Today, I enjoyed a beautiful, warm and sunny, early spring day on Sandy Hook in Highlands, New Jersey. After the winter we had, today seemed like a long awaited miracle.
I chose to spend my morning and early afternoon birding with a friend. We joined Monmouth County Audubon Society‘s walk and saw a ton of early spring migrants!
The most exciting moment of the walk was when a large group of gulls on the Bay took off flying and cleared the sand bar they were sitting on. A few seconds later, soaring through the sky, came an immature Bald Eagle! The leaders of the walk estimated that the eagle was about three years old.
Today also brought three new additions to my life list! The Black-crowned Night-Herons we saw sitting in a tree above Nike Pond, the male Northern Harrier (known to birders as the “Gray Ghost”) flying over our group and the Blue-gray Gnatcatchers my friend and I saw on a later walk to North Beach were all life birds for me.
We estimated at least twenty ospreys have returned to Sandy Hook, many were carrying fish in their talcons and some were carrying sticks to do some “housekeeping” on their nests. We saw a number of Northern Gannets diving offshore as well.
A full list of the birds that we saw today:
- American Crow
- American Kestrel
- American Oystercatcher
- American Robin
- Bald Eagle
- Black Scoter
- Black-crowned Night-Heron
- Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
- Boat-tailed Grackle
- Brant
- Bufflehead
- Cooper’s Hawk
- Double-crested Cormorant
- Fish Crow
- Great Blue Heron
- Great Egret
- Horned Grebe
- Laughing Gull
- Long-tailed Duck
- Northern Cardinal
- Northern Flicker
- Northern Gannet
- Northern Harrier
- Northern Mockingbird
- Osprey
- Piping Plover
- Red-breasted Merganser
- Red-tailed Hawk
- Sanderling
- Sharp-shinned Hawk
- Song Sparrow
- Surf Scoter
- Tree Swallow
- Turkey Vulture
Walks led by local Audubon Society chapters are great for beginning birders! I would recommend them to any 20-something environmentalist looking to learn more about birds. Find a chapter near you!
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