Jeanette and I took a drive down to Cape May yesterday to try to see the first New Jersey State Record of Broad-tailed Hummingbird. We had seen them in Arizona but to have one all the way out here is NJ is a true rarity so it was a must see. We got up early and hit Sunset Beach for the reported Western Grebe (another uncommon visitor to NJ) and got him right off the left side of the Concrete ship! We went back later and didn’t see it (later had Red-throated Loon, rafts of Scoters and a few Northern Gannets only) so we were glad we decided to to the beach first while the sun finished its mediocre rise (sorry Sun but your light was pretty crappy this morning. :)) After a little more sunlight and coffee we parked on Shunpike road and walked down to join two other birders there already. They hadn’t seen it yet but we were hopeful it was just a matter of timing. Sure enough, I saw a quick movement into the heavily obscured feeder and saw the bird rest oh-so-briefly on the right hand side pod. Luckily he came back and sat a few times on various bushes and small trees around the yard and the nice gathering of birders that had joined by then all left happy. 🙂 As always, thanks goes out to the hard working and diligent NJ Birders who kept working at this ID! Thanks for sharing this guy with us all!
We also hit the Brig before arriving in Cape May and had a nice number of Ducks and Geese. Below is a shot of a Snow Goose close by the road as we drove the Brig.
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