American Avocet — AMAV

In June of 2013, when it was reported that a single American Avocet had been spotted at Forsythe, it was big news. Conventional wisdom was that these birds were reluctant to venture across the Delaware River into New Jersey. Like many others, I hurried to Galloway Township to view and photograph it. The result was a set of rather sorry photos of the bird sleeping and wandering around in the shallows at the extreme range of the K-x camera I was using then even though I had deployed the 500 mm Sigma zoom lens.

Then, in January of 2016, a pair of Avocets took up residence at Absecon, a couple of miles south of Forsythe, and stayed there foraging on the tical mud flats next to E. Church Street. They stayed well into April and during that time transitioned from nonbreeding to breeding plumage.

Since then, as many as a dozen or so American Avocets have been appearing just about every year at Forsythe and the challenge has become to resist the temptation to just stand there and take hundreds of photographs of them.