Out in the Cold

In winter we behold the charms of solemn majesty and naked grandeur.  -- James Ellis

This morning it was 14 degrees F when the sun rose after 7 a.m. ET. I had lingered in bed under quilts and was not interested in moving. Then I remembered the birds.

Winter, Patriots Path, Nov. 22, 2025 (Margo D. Beller)

Ever since bears damaged feeders and the poles they hang on - several times over the years - I've brought the feeders in at night. But while I was lying under covers, the birds were in shrubs, hedges and on tree branches, puffing themselves up to maintain a layer of warmth under their feathers to survive the cold. It is why I leave the feeders out as long as possible before dark, so they have the fat energy for survival, and why I rouse myself from my warm bed to put the feeders out in the morning.

Lots of birds came to the feeders today, including the red-breasted nuthatch pair that has been hanging around the yard for way over a week. I did not travel far this cold morning, but one morning the previous week, when it was a balmy 17 degrees at sunrise, I took myself to the nearby linear park known as Patriots Path.

White-throated sparrow (Margo D. Beller)

This park goes on for many miles through my home county. I parked at one section started walking.  

I've seen interesting birds in this particular section in all seasons, and there have been many changes in the topography over the years. But now I just wanted to walk and hope something interesting called for me (or Merlin) to hear and identify. I wanted to see what birds do in the cold. It turns out, the same as any other day - get something to eat and try not to be eaten. In the cold, however, I sensed a bit more frenzy.

As I began my walk, a flock of American crows circled and cawed. Were they chatting among themselves, as corvids are wont to do, or were they disturbed by something - a hawk or me? They circled and departed, but then several black vultures flew overhead. Then some turkey vultures. All the vultures started landing in some of the bare trees near the river. The vulture types did not mingle. 

Among them were six turkey vultures roosting in one tree, and beneath them three deer, in winter camoflage, were browsing the winter-killed grasses. They raised their heads, looked at me, then continued eating. This is a hard time for deer. Plants they'd normally browse have died or gone dormant, and people are out trying to shoot them. This section of the park used to be marked as a "Deer Management Area" but I noticed the orange sign had been removed. No hunting here today.

Turkey vulture (RE Berg-Andersson)

With my binoculars I looked at all the birds and found a roosting red-tailed hawk in a separate tree. All these raptors were waiting for the sun to hit them so they could be warm enough to hunt for their breakfast. I wondered, where did the vultures come from and why did they pick this area to congregate? I can only guess.

The cold kept the number of walkers, with or without dogs, at a minimum so the birds remained where they were as I stood still to watch and listen. Near the intersection with the next road were many birds flying around, looking for food or just some warm sunshine. Robins and rusty blackbirds flew around the trees. White-crowned and song sparrows called from thick shrubbery. I was lucky a swamp sparrow allowed me to see its rich colors. A raven croaked as it flew by overhead. Goldfinches and juncos flitted around. Various woodpeckers banged at trees to dislodge hidden insects. Titmice hung upside-down on smaller branches, doing the same. Jays, white-breasted nuthatch and fish crows called. 

Roosting red-tailed hawk from another time (Margo D. Beller)

I stood for a long time listening, or at least trying to hear over the sound of morning rush hour traffic. (Merlin was a great help in this.) Where the birds went fast, I went slow. But despite my winter gear the cold started affecting me, starting with my legs. Holding the binoculars made my hands very cold, and it was hard to focus the gears. Had I been carrying my stick it would've become painful through my glove. Instead, I was holding my phone, which the cold also affected. Between the cold and the Merlin app the phone dropped to a dangerously low power level. I shut everything off and walked quickly back to my car to warm up.

But I was satisfied with all I saw and heard despite the discomfort. According to the New Jersey Bird Records Committee's list of every bird ever recorded (and verified) in New Jersey (part of a plethora of lists and annual reports it puts out), 502 types of birds have been found in the state (plus five now considered extinct). I got to see or hear 15 of them.

Another time out in the cold. (RE Berg-Andersson)

Today the early birder got the birds. 

Looking Out My Back Door

This morning I found it had snowed a bit overnight and the roads were shiny with ice. I had thought about going to one or more places to do some birding - not expecting much now that migration is long over, but maybe finding something that has flown south to my area and will now hang around for the winter.

Cardinal in a past winter. (Margo D. Beller)

But since my fall I try to be more careful about where I go to walk. Ice on the road means ice on the paved paths I usually walk.

So I put out the feeders, brewed some coffee, put a cup in a thermal mug and took Merlin outside to listen.

This blog is called Backyard Birding for a reason. It was in my backyard that I first realized the diversity of the winged world. The birds coming to the feeders. The birds calling from the trees and bushes. The birds flying overhead, some of them looking to make a meal of a bird or squirrel.

When weather won't allow me to go out, or even if I am just restless to do something, I either sit on the enclosed porch or I stand on the patio and wait. At this time of year, when I seem to be the only one offering birds something to eat, the yard gets very busy, very fast.

I must be careful where I walk on snowy days.
(RE Berg-Andersson)

Take today, for instance. In no particular order the yard had hairy woodpecker, downy woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, yellow-bellied sapsuckers (two, chasing each other around the dogwood tree), house finches (too many), mourning doves (at least eight, all picking up what the finches dropped), blue jays, cardinals, titmice, a black-capped chickadee, a goldfinch, white-breasted nuthatch, house sparrow and, unusually quiet in a nearby hedge, a mockingbird. (Once in a while a robin or a Carolina wren will pass through, but not today.)

Lately, I've hosted several visitors from the north: white-throated sparrows, juncos and, most unusual, red-breasted nuthatch. This nuthatch is smaller than the white-breasted nuthatch I see more often, and is more comfortable hanging upside-down on the suet feeder. One day we had two birds, a male and female. Both have a black and white face pattern, the male's breast a darker red than the female's. These birds are usually found in pine forests, so perhaps they were attracted to the sheltering branches of Spruce.

The more commonly seen white-breasted nuthatch (top) with
titmouse. (Margo D. Beller)

As for the "...and Beyond" part of my blog title, this afternoon the temperature rose and the wind died down, making it feel like spring, albeit a cold spring. My area was clear of snow. I drove out to the park I would've visited earlier in the day. The path was still covered with snow and the parking lot blocked. 

So I turned around and drove home, content to resume my backyard birding. 

Still Life, With Woodpeckers

It is autumn once again. The ornamental grasses and other shrubbery are turning gold and brown and the trees in my yard have lost their leaves except for the red and white oaks. Other trees in the area have leaves but they are fluttering with each breeze to the ground like rain. Even though age has forced my husband and me to hire a lawn service to get the bulk of the leaves and locust tree pods to the curb, today I went out with my rake because I miss the calm I get from simple yard work outside.

Male redbelly at his preferred feeder. (Margo D. Beller)

But though my rake is far more quiet than a leaf blower, the calm was soon broken by the incessant and increasingly high-pitched barking of a neighbor's dog. After I finished, that noise was replaced by several homeowners using the inevitable leaf blower. Here in the suburbs, leaf blower season will last until it finally snows and people will stop caring about having a perfect green lawn.

It is dark at 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time now, and southbound bird migration is just about done in my area. If the Merlin app on my phone is any guide, there are still a lot of different birds that will be stay through the winter in the general vicinity of my backyard early in the morning. (I usually hear about half of them.) But the catbird, warblers and other summer birds are now far south of here.

Once in a long while I do find something interesting in the yard - a Carolina wren, a gold-crowned kinglet, more recently a yellow-bellied sapsucker softly tapping on a branch of my old apple tree in the dim light of dawn. I like sapsuckers, and rarely see them, but this tree has had enough stress in its life and its trunk is already covered in tiny sapsucker holes of past years. So I walked toward the tree and the bird flew off.

Nearby tree. The leaves will soon be gone.
(Margo D. Beller)

Now, on my enclosed porch and running a fan to cut the leaf blower noise, I watch my feeders. It is not the coldest of days so there has been little activity. Suddenly, a red-bellied woodpecker - the red going up the back of its neck to its head showing this is a male bird - comes to the house feeder for a sunflower seed. It takes it, flies to a nearby tree and then pounds the seed against a limb to break open the shell and get to the meat.

The redbelly, a medium-sized bird, has drawn the attention of the much smaller downy woodpecker. There is no red spot on the back of the neck, so this is a female. She is on the dogwood tree, closer to the other feeder pole. When the redbelly flies off, she flies to the pole and slides down until she can jump up to the suet that hangs upside down in its feeder.

She picks at the suet, then quickly flies back to the dogwood as the redbelly returns to the house feeder for another seed. This is the law of nature. If you are a little bird and a larger bird, especially one of your type, flies at you, you quickly get out of the way. So each time the redbelly came to the house feeder - first one side, then the other - the downy would leave the suet for the safety of the dogwood.

Downy woodpecker at suet, back when I hung it near the house feeder.
(Margo D. Beller)

I don't know why this redbelly is not inclined to hang below the suet feeder as downys and the larger hairy woodpeckers do. This bird kept at the house feeder before deciding to try the caged seed feeder that hangs near the suet. The cage feeder is for the little birds but bigger birds like the redbelly will cling to the cage, put its head in and try to grab a seed from the central tube. It is not a comfortable position for the bird and eventually it goes to the house feeder.

The downy, meanwhile, climbed to the top of the dogwood. I thought she would fly off but instead she flew to the pear tree. I turned in my chair and saw her tapping at the trunk. She waited to see if the big bird would come back, then flew to the house feeder for her own seed. She took it back to where she had been on the pear tree to hammer off the shell and get at the seed. The redbelly, perhaps sated, flew off from another tree. The downy ate and later left.

I have seen downys come to the house feeder when titmice and chickadees make their runs back and forth to grab a seed. But should a large jay, redbelly or cardinal fly in, the smaller birds fly to the bushes and wait for the big birds to leave. 

This tableau has and will be repeated countless times, especially when the weather becomes colder. At this time of year I am not nearly as active as I would like. I feel aches and pains more often. I dread the coming of cold, snow and the dry heat from the furnace that affects my sinuses. 

When life becomes still, watching the feeders will be the best thing I do.

Following John Burroughs

 The pleasure and value of every walk or journey we take may be doubled to us by carefully noting down the impressions it makes upon us. -- John Burroughs, from "Spring Jottings"

I own a lot of books that deal with birds and nature. I have a paperback copy of what might be the first writing devoted to carefully studying the flora and fauna of a particular area, "The Natural History of Selbourne" by English churchman Gilbert White. I have several volumes written by John Muir, whose detailed writings about Yosemite in California's Sierra Nevada mountains helped protect it first as a state, then as a national park. Muir then turned his sights on Alaska, exploring glaciers - including the one later named for him.

The view from Boyhood Rock - Slide Mountain with Burroughs'
grave in the foreground. (Margo D. Beller)

Henry David Thoreau's most famous book is his detailed study of his home area of Concord, Mass., and the nearby woods, "Walden." More recently, Aldo Leopold wrote about his Wisconsin farm in "Sand County Almanac." His book, like Muir's, promoted the importance of nature and our relationship with it in an increasingly industrial world.

And then there is John Burroughs.

I don't remember how I first heard of John of the birds, so called to distinguish him from John (Muir) of the mountains. My husband (MH) was surprised to learn I had not read him, although I had read OF him in John Taliafarro's biography of environmentalist Robert Bird Grinnell who, with Burroughs and Muir, were part of industrialist E.W. Harriman's Alaska expedition of 1899.

So I got two books of Burroughs' essays from the library and found a sort of kindred spirit, though I'll never be the naturalist - or the writer - he was.

Burroughs, born in a brown wooden house in Roxbury, N.Y., did his nature writing on the side while making a living as a teacher. Later, after he married, he took a job with the U.S. Treasury Dept., living in Washington, D.C. on the north side of the Capitol, in a house on a one-acre lot where he let his cow out to pasture on what later became the National Mall. It was at this time he met and befriended the poet Walt Whitman, who became the subject of his first book.

Woodchuck Lodge (Margo D. Beller)

But he did not enjoy being stuck in a government office, as he notes in his essay "A Cow in the Capital":

I planted myself as deep in the soil as I could, to restore the normal tone and freshness of my system, impaired by the above mentioned government mahogany.

Having been stuck in enough offices when I'd rather be out birding, I can commiserate.

So he and his family went home to New York, where he built a house in Esopus, near the Hudson River. Then he built a cabin nearby he called Slabsides and there he began writing in earnest. His essays were published in influential magazines and he soon became a best-selling author, his prose striking a chord with those city people who wanted to retain a connection with nature or remembered when their families lived on farms.

As a youth I was a philosopher, as a young man an Emersonian; as a middle-aged man I was a literary naturalist - but always have I been an essayist. (from "An Egotistical Chapter")

In the summer the family would go back to Roxbury, to another brown wooden house built by his brother and named Woodchuck Lodge. He would write in the hay barn. When he wanted inspiration he would climb to what he called his Boyhood Rock and look out at Slide Mountain, the tallest of the Catskills, and listen to the birds and commune with nature.

As he became successful he made a lot of rich and powerful friends - President Theodore Roosevelt, inventor Thomas Edison, automaker Henry Ford. All had a great love of nature. They would visit Woodchuck Lodge or the group would go on long hikes. It helped to have such friends. After Burroughs died in 1921, Ford bought the lodge to preserve it and the surrounding grounds. It was eventually incorporated as John Burroughs' Woodchuck Lodge Inc. One-tenth of a mile from the lodge is an open area that is a New York State Historic Area. It includes a path up to Boyhood Rock and Burroughs' grave.

Plaque on Boyhood Rock: I stand amid the eternal ways and
what is mine shall know my face. (Margo D. Beller) 

MH and I visited on Oct. 16 as part of our annual trek to see autumn leaf color.

The lodge is only open the first Saturday of the month until October, but it has been under renovation for years and we had not planned to enter. I wanted to see it and the hay barn where he wrote. It was a windy day, making it cold enough for me to need my winter parka. Then we drove down the road, parked and made the climb to the Rock. 

Between MH's knees and my previous falls, we both climbed very carefully. My wrist reminded me that it was still not 100%. I listened for birds but only heard a blue jay. MH and I sat on the bench provided and looked at Slide Mountain, 25 miles away, with Burroughs' grave in the foreground. Like the rock on the grave of Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of Burroughs' influences, Boyhood Rock was Burroughs' headstone.

The silence was overwhelming. Except for a distant raven and a woodpecker softly tapping on a tree near us, it was quiet. No cars. No leaf blowers. No yapping kids or dogs. Just a mountain ahead of us and peace all around us. I almost cried. No wonder the man came here for inspiration. 

One of the few bits of deep color we saw in our travels.
(Margo D. Beller)

What we love to do, that we do well. To know is not all; it is only half. To love is the other half. (from "The Art of Seeing Things")

I thought of all the times I've been in parks, listening or trying to see birds, as I was passed by runners wearing noise-cancelling headphones, groups of chatting walkers or bikers zooming through. Rare is the time someone stops and asks if I've found anything "good," rarer still they tell me of the birds they've seen. Most people seem to use the park as background, to "get into nature" while paying as little attention to it as possible as they move through quickly. 

Before MH and I made our very careful descent to our car, I opened the wooden hutch where visitors could sign in and make comments. When the doors opened a small, winged insect flew out and into my open parka pocket. Maybe it sought more warmth than what the hutch provided. I tried to find the insect but it stayed hid. I wrote in the register, "Making the pilgrimage to a great man and writer." As I turned to leave, the small insect flew out of my pocket and landed on Burroughs' grave. 

I think Burroughs would've appreciated that moment.

My life has been a fortunate one; I was born under a lucky star. (from "My Boyhood")

 

Another Autumn, Another Fall

 Spring is the inspiration, fall the expiration. -- John Burroughs

The cast on my wrist came off October 1. The next day, after occupational therapy (OT), my husband (MH) drove me to the local Agway. I had hoped to buy a black-eyed susan plant. I had tried growing one some years ago but it didn't take.

I did not find it, but I did find two plants I've always wanted to grow plus one, a lavender, I planted in my ornamental grass garden years ago but it didn't survive the invasive roots of the ash tree, which has since been cut down. This time I decided to grow the lavender in a pot I put by the front door. It is a plant deer don't browse for the same reason people buy lavender products - the scent.

Potted lavender, 2025 (Margo D. Beller)

The other two plants I bought are autumn growers - Japanese anemone and a New England aster, which I've seen growing tall in fields, its purple flowers usually hosting bees.

So a few days later I spread my tarp on my enclosed porch and worked. It was a joy to be working with plants, My wrist, thanks to OT, was much stronger but I was still careful when it came to moving a bag of soil, filling a pail with some of my stored compost and then putting in the plants. Then I managed to get the aster into the ground behind the deer netting, put the lavender in its pot by the door and put the anemone into its pot behind the netting.

I shook out the tarp over the backyard and then took to folding it.

That's when I stepped backwards at the edge of the patio, lost my balance and fell on my butt.

My head survived and my back was jarred but they had fallen on soil, not the patio blocks - a blessing considering falls are a leading cause of death for seniors, which I reluctantly acknowledge being. I retrieved my glasses. This time my wrists weren't involved, my hands being in front of me holding the tarp.

Again? I told myself. I had been so careful with the soil, the pots, the planting. All I was doing was folding a tarp. But falls can happen at any time, in the house or outside. I've had both. They are not fun.

Carefully, I finished folding the tarp and went in to tell MH of my latest fall. 

Potted anemone. The wiring around this and the lavender is to 
keep out digging chipmunks. (Margo D. Beller)

The immediate consequence was a pain at the top of my left leg that was so bad I could not stand, much less walk. Pain makes me a snarling beast, and that scared MH. But after a few days of heat and rest that pain diminished and then went away. So did the lower back strain although there is still one area - either the sacrum or the hip - that I have not helped by hiking around during a period when high numbers of birds have been migrating south.

These pains used to be gone in a day. But that was when I was much younger. 

The plants are thriving, especially the lavender. My wrist improves, allowing me to finally drive solo and spare MH being my chauffeur. I've also had to move the anemone pot under the overhang so it wasn't drowned by our recent nor'easter, tho' our area wasn't hit nearly as hard as the Jersey Shore. My wrist reminds me when I've gone too far.

When OT ends next month I am sure my wrist will never be 100%. I will have to live with that, along with the other aches and pains that have dogged me in recent years. It won't stop me from birding areas where the migrating birds are. It won't stop me from going out to listen for birds on the back patio with Merlin. Nor will it stop me from writing this blog, which I'm doing wearing a compression sleeve and a wrist brace.

It beats the alternative.

Broken-winged Birder

Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die life is a broken-winged bird.

--Langston Huges

Years ago I wrote a post about birding with disabilities after talking to a woman at Great Swamp who birded from her car because of her walking problems.

I think of her because now I can't drive.

Three weeks ago I fell in a field full of flowers when a bumble bee, perhaps thinking my red hat a flower, charged me. I reared back, lost my balance and went down on my butt and my left wrist. Luckily, my husband (MH) was within shouting distance. He got me to a bench, got help and was able to drive to me so I could get home to ice and painkillers.

(Margo D. Beller)

What I thought was a sprain turned out to be a fracture. I will spare you the sequence of subsequent events. Now I have a cast on and while I can do a lot - such as type this post with two hands - I can't drive.

You learn pretty quickly how fast you lose your independence and have to depend on other people for basic things. But while I have been slowly improving and doing more, there is one thing I still can't do:

I can't go birding in the early morning during prime southbound migration weather.

MH, you see, is not an early riser if he can help it. He rises to take me to appointments if they are early but if there are no appointments he wants to rest his weary muscles that have been used more than they have been in years since my injury.

So my field of operations is limited. I can walk to the outer fringes of Greystone, or sit on the back patio, both with the Merlin app on to help me. When I hear a chip Merlin tells me is an American redstart, and then I see the black and orange male flitting around in a tree, I think of how many more birds I could see beyond the backyard jays, cardinals and woodpeckers if I could drive farther afield and stay out longer.

But, I have learned, MH has worried about me taking these long trips alone. My recent fall was within shouting distance of him. I've had other falls when he wasn't around. I could get up then. I might not be so lucky next time.

So I do what I can and wait for a day he'll feel up to driving me someplace and we'll walk and, with any luck, still find treasures, even after the cast comes off.

Down the Shore on a Stakeout

When a bird is in an area where you don't expect it, it is considered an "accidental." If it hangs around an area long enough for birders to come from far and wide to see it, it is an "event."

But if it hangs around and only comes out into the open for very short periods during the day, and there are lots of people who still want to see it, that becomes a "stakeout."

Here is the difference between an event and a stakeout. Years ago I learned several northern lapwings, a bird usually found in Europe and Asia, showed up at a farm in New Egypt, New Jersey. These birds caused quite a stir. In their usual territory they like mudflats, open country and, notably, farm land. Based on what I read on the eBird lists, quite a lot of people came to the south Jersey farm to see these birds and had to be reminded to stay in the road and not to block the farm equipment.

Cormorant watching over the oyster reefs in Barnegat Bay
 (the lighthouse can be seen on the far right.)
(Margo D. Beller)

Also in New Egypt is a used bookstore my husband (MH) likes to visit, so it was not very hard to get him to agree to drive down there a few weeks after these birds had been reported. Amazingly, the three birds were still around and there were no people other than another couple and us. We saw, we noted, we left.

That was an event.

Meanwhile, in 2019 I was underemployed. I had a lot of time to go chasing after rarities, especially if they were close to home. So it was that a black-headed grosbeak, a western relative of the more common (to me) rose-breasted grosbeak, was coming to a feeder in the backyard of a house not far from Jockey Hollow in Morristown. The homeowners were nice enough to allow people to come to their driveway and watch for the bird at their feeder.

Sign explaining the Forked River Beach project (RE Berg-Andersson)

In hindsight, I should've brought a chair because this bird was nowhere to be seen, at first. A man who drove with his wife to NJ from Ohio, as I recall, was nice enough to let me sit in his chair. They'd been there for hours by the time I arrived. We were soon joined by others in chairs or standing behind tripods holding their long-lensed cameras, ready to "shoot" this rarity.

I was lucky. Besides the man letting me sit it was only 30 minutes in that I saw the bird, pointed it out and the cameras started clicking. The bird allowed me to see its handsome black head and orange breast (it was a male) and then I gave the man his chair, thanked him and left.

That was a stakeout.

This is a longwinded introduction to the second stakeout I've ever attended, this one with MH the other week down the New Jersey shore.

Green heron (RE Berg-Andersson)

I don't know if it was the weather pattern or global warming but recently there have been many roseate spoonbills found far from their usual breeding territory in the Florida Everglades and along the Gulf of Mexico. The bird, as the name implies, is pink and has a spoon-like bill to scoop up its meal. MH and I have seen one twice - a mature captive bird at Pittsburgh's National Aviary and a juvenile that in 2018 was found by the side of a rain-created pond at a quarry in northwestern New Jersey. More recently these birds have been found in Maine, Connecticut and Minnesota.

Three juveniles were found in Forked River Beach, NJ, earlier this month and that prompted a stakeout. Incredibly, MH was into the idea of traveling to a shore area in summer (on a weekday) to see these birds.

Semipalmated plover (RE Berg-Andersson)

It is a long drive from our town to Forked River Beach, especially taking the back roads MH prefers to drive rather than superhighways (me, too) and making pit stops. Once we got to the area we parked near a playground by Barnegat Bay. We could see the lighthouse across the water. In front of us were poles atop which were double-crested cormorants standing guard over oyster reefs.

If the insatiable desire for eating oysters at fashionable New York restaurants, as detailed by Mark Kurlansky in his book "The Big Oyster", didn't kill off the area's oysters, water pollution did. According to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, oysters are a "keystone" species "meaning they are an integral part of a healthy marine ecosystem. Oyster reefs provide vital habitat for many of the commercial and recreational species that fishermen, boaters, and naturalists enjoy in New Jersey’s waters. Oyster reefs are home to a host of species including striped bass, blue crab, and summer flounder, among many others. Additionally, a single adult oyster can filter and clear significant volumes of water each day, helping to improve water quality by cycling excess nutrients."

At the same time the oysters were being depleted, coastlines were being eroded by the constant wave action intensified whenever a major storm or hurricane occurred. And we've had some major hurricanes affecting the shoreline in recent years. Beaches are big business in New Jersey. The Forked River Beach beds were an effort to help the shoreline in this area.

Great egret, as seen from behind the stakeout. The
roseate spoonbills would later be seen in this
area. (RE Berg-Andersson)

There was a paved path to walk past beach houses large and small with lovely gardens. There were benches, monarch butterflies at the flowers and even some birds but no spoonbills and, tellingly, no people looking for them. We were in the wrong place.

Luckily, someone had put a map on Facebook and by comparing that map to our map we found our way to another part of Forked River Beach. This time we found the stakeout. This time we had our chairs and sat a while. MH took pictures as I scanned the mudflats with my binoculars.

There were green herons. There were semipalmated sandpipers and semipalmated plovers. There were Forster's terns and a great egret. There were laughing gulls and herring gulls and very nice people who pointed out birds as they found them.

Sometimes it is a good thing to have a spotting scope, but I don't have one.
As best as I can tell the birds in this picture include semipalmated sandpiper (the 
small one), Forster's tern (the smaller blackheaded one), laughing gull (the larger
blackheaded one) and immature herring gull (the dark one in the back). I
can't identify the others. I've always been weak on shorebird IDs.
(RE Berg-Andersson)

What there weren't were roseate spoonbills.

That these birds were here at all was an amazing thing. This wetland along the bay was across the street from a massive development of expensive houses, many of which faced or were within walking distance of the water. (Hurricane Sandy's devastation of the Jersey shore in 2012 has not stopped housing development. If anything, it has gotten worse.) The main streets were named for Florida areas. Cross streets were named for birds. (As it happened, the closest cross street to the stakeout was Spoonbill Court.) Thankfully, this wetland had been left alone. 

We did not stay more than a half-hour. Seeing these birds would've been nice but they weren't my main reason for us to come here. It was very pleasant to get out of the house, sit by water on a sunny summer day, get a breeze in my face and look for birds. We left to explore areas nearby and eventually started the long trip back. As I later learned, the spoonbills briefly showed themselves about 30 minutes afterwards. The air must've been loud with camera clicks.

As of Aug. 15, they are still around, according to a Facebook post from the area.

Global warming has pushed many birds north. There was a time someone from New Jersey would be lucky to find a Carolina wren, a redbellied woodpecker or a northern cardinal. Now they are common. White ibis, another Everglades bird, has been coming to Ocean City, NJ, for years to breed and now white ibis are being seen in other northeastern areas. Mississippi kites have bred in New Hampshire for years.

There was a time you'd never see a Carolina wren in the north, especially
in winter. But that has changed. (Margo D. Beller)

I expect the ibises and the spoonbills to head south when winter comes. But what if winters remain so warm there is no cold and no snow to prompt them to leave? I would say there would be no migration but there would be a lot of competition for limited resources between birds that should've migrated south and those that remain all year or are only found in winter.

For the moment, the New Jersey spoonbills are an accidental that created an event that became a stakeout. But they could be a harbinger of things to come.