The TASL count on Sunday 11/21 was apparently the most effortless in living memory. Amazing conditions, including no wind, glassy seas, reasonable temperatures and NO SUN. The worst aspect, from my point of view, was that the tide was going out all morning--we ended up with dead low tide around 2 pm. Also, perhaps due to balmy conditions earlier this fall, we still haven't seen a big influx of birds such as Brant, eider or goldeneye. This is my conjecture but I can't be sure until all the data is tabulated. But a Snowy Egret at Belle Isle in November?
Welcome back to a few very old-time TASLers: Kenton Griffis and Betsy Sims (helping to cover Nahant) and Lee Taylor (with Dave Lange at Long Island).
Welcome to new TASLers Brian Lipson, helping me cover the East Boston to South Boston route, and Phil Mitchell and Ashley Harris with Andrew Joslin and Ken Barney at Hough's neck. Any other newcomers I'm not aware of?
Special thanks to Mr. Brian Dinneen, Director of Long Island Hospital, for prompt response to our request for access to Long Island.
Here are selected comments from reporters:
From Linda Pivacek, Nahant, 11/21:
It was a lovely, balmy day without rain - we had fun. Big
concern is the missing eider from East Point. I heard that there is an
organism/plant? invading the mussel beds - know anything about this? (See Common Eider question.)
Dunlin and RB Mergansers were all over.
From Fay Vale, Winthrop, 11/21:
Got a snowy owl at Logan, otherwise, sort of not too much.
From me, Boston, 11/21:
We saw a Snowy Owl at Logan also. Couldn't be the same as the Vales', I suspect.
Details:
seen from Castle Island between 12:30 and 1:30 PM at SE corner of airport
first seen on ground in (or behind) tallish brush (taller than it anyway)
then flew to dark wooden platform about 2 feet high off the ground
always faced us to the SE
smallish, white bird
kestrel seemed to harass it briefly, then perched for a while nearby
From the location I think Vales' couldn't have seen it when we were seeing it.
Also, Snowy Egret at Rosie's. Two Snowies in one day is pretty good. All we needed was Snowy Plover for a hat trick!
Brian and I also had a slow day until we got to Castle Island, where things got a bit livelier: 600 eider, 280 rb merganser, goldeneye, bonaparte's, loons, grebes, scoter. A couple of places we had flying flocks of (unidentified) shorebirds.
From Dave Lange, Squantum, 11/24:
Our eider numbers were up close to 20% from last year but way down from
several years ago. But sea ducks are highly dependent upon tide as well as
visibility. I know you try to have similar tide conditions from year to
year but I notice big differences in tide at a particular site from count
to count. (See Tide question.) I pretty much do the stops in the same order but sometimes it takes us much longer to go around (Lee and I were slow this time; last
winter there was a lot of ice so few ducks to count). Sometimes we do the
Marina, river and cove stops heading out; they are generally better at high
tide, this time we did them in order and it was low tide when we were there
with few ducks. Once or twice when we have spent a long time at a stop or
went back briefly we've seen large changes in numbers.
One thing I did notice was the higher numbers of Long-tailed Ducks but I see we had close to the same numbers in 2000. Another difference this time is that they were all over the place, not just in a couple of stops. That could also be said for the Brant: No really big groups.
From Andrew Joslin, Hough's Neck, 11/21:
Participants included Ken Barney, Phil Mitchell and Ashley Harris. Phil and Ashley are new to winter waterfowl, they did a great job. Ashley spotted (among others) Belted Kingfisher, Harbor Seal and Bonaparte's Gull. Phil picked up the Sanderlings at Wollaston Beach. Ken
and I completely missed them :-)
The sea was as flat and glassy as I've seen at Hough's Neck. Fantastic viewing conditions.
We spent a long time at HN5 (Post Island Road) with a female or immature Merlin perched on a flagpole by the seawall. We had quite a few neighbors take a look through the 'scope, a great community event. Probably the best sustained close look at a Merlin that any of us have had. It performed a couple of sorties, once diving on an unidentified small bird on the beach. A female American Kestrel at Nut Island was also good to see.
The competing highlight was a pair of RB Mergansers performing a mating dance at Nut Island Pier. Their synchronized tango/ballet was superb!
From Paul FitzGerald, Hull, 11/21:
As always there were roughly 300 unidentifiable birds over towards Bumpkin
Island (and still further towards Sheep Island). No one else (on the TASL count) can see them
at all. As before, I've guesstimated their species breakdown based on
that of the 1000 or so birds at stops 22 - 24 that were close enough to ID.
It's not exactly solid data but it's worth noting.
The King Eider (drake) was seen from the Hull elementary school.
Dave Lange commented on the variable counts at the same site as the tide changes. This is indeed an issue we try to deal with when scheduling the counts. We try to schedule so that high tide is as close to the middle of the morning as possible. Unfortunately, some years, it is not possible to pick a series of Sundays that satisfy that condition. This year, for example, the choices for November were for Sundays when high tide was at 8 AM or at 2 PM. We selected the 8 AM tide on 11/21 partly because it is closer to the end of the month without interfering with Thanksgiving weekend. I ended up not liking that tide at all, because the entire time we were out the tide was either going out or low. It was most definitely a compromise.
Note: After I wrote the above, I rechecked the tide and found that high tide was actually around 6:30 AM. This is even worse than I had planned. I apologize. I need to double-check those tide times. -sz
Here are the eider counts from the past few years:
| 2000 | 2001 | 2003 | 2004 | |
| Nahant | 1825 | 1316 | 691 | 376 |
| Winthrop | 6970 | 2314 | 1791 | 4032 |
| Boston | 525 | 221 | 156 | 839 |
| Squantum | 1189 | 936 | 650 | 757 |
| Hough's Neck | 514 | 1093 | 584 | 281 |
| Weymouth | 231 | 575 | 321 | 456 |
| Hull | 2026 | 1570 | 5315 | 1538 |
| Totals | 13280 | 8025 | 9508 | 8014 |
It looks like we're within range of the lowest count (8025 in 2001). It also looks like the birds are somewhat more scattered, but with the majority in Winthrop. There really was a low count from Nahant, as well as from Hough's Neck. We don't know what that means yet. Maury Hall, our data compiler, is a biologist with MWRA and keeps track of the marine food chain in and around the harbor. He said this was the first he had heard of a problem with mussel beds mentioned by Linda Pivacek.
Anyway, keep in mind: This is early for migrating ducks. Eider can pour into the area throughout December. Perhaps a milder than normal fall means the November eider flight was lighter than normal.
From Maury Hall, compiler (and Weymouth route), 12/6:A relatively average year. Loons and grebes were on the high side as were scoters. Black duck remain low. Brant very low and cormorants were low.
I think the main Double-crested Cormorant flight south this year was much earlier than usual. There were a lot of cormorants around the harbor in late September but thinned out after that. Some years the main flight doesn't seem to come down until late October.
Eider were about average but half were off Deer I. Low numbers elsewhere.
I went down to Weymouth yesterday and looked around Castle I. Saturday. Numbers were very low compared to 2 weeks ago.
I expect Christmas Count and our winter counts to be quite low. I bet it will be another tough winter.
Comments compiled by
Soheil Zendeh
last updated: 12/28/2004
url: http://www.gis.net/~szendeh/tasl.nov.04.notes.htm