Got the zodiac ready for fall Jaeger season on Aug 19th! Out on the lake for a few hours, but wasn't really birding...
Then on Aug 20th the first jaeger sp's of the season were seen by Rob Dobos et al..... Current forecast is for DAYS and DAYS of high pressure, which means each afternoon the lake will create its own east winds.... I remember waay back to 2006 when we had a pattern like this for 10+ days through the end of August, which ended with the Manx Shearwater on Aug 31st...........
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Parents yard continues to show some fun species.... REALLY makes me wish I had my own place.... Hopefully not much longer,,, I hope......
Somatochlora emerald sp. on Aug 18
Bobolinks (3 flocks) on Aug 19th
daily nighthawks
Fiery Skippers on 5 of 6 days (where's my Sachem?)
And a Red-breasted Nuthatch that looked migratory...
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When is our hurricane going to hit??
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
This is the classic time of year for activity to peak... Keep an eye on Jeff Master's blog (or Levi's: http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/ --- which is FANTASTIC) for speculative and informative information... But don't worry, if anything starts coming in our direction, I'm POSITIVE you'll hear about it here :)
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Sea Ice? A huge storm in the Arctic took a massive chunk out of the sea ice recently (north of Alaska)...
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And I mean HUGE! (Aug 19th image)
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My personal ponderings over "OBRC-level" rarities seems to show that the last 7-10 days of August have turned up a very healthy collection of rarities over the years... Here's a history of mega's in Ontario:
Aug 20 - Sharp-tailed Sandpiper
21- Spotted Redshank
23 - Long-billed Curlew, Black-headed Grosbeak
24 - Prairie Falcon, Eurasian Tree Sparrow
26 - Manx Shearwater
27 - Western Wood Pewee
29 - Black-throated Sparrow, Virginia's Warbler, Great-tailed/Boat-tailed Grackle
31 - Manx Shearwater
Not a bad run... Compare that to Sept 1st - 6th, which only has Fork-tailed Flycatcher (3rd) on my "mega's list".... Or Sept 13-21st which has a Green-tailed Towhee from Thunder Cape (19th)...
So it could mean two things...
1.) the typical "dog days of summer" of light winds, no rain, and high pressure allows vagrants to make long-distance flights (to Ontario) with relative ease...
or...
2.) -- nothing... doesn't mean anything at all....
Could also coincide with the lack of birders in the field as school tends to usually start beginning of September.
ReplyDeleteI remember waay back in the day when I was in school, there was hardly any other young birders! At least compared to today ;)
DeleteI meant the parents were getting them to school. Summer holidays for the parents would be over too, so they wouldn`t have time to run out to the local sewage lagoons after work because they`d have to go pick up the kids from school. I`m still the only person 30 or under I see birdwatching when I go home to visit my parents. Everyone else is 50 and over. A couple of them dropped birding while they were working but picked it back up again once they retired.
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