Despite awful conditions new birds still come. We opened the door to be met with torrential rain.  Ah! We hadn’t expected that.  Sticking with Plan A we headed north up the east coast of Cape May Point. As we drove the rain if anything got worse, but we pushed on. At Forsythe WNR, Brigantine division, we called in at the office and interrupted some sort of nautical exam.  Confusion was quickly over and a member of staff took our small entry fee and we were let loose on the reserve. Well not very loose, we drove around a loop road, ideal for such a rotten day. On our right was a vast expanse of saltmarsh, on our left freshwater lagoons. What a great place and loads of birds. We crept along slowly stopping every few yards to view each new flock of waders. It soon became obvious that the vast majority were just three species – Short-billed Dowitchers, Least Sandpipers and Dunlin. Every now and then we picked out other goodies such as breeding plumaged Grey Plovers (black-bellied), American Golden Plovers, Whimbrel, Ruddy Turnstone, both Yellowlegs, Semi-palmated Plovers, Spotted Sandpipers.
Then a small bird popped up on some dead grass right by the road, get on it quick! The bird darted back into cover. The brief view was enough to see it looked different so a tense wait ensued. Luckily the bird popped up again and over next few minutes we enjoyed good views as it darted about, Nelson’s Sharp-tailed Sparrow, our first new bird of the day and a very handsome one. On further along the raised road and terns showed well, a pair of Gull-billed sat and showed off, a lovely breeding plumaged Black Tern battled past into the wind, many Forster’s and small numbers of Common Terns fished the tidal creeks. A black finch like bird flew up from the roadside, emergency stop, there on the reed, male Bobolink! Wow! What a cracker, full adult male, new bird number two.
Birds just kept coming, Black Skimmer, Black Ducks, Great and Snowy Egrets, Glossy Ibis, Ospreys….We were almost at the end of the track and still hadn’t seen our main target bird here, White-rumped Sandpiper. Scanning ahead we could see one last huge flock of waders, great still in with a chance. No sooner had we said this than the majority of the flock lifted and headed high north, no! We dashed to the spot to be greeted with a mere 200 or so waders left, scanning franticly the fourth bird we looked at was a White-rumped Sandpiper, whew. We quickly found a second but moments later this flock was up and not a single wader remained.  Only a few seconds later, and we’d have seen nothing at all!  A Northern Harrier and a Merlin swept over the saltmarsh close to the car, what a wonderful place.Leaving the wetlands behind, the road ran alongside an area of mixed woodland which contained a good variety of birds and we enjoyed close-up looks of Eastern Bluebird, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Blue Jays and, best of all, an Eastern Towhee which hopped about on the forest floor only a few metres in front of us, another new bird.  We left Brigantine and headed inland for Belleplain Forest.  Sadly the rain came too with no let-up in the heavy downpour.  The lake here held Spotted Sandpiper and a very confiding group of four Solitary Sandpipers.  Searching the woodland we again encountered some great warblers.  Chief amongst these was a gorgeous male Yellow-throated Warbler, new for the year.  American warblers are great, often doing what it says on the tin and this one is no exception: a gorgeous yellow throat highlighted by solid black at the edges, a white supercilium with a broken eye ring, grey-blue above, with two clear white wing bars and white outer tail feathers.  The woodland also contained both Scarlet and Summer Tanagers, Black-and-white Warbler, Blue-grey Gnatcatcher, Wood Thrush and Northern Flicker, this time yellow-shafted.  Then something rather more drab appeared, a small flycatcher of the Empidonax family.  A nightmare!  These birds are not easy to identify.  Luckily this particular individual showed well and in good light, and given its combination of long, broad bill, greenish upper parts, narrow eye ring, clear wing bars and long primary projection, we could confidently identify it as an Acadian Flycatcher, and yes, another new bird for our year list.To finish off the day, we headed back south to Cape May and called in at the Bird Observatory to see what news had broken during the day.  As it happened, not a lot – no doubt a combination of the appalling weather and the fact that many birders were out scouting for tomorrow’s big day and keeping stumm on what they’d seen.  One last circuit of The Meadows wetland ended our birding day.  The rain had lessened to a heavy drizzle and we enjoyed watching Northern Rough-winged Swallows and Tree Swallows feeding low over the water.
Bird species total: 2186
Posted at 10pm, 9th May, Cape May, New Jersey