If you’ve been following this year’s quest for a new North American Big Year record, the mark keeps rising. Australian birder John Weigel as of Sept. 14 had recorded 763 species. The old mark was 749. Hoping for the usual fall bonanza of Asian strays on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, Weigel added only two new birds in 25 days. Twenty-five days!! OMG! Birders who visit Gambell routinely said this fall was the worst they’ve experienced for vagrants. The stormy westerly winds needed to blow Asian migrants off course and into the island village of Gambell never materialized. Weigel presently in on St. Paul Island, another Bering Sea hotspot. His one new bird there, Jack Snipe, was seen on the 14th. He wrote me on the 18th with nothing else to report, so birding must be slow there, too. He said he expects the two other BY birders who spent time on Gambell to break the old record. One of them is Laura Keene, a birder from Ohio who has set a new NA BY record for women, and who likely will hold the second of third highest total ever when the year ends.
Jim Williams Wayzata birding blog at startribune.com/Wingnut ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
