Folks,
After heading out from work today at 3 PM I swung by Pleasure House Point
to try and re-locate the Western Tanager that Ernie Miller spotted
yesterday and reported to eBird. While I only spent a half hour at the park
and was not able to find it, a couple other birds there said they did
indeed see the bird, and it's showed up in eBird reports, so it is still
hanging around. Not much else was seen at PHP to speak of, a few Greater
Yellowlegs, lots of Gadwalls and American Wigeons out on the creek, but
again I didn't stay long. With the dreary weather, I wanted to get up to
the first island of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel before any rain
started falling, and before it got too dark to see anything with the sun
already being hidden behind the clouds.
So, I headed up there and arrived at 4 PM. Walking the island
counter-clockwise from the southeast corner, and then back yielded a
fantastic day for ducks. I saw my first White-winged Scoters on the year,
as one was swimming with a pair of Lesser Scaup at the southeast corner of
the island (No Redheads were present this time out). Along the east side of
the island, a great number of Ring-billed Gulls were present, with lower
numbers of Herring, Great Black-backed, and a couple of Lesser Black-backed
Gulls as well. At the point, the only duck I spotted was a Red-breasted
Merganser, then located two Surf Scoters very tight to the rocks near the
pier. On the return trip, about 20 Long-tailed Ducks could be seen out in
the swift moving tidal currents north of the island, and a pair of 1st
winter Common Eiders were also out there! As if that wasn't a good enough
surprise, there was also a lone Harbor Seal swimming around in the
vicinity, which I got to see just the head pop up twice far out (I did get
one shot of the Seal and many of the Eiders,
http://www.rbnature.com/galleries/we-20150125).
A group of Buffleheads, Black Scoters, and White-winged Scoters rounded out
the sightings as I reached my car again and then drove the same route to
get back on the southbound travel lane to the mainland of Virginia Beach.
Turned out to be a great couple hours of evening birding to end the week,
though I missed not having the beautiful sunset like last week. We're
expecting a wet day tomorrow, but hoping the whole day isn't a wash out.
Good luck to those who head out this weekend!
Rob Bielawski
Virginia Beach, VA
