Henslow's Sparrow and some other Saturday highlights

Last Saturday, December 3, I was finally able to make a return trip to the New Bern area to try my luck with the Anna's Hummingbird that I had missed several weeks before with Ali Iyoob. I opened up this trip to a variety of Moore County birders, but my dad was the only taker. We arrived a little before 8 in the Trent Woods neighborhood where the bird was being seen and sporadically coming to a feeder. Just a couple minutes after arriving, we heard a strange array of chirps and twitters that could be nothing else than the Anna's calling! It was perched in some azaleas, but the only look I got of the bird was as it was flying away, towards the upper half of a large pine on the other side of the yard. A few minutes later, I briefly spotted the bird fly past again, but we were never able to get satisfactory looks. Still, at least we had something to show for our efforts, and it was a new NC bird for me (#329).

We killed a little bit of time ocean watching down at Atlantic Beach before meeting up with Scott Winton to search for Henslow's Sparrow. He had arrived in Trent Woods shortly after we left, and had better luck with the hummer, getting some decent views and a few photos. Scott and I had both tried separately for Henslow's Sparrow recently, both striking out. A certain powerline cut in the Croatan NF near Havelock, NC has housed small numbers of wintering Henslow's Sparrows in recently years, and that's where we were heading again. Luck was with us that day- we ended up flushing one and following it around for about half and hour, and I was finally able to get some decent photos of it. I snapped off a total of about 75 shots of the bird, of which a dozen or so were good enough to keep. The bird was upslope from the main wet area with a lot of standing water, at the Y-junction of two powerlines. It stayed low to the ground almost the whole time we observed it, mostly in dense wiregrass and pinestraw cover. Like many Ammodramus sparrows do, this bird had a tendency to run along the ground, making keeping eyes on it quite difficult at times. This certainly was a beautiful bird. Another state bird for me as well, #330! Despite thoroughly searching the area, we only found the one. Numerous Swamp Sparrows were present as well as a single junco and Chipping Sparrow. A couple photos of the henslow's:

From here we went to Fort Macon State Park, specifically the jetty, where we found a couple surprises- a Razorbill sitting on the water, and a Parasitic Jaeger. The experience with this jaeger made me realize that my ID skills with this group of birds needs some refining. The Razorbill was sitting on the rough ocean a good ways out, and kept disappearing from view, giving us no more than a quick look at a time. These birds are small enough so that they can easily remain undetected out on the water when the ocean is rough. Two Purple Sandpipers on the jetty were a treat as well, even though they can be found here throughout the winter.