Bad Bird Photos of the Week

The other day Patty, who subscribes to every bird alert there is, received a text,"American Golden Plover at the Burlington County Fair Grounds". And as the fairgrounds are just a few miles up the road from us we had to go.

When we arrived our friend Terry, who is doing a Burlington County big year, was already there, bemoaning the large number of Killdeer, over 100, making the search for the plover, a Killdeer sized bird, that much harder.

Our target bird is dead center in this image, in which there are also at least five Killdeer. I used my Canon SX70 HS, the camera with the 1365 mm equivalent lens, and it is still a 'speck bird'.

We also had to contend with a large flock of European Starlings which kept flying about en masse.

Fifteen Starling, ten Killdeer, and one American Golden Plover.

There was also an Upland Sandpiper wandering about that I saw but did not photograph.

The fields in the Fairgrounds are off limits*, so one needs to bird from either the parking area or from along Route 206. And hope that you can get close enough for a good look This is pretty much the best we did.

🦅  🦅  🦅  🦅  🦅

* The fields are off limits ostensibly due to a Bald Eagle nest in the center of the fields. However, any young have long fledged by now, so it is not clear why it is off limits year round.

And one time I did have permission to wander about the fields. I was doing grassland bird surveys for NJ Audubon and a Vesper Sparrow had been reported here. So myself and fellow surveyor Bill Margaretta were asked to check it out and see if we could relocate it. We were not successful. But we did find eight male and two female Dickcissel, the males signing and defending territories. This at a time when one Dickcissel, found in north Jersey, was lighting up the bird alerts. And we couldn't tell anyone because the fields were off limits. And we had no effect on the Bald Eagles.