Sorry for the weird formatting, maybe this will work better: Hey all, scoping
the James River from Lion's Bridge of Mariner's Museum Park in Newport News
this morning turned up 2 Black Scoters and a pair of salty Green-winged Teal
fairly close to shore. The rafts of Canvasback, Scaup, Ruddy Ducks, and
Goldeneye have not returned here yet, hopefully in a couple weeks in time for
the CBC. The 2 Black Scoters were present here yesterday too, along w/ 5 Surf
Scoters. This is my 1st time seeing Black Scoters this far up-river. I
motor-boated through this stretch of River yesterday traveling from Huntington
Park to the Warwick River mouth, and turned up few ducks other than Buffleheads
and 1 Ruddy, but did find 1 big aggregation of approx. 50 Horned Grebes, a
couple rafts of Common Loons totaling some 50 birds (these guys were pretty
vocal too), good counts of Forster's Terns (25) and Brown Pelicans (79) with
most of these roosting on abandoned pilings, 20 + Bonaparte's Gulls feeding
over the Loon rafts, and approx. 70 Laughing Gulls still hanging around. A
Peregrine Falcon was a nice fly-over after loading the boat back up @
Huntington Park. OK, gotta get to the leaf-raking now. Best, Nick Flanders,
Raleigh NC.
