Bombay Hook – 1/22/2022
— by Bill Gadbow —
Birds like The Bombay Hook Wildlife Refuge in spring, fall, and winter. The refuge is on the Delaware shore at the point where the Delaware River dumps into the Delaware Bay. Every winter for the last eight years I have been there to see them, especially the Snow Geese. At times there are over a hundred thousand geese in the big pools around the car loop. One year, I was there around dusk, in the springtime, when the entire flock rose up and flew over the road where I was standing. It took ten or fifteen minutes for them to all fly past me. During that time, I could feel and hear the wind from their beating wings. That was a lot of geese.
But on 1/22/2022 in 22-degree F cold, we didn’t see any snow geese. They may have been hunkered down in the tall grass on the land, or they may have gone somewhere else to feed and stay warm. Maybe they were farther south. Initially we saw a few Great Blue Herons and quite a few Bufflleheads. These are little diving ducks, about the size of a robin. They are quick and always moving. They definitely have attitude.
Then we saw this guy and I got his pic. He was out all morning and we saw him hunting at least a dozen times. It’s a Harrier, also known as a Marsh Hawk. Harriers fly fast and low which makes it really hard to take their picture. The camera can’t focus on the moving bird when there is grass and trees in the background. And doing it without autofocus? Forget about it. When they land, they tuck themselves into the tall grass. Again – inconvenient for photography. I have many pics of Harriers showing the distinctive white patch on his lower back, but all of them are blurry – really, really blurry. So, this time, getting a nice image, was a treat for me.
We saw a Kingfisher, some Tundra Swans, Black Ducks, Mallards, Robins, Sparrows, Red-winged Blackbirds, a Red-bellied Woodpecker, a Mockingbird, and … Actually, that was about it for the rest of the morning. The cold weather must have been keeping the birds from coming out to get their pictures taken.
We were getting ready to go for lunch at the Smyrna Diner when Chris spotted some Northern Shovelers moving around on the bank of the waterway that runs along the road. While I was taking their pictures on the bank, one of the shovelers floated out on the water and posed for me. That was nice of him. You can see his beautiful breeding colors and his over-sized bill that gives the species their name.
The afternoon sun probably was responsible for the pickup in activity because we started to see a lot more birds. A fair number of large ducks called Gadwalls came out. Here’s one:
And then I took a pic of a mallard that seemed fairly animated. When I blew up the picture in the camera playback display, I saw why he seemed so happy. Look in the water below him. Peaking her head just a little out of the water is a female mallard. Honestly. When I took the picture, I did not know that I was invading their privacy.
However, they didn’t seem to mind me taking their picture in the act. In fact, the female came out of the water and did a little happy dance. She seemed satisfied with her guy’s performance.
The male mallard was much less restrained with his happy dance. He was obviously ecstatic.
There was one more pleasant surprise before we left. A Blue-winged Teal. The white stripe across his face is the unmistakable field mark.
From the archives:
In addition to the missing Snow Geese, the Northern Pintails were also missing. A recent post indicated that the pintails were on site, but we didn’t see any. Here’s a pic from a prior visit.
My favorite Bombay Hook bird and one of my favorite birds overall is the American Avocet. You can see a lot of them in the west and south and along the Atlantic coast, but they are only in our area briefly as they migrate through. One of their stopping spots is Bombay Hook. I saw them during the fall migration. Here’s one of those pics:
