Balloon Juice - On The Road - frosty

On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.

From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.

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frosty

I became a birder when a Roadrunner crossed my path in Big Bend National Park in 2020 and we subsequently stayed in seven Arizona state parks when COVID shut everything else down. With not much else to do I pulled my binoculars out while hanging out at the campsites. As you can tell by my OTRs, I’ve kept up that practice, looking for new birds wherever I go.

At least for me, birding gets to a point where there aren’t a lot of new species at your usual haunts. That’s where eBird’s “Rare Birds in ____” reports come in. I get them for Pennsylvania and Maryland. Occasionally there are birds I’ve never seen. Sometimes they’re reported in a location that I consider close enough to drive to and I’ll make the trip to Chase A Bird.

These are from 2023 when we traveled all over the US and I figured it would be my best chance at a Big Year (it ended up at 302). I’d never be in Key West, California, Hawaii, and Maine again in a single year and be able to see birds in all of those places. Towards the end of the year when the traveling was over I was still trying to add to the list and I saw two birding trips by New Jersey Audubon. One was in Cape May to see seabirds that usually stay offshore and the other one was at Barnegat Light, called the “Harlequin Romance.” NJ Audubon guaranteed we’d see a Harlequin Duck and a Purple Sandpiper.

As it turned out, I saw the duck but not the sandpiper, even though everyone around me saw it and pointed me to it, by which time it was gone, of course. I didn’t get a picture of the duck, unfortunately. I barely managed to see it through a kind birder’s scope.

So here’s a few pictures of three of the ones I chased that came out OK. They’re not up to Albatrossity’s standards, of course but they’re passable. Defeating auto-focus when the subject is behind twigs and grass isn’t all that easy!

North Point State Park, MD

This is not a Purple Sandpiper, it’s a Snow Bunting, After I was back from Jersey, Purple Sandpipers showed up at North Point State Park, on the Bay near Baltimore. I made three trips there but they decided to be elsewhere on those days. But in the meantime these Snow Buntings, another rarity, showed up. They were very cool, not bothered by people around them, wandering back and forth foraging in the grass.

North Point State Park, MD

Snow Bunting

North Beach, MD

In late December, Purple Sandpipers were reported in Calvert County, a long drive from the Mason-Dixon Line, but I made the trip (on 12/30 – last of my Big Year birds) and this time it was successful. These pictures are a small flock of them hanging out on the rocks next to a pier.

North Beach, MD

Purple Sandpiper