I spent the morning sea watching at Robert Moses State Park Field 2 from about 6:30 (not seriously until the fog eased around 8:30) to 12:30 (when the fog thickened again). Also joining in the effort were (until about 10:30) Brent Bomkamp, Pat Palladino, and Taylor Sturm, and (from about 11 to 12) Pat Lindsay, Shai Mitra, and Peter Morris. Actually, I have to give them more credit than that, as they picked out a lot more birds than I did. But I think I did a decent job of being the scribe. So here is what I scribed.
Great Shearwater - 119 Cory's Shearwater - 23 Sooty Shearwater - 1 Shearwater sp. - 21 (most earlier on when denser fog added to the ID difficulty; Brent thought one may have been a Manx, but too difficult to confirm). Wilson's Sturm-Petrel - 6 One amusing sequence involved two Great Shearwaters, closer in than expected, and a swimmer, further out than expected. The shearwaters slowed down to investigate the swimmer, with the second one actually landing very close to him. It flapped its wings at him (or something like that) a bit before moving on. Afterwards in the parking lot, a few Larus fuscus americanus (well, they might be in a few thousand years). I didn't know about the Brown Booby until I was already at Robert Moses. As I've mentioned before, I get the reports off the archives. I don't know how well that always works. I'm pretty sure I checked last night and the booby reports hadn't made it to the archives yet. I know that when I looked this morning, it was obvious why I choose not to get the e-mails. I see a lot of reports of things like Yellow Warbler getting in the way of the reports I really need. Why? Okay, Steve, be nice, stop your rant right there. Steve Walter Bayside, NY http://stevewalternature.com (currently featuring the Henslow's Sparrow) -- 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/ --