Frontal passage day! For all good bird movements associated with cold fronts we must pay the price of a day or so of inclement weather on the leading edge. Today was one such day, and if you think that the fouler the weather is the better the bird movement following it will be then tomorrow should be great for birds, because today sure was a doozie. The only notables were a single Black Skimmer struggling into the strong SE gale, and later on a small pulse of Laughing Gulls heading south just after the rain let up and the wind shifted. Visibility for most of the day was less than a mile, and during the strongest of the rain it diminished to only a couple of hundred meters.
This Ruddy Turnstone was clearly perplexed as to why I would willingly stand outside for 9 and a half hours in today's weather.
The tide even pushed this Purple Sandpiper up onto the seawall right in front of the Seawatch as the front finished passing through.Location: Avalon Seawatch
Observation date: 12/1/10
Notes: Rain for much of the day, intense at times. Strong SE winds shifting
around to the W as the front passed and the sky cleared between 1:30 and 2:30
PM.
Number of species: 29
American Black Duck 2
Greater Scaup 3
Common Eider 18
Surf Scoter 261
White-winged Scoter 3
Black Scoter 56
scoter sp. 4
Long-tailed Duck 2
Red-breasted Merganser 18
duck sp. 17
Red-throated Loon 137
Common Loon 4
Northern Gannet 248
Turkey Vulture 3
Peregrine Falcon 1
Black-bellied Plover 1
Ruddy Turnstone 2
Purple Sandpiper 28
Bonaparte's Gull 14
Laughing Gull 40
Ring-billed Gull 3
Herring Gull 1749
Great Black-backed Gull 11
gull sp. 2
Forster's Tern 2
Black Skimmer 1
Rock Pigeon 1
Mourning Dove 3
European Starling X
Song Sparrow 1
Dark-eyed Junco 1
House Sparrow 12
No comments:
Post a Comment