Day 8 of this rarity -- only the 5th Ivory Gull ever seen in NJ, & the 1st at Cape May. Very reliable at this site (enjoying fish heads at the fish cleaning dock), & very tame. They often scavenge polar bear kills on polar pack ice, so maybe humans are just very small, very slow polar bears as far as it's concerned.

Perhaps as the polar pack ice recedes and the polar bear population plummets, we'll start to see more hungry Ivory Gulls ranging down our way.

Old sighting, already reviewed on eBird. Photographer Anita Gould.

While these are common in the southern part of the state this is actually the first one ever reported in our Christmas Bird Count circle. We arrived to check this site — usually yields a few dabbling ducks in the sheltered spot by the boat ramp, sparrows in the weedy hedgerow below the coast road, gulls & maybe a few diving birds offshore in the channel — and found the bird perched at close range on the fence of the tiny groomed park next to the boat launch. We observed it for a few minutes as it moved around on the fence and dropped down to explore the park sidewalk; it looked alert and active. People do feed the birds here. The area is a mixed-use waterfront—industrial docks to the south, suburban residential to the north with a narrow strip of gravelly(?) beach. Half a mile north is a marina & a park with a small area of salt marsh.

A little later, a mile or so up the road, a local stopped and rolled down his window when he saw people wandering around with binocs. “Hey, there’s a bird that’s been hanging around the boat launch for a couple of months now. Never seen one like it. It looks a lot like a grackle, but it’s bigger, and it’s brown instead of black.”

Not sharpened (except for camera default), as I didn't want to affect the eye color.