A Sunday note from Salem County

Yesterday while tooling around the southwest corner of the state, we stumbled upon a farm field near Woodstown with at least 65 Cattle Egrets in it. This is a far cry from the state high count quoted in Walsh et al's Birds of New Jersey, but it's the most that we've seen for a long time. Birds of New Jersey states that Cattle Egrets hit their peak of abundance at this time of year due to post-breeding dispersal. These particular birds probably came over from the colony on Pea Patch Island, in Delaware.

For the record, the state high count was made on 31 August 1987 at Mannington Marsh; that was a cool 2,000 birds.