Welcome to new TASLers Sabrina Hepburn, Jennifer Ladd, Jim McCoy, Jack Renfrew, Jack Renfew, jr., Christine Wickers.
Here are selected comments from participants:
From Maury Hall, compiler:
Am Black Duck, eider, goldeneye, total species, total abundance, Bufflehead, Brant, Mallard near or at all-time lows. Squantum crew wasn’t able to get to the tip of LI. As a result we may have missed a few eider but likely not that many.
From H. Heusmann, field ornithologist, Massachusetts Fisheries and Wildlife:
Ducks numbers in general were low north of Boston, but high on the Cape and Buzzards Bay. The USF&WS counted only 35,000 eiders, but 26,000 were in a flock on the south side of the Cape off Monomoy.
From Linda Pivacek, Nahant:
Very low numbers for some species due to the low tide and exposed flats and mussel beds in some areas. However, the Common Eider count appears to be very low in general, especially around East Point, where a few years back the point was surrounded by rafts of Eider.
From Pat Randall, Winthrop:
At my first site, I discovered that my scope wouldn't work—the screw to put it on the tripod was stripped (or something). We did what we could under the circumstances, but our numbers are likely lower than they should be. I tried holding the scope on top of the tripod which worked to a small extent.
From Fay Vale, Winthrop Harbor:
Tides wrong, weather wrong, not much.
From Dave Lange, Squantum:
The Razorbills were in the main channel between Long and Deer Islands.
Seven in one group and two in another. We first saw the seven at a distance more off towards the airport and they were moving east spending most of the time under water. We were trying to follow them and then were just seeing two; the group of 7 had moved way east. At this point a container ship came in through the channel and at that time we saw the two flying east disappearing behind the container ship. So both groups in sight at the same time. After initially calling them Razorbills, then thinking they were Common Murres, Sabrina emailed me to take a look at Sibley so we are back to Razorbills—long tail, fairly heavy bill, sometimes could see dark line coming down from the eye on some, black on back of neck fairly extensive in most birds.
Numbers of eider have been way down the last 4 years. No big groups around the outer islands as we used to see from Long island.
From Maury Hall:
Thanks Dave. Interesting sighting of so many Razorbills. Were they clustered together? I've been hearing reports of penguins in the Quincy Bay area. These are likely the penguins.
From Andrew Joslin, Hough's Neck:
Nothing unusual to report, was quiet overall. The low tide at the beginning of the count moved birds around a bit from the usual in the back estuaries. Seemed high Horned Grebe numbers for January. There were 104 Sanderling at Wollaston Beach, may be a high count for the time I've been doing the HN route. We were impressed by the speed of a pair of Buffleheads and then a pair of Long-tailed Ducks motoring past Nut Island with a north/northwest tail-wind. Looked like they were doing around 60+ mph but that's just a guess. Need a radar gun.
From Paul Fitzgerald, Hull:
Unbelievably low numbers of everything. At least the Barrow's is still hanging around Spinnaker Island.
Comments compiled by
Soheil Zendeh
last updated: 2007.01.28
url: http://www.gis.net/~szendeh/tasl.jan.07.notes.htm