Forsythe NWR
Part 2 of the birding vacation has come and gone. Instead of Cape May, we went to Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge (Forsythe NWR) in Brigantine, NJ. It was closer and we could see a lot of migrating waterfowl.
Well, the initial view was less than encouraging. Walking paths are limited – most of the park is along an 8-mile road that you either have to drive or bike through (although I guess you could walk, if you chose. It made it a LOT harder to really get a good view of things since you had to stop, get out, find it again IF it didn’t get scared off and then check it out. Not my idea of fun.
But my biggest frustration was my horrendous photography throughout BOTH days of the trip. I don’t know if I was in a mental fog or if I was just being a bad photographer, but despite me using Kodak UC-100 Professional film, my pictures came out looking like crap. Either they were too bright or my DOF was off. And the photo processing was horrid as well, which didn’t help much. If you want to see the pictures, check out my Flickr site. I’m too embarrassed to show them here.
The good side of the two day trip was that I added 7 new species to my life list:
- Gadwall
- Short-eared Owl
- Hooded Merganser
- American Oystercatcher
- Glaucous Gull
- Fish Crow
- Eastern Meadowlark
The Gadwall was pretty cool, as was the American Oystercatcher. But I think that the Short-eared Owl was probably the coolest thing we saw.
On a non-geek note, we took the dogs with us and while they thought we were nuts for wasting perfectly good daylight and muddy water looking at stupid birds, they seemed to enjoy the day. Well, at least Oakley did – Miles definitely looked more on the “Can I go home now” side of things. All in all, other than my crappy photos, it was a fun 2 days.
Other musings »
- PVP Online – My thoughts exactly
