I had hoped to be able to report about seabirds being seen close to the Vineyard after the windy and wet weather we had between Sept. 30 and Oct. 5. For most of that time we had northeasterly winds around 20 miles per hour, with higher gusts. Perhaps the shearwaters, storm petrels, phalaropes, skuas and other seabirds that are normally on Georges Bank or along the Gulf Stream would come to visit. I was an optimist.
According to Norman Elkins in Weather and Bird Behavior, ecologists generally believe that it is harder for seabirds to feed when strong winds roil the ocean surface. The water is more opaque and difficult to see through, and both fog and precipitation make the air more opaque as well. Maybe the seabirds would leave their normal oceanic feeding areas and head to calmer waters closer to shore, perhaps even close enough so that we could see them from land.
No such luck. I have no reports of unusual seabirds. On Oct. 3 I went to East Chop and spent a half hour looking out over Nantucket Sound. Though my car was buffeted by the wind, the only seabirds were the usual herring and great black-backed gulls soaring and riding the updrafts created by the wind hitting the bluffs of East Chop. I might have seen seabirds had I been there for the strongest winds, or stayed for a longer stretch of time. I then searched elsewhere in Oak Bluffs and Edgartown, but there were no seabirds or strange gulls roosting in fields or corners of ponds that were protected from the strong winds.
Apparently the winds were not strong enough to displace the seabirds. Fortunately, Hurricane Joaquin did not come our way. Undoubtedly, there are seabirds caught in that storm, and they will be carried by the strong winds until they weaken. We would have seen some of these seabirds had the storm made landfall in New England, or even approached closer to the coast. Maybe we will see some of them as they make their way back to their normal haunts.
Bird Sightings
Tim Johnson found a flock of tree swallows on Chappaquiddick on Sept. 29 and again on Oct. 2. The second time the swallows appeared to be foraging for bugs that were hiding in a telephone pole. Needless to say, that is not a normal place for them to seek food, but any bugs they can eat in the strong winds is good for them. My guided birding tour observed a flock of tree swallows working their way northward along State Beach on Oct. 3, heading into the 20-mile-per-hour breeze. They hovered around a bayberry bush in search for bayberries, but all of them had already been consumed.
Mr. Johnson also found two lesser yellowlegs near Menemsha Pond on Oct. 4. Other shorebirds in the news include the sanderlings, dunlins, black-bellied plovers and a red knot spotted by Lanny McDowell on Norton Point on Sept. 28. My Oct. 3 guided birding tour also went out to the Farm Institute and Norton Point. We had about 300 black-bellied plovers total, mostly at the Farm Institute. There were four golden plovers in one flock in a pasture across Aero avenue from the town’s solar array. The four were easy to distinguish when the birds were in flight as the goldens have a dark tail (the same as their back coloration) and lack the black wingpits. We also found a few sanderling and dunlin in the fields. There were killdeer at Herring Creek Farm, but no other shorebirds.
Songbird news is sparse this week for two reasons. One is that the birds are hiding out from the strong wind by staying deep in the protection of trees and shrubs. The second reason is that birders are also staying out of the wind, and thus fewer people were out searching for birds. Luanne Johnson observed a black-and-white warbler feeding in an oak tree outside her house near Major’s Cove on Oct. 3, and a peregrine falcon flew by that day as well. Allan Keith braved the weather on Oct. 5 and ventured to Aquinnah, where he did “surprisingly well.” He found two western palm warblers, an orange-crowned warbler, blackpolls, blue-headed vireo, an indigo bunting, a Lincoln’s sparrow, two merlins and an early dark-eyed junco. At the Gay Head moraine he added a ruby-crowned kinglet and a redstart.
EL Edwards reports that ruby-throated hummingbirds were still coming to his feeders as of Oct. 1. Please keep track of hummers at your feeders as this is the only way we can know how late into the fall they stay. Please let me know if you still have feeders out, even if you do not have hummers visiting them.
Speaking of lingering into the fall, there still are quite a few great egrets around. Susan Straight found three of them feeding along the edges of Menemsha Pond on Oct. 3.
Finally, Kira Shepherd had an unexpected visitor on her deck on Oct. 1 — a juvenile great blue heron that appeared to have a tangle of dried grass wrapped around its beak. The bird was seen again in a nearby marsh on Oct. 3. Fortunately, it looked like the grass was almost all the way off its beak.
There are lots of birds around, so please get out looking for them, and be sure to report your bird sightings to birds@mvgazette.com.
Robert Culbert leads Saturday morning guided birding tours and is an ecological consultant living in Vineyard Haven.
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