Tom Burke and I started the day with a sea watch off of Robert Moses State Park beginning @ 8 am. The three-hour watch was slow, notable only for one Sooty Shearwater (seen twice) and one Cory's as pelagic birds. We drove east to Dune Road and a stop at Tiana Beach yielded 140 Short-billed Dowitchers including a single bird of the Prairie race ( hendersoni). Other shorebirds included a few Least Sandpipers and one Semipalmated Sandpiper, a few Black-bellied and Piping Plovers, one Greater Yellowlegs, and numerous Willets and American Oystercatchers. One Roseate Tern was present with the Common and Least Terns gathered there. We resumed our sea watch at Shinnecock Inlet, yielding more pelagic birds - a dozen Shearwaters working in 2 groups and appearing to be Cory's, 2 Wilson's Storm-Petrels, and 7 Northern Gannets. After three hours there we moved to Cupsogue where there were many hundreds of birds on the bay side (Gulls, Terns, Cormorants and shorebirds) but nothing unusual including no Pelicans. On the ocean we could see a large gathering of birds to the east so we relocated to Pike's Beach and resumed the watch. Here we saw 16 Shearwaters appearing to be all Cory's, other Shearwaters were left unidentified as the visibility waned, 1 Wilson's Storm-Petrel, and 4 Northern Gannets. We left at @ 7 PM. Gail Benson
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