I was unlucky on Friday the 13th with other obligations. And then the great
disappearing act of the 14th. I vowed to go to the ends of the earth to get
Franklin's pictures. Fortunately, it won't come to that. I visited a flooded
agricultural field in Cutler, Florida today, where up to 6 were present.
According to a resident I asked, Franklin's are not found in Florida most
years. So it would seem a direct correlation to the eastward migration jog.
Also present were at least 200 Lesser Black-backed Gulls -- another answer to
where did they all go. Also a Bonaparte's walking around the field. Strange to
see one like that.
Steve WalterSunrise, FL (temporarily)
Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone
-------- Original message --------
From: Shaibal Mitra <[email protected]>
Date: 12/09/2015 1:19 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [nysbirds-l] More Gulls
Very belatedly, I would like to offer some thoughts about the astonishing
Franklin's Gull flight of 13 November 2015, partly inspired by Bobby's
intriguing post.
Now several weeks after the flight, summaries and interpretations have been
prepared and digested:
http://birdcast.info/forecast/migration-story-mid-latitude-cyclones-plains-temperature-anomalies-edmund-fitzgerald-and-franklins-gulls-part-2/
In particular, parallels have been drawn between this year's incursion and a
similar one in November 1998:
https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/nab/v053n01/p00012-p00019.pdf
I'd like to add two ideas to the discussion: (1) a suggestion to the weather
history enthusiasts in our community to examine 27 October 2010 as another
potential example of a similar phenomenon; and (2) some questions about how and
why the birds ended up where they did.
(1) On 27 October 2010, Ken Feustel found a hatching-year Franklin's Gull at
Robert Moses SP, Suffolk County, Long Island. A number of us raced there very
quickly, hoping to see this locally very rare species, but narrowly missed it.
Broadening our search, we found numbers of Lesser Black-backed Gulls (a
parallel to Bobby's experience, and also our own, this year), but almost
absurdly, Patricia Lindsay found a different, adult, Franklin's Gull at nearby
Captree SP. Although eBird shows only one other Franklin's Gull along the
northeast/mid-Atlantic coast during Oct-Dec 2010, that bird was also found on
precisely the same date, 27 Oct, in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. It seems
very likely that others passed undetected that day. The weather-map aficionados
will probably remember this period, because in the days immediately following,
a remarkable series of vagrants appeared on Long Island, including Common
Ground-Dove and multiple Cave Swallows--which were associated with this year's
system also.
(2) On 13 Nov 2015, Pat and I were stranded on Block Island, where all ferries
were canceled due to the high winds. Birding was tough that day, in contrast to
the much blander previous day, when we and others had conducted our annual
CBC-style November count on the island. A very striking contrast between the
two days involved the overall numbers of gulls. On the windy 13th, we found
vastly more large gulls on the island than had been present a day before,
include 7 (vs. 2) Lesser Black-backs. We also found 4 Franklin's Gulls, in
keeping with the amazing theme of that day. Clearly, the large gulls were
aggregated there because the winds discouraged them from their normal feeding
patterns, whereas the Franklin's Gulls were there because they had traveled
from somewhere far to the west. Just one day later, almost no Franklin's Gulls
could be found. Perhaps they fled south, or maybe they went out to sea (there
is an over-representation of pelagic records among northeastern records of
Franklin's Gulls), or maybe they did something else that reduced detection (one
of the wind maps from the preceding days showed air flows at 1000 meters, so
maybe by the 14th, all those Franklin's Gulls were just gazing down at us from
vast heights!). And the Lesser Black-backed Gulls had melted away as well.
Isn't it odd that these two utterly contrasting species have correlated
November occurrence in our area?
My point is that there's a lot we don't know about why it seemed as though one
could just drive up to any spot on the east coast on 13 Nov and see a
Franklin's Gull. They had to get here, and then they had to behave in a way
that allowed us to detect them. Given that they were capable of hunkering down
under high winds on the 13th, why didn't they simply hunker down in Iowa (or
wherever they came from) in the first place? In the same vein, were the Common
Ground-Doves forcibly ripped from the ground and blown multi-hundreds of
kilometers, or were they, in some sense, willing to go along?
Shai Mitra
Bay Shore
________________________________________
From: [email protected]
[[email protected]] on behalf of Robert Berlingeri
[[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, November 13, 2015 5:55 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [nysbirds-l] More Gulls
While at the tail end of my travels today on the south shore of Nassau County,
I was at Tobay Beach (JFK Bird Sactuary) when I came across 4 Leeser
Black-backed Gulls resting in the Parking lot. - Not sure if these have any
relation to the recent unprecidented influx of Franklin's Gulls in our area, or
if these are lingering birds which I had at this location on Oct. 3. Perhaps
these came from points to the north, migrating slowly under mild conditions
with prolonged SW winds? - One of the birds was a full adult, 2 1st year
birds, and one in between. Only 23 other Gulls were with the LBBG's: 15
Herring, 5 GBBG, and 3 RB Gulls. The only Laughing Gulls I had today were in
the Field 6 Lot at Jones Beach, whereas hundreds, and beyond have been in
Hempstead Harbor in recent days, apparently feeding on baitfish getting pushed
up to the surface by larger fish - also probably slow to migrate I would think.
Interesting stuff all around......
Bobby Berlingeri
Elmont, NY
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