Today is a pseudo CASW setup I think... It COULD happen - and I may hang around and try to get CASW as a condo bird - but I'm not feeling it for the most part. Hoping to be pleasantly surprised.
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Josh V is back from Netitishi !!! -
I'm sure if you read my blog, you've already read this post... But regardless - I watched day after day after day of solid north winds in their forecast during the trip, which leads me to one question - where are the tubenoses?!
Obviously they had a ragin' good time up there. (Townsend's Solitaire!)... But the results of the trip open up a whole can of worms in trying to "figure out" Netitishi... What the heck causes birds like Shearwaters and Fulmars to be detected in some years, and not in other years?!
Should I be watching the weather for the Hudson Strait instead of James Bay!? Is it the time of year!? Ice conditons further north?! Sea surface temperatures on James Bay? Hudson Bay? The Labrador Sea?!
Not sure if I'll try and do a more detailed breakdown or not.... But for now:
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For NOW! - Why have all of the "lakewatch" sites around the Great Lakes had a lack of notable birds for the past month?!
Starting around Oct 9th - the "lack" of new arrival rare waterbirds has been rather startling... The weather has looked decent enough - but what has been found?
Whitefish Point - why are you still getting Sabine's Gulls in late Oct?
Wisconsin Point - (sorry, I haven't been paying attention - have you seen anything?)
Tiscornia - Eared Grebe in the past 3.5 weeks?!
Indiana Lakefront - Little Gulls?!
Port Huron - Arctic Tern/King Eider combo is pretty sweet actually - but I could argue that they were "staging" and not really "lakewatch/migrants/blown inshore" birds...
Ohio - you're still getting Sabine's too? Why? Black Tern?!
Ohio - JP Lakeshore Waterbird Survey - Laughing Gull? What is this, August?
Pelee - I was there - and nothing was happening... I could barely muster a Little Gull as a flyby...
Long Point - BLACK TERN?! What's goin on here??? (The Booby doesn't count as a "new" bird - since it arrived a month ago) - I mean, it counts as an epic bird - but isn't what I'm talking about here... A few onshore Red Phals are cool and all...
Fort Erie - sans booby, what else? Same Black-headed Gull of previous years returning?
Van Wagner's Beach - ??? A few Jaegers? Maybe? For most of October???
CONDO Watch - I ain't seein squat! (In terms of rares)..
Hamlin???
Derby Hill - Pacific Loon? Pretty cool and all...
BUT....
Overall, I'm wondering where the cool birds are hiding? It doesn't surprise me that any given location can have an "off year"... Whitefish Point may be responsible for some of the craziest bird sightings ever in the Great Lakes region - but they don't happen ever year..
But when EVERY SINGLE lakewatch location around the ENTIRE Great Lakes (and I guess James Bay as well) - are reporting a serious lack of Jaegers, Kittiwakes, etc - you start to wonder - where are the birds??
I joked several weeks ago that the sustained "north wind events" that made the birding great (for that time of year) were going to "blow away all the birds" by early November. But now I'm wondering - has it actually happened?
Or are there still thousands of birds (and other goodies) stocked up and ready to go ? (somewhere?) ...
An ebird check for Brant in North America doesn't really show any dramatic numbers anywhere this november. (1 day total of 9000) - which is 1/3 of a day they had at Netitishi last fall.. Are half of them still up north?
Anyways - I'm being a bit dramatic... There's 25000 ducks off my condo - so clearly migration is moving along just fine - but it does seem rather slow "all around" in terms of notable birds. Maybe I'm just frustrated at scanning ducks and not being able to turn up a Harlequin yet! ;)
Something to watch going forwards though. More to come? Or an early end to the lakewatching? ... Personally, I've got my fingers crossed we're "saving up" for a Murre wreck in late November.
ANYWAYS - this is a FAR too much writing for me to say "I really hope the lakewatch sites heat up a bit in the next 2 weeks - it feels kinda slow overall"
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Add in SAGU on the 26th (second of the season and close too if not record late for the county), PUSA on the 28th, and 13 ROGO (and one blue hybrid thingy) today. Yeah, spectacular.
ReplyDeleteI haven't written the fall off yet, the big BWTE push this fall was a month later then last fall and I have a feeling (hoping) that that's carrying over for the other waterbirds. Remember, a year ago we were basking in that lovely post-Sandy rarity glow, while the latter half of this fall has been dead (except for a couple plovers) and that may be influencing how things seem to suck lately.
Also, around Tiscornia the big November bird (and typically bird of the fall) usually doesn't happen til the 14th or later.
Bring on the....anything
Looking forward to seeing what you get! I (personally) just can't decide if the birds are gone (I'm thinking birds like Jaegers may be largely gone) or just late (such as all the Sabine's and Terns still around)... And with that said - why would a Long-billed Murrelet even care!?
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