Winter Coastal Birding on New Year's Eve

After an uneventful day yesterday at the Raritan Estuary CBC, I decided to do some birding along the NJ coast today. I started at Manasquan Inlet near Point Pleasant, NJ. This is a great spot in winter for loons, gulls, and alcids. A few Black-headed Gulls had been seen here recently and I wanted to see one. Unfortunately, today would not be my day. One had been seen around 8:00 AM, but had flown far away by the time I got there. As a nice consolation prize, there were quite a few Bonaparte's Gulls in extremely close as well as many Northern Gannets and loons.

From there I headed north to Sandy Hook to look for some rarities that had been hanging out since late November - a Townsend's Solitaire and a Western Kingbird. Neither of these are life birds or state birds for me, but I thought they'd be nice to see. The Hook was extremely windy. I looked in vain for the Solitaire for quite a while, but I didn't manage to find many birds at all. The only thing I scared up was a few Golden-crowned Kinglets and a Brown Creeper. I then moved to the North Beach pavilion to look for the Western Kingbird. As I stepped out of my car, a bird alighted on a perch to my right and, sure enough, it was the Kingbird!


One out of three ain't bad. I ran into another birder who had been looking for the Kingbird for a while and I was able to get him on it. The wind and the cold were beginning to get to me. I made a few more stops along the way out, but then headed home. Not a bad morning out birding on New Year's Eve. Happy New Year!