As a post-script to the Great Shearwater story, a colleague from the North Carolina Museum informed me that the wreck extended to that state. One rehabber there took in 80 birds.
From: bounce-121663379-11471...@list.cornell.edu [mailto:bounce-121663379-11471...@list.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Tshrike19 Sent: Monday, July 17, 2017 1:49 PM To: NYSBirds-L@cornell.edu Subject: [nysbirds-l] Fwd: A Mystery of Seabirds, Blown Off Course and Starving - The New York Times Hi All, As Derek mentioned in a previous post, the coastal low pressure system that set up from the night of the 6/17 through the 19th, resulted in a strong and persistent onshore wind, as well as strong gusts. This system resulted in strong southeast flow from new England all the way to key west (I was there at the time), these conditions can certainly help concentrate seabirds inshore where they are typically more scarce. In addition, as also mentioned, there is an abundance of bait offshore. Many of the charter and head boat captains I've chatted with (in NJ though) have mentioned the abundance of sand eels offshore, with fluke being caught on some of the Montauk boats spitting up sand eels on deck and some of the charters going for tuna seeing bait balls of sand eels. It's probable that large numbers of Shearwaters were already offshore due to food availability with the weather system helping to concentrate them inshore. If so much food is available offshore, why does it appear many are starving is a question though, and we can only speculate as to what may be causing this. Perhaps some of these birds arrived in the NY Bight in bad shape already and didn't have the energy to actively forage (sick from a virus, toxin load from algae??). Was anyone able to age the birds they were finding dead, or will the folks who are receiving the dead shearwaters be able to provide an age breakdown? Mortality tends to be high in first of year birds, if there was a high percentage of young birds in this unusual concentration off long Island it wouldn't be unusual finding a number of dead birds (with an onshore wind to bring the dead and dying to shore). A fact of nature is that seabirds sometimes wreck in large numbers, it's been happening long before we were around. tom brown Tshrike19 tshrik...@aol.com<mailto:tshrik...@aol.com> -- NYSbirds-L List Info: Welcome and Basics<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.northeastbirding.com%2FNYSbirdsWELCOME.htm&data=01%7C01%7Csweet%40amnh.org%7C139706c04c9741b02f7908d4cdab22fd%7Cbe0003e8c6b9496883aeb34586974b76%7C0&sdata=84LvWipvnBiVQ%2Fvnz0eHoyNtuy4D%2B9qH9aKA2GmRKj8%3D&reserved=0> Rules and Information<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.northeastbirding.com%2FNYSbirdsRULES.htm&data=01%7C01%7Csweet%40amnh.org%7C139706c04c9741b02f7908d4cdab22fd%7Cbe0003e8c6b9496883aeb34586974b76%7C0&sdata=I3n54O0nYn1sS7b834uBm9CE6wkXuTMwWr2mwykJylQ%3D&reserved=0> Subscribe, Configuration and Leave<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.northeastbirding.com%2FNYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm&data=01%7C01%7Csweet%40amnh.org%7C139706c04c9741b02f7908d4cdab22fd%7Cbe0003e8c6b9496883aeb34586974b76%7C0&sdata=Slp5nXVwviLslFKOq61Xvx8UQSgxtZTgqSgZRtN%2FWlI%3D&reserved=0> Archives: The Mail Archive<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mail-archive.com%2Fnysbirds-l%40cornell.edu%2Fmaillist.html&data=01%7C01%7Csweet%40amnh.org%7C139706c04c9741b02f7908d4cdab22fd%7Cbe0003e8c6b9496883aeb34586974b76%7C0&sdata=x6snKSCpXmRDniTyB9Dcw9geZ9g3t06P6MKOTPilZmQ%3D&reserved=0> Surfbirds<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.surfbirds.com%2Fbirdingmail%2FGroup%2FNYSBirds-L&data=01%7C01%7Csweet%40amnh.org%7C139706c04c9741b02f7908d4cdab22fd%7Cbe0003e8c6b9496883aeb34586974b76%7C0&sdata=MfYbU4DZrqfLrLIN61EZJRvjikBWXtxhz2FyxxOrXmc%3D&reserved=0> ABA<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fbirding.aba.org%2Fmaillist%2FNY01&data=01%7C01%7Csweet%40amnh.org%7C139706c04c9741b02f7908d4cdab22fd%7Cbe0003e8c6b9496883aeb34586974b76%7C0&sdata=oXxyYVIResH000K%2BYP4JRihCPzM7JlSyUTeUZ3C6my4%3D&reserved=0> Please submit your observations to eBird<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Febird.org%2Fcontent%2Febird%2F&data=01%7C01%7Csweet%40amnh.org%7C139706c04c9741b02f7908d4cdab22fd%7Cbe0003e8c6b9496883aeb34586974b76%7C0&sdata=XYQrjx1Hzmmq9uiUZ%2FoppZl1CWx05ZBgkxAFLiyv1RM%3D&reserved=0>! -- -- 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/ --
