologists of Stone's time didn't know the details about the white-striped and tan-striped forms of the whitethroat.)]

[Dark-eyed Junco today, "Slate-colored" Junco to Stone: "'Snowbirds' as they are usually termed, here, always occur in flocks, sometimes by themselves, sometimes mingled with the various winter sparrows and often drifting about with the flights of Myrtle Warblers in windy weather and snow flurries."]

[Song Sparrow today. "The Song Sparrow may be regarded as a regular resident about Cape May, but whether the birds that we find in winter are the same as our summer breeding birds is open to question." (Stone, 1937). Song Sparrow has been as ubiquitous as you'd expect along the bayshore roadsides of late.]

[Brown-headed Cowbird today. "Snow, when heavy enough to cover the ground, disturbs the Cowbird flocks not a little and on March 11, 1934, a number of them were forced to repair to the orchard on Otway Brown's place at Cold Spring and flew down close to the house to feed on the scraps we threw out to them." (Stone, 1937).]

[European Starling today. "The Starling, which man so unwisely introduced from the Old World in 1890. . .has been increasing since its first appearance. . .by consuming the winter food supply it makes it difficult for many of our former winter residents to survive the cold months." (Stone, 1937) ]

[House Sparrow with female Brown-headed Cowbird today. "Those that come to feed on scraps of bread thrown out in our garden for other bird visitors defer to Starlings, Grackles, and Red-wings but they do not leave the field and by watching their opportunity will snatch up a crust form under the very bill of one of the larger birds and fly off with it." ]

[Female House Sparrow. "Even this familiar bird would seem to warrant further study!"]

Razorbills, Rail and Cranes

[The two Sandhill Cranes continue along Seashore Road/Broadway on Cape Island, photographed here by Joe Brennan.]

Michael O'Brien, on his way back from Florida's Space Coast Birding festival, had 5 Razorbills from the Cape May Lewes Ferry today, 2 in NJ waters.

Bob Brown gave me a call to report the Virginia Rail still at the Beanery this morning, along with a few Rusty Blackbirds. Bob had the cranes on Seashore a bit south of the mailbox with 1062 on it.

Chris Hajduk reports from the Poverty Beach area: "Double digits of both loons, Red-breasted Mergansers, Long-tails, Bufflehead, and Great Cormorants. The King Eider is still present and is actually closer to Poverty. Still a long scope though. No Harlequins. Long-tailed Ducks are calling and displaying in Cape May Harbor. Buffleheads doing their bobbing and weaving also. Actually experienced two new things today. Heard the call of a Red-throated Loon several times (the ocean is quiet today). Also saw two Common Loons in a confrontation. Mostly posturing with wings spread, neck arched up with head pointed down. One eventually dove and swam away."

Storm Thoughts

[This Boat-tailed Grackle sang merrily along Pierce's Point Road this morning, probably not oblivous to the approaching storm but certainly acting that way. Click to enlarge photos.]

Weather and radar guru David LaPuma (now a colleague here at CMBO-CRE working in the research department) and I were talking about the approaching weather and its potential effect on seawatching. David noted the strong southerly flow up the Atlantic coast as the low approaches, and then a strong easterly and finally northeasterly flow right into our region through Sunday AM. He theorized this could/should push whatever is offshore closer to shore over the next few days, and could bring more southerly pelagics into the region and close to the coast. We're thinking about alcids primarily here. Predicting seabird movements is confounded by a huge array of variables, including especially food availability and tides, and as David noted this is all a gigantic "maybe."

Birders, including me, have a tendency to think that seawatching from shore might be most interesting with east winds, hoping birds will be pushed close to shore. My experience is frankly that that seldom happens, or if it does the viewing conditions are so difficult we don't see them! The best seawatching seems to happen when the conditions are good for viewing, especially when those conditions coincide with some unique food availability like baitfish concentrated in the rips off Cape May, or migrating menhaden or mullet. Hurricane birds, of course, are a whole 'nother subject.

This might all be moot, since we might not be able to get to the shore to look for the next day or two!

[I worry about Carolina Wrens with the weather of late and to come. Their numbers decline after severe winters. This one was along Pierce's Point Road this morning.]

Eagle Correction

John Steiger contacted me to let me know the eagles he photographed (below) were not the Avalon birds, or at least they weren't along the Avalon Causeway. They were photographed about 9 miles farther south, along Wildwood Blvd. between the George Reading Bridge leaving Wildwood and Rio Grande. They were on the first of the three Osprey nests on the right just before the entrance to the parkway at Exit 4