Although landbird migration has been tough to find under the steady easterly winds of recent days, many kinds of seabirds have been conspicuous in coastal Long Island. A two-hour seawatch at Robert Moses SP this morning (with Ken Feustel 8:00-9:00) yielded lots of birds when rain and fog cleared enough to reveal the ocean:
36 Common Loon 35 Northern Gannet 81 Sooty Shearwater 1 Parasitic Jaeger (light morph adult) 1 Laughing Gull There was also one immature Lesser Black-backed Gull in the RMSP parking field 2, and a Caspian Tern flew over the Twin Causeway as I returned across Great South Bay. The scene was somewhat similar yesterday morning, when, with Patricia Lindsay, Shane Blodgett, and Ken, we recorded a very good tally of six Parasitic Jaegers, all light morph adults or near-adults, and four Lesser Black-backed Gulls (all different from today's bird). Shane mentioned seeing seven more LBBGs at Jones Beach later in the day. A day earlier, on Sunday, Mary Normandia recorded at least three jaegers there, and she, Patricia, and I enjoyed a Black Tern, nine Roseate Terns, and four LBBGs at nearby Democrat Pt (the latter mostly/entirely distinct from yesterday's and today's birds, and locally outnumbering Ring-billed Gull!). Another Caspian Tern was at Pikes Beach on Saturday, when Patricia and I visited. We've come to expect this late spring push of immature LBBGs, but I find this spring's tally of Parasitic Jaegers very unusual. In 16 years of fairly consistent coverage of the LI shore, I've averaged just 1.2 PAJAs per spring, and I'd never before seen more than three in one day or four in one spring. Shai Mitra Bay Shore ________________________________ Change is in the Air - Smoking in Designated Areas Only in effect.<http://www.csi.cuny.edu/tobaccofree> Tobacco-Free Campus as of July 1, 2012. -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
