This will be a short note!
Hanna was a mild, quick storm, with few birds obviously entrained, at least
on the coast. I will summarize what little I have heard here:
6 September
Day spent between CBBT and Sunset Beach, with a few hours looking around farm
fields. Winds never really heavy, gusting mostly in the 30s. Very little
rain at all on the coast, amazingly. A few Black Terns around, but that's
not unusual for early September. Single Lesser Black-backed Gulls at CBBT and
Kiptopeke, also normal. Essentially no terns in farm fields and few
shorebirds (no classic 'storm roosts' anywhere). Winds out of the southeast
until
about 4 p.m., when they switched hard to westerly. This storm was oddly
lopsided - almost all the rain on the western side, and a very late wind switch
(what was arguably a center of circulation was almost past Maryland by the time
we
got the wind switch in southeastern Virginia). We have never seen many
birds on easterlies in eastern Virginia, despite intensive watching; typically,
southwesterly and westerly winds bring birds to the east side of the Chesapeake
Bay, if they are displaced by storms.
News from farther afield was that Marshall Iliff found 4 Sooty Terns, a
Cory's Shearwater, and 10 Parasitic Jaegers at Ocean City; Ricky Davis found a
Red
and 10+ Red-necked Phalaropes at Buckhorn Reservoir, NC; John Fussell had both
Bridled & Sooty Terns at Morehead City; Richard Crossley found Long-tailed &
Parasitic Jaegers, Bridled & Sooty Terns near Frisco; Les Willis had an adult
Sooty Tern at 10:45 on the Nansemond River, plus a juvenile at 12:20. On the
drive north from North Carolina, Crossley also had a Purple Gallinule cross
Route 13 at Windy's Flying Service (near Dalby's) in southern Northampton
County, VA. This was reported to be an immature, a plumage for which there
are
few VA records, I think. No reports from Kerr Reservoir, which probably had
some storm birds.
7 September
Morning at CBBT produces more Black Terns, a Parasitic (Dave Schoch et al.)
and a Long-tailed and an unidentified jaeger (myself) at CBBT, a Northern
Gannet, 2 Red-necked Phalaropes, and not much else. Predawn at Sunset Beach,
a
nice migration of Wood Thrush and Bobolink. A frigatebird at Mecox Bay, NY is
reported mid-morning.
Ned Brinkley
Cape Charles, VA
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