Observer: Skye Haas
Species counted:
Canada Goose - 1
American Black Duck - 16
Northern Shoveler - 2
Northern Pintail - 20
Green-winged Teal - 38
Ring-necked Duck - 10
Aythya sp. - 15
Duck sp. - 24
Surf Scoter - 238
White-winged Scoter - 9
Black Scoter - 1469
Dark-winged Scoter - 126
Red-throated Loon - 22
Common Loon - 10
Northern Gannet - 3
Brown Pelican - 5
Double-crested Cormorant - 21,682
Great Cormorant - 5
Great Blue Heron - 152
Laughing Gull - 175
Herring Gull - 10
Great Black-backed Gull - 2
Caspian Tern - 6
Forster's Tern - 184
Royal Tern - 20
Black Skimmer - 2
Parasitic Jaeger - 1
Jaeger sp. - 2
American Oystercatcher - 3
Semipalmated Plover - 9
Total: 24,261
A note from Skye:
Woo-wee! The Avalon Seawatch officially woke up today! Over 24,000 waterbirds were recorded today, most notably a really huge Double-crested Cormorant count. For a little while I wondered if we were going to break the 2008 single day total of 24,637, but the Corms stopped flying the last couple hours of the day. Midday the Scoters that had been trickling by really ramped it up and we ended the day with 1469 Black Scoters; the previous high count for the season had been 32.
Lets see here what else happened... First Red-throated Loon flocks, decent dabbler showing including first of season Northern Shovelors, A strong Great Blue Heron flight was in the first few hours of the count with all the herons being found quite a ways out over the ocean. There were a good couple looks at Great Cormorants including a nice trio of adults that showed their white chins rather well. At least 5 Jaegers were seen and down the beach 250 Black-bellied Plovers were taking refuge from the excessively high water in the salt marshes. I couldn't record too many non-waterbird sightings today due to the high volume of flight, but 4 Peregrine Falcons were seen.
 |
| [Black Scoters. Photo by Skye Haas.] |
 |
| [Great Blue Heron. Photo by Skye Haas.] |
No comments:
Post a Comment