Observer: Skye Haas
Species counted:
Canada Goose - 13
Brant - 39
Wood Duck - 14
Gadwall - 4
American Black Duck - 15
Northern Pintail - 27
Green-winged Teal - 57
Greater Scaup - 6
Scaup sp. - 1
Duck sp. - 158
Surf Scoter - 4,452
White-winged Scoter - 2
Black Scoter - 4,747
Dark-winged Scoter - 6,195
Bufflehead - 8
Red-breasted Merganser - 1
Red-throated Loon - 132
Common Loon - 53
Horned Grebe - 2
Northern Gannet - 2,100
Brown Pelican - 6
Double-crested Cormorant - 13,338
Great Blue Heron - 3
Great Egret - 2
Snowy Egret - 2
Laughing Gull - 523
Bonaparte's Gull - 49
Ring-billed Gull - 81
Great Black-backed Gull - 33
Iceland Gull - 1
Forster's Tern - 124
Royal Tern - 24
Parasitic Jaeger - 4
Greater Yellowlegs - 1
American Oystercatcher - 14
Black-bellied Plover - 140
Semipalmated Plover - 4
Dunlin - 200
Sanderling - 150
Ruddy Turnstone - 8
Red Knot - 30
Spotted Sandpiper - 1
Semipalmated Sandpiper - 3
Calidris sp. - 40
Total: 32,807
A note from Skye:
The Avalon count was a bit frustrating today as we spent too many hours with the majority of our birds (primarily scoters and cormorants) migrating far off-shore. As is even though we ended up with a healthy total of 15,396 scoters for the day, "dark-winged" scoters were the lead totals with nearly half of all scoters falling into this catch-all grouping. The dawn radar showed quite a bit of passerine migration going on, but other then a little influx of Savannah Sparrows, few passerines were seen today. It was pretty adorable when I got on a small songbird flying in off the ocean only to realize it was a Winter Wren coming in!
Making up for the likely Thayer's Gull yesterday, a nice looking adult Iceland Gull gave enough of a good look to ensure a solid ID today. But the craziest part of the seawatch today was the last 90 minutes of the count when a huge Northern Gannet flight erupted. Of the 2100 Gannets counted today, 81% of them came during that time! Lots of gulls, terns and Red-throated Loons came by in this period too and I was hopping to stay on top of this end-of-day flight. More to come!
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| Savannah Sparrow. [Photo by Skye Haas.] |
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