As Hurricane Irene approached with a likely landfall somewhere in New England on August 28th, I had made plans to go birding with David Deifik the day after the storm passed on the 29th. Perhaps heading to First Encounter Beach on the Cape as that is typically one of the best places to head the day after a hurricane. But as the morning of the 28th arrived, it was obvious that the hurricane was taking a more inland track through western CT, with less than expected wind and rain near the east-facing New England coastline. So now maybe western MA would be the best place to try for storm-driven birds. And in western MA the large reservoirs might be the places to try. Watching the morning radars it was obvious that much of the rain east of the storm in MA would be winding down by noon – much earlier than expected. So instead of First Encounter Beach on the 29th, I called David to talk him into heading to Quabbin Reservoir on the afternoon of the 28th.
On our 90-minute ride through central MA we encountered a few small branches in the road, and many leaves (carpeting the roads in places), but no downed trees or flooding. By the time we reached the Quabbin, winds were rather light from the south with only intermittent drizzle. We arrived at about 2 PM at the dam to see 6 or 8 birders already there – some had been there since the early morning and had had a couple jaegers and some migrant shorebirds including Hudsonian Godwits, but no megararities. Over the next couple hours we continuously scanned the reservoir typically seeing nothing at all. Key locations on the far side of the reservoir were an island which was 2.9 miles away, and a boat ramp which was 3.5 miles away. Needless to say, anything flying around on the far side would be little more than a speck. On one of my scans I picked out 3 distant black terns, and was able to get most of the other birders on them. Later we had a brief look at a flock of mid-sized shorebirds – but too brief for an ID.
Then around 4 PM several of us saw 2 very distant all dark birds which went down as Jaeger, sp. Then just a minute later one birder yelled – “I’ve got something good” (or something like that). A couple seconds later another birder yelled – “White-tailed Tropicbird!”. It took me a few seconds to get on the bird (which seemed like hours), but I eventually saw the bird fly by, and even at a distance of about 3 miles I could see the very white bird with the long tail feathers. Then the bird turned and starting flying directly towards us. Eventually it landed on the water much closer – relatively speaking that is – about a mile away. With high magnification you could pick out the tail feathers sticking straight up, and the mostly white bird. As I stretched the limits of my scope (and my eyesight) to try to pick out further field marks, another birder yelled – “Sooty Tern!” Again it took me an agonizingly long several seconds to find the bird, but then got excellent looks at the adult tern as it made its way closer and closer to us. Eventually it was just a few hundred yards away, and I watched it continuously for 5+ minutes as it flew and even fed on the water surface at times, seeing all the salient field marks. Then it soared and circled up over the reservoir, and flew south over the trees, hopefully making its way back to salt water somewhere. The jaegers, tropicbird, and tern all appeared in a space of 5 minutes or less. We went back to looking at the tropicbird, and realized that the wind was causing it to slowly drift away. About an hour later it was little more than a white speck on the water, barely recognizable among the whitecaps. A small flock of Turnstones flew by a bit later, but that was all the storm-related birds to be had. So in 4 hours of scanning the reservoir, I saw storm-related birds for about 10 minutes, but they sure were good ones.
I’ve only seen White-tailed Tropicbird once before – on the Dry Tortugas in Florida. I’ve seen Sooty Tern on my several trips to the Dry Tortugas, and also in Tennessee on the day that Hurricane Katrina passed through the central part of the state. (I also had Band-rumped Storm-Petrel that day – but that’s another story.) Needless to say, they are great birds for New England! Numbers 393 and 394 for MA. And this would be just the beginning of my Irene birding experience…
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