>Perhaps the favored sites are so generally sterile as to be disdained by Great Black-backed Gulls, allowing WISPs to move >in when their own feeding opportunities arise from time to time?
I think this explanation can probably be crossed off also. Great Black-backed Gulls are very numerous between the North and South Fork during the summer and there was a raft of a hundred or more near where the Wilson's Storm-Petrels were feeding on Sunday. I presume these are from the local nesting colonies and crowd around the draggers using the bay or returning to port in Montauk and/or Greenport. I've not seen any evidence of them going after storm-petrels. Of course, the presence of so many large gulls (there are similar numbers of Herring Gulls) in the area is a serious concern for nesting terns and presumably explains the paucity of terns on the Cartwright Shoals south of Gardiner's Island for the past several summers. Interesting discussion Angus Wilson -- 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/ --
