I spent yesterday birding at Chincoteague with Susan Stanton and Peggy Lyons.
You can now drive all the way out Beach Rd to the close edge of Swan Cove, park
and then walk the rest of the way to the beach.
Highlights: thousands of SNOW GEESE flying over and landing on the sand on the
far side of Toms Cove early in the morning and then skeins and skeins of them
flying over us around sunset on the Wildlife Loop; hundreds of BRANT, mostly
seen from the causeway between Wallops and Chincoteague; and a phalarope that
we identified as a RED PHALAROPE (based on size of bill, head pattern, back
color and pattern - photo taken aren't great quality but available when I can
download them) in Snow Goose Pool across from Swan Cove. Lots of water so all
of the expected waterfowl including at least a thousand Green-winged Teal,
Tundra Swans, Canada Geese, black ducks, shovelers, pintails, ruddies,
buffleheads, wigeons, gadwall, mallards, Red-breasted Mergansers and a few
Horned Grebes. Mostly small groups of shorebirds seen (Black-bellied Plovers,
oystercatchers (seen at Queens Sound only), both yellowlegs, willets, Marbled
Godwits, Sanderlings, Semipalmated Sandpipers, Dunlin and Short-billed
Dowitchers.
Rexanne Bruno
Lynchburg, VA
Sent from my carrier iPigeon
