Hello, Birders. With Eric Salzman, Lorna Salzman, and Eileen Schwinn, I had a nice time at Montauk Point, Suffolk County, earlier today, Tuesday, Oct. 27th. The highlight was an immense gathering of Laughing Gulls. Most of the birds were close to shore just off the south-facing promontory at Camp Hero State Park, where they massed in several super-tight feeding clusters of 1,000+ birds per cluster; we tallied about 8,800 birds in these clusters, but that felt like an under-count. Most were basic adults, there were hundreds of handsome first-cycles in the mix, too. There was also a group of about 1,150 roosting near the south shore of Lake Montauk. On two occasions, non-birders joined us to gawk. Truly, an amazing spectacle. Two nice birds out there were a Cory's Shearwater and a light-morph adult Parasitic Jaeger. The dark-winged scoter flight seemed strong, but was probably typical for late October, with about 635 Surf Scoters and about 1770 Black Scoters, virtually all of them flying west, on active diurnal migration, past the Camp Hero promontory. There were also about 45 White-winged Scoters, flying every which way. Our Common Eider tally was about 240, most of them after noon (i.e., after the weather got especially nasty). The Northern Gannets, most of them moving generally west, although with much meandering, were marvelous. We counted about 435. Other odds and ends included 1 Harlequin Duck, 3 Long-tailed Ducks, 2 Red-breasted Mergansers, 7 Red-throated Loons, 16 Common Loons, 1 Great Cormorant, and 8 Sanderlings. A beautiful day, really. What's not to like about "bad" weather on the North Atlantic in October? Great company, too. -------------------------------
Ted Floyd tedfloy...@hotmail.com Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado ------------------------------- Ted Floyd Editor, Birding ------------------------------- Please support the American Birding Association: Click on http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=884482 to search the internet. Check out the American Birding Association on FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22934255714 Check out the American Birding Association on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abaoutreach Please visit the website of the American Birding Association: http://www.aba.org _________________________________________________________________ Windows 7: It works the way you want. Learn more. http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/windows-7/default.aspx?ocid=PID24727::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WWL_WIN_evergreen2:102009 -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES Archives: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
