Saturday, March 8, 2008

Golden Eagles at Jake's; more birds on the move

I saw 2 Golden Eagles from Jake's Landing around 6:00pm this evening. The birds were distant, about a mile out to the southeast, and split in different directions- one bird headed southeast toward Beaver Swamp WMA, and the other followed the treeline southwest toward Goshen Landing. A male Short-eared Owl made several brief appearances, but apparently decided that the 20-30mph winds were a bit much for him.

There were large numbers of gulls along the bayshore from Pierce's Point north this afternoon, at least 1,000 total, comprised mainly of Herring Gulls. Whether this was a product of the storm, an aggregation of northbound birds, or a combination of both, I'm not sure...
There were also about 100 Northern Gannets between Pierce's Point and Reed's Beach, and a distant, tight-knit flock of about 40 Bonaparte's Gulls moving north over the bay, in a hurry. I neglected to mention yesterday that I saw my first bayshore Double-crested Cormorant, American Oystercatcher and Boat-tailed Grackle of the year at Reed's Beach.

There were 10 Greater Yellowlegs, the same 2 Great Egrets and a handful of Green-winged Teal on the ibis pond along Reed's Beach Road around 5:00pm. I haven't seen any yellowlegs here in three weeks, so I'd assume that the birds today were newly-arrived migrants.

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