Last Wednesday (6/25/08) my boyfriend and I headed back out to the Delaware Water Gap – using an upcoming deadline for a photo contest as an excuse. ^_^ I ended up with one entry (non bird) but got a whole slew of incredible new sightings! I also found out that not only does my boyfriend make a mean sandwich; he also is an excellent tracker / tiny critter spotter.
We started by visiting Kittatinny Point to photo the mountains, but it was CRAMMED with people and canoes. So we went back to good ol’ Old Mine Road. We parked at different spots along the road and waited for birds or mammals to come along. Our first sighting of the day was a chipmunk, which is pretty cool since we only have squirrels where I live. The second sighting has my totally baffled. We saw a small black or dark bird with red flashes on its wings and on / near its tail. It was fast and restless and all my pictures of it just show unidentifiable blurs. We waited a while, hoping it would come back, but it didn’t so we moved on.
We drove down to the Poxono boat launching area to photo the river and anything near it and were greeted by… flies and a stinky dead fish. As I wondered if a bear killed that large, not so freshly killed fish (left an awful lot if it did) my boyfriend noticed thousands of tadpoles in the water – my very first ones! Some had even sprouted legs. All of a sudden, we noticed a huge bird fly by – easily the largest bird I’ve ever seen! It was followed by two other huge birds – but they were pretty far away. I snapped some pictures in full zoom and zoomed in again in preview mode to make the ID. They turned out to be pretty easy to ID… big yellow raptor bill, dark body and wings, completely white head and tail… BALD EAGLES!!! There were 2 adults and one immature one all dark and spotty; my very first wild bald eagles which surprisingly flew by again awhile later despite my excited squealing and jumping around. ^_^ As if to quell any doubt, an osprey flew by a few moments later, making the comparison and ID much easier for me since I was in total disbelief about my sighting. I did manage to get a funny picture of the immature bald eagle being chased by a red winged black bird, though they were still pretty far (posted).
My boyfriend’s ‘eagle eyes’ were able to spot another wonder no bigger than my pinky fingernail – tiny newly developed American Toads! (Thanks to the folks at fieldherpforums for the ID). I have a picture of one posted to my Flickr account. After a while of reveling there and fruitlessly trying to ID or photo the tiny birds swooping at the water, we continued our drive.
Quite a ways down, I heard a very strange bird call and we pulled to the side of the road near a bush to listen. It sounded like a Pacman sound effect. I don’t know how to describe bird calls yet, but I’ll check to see if I can extract the sound from any video I took and post it here. Anyway, I have my head out of the car window, camera at the ready, when something flies to the visible branches of the near bush. It took me a moment to register because to me, it was as exciting as the bald eagles. MY FIRST CEDAR WAXWING!!! From the first time I saw their pictures and drawings in ID books and sites, I felt they were the most beautiful birds in the world and fell absolutely in love. A bunch of them appeared in the bush only to disappear within its depths and reappear seconds later. I took as many pictures as I could in an unfortunately necessary high ISO (400) due to the light (posted). We reluctantly continued on our way seeing bunnies, beautiful flowers and even our bald eagle friends again before we called it a day. No bears this time, but still such incredible, wonderful wildlife! We had a great time!
