After deciding that our early morning success (see e-mail from the AM) warranted another crack at sea watching in the evening at Robert Moses. Tom Burke, Gail Benson and I began another seawatch in the afternoon around 4:50 p.m. hoping that the winds and offshore conditions would see a good flight of seabirds.
We were not disappointed! After picking up a few Cory's Shearwaters, in a matter of minutes, we realized that we might be in for an afternoon treat and settled in for the long haul. 3 hours 45 minutes later of a very disciplined count these were our highlights. *129 *Cory's Shearwaters *6 *Great Shearwaters *3* Sooty Shearwaters *5* Manx Shearwaters *37* Wilson's Storm Petrels *2* Parasitic Jaegers Most of the birds were streaming from west to east and we took care to avoid double counting any birds that might have circled back heading west. The heaviest movement came about 30-40 minutes after we began and slowed down about 15 minutes before we called it a day when the light began to deteriorate. The Manx and the Sooty Shearwaters along with the Jaegers all came later in the seawatch--heading east at a fairly good clip. This was unlike some of the Cory's Shearwaters and some Wilson's Storm-Petrels who at times milled around working various areas of the offshore slick. In addition to the outstanding seawatch, Tom, Gail and I did some land birding with mixed results. We tried twice unsuccessfully for the Captree Island White-faced Ibis. Although, we noticed that the Ibis flock seemed sparse compared to last week, this could just mean that some Ibis' including the WFIB were either elsewhere or out of site in the marsh. Please keep posting both positive or negative reports. The other land birding took place at Connetquot State Park where we made an interesting observation. We heard and saw 3 different Yellow-throated Warblers. At first there was some skepticism--after a careful effort of triangulating the songs and sources we confirmed 3 different individuals. I believe that other folks might have documented two birds at this location potentially nesting but I have never heard anyone mentioning 3 birds. Please continue to give these birds the necessary space and avoid the use of any playback devices. It would be totally stonking if YTWA gets a solid foothold on LI. Cheers, -- 風 Swift as the wind 林 Quiet as the forest 火 Conquer like the fire 山 Steady as the mountain Sun Tzu <http://refspace.com/quotes/Sun_Tzu> *The Art of War* <http://refspace.com/quotes/The_Art_of_War> (\__/) (= '.'=) (") _ (") Andrew Baksh www.birdingdude.blogspot.com -- 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/[email protected]/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/ --
