Brigantine Birding

This morning Ellen and I joined a birding group at Forsythe Wildlife Management Area on the coast a little north of Atlantic City (commonly known among longtime birders as Brigantine or “Brig”). It was a tour led by long-time New Jersey Audubon staffer Pete Bacinski along with Scott Barnes, Linda Mack and others as a thank you to folks who support the organization. Here’s the group gathered in the parking lot at 9 AM.

We thought this Red-Tailed Hawk perched on the visitor center was a good omen. The weather was mostly sunny and cool, a little windy but still a fine day for it.

Our first stop was this observation tower overlooking the refuge from the west end.

Brig is wetlands surrounded by dikes with an eight-mile road one drives, stopping along the way to see all kinds of water birds.

The area directly below the tower is Gull Pond, where we saw no gulls today, but some other good birds.

There are hundreds of Great Egrets here, for example.

One drives along the road stopping whenever something worth looking at is spotted.

There were plenty of Forsters Terns, as well as Bald Eagles, Merlins, Northern Harriers, Peregrine Falcons, and assorted herons, egrets, geese, ducks and shorebirds of many kinds.

The rarest birds we saw were a dozen Hudsonian Godwits, shown here in a picture I found online (didn’t have a photographer credit unfortunately). They were too far away for a good photo with my camera. But all the birds we saw were beautiful and appreciated, and the group was a friendly one. A fine outing.