Things worked in our favor today. Mike has been wanting to go on the bird tour at the Rutgers Newark campus led by Claus Holzapfel. Chris had been hesitant to get up so early, but, boy, is she glad she finally agreed. Mike had a meeting on the Rutgers campus this morning, and with fall migration in full swing, it was a perfect opportunity. We picked up quite a few tips that will help us find and ID birds when we're on our own. Hopefully Mike has learned the value of patience and Chris can get him to stay in one spot for more than 2 minutes. Anyway, we think these pictures of the yellow-breasted chat show a couple things other than how beautiful this bird is. As you can see, it would be easy to miss seeing this bird because of the way it can hide under the shrubs and blend right in, and you can also see why it is so important not to litter as this poor little thing has to put up with garbage mixed in with the leaves while searching for a meal.
In addition to the chat, we also saw an oven bird, a variety of sparrows, a yellow-bellied sapsucker, a house wren, a cardinal, a common yellowthroat, ruby crowned kinglets, a hermit thrush, eastern towhees (both male and female), all in the middle of Newark in less than an hour. Amazing!
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