Cape May
My first time birding Cape May, limited though it was, gave me a taste for the spot. We just spent a short while at Cape May Point State Park but the appeal for birders is immediately obvious. I had my new spotting scope so concentrated on shorebirds and waders, but other birds were so obvious they must have felt slighted that I was paying them no mind. So, many Canada Geese, several mute swans, semi-palmated plover, common terns, Forsters terns, Great Egret, Eastern Kingbird, American Oyster Catcher, a small olive warbler, barn and tree swallows. That's the short list. there were things I never Id's and things I never saw or don't recall. Rather rushed feeling. Beautiful day.

I joined a birding class led by Joe Giunta at Jamaica Bay on Sunday the 17th. I added a number of birds to my life list, and I'll try to set down everything I saw from memory:
Mute Swans
Greater Yellow Legs*
Lesser Yellow Legs*
Least Sandpipers*(above)
Spotted Sandpiper*
Semipalmated Plover*
Semipalmated Sandpiper*
Willet*
Pectoral Sandpiper*
American Oyster Catcher*
Glossy Ibis
Wood Duck*
Short-billed Dowitcher*
Least Fly Catcher
Mallards
American Black Duck
Tri-colored Heron*
Yellow Crowned Night Heron
Black Crowned Night Heron
Little Blue Heron
White phase immature blue heron
Green Heron
Snowy Egret
Great Egret
Great Blue Heron
Black Bellied Plover
Common tern
Foster's Tern*
Cedar Waxwing
Tree Swallow
Barn Swallow
Laughing Gull
Boat Tailed Grackle*
American Goldfinch
Mourning Dove
Northern Mockingbird
Osprey
Double-Crested Cormorants
In Transit:
Rock Doves
House Sparrows
40 birds, I think 14 life birds