The Thick-billed Murre I found in Brooklyn yesterday is just another chip off the very large iceberg that is the exponentially higher numbers than usual of several species of ocean-dwelling birds close to shore. I was glad that some of my fellow urbanites who typically don't have access to farther afield were able to go see it before dark yesterday. That said, the murre did not seem to be particularly content, judging but the fact that is basically paddled nonstop for four miles, in roughly two hours, barely foraging and occasionally being dive-bombed by Ring-billed Gulls:
https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S51806842 This year's alcid irruption is yet another historically unprecedented one, coming six years after an unprecedented Razorbill irruption. Six years ago, Razorbills irrupted farther south than had ever been recorded. This year, however, the largest variations from the annual norm seem to have been around Long Island, southern New England, and the Mid-Atlantic (notably the New Jersey coast). Even if the cause of them leaving their normal winter haunts was the same in both cases (presumably a food shortage, though it could be more complicated than that), there are other factors at play that we don't fully understand yet. To that end, I would encourage anyone, especially those who have easy access to our local beaches on a regular basis, to keep an eye out for, and indeed even actively search for, dead or moribund alcids washed up on shore. If there does end up being some kind of appreciable mortality event (as happened with Great Shearwaters two summers ago), it is possible that analysis of the bodies will help us understand a little bit more about what is happening. If you do find a specimen, the most helpful thing to do would be preserving it (via freezing) for transport to an institution that could study them, such as the American Museum of Natural History. Good Birding (and sciencing), -Doug Gochfeld. Brooklyn, NY. -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm 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://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
