Shift change on the Hook

If the first really, really nice day of March is a gift, this year it's the winning lottery ticket. After the winter we've endured -- bone chilling cold interrupted by repetitive big snow storms, or the combination of both -- the prospect of frolicking in 60 degree weather is totally irresistible.

That's exactly why I ended up at Sandy Hook earlier today. Well, that and the fact that the Osprey should be returning any day. Among the first raptors to capture my imagination many years ago, the good ol' fish hawk is generally expected to arrive back at the Hook around March 15. Given the harshness of the winter, I wasn't really sure whether they might be delayed, but it was worth a shot. Would they resettle on the nesting platform near the still-not-replaced boardwalk deck at Spermaceti Cove? Could they already be staking out the usual spots on Officers Row and the Officers Club? (Hmm... with homes like that, could it be that Osprey are the Hook's full bird colonels?)

And besides, I might get a chance at seeing the straggler seals in the bay before they head north for the summer.

These prickly pears will soon be livening up for the summer.

Usually we're so busy looking for signs of spring -- crocuses, the first robin, budding trees -- that we don't consider that our winter visitors are getting ready to leave for points north. I was wondering whether I might be able to see both today: maybe some winter ducks and seals, within view of newly-arrived osprey and other recent migrants.

Actually, it didn't take long for me to experience the overlap. Parking at Lot C and walking the path between the dunes to the bay, I heard the call of a Red-winged blackbird just as I spotted a group of seals sunning themselves on a distant bayside beach. True, some Red-wings stick around in the colder months, but their song always puts me in the mind of sunny July mornings on the Hook.  So... mission accomplished there.

My next stop was the bayside beach near batteries Kingman and Mills, where I supposed some straggler ducks might be hanging out. A quartet of Brant swam near the water's edge; a pair of Buffleheads farther out were alternately floating along and diving. Remembering the overhead scolding I got last May, I was optimistically hoping to find an Osprey or two near the nesting platform inland of Battery Mills, but alas, it's a little too early in the season for setting up housekeeping.

This Officers Row house is being fitted with a new porch.
You can see PVC piping in the chimneys above.

That said, I wasn't too confident I'd find any down at the garrison, either, a feeling heightened by some surprising activity atop the houses on Officers Row. Several houses already sport PVC piping emerging from chimneys, perhaps a means of ventilation to stabilize ongoing decay, and a crew was fitting yet another house as I passed. While I'm all for whatever it takes to preserve and restore these amazing homes, I'm a bit saddened by the prospect that Osprey will lose their long-time nesting spaces as a result. Allowances may already have been made: one of the houses appeared to have been skipped over, and I think it's the usual nesting chimney.*

Still, though, I hadn't seen a single one of the birds that prompted my visit. I was just about passing the Officers Club (no luck) when I saw something gliding through the sky. Right shape? Right size? Pretty much. Right markings? Well, that was the question. As I pulled the car over near Nine Gun Battery to get a look, the mystery raptor's circling widened, bringing it farther away from me. Just my luck.

Patience is a virtue with birding, and I decided to wait a little to see if it would return. A clutch of Turkey vultures glided in, a few alighting on the Battery. Trying to tell me something, guys? Then I saw it: either the same mystery bird or a friend, approaching for a fly-by, but I couldn't get a bead on it. My binoculars have been temperamental lately, and they picked this moment to be especially difficult. I thought I saw the distinctive black eye stripe of an Osprey, but I didn't catch enough of its other markings to be sure. Birds, of course, don't care about your optics issues. You may get another chance, you may not.

Shaking my head, I got in the car and continued southward, in the direction the mystery raptors had flown. They seemed to be heading to the Gunnison parking lot, which, not surprisingly, held a couple dozen cars on this sunny, warm day. The vultures seemed to find the area amenable. I sat, waiting.

Well, it's often said that when you look for one bird, you often find another one that's just as interesting, and that's exactly what happened. Among the couple of "I'm not sure, but I could make it a juvenile osprey" individuals was one much different: a Red-shouldered hawk. And this fella wanted me to be absolutely sure, gliding above me so I could get a good look at his orange-tinged body and striped tail. On his departure, he wheeled to let me see his distinctive red shoulders, nicely displayed in perfect sunlight. If I wasn't entirely sure about the Osprey, the Red-shoulder was a nice consolation.

As I got back into the car, I looked in the distance to see two raptors flying a tandem pattern, apparently getting to know each other better, or maybe looking for a nice place to nest. Though they were too far off for me to identify decisively, I'm sure they were Osprey. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

*Update, April 10: the Osprey are undeterred! At least three pairs have or are attempting to set up shop on the chimneys, incorporating the PVC piping in their nest design. Scuttlebutt is that the piping was placed to discourage the birds as the National Park Service is moving to lease the houses to entities that will restore and reopen them.

South Branch WMA: a very birdy grassland walk (without the ticks)

Wrong turns uncover a lot of great surprises for us Hidden New Jersey nuts. I guess that's not surprising, as you don't go places you don't usually visit. (I'm feeling a lot like Yogi Berra right about now.)

It was a wrong turn that helped us discover a beautiful grassland birding spot in Hunterdon and Somerset Counties a couple of weekends ago. I won't bore you with the logistical details, but it involved taking 287 in the wrong direction to get to 78 and then wandering around looking for an appropriate ATM. The net was that after driving through some classic Central Jersey former farmland/present subdivision terrain, we found ourselves in open fields, some covered with crops, others laying fallow.

Grassland is in woefully short supply in New Jersey. With so many families getting out of agriculture over the past few decades, a great deal of pasture has been converted to residential use. The farms that do remain are often pushing to get the greatest productivity possible from their acreage, meaning that fewer fields lay fallow to recover after a planting year. Translated to bird talk, there's less room for grassland species to nest and feed, putting them in danger. A large percentage of the birds on the lists of state endangered and threatened species are those who count on this type of habitat.

Always on the lookout for good habitat, we stopped a few times to check for birdage, particularly the grassland species Ivan needs for his year list. Then we came upon a brown plank sign labeling the entrance to the South Branch Wildlife Management Area. This was a new one for both of us, and if the fields we'd just past were any indication of the quality of its habitat, we needed to check it out.

A paved road leads off the road but is blocked by a padlocked gate fifty yards or so in. We parked the car nearby and walked around the gate posts to explore further up the road, which appeared to end at a crest in the hill. To the left was a broad field of assorted grasses and wildflowers, while the clearing to the right was edged by a thick stand of trees. From the music we were hearing, we could tell this was prime territory. Why hadn't we heard about this spot before?

Walking along, we were able to spot most of the usual suspect birds, as well as some of their brighter cousins. Indigo bunting, yellow warbler and goldfinch were regular sights, as were both Baltimore and orchard orioles. The orchards, in particular, were unusually plentiful; we must have seen three or four juvenile males before finding an adult.

We also scared up a fox who'd been obscured by the tall grass. Not wanting to deal with us, he trotted down the road and found refuge in the woods. He might have been the one who'd left the scat I'd noticed at spots on the pavement; we didn't see any deer. Or, perhaps, it might have been the byproduct of whoever left the claw marks I thought I saw in some mud.

In any case, the road kept going once we reached the rise, terminating at an old prefab metal building. Even though the property appeared to stretch far beyond, we chose not to do any bushwacking. We've had more than our share of post-trip tick discoveries so far this season, and we were both relieved to be birding somewhere productive that didn't require us to walk through brush. There was no need, anyway: a connecting road led across the property and was just calling out to us. How could we resist the invitation?

Like the Negri Nepote Grasslands we visited last year, this field hosts a long row of 300kv transmission lines that announce themselves with a buzzy hum as you approach. Also like last year's experience, a red tail hawk was perched about midway up one of the transmission towers, occasionally screaming to warn us away. This one, though, wasn't nesting and didn't appear to have young nearby at all. He seemed to be preening or airing out one of his wings, creating a somewhat cloaklike shape on one side. At first we wondered if he might be injured, but after taking looks from several perspectives as we walked further down the trail, we decided he was fine. Maybe a little wet from the previous night's rain, but fine, nonetheless.

The path continued down a short, gentle incline to a wooded area complete with a tiny brook, and then back up to another field. Finding nothing really different in terms of habitat or birds, we decided to turn back and continue on our road trip travels. Even though we hadn't found Ivan's target birds there, we'd seen enough to know that South Branch WMA was a definite option for future exploration.

Hawk eyes and more in Montclair

Following up on our hawk watch post a few weeks ago, Ivan and I ventured to the Montclair Hawk Watch site this past Sunday to see what was in the skies above. We'd been fortunate to see a variety of raptors (including a mature bald eagle -- extremely awesome!) at the Meadowlands Festival of Birding, so we hoped that we'd have the same luck a few miles south and a few hundred feet higher in altitude.

The Montclair Hawk Watch is New Jersey's oldest established hawk watch site, second only to Pennsylvania's Hawk Mountain in longevity nationally. Local birders started scanning for hawks from this site on the First Watchung Ridge in 1957, climbing up a rough trail from the neighborhood below. The site was eventually obtained by New Jersey Audubon and adjusted to make it more amenable to hawk watching. Today, viewers enjoy a large, flat, rock-covered platform with a sweeping view of eastern Essex, Bergen, Passaic and Hudson Counties and the New York City skyline.

It doesn't take rappelling gear to reach the summit, but the way up to the platform is a bit more than a walk in the park. After parking in a small lot for the nearby Lenape Trail, we crossed the street and made our way on an unlabeled path into the woods. Soon enough, the path rises on a series of railroad-tie-and-dirt steps leading to a steep wooden staircase built into a wide crevice between two rock faces. Once you're up a bit, you walk atop a broad, slightly angled rockface until you get to a metal staircase that Ivan described as a pool ladder. It's more substantial than that, but you get the idea.

The afternoon of our visit, a handful of other birders were already up there, chatting while keeping a keen eye out for hawks and others on the horizon. I learned that the best way to spot is to take sweeping views horizontally across the vision field through your binoculars, then moving down to the next plain and zag across the next lower field. The lulls between sightings create opportunities for conversation, and it's a friendly crowd, so it didn't take long before I felt comfortable calling out a sighting in the distance. I didn't necessarily know what I'd spotted, but others didn't take long to voice their theories until a consensus was met.

While we were there, a decent showing of birds came by, including plenty of sharp-shinned hawks, some osprey, kestrel, merlin and even a bald eagle. I always get a big kick out of watching them soar -- they look as if they're having so much fun (I know I would be if I were them), and being at a 500 foot elevation brought them so much nearer than you'd generally see them. Some of them even circled above the platform, giving us a lovely view of their undersides.

The watch season is just gearing up, and broad-winged hawks should be making their appearance in kettles (large groups) next week if experience is any indication. Other species will take up the march over the next two months, until migration is largely complete in November. Stop by and check it out for an hour or two -- I guarantee you'll gain a new respect for those large birds that we often see as just specks far up above us.