The Changing Seasons / Spring 2010

The Changing Seasons:

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The Changing Seasons:EDWARD S. BRINKLEY • 124 PeAch STreeT, cAPe chArleS, VirGiNiA 23310 • ([email protected])

Spring 2010 was an uncommonly activeseason for birds and birders, and it wasan especially memorable season for low-

pressure systems trekking across the Lower48 states and southern Canada, if not (alas,for Bering Sea birders) across the Aleutiansand Pribilofs. Remarkably, several of theseevents lined up perfectly with some of thebusiest birding weekends of the year, so thebird activity associated with them, whether

fallouts, groundings, overshoots, or longitu-dinal displacements, was especially well doc-umented and well enjoyed. Increasingly, bird-ers are watching storm systems at the conti-nental level, from their appearance at somedistance from our shores, through their inter-actions with coasts, mountain ranges, biglakes, and plains, through their farewells. Ourability to predict the effects of these systemson birds improves, if slowly, though every

season shows us that some such interactionsare well beyond our ability to forecast. Ratherthan spell out the spring temperatures andrainfall patterns by region this time (well cov-ered in most regional reports’ introductions),we’ll look at three systems that brought birdsto large areas of the country: the Gulf coast,the lower Midwest, and the contiguous Pacif-ic coast states.

System 1:Western Overflow Weekend In his regional report for the spring season,Steve Cardiff writes: “What seemed relativelyunremarkable on a weather map brought arather spectacular assortment of western mi-grants into coastal southwestern Louisiana.Coinciding with the Louisiana OrnithologicalSociety (LOS) spring meeting in CameronParish and dubbed by one contributor as the‘Western Overflow Weekend,’ LOS partici-pants were treated to a nice variety of westernvagrants and normally scarce coastal mi-grants.” Those who organize and those whoattend weekend meetings or festivals duringmigration know how seldom they coincidewith big numbers of birds, and no recent fall-out in memory for has produced its ownacronym, WOW.What makes this weekend so interesting to

those who follow fallouts? Two things, per-haps: the unusual mix of birds, and the weath-er features that brought them together (Fig-ures 1, 2). The label “western” for this set ofbirds is no exaggeration: though coastal Texasmight be fortunate to record many on theLouisiana list (Table 1) on a somewhat regularbasis in spring, even there, a Varied Thrush,nine Lesser Nighthawks, two Audubon’s War-blers, and a MacGillivray’s Warbler (Figures 3-5) would make a remarkable haul, especiallywith colorful Bullock’s Oriole, Western Tan-agers, and Yellow-headed Blackbirds thrownin. Belated migrants, such as the Blue-headedVireo on 24 April, are to be expected, but 18Blue-headeds three days later is rather amaz-ing for the number. But the big numbers be-longed to Dickcissels, Baltimore Orioles,Painted Buntings, and especially sparrows,counts of which broke perhaps a dozenrecords for this well-birded corner of the state.Almost all of these birds were circum-Gulf mi-grants in spring, those that avoid crossing theGulf of Mexico and instead fly from Mexicothrough Texas, then on to breeding areas.

Birders participating in a Massachusetts bird-a-thon 15 May 2010 (here) found this adult Purple Gallinule perched in a Norway Maplein Gloucester, where it fed on winter moth caterpillars through 23 May. A wave of Purple Gallinules was discovered in early May, fromTennessee to Michigan, apparently attributable to the passage of a strong low-pressure system through the southern United Statesand Midwest. Was this Massachusetts bird the easternmost waif of the early May event? Photograph by Jeremiah Trimble.

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A Tale of Three SystemsA Tale of Three SystemsFarther east, in Florida, birders also began

finding hundreds of colorful migrants, begin-ning 22 April, a Thursday. Sadly, as more bird-ers got out on Friday, it became apparent thathundreds of birds had washed up dead onFlorida’s Gulf beaches, from the Alabama bor-der to Pinellas County in the central peninsu-la, among them many typical trans-Gulf mi-grants such as Scarlet and Summer Tanagersand Rose-breasted and Blue Grosbeaks, alongwith some seabirds, according to Bruce An-derson. But western species and sparrows, asseen in Louisiana, were not in evidence far-ther east, and the one high count mentionedwas of 62 Rose-breasted Grosbeaks at SaintGeorge Island State Park, Florida 27 April.Florida did, however, have robust counts ofstrong-flying Dickcissels, their numbers in-creasing through the weekend and into thefollowing week (Figure 6); a count of 200 atFort Morgan, Alabama 27 April was surelypart of the same phenomenon, though the 24-27 April flight there was dubbed otherwise“comparatively minor” by regional editorSteve McConnell. So why should a relatively innocuous-look-

ing frontal system with modest winds move somany circum-Gulf migrants offshore and bringabout the demise of many trans-Gulf mi-grants? Weather conditions, after all, appearedreasonably good for a fallout, at least based onthe 23 April morning surface weather map(Figure 1), but a fallout of trans-Gulf migrants,not of birds from farther west. The key may liein the wind currents above these (Figure 2),which instead of a southerly flow show an in-creasingly strong westerly flow between Mexi-co and Florida. As birds moved northward inthe evening on southerly winds, the system it-

Figure 1. Surface weather map for 23 April 2010 at 0700 eST. Note that air flow over the Gulf of Mexico at this hour is south-southeast-erly, probably ideal for Neotropical migrants coming from the Yucatan Peninsula, and that there are showers (in green) on the UpperTexas coast, probably ideal for birds to fallout there and in southwestern louisiana, rather than moving inland toward food-rich wood-land areas. The westerly winds of the troposphere (Figure 2), however, apparently shifted surface-level systems—and thus much ofthe circum-Gulf and trans-Gulf migration—toward the east, resulting in the “Western overflow Weekend” in louisiana, among otheravian events that weekend. Map courtesy of and © National Centers for Environmental Prediction, United States National Weather Serv-ice, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Figure 2. Positions of high- and low-pressure areas at about the500-mb height contour, 23 April 2010 at 0700 eST. The 500-mblevel, which is roughly 5400 meters (18,000 feet) above sea lev-el, is often referred to as the “steering level,” as most weathersystems and precipitation follow the winds at this level. Veryfew birds would be found migrating so high, but because sur-face-level weather systems are typically guided by upper-levelwind flow, birds moving northward in spring on southerlywinds (near the surface) can find themselves displaced longitu-dinally if the surface-level system gets moved along quickly.Note the position of the upper-level low moving into the GreatPlains in this image: steering currents for systems to the southand southeast of it were westerly and relatively strong, increas-ing in strength as the upper-level low moved eastward. By con-trast, surface winds at the same time were southerly. Mapcourtesy of and © National Centers for Environmental Prediction,United States National Weather Service, National Oceanic and At-mospheric Administration.

self was shifted eastward, and the birds along with it—bringingbirds that normally migrate over land out over the Gulf and com-pelling many migrants to fly longer to complete the crossing. Insome cases, the birds had to fly for more hours than their fat re-serves permitted. When trying to understand and perhaps predictthese displacements and mortality events, in the Gulf and else-where, we should look both at surface weather maps and at mapsof steering winds, both readily available online. Those birders whoare pilots, meteorologists, and researchers of migration often lookat the larger picture before going out birding.

System 2:Gallinules, ho!The star of spring 2010, in at least seven states, was PurpleGallinule, at least seventeen of which turned up out of range thisspring, a very high number (Table 2). Unlike Black Vulture,Glossy Ibis, White-faced Ibis, Black-bellied Whistling-Duck, or


THE CHANGING SEASONS: A TALE OF THREE SYSTEMS

Table 1. Noteworthy species recorded in southwestern Louisiana between 24 Apriland 1 May 2010, after passage of a relatively weak low-pressure system. Most of therecords from the Johnsons Bayou area were in the Baton Rouge Audubon SocietySanctuary proper.

Species Location Count Date(s)Lesser Nighthawk coastal Cameron Parish 9+ 24 April–1 MayBlue-headed Vireo Johnsons Bayou 1 24 AprilBlue-headed Vireo Johnsons Bayou 18 27 AprilWarbling Vireo Johnsons Bayou 8 25 AprilWarbling Vireo Johnsons Bayou 30 27 AprilHermit Thrush Johnsons Bayou 1 27 AprilVaried Thrush Grande Isle 1 27 AprilNashville Warbler Johnsons Bayou 17/day 24-25 AprilBlack-throated Blue Warbler Grande Isle 1 28 AprilAudubon’s Warbler (female) Johnsons Bayou 1 24 AprilAudubon’s Warbler (male) Johnsons Bayou 25-27 AprilMacGillivray’s Warbler Johnsons Bayou 1 24-27 AprilCanada Warbler Johnsons Bayou 4 24 AprilCanada Warbler Johnsons Bayou 12 27 AprilWestern Tanager (male) Johnsons Bayou 1 24 AprilWestern Tanager (female) Johnsons Bayou 1 24-28 AprilChipping Sparrow coastal Cameron Parish 200+ 24-25 AprilClay-colored Sparrow coastal Cameron Parish 15+ 24-27 AprilVesper Sparrow coastal Cameron Parish 14+ 24-28 AprilLark Sparrow coastal Cameron Parish 36+ 24-25 AprilWhite-crowned Sparrow Johnsons Bayou 43 24-25 AprilLincoln’s Sparrow Johnsons Bayou 16 24 AprilSavannah Sparrow Johnsons Bayou 158 25 AprilGrasshopper Sparrow Johnsons Bayou 1 25/27 AprilPainted Bunting Johnsons Bayou 60 24 AprilPainted Bunting coastal Cameron Parish 38 24 AprilDickcissel coastal Cameron Parish “hundreds” 24 AprilYellow-headed Blackbird coastal Cameron Parish 8 24-25 AprilBaltimore Oriole coastal Cameron Parish “hundreds” 24 AprilBullock’s Oriole Johnsons Bayou 1 25 April

Figure 5. A species seldom so obliging, this female MacGillivray’s Warbler appeared during the “Westernoverflow Weekend” and was enjoyed by many observers 24-27 (here 25) April 2010 at the Baton rougeAudubon Society Sanctuary, Johnsons Bayou, cameron Parish, louisiana. Photograph by Dave Patton.

Figure 4. This male Audubon’s Warbler on 26 April was one of at least two found among the assortment ofother western vagrants present at the Baton rouge Audubon Society Sanctuary, Johnsons Bayou, cameronParish, louisiana 24-27 April 2010. Photograph by Tom Finnie.

Figure 3. one of at least nine found in southwestern louisiana from 24 April through 1 May (here) 2010, thislesser Nighthawk was one of at least four that posed for visitors to the Baton rouge Audubon Society Sanc-tuary at Johnsons Bayou, cameron Parish, louisiana. Photograph by Tom Finnie.

arguably many other southern species, PurpleGallinule (Figures 7, 8) has not reallychanged its modus operandi much over thepast twenty or even hundred years. In theMidwest and in the East, their “flights” arestill infrequent and unpredictable. Vic Fazioand Rick Wiltraut, writing the spring reportfor the Eastern Highlands & Upper Ohio Riv-er Valley region, note that previous flights ofthe species to Ohio haved involved four birdsin May 1877 and six in March 1989. FromTennessee & Kentucky, Chris Sloan andBrainard Palmer-Ball, Jr. write: “PurpleGallinules have long been known to becomecaught up in strong cyclonic weather systemsand strewn far and wide downwind of themain flow. While numerous weather systemsthat could potentially result in such extralim-ital reports occur on a somewhat regular ba-sis, only a small percentage of them apparent-ly end up moving birds perceptibly. Whatmakes for a ‘good’ storm in this case is un-known, but it is possible that passage of sucha storm must coincide in some manner with astrong migratory movement of the species.”They attribute the appearance of five birds intheir region 3-9 May to a powerful weekendlow-pressure system that swept through overthe weekend, 1-2 May (Figures 9, 10).So where did most of these birds show up?

Looking at Figure 10, your eye may have beendrawn to the swath of precipitation and strongsouth-southwesterly winds on the (by then

stationary) edge of thelow, stretching fromMemphis to easternMichigan. Well… that’swhere all the galli nuleswere, with the excep-tion of one or possiblytwo in eastern Massa-chusetts. The Caroli-nas, the mid-Atlantic,Hudson- Delaware re-gions, all of whichhave past records ofspring Purple flights?All shut out.We rarely get a snap -

shot of bird vagrancythat lines up so neatlywith a weather phe-nomenon, much lesswith a weather graph-ic, other than those oftropical cyclones. And whatof the Massachusetts bird, orbirds? Well, like Canada’sMaritime Provinces andMaine’s offshore islands,Massachusetts, with that bighook sticking out in theocean, has some real geo-graphic advantages when itcomes to picking up avianstrays. (Take, for instance,the flight of White-wingedDoves in the East this year—rather uneventful for most ofthe East, but Maine and NewBrunswick each picked upone [Figure 10], and NovaScotia recorded its forty-ninth! Blake Maybank asks:“What is the nearest U.S.state with 50+ records of thisdove?”) The point belaboredhere is that eastern Massa-

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Table 2. All reports of extralimital Purple Gallinules inNorth America, spring 2010. County names are in italics.

Location Date(s)Columbiana Reservation, Lorain, OH 2-23 MaySauerheber Unit Sloughs W.M.A., Henderson, KY 3-4 May Medina, OH backyard 4 MayOttawa, OH 4 MayMcElroy Lake, Warren, KY 4-8 MayFranklin, TN 5 May LaPorte, IN backyard (up to 2 birds) 6 May-7 JunAurora Ferry Road, Boone, KY 6-8 MayClear Fork Res., Richland, OH (pair) 7 May+Minonk Sewage Lagoon, Woodford, IL 8 MayFort Loudoun Lake, Knox, TN 9 MaySpring Valley Wildlife Area, Greene/Warren, OH 9 MayIosco, MI 13-28 MayGloucester, MA yard 15-23 MayMingo, MO 23 MayGreat Pond, Easton MA 26 May** The Easton bird was possibly the Gloucester individual; thesites are 77 kilometers (48 miles) apart.

Figure 6. Unprecedented numbers of Dickcissels invaded Florida in spring 2010, most making landfall along the Gulf coast in lateApril. These are six of a flock of seven photographed at Fort De Soto Park, Pinellas county 26 April 2010; two days later, there were 62at the park. Photograph by Lyn Atherton.

Figure 7. one of three found in Kentucky during the first week of May 2010 following a strong low-pressure system that moved through the eastern United States 1-2 May, this Purple Gallinule waspresent 4-8 (here 5) May in southern Warren county. Photograph by David Roemer.

Figure 8. A canoe trip on 23 May 2010 into Monopoly Marsh at Mingo National Wildliferefuge, Wayne county, Missouri rewarded the photographer with this Purple Gallinule,the first report in the state in many years. Although the date is later than the 2-9 Maywindow in which most Purples appeared in the Midwest, the location was almost cer-tainly not checked by canoe earlier in the month! Photograph by Chris Barrigar.

chusetts, and its gallinule, may be best consid-ered outliers.Were any other extralimital birds recorded

in the gallinules’ swath? That’s difficult to say.

A female Anhinga flew over Sault Ste. Mariefrom Ontario into Michigan 1 May, perhapsencouraged by the southwesterlies ahead ofthe low; but no other Anhingas were seen out

of range this spring. The next day, thirteenBlack-bellied Whistling-Ducks turned up insouthern Ontario, but a perusal of otherrecords does not suggest a weather-relatedpattern: eleven in Indiana 19 April and one inthe same state 20 April, one in North Dakota11 May, twelve in South Carolina 14 May, tenin Ontario 15 May, five in Kentucky 20 May,six in Missouri 23 May, two in Kansas 26 May,five in Pennsylvania 30 May, five in upstateNew York 31 May, plus many in Tennesseeand many to follow in the Northeast in Juneand July. The species is doing well as a nesterin Georgia and in Florida, where, Bruce An-derson writes, “About a decade after the first2 Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks appeared atLake Apopka, 1200+ were estimated there 14-17 March.”We tend to think of displacements as in-

variably unfortunate events for birds. But, likethe eponymous heroine of Daniel Defoe’s TheFortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous MollFlanders, the sturdy Purple Gallinule tends tomake the best of displacements and direstraits, browsing in backyards, as in Indianaand Ohio and Massachusetts this season (andas I found my first vagrant; American Birds 35:810), or sewage ponds, but when they locatesuitable habitat, and each other, vagabondPurple Gallinules sometimes set up shop andbreed, as a pair did in Richland County, Ohioin summer 2010—see the next issue for thesteamy details.As Blake Maybank notes in his introduc-

tion to the Atlantic Provinces & St. Pierre etMiquelon report, individual birds of migrantspecies found weeks earlier than normal inspring can be very difficult to sort out. “Takefor example a Nashville Warbler in Nova Sco-tia 18 April this season. Was this a local bird



Figures 9, 10. These maps tell part of the story of the low-pressure system associated with records of extralimital Purple Gallinules inthe southeastern Midwest. The upper map shows weather systems’ positions at 0700 eST on Friday, 30 April 2010, the lower map atthe same time on Saturday, 1 May 2010. Southeasterly winds offered good passage from the Greater Antilles, where many Purpleswinter, to the Gulf coast states ahead of the passage of the low, but something—perhaps strengthening winds combined with de-veloping showers along the stationary front extending from the low—caused sixteen to fallout well inland, from western Tennesseethrough eastern Michigan (Table 1), an area of precipitation with strong south-southwesterly winds (Figure 10). interestingly, duringpassages of weaker tropical cyclones, entrained/fallout birds are often seen in bands of rain but not in equally windy areas with norain. Maps courtesy of and © National Centers for Environmental Prediction, United States National Weather Service, National Oceanicand Atmospheric Administration.

Figure 11. A White-winged Dove on Monhegan island, Maine 20May 2010 was the southernmost of four in the Northeast; otherswere in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. Nonewere reported in the Atlantic coast states north of Moreheadcity, North carolina, where one has been recorded off and on inspring for over a decade. Photograph by Geoff Dennis.


on territory three weeks early? Was it a mi-grant en route to more northerly breeding ar-eas? Was it an overshoot from more souther-ly breeding areas? Was it a storm-swept waif,such as this Region sees in spring on occa-sion? We can only guess.” Just as with somespecies’ departure dates in autumn, it has be-come clear that average arrival dates in springhave shifted, with many species detected soearly in northern areas as to cause real disbe-lief—in the past 10 years or so, reports of ex-tremely early Yellow-billed Cuckoos, EasternWood-Pewees, Eastern Kingbirds, and severalEmpidonax flycatchers have occasioned con-sternation, especially in this Internet age,when regional editors and records committeemembers know fewer observers personallyand when many people reporting birds seemunsure of the significance of their finds, par-ticularly the seasonally rare (early and late)birds. Making sense of reports of early arrivalsis probably more difficult now than ever. But in this Internet age, we have access to

remarkable resources on weather and climatethat may help us explain certain early arrivals.Maybank’s S.A. Box covering the late Apriland early May records is particularly instruc-tive. As a somewhat parochial birder, I tend towatch storm systems that seem most likely toproduce interesting birding where I live. Sothough I saw the big low-pressure systemsteaming across the continent (Figures 9, 10),and wondered what it might mean birdwise, Imissed the one that passed right over myhead, a small, fast-moving system that movedfrom the Carolinas and eastern Virginiastraight to Newfoundland in late April (Fig-ures 12, 13), which did not appear to havemuch effect on local birds.As we worked through the usual birds in

the usual places on the usual dates in the mid-Atlantic states in late April, very earlyNeotropical migrants began raining on east-ern Newfoundland and St. Pierre (Figure 14),some of these birds a whopping three weeksahead of schedule. We are fortunate, now, thatwe have plenty of context for such an event,with analysis at our fingertips from pastspring seasons in Atlantic Canada (e.g.,McLaren and McLaren 2009). But I don’tthink that’s the entire story with Canada’s ear-ly birds. Certainly, low-pressure systems canand do entrain birds and move them to sitesthat are far from their migratory goals; thisseems particularly true of birds migratingover water and probably birds making at leastpart of that flight nocturnally. But there areother aspects of weather that make passage—say, from the Bahamas to the coastal South-

east—perilous for Neotropical migrants. Lookback at Figures 9, 10, simplified maps for theperiod just following the late April low. Thegeneral set-up looks something like that insummertime: a large high-pressure area is

over Bermuda, one that would persist forsome time. This kind of map means thatwinds might initially be favorable (southeast-erly) for such migrants but begin to have anunfavorable (westerly) component at higher

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Figures 12, 13. These surface weather maps provide some idea why birders on Newfoundland and nearby islands recorded a great di-versity of Neotropical migrants much earlier than usual, as well as detecting some species that nest well to the south of the region. inthe upper image (1900 eST, 26 April), a low-pressure system has moved up from the carolinas to the Virginia coast, where it is aboutto move offshore. in the second image (1000 eST, 27 April, the center of the low is east of New england, with offshore winds to thesouth of the center, onshore winds to the north. Maps courtesy of and © National Centers for Environmental Prediction, United StatesNational Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.


latitudes, particularly when there is a low sit-ting offshore just to the north, which normal-ly intensifies the offshore flow. And so thoughmany of the birds identified as “very early” inearly May in Newfoundland could surely havebeen brought there by a fast-moving low inApril, it is plausible that some were shuttledoffshore by the Bermuda high, then camearound the east side of the low sitting in theGulf of Maine. The staggered dates of discov-ery don’t help us know whether that’s thecase, as the birds could have been present forseveral days before being found.Nevertheless, I do not believe that the

bread-and-butter early arrivals got unlucky inthis way. Take, for instance, all the many,many early dates logged in southern NewEngland this year, spanning most of the sea-son. Mark Szantyr’s regional report ably cap-tures the astonishment of many veteran bird-ers in those parts. These birds were surely notall whisked onshore by a conspiracy of un-pleasant weather systems: they were part of apattern, an uneven but still startling pattern,of increasingly early arrivals in spring. AsSteve Dinsmore (2002) argued not too longago, this emerging pattern of earlier arrivalsdoes not absolve us of the duty to document

outlandishly early birds; however, in somecases, we might relax our disbelief aboutthem, at least long enough to find out if thereare photographs or other supporting docu-mentation! Such reports nowadays have be-come so commonplace that we cannot sum-marize or analyze them here, and distinguish-ing the accurate from the wishful reports isalone a daunting and time-consuming task inmany regions. Though certainly some mi-grants move northward during episodes ofstrong southerly winds—as ahead of ourstrong System 2 (Figures 9, 10)—such eventsdo not appear to account for arrivals that are


Figure 16. The spring of 2010 was fascinating not just for the eastward (andnortheastward) displacement of passerines and species such as Swallow-tailed Kites and Purple Gallinules: there were some splendid records of shore-birds well east of typical migration corridors, such as the unprecedentedspring flight of long-billed Dowitchers through ontario. This bird was beauti-fully photographed in flight at the famed Tip of Point Pelee, essex county on 6May 2010. Photograph by Ben F. DiLabio.

Figure 14. The appearance of this Prothonotary Warbler at St. Pierre 1-6 (here2) May 2010—the first confirmed for the French islands of St. Pierre etMiquelon—was almost certainly related to the passage of a low-pressure sys-tem offshore that passed quickly from the carolina coast directly to Newfound-land in the last days of April (Figures 12, 13). Photograph by Joel Detcheverry.

Figure 17. A nice yard bird if you can get one (or two), these Swallow-tailed Kites at Warwick, Bermuda 24 March 2010 werepart of a record-breaking season for the species in the northern caribbean and Bermuda. Photograph by Andrew Dobson.

Figure 15. During a severe cold spell in early May, swallows at numerous locations in southern ontario were grounded bythe hundreds. These swallows, mostly Bank with a few cliff and Tree Swallows, were at the Tip of Point Pelee, essexcounty on 8 May 2010. Photograph by Jean Iron.


in some cases two weeks ahead of historicalarrival dates. And we should point out thatthough spring was mostly balmy in the Eastin May, with leaf-out several weeks ahead ofaverage, there are always potential costs for

arriving early: the backside of a passing lowbrings northerly winds and cold tempera-tures, not beneficial to aerial insectivores inparticular (Figure 15).There are other apparent trends that bear

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Figure 19. This map depicts surface weather features at 0400 PST on 22 May 2010. The strong low-pressure system centered overWyoming brought northerly winds over a large area of the West, from the rockies west to the Pacific coast. These winds were verylikely in part responsible for concentrations of several species, among them Gray Flycatcher and Black Swift. Maps courtesy of and ©National Centers for Environmental Prediction, United States National Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Figure 18. common Black-hawks were found at some surprising places in Texas in spring 2010, including in the Panhandle, the SouthPlains, and the Blackland Prairies. This adult at Fayette reservoir, Fayette county 30 March through 9 (here 1) April represented a firstrecord for the Blackland Prairies. Photograph by Steve McDonald.

Figure 22. This Acorn Woodpecker, present at feeder in Prince-ton from 24 (here) through 28 May 2010, represented a thirdrecord for British columbia and for canada. Photograph by Chris Charlesworth.

Figure 21. This Black Swift was part of a flock of exactly twentyover Point loma, San Diego county on 22 May 2010, when amajor flight of the species was detected in southern californiacounties north to the Santa Ynez Mountains of Santa Barbaracounty. This image shows the diagnostic slightly forked tail andwhite flecking on the forehead. Photograph by Matt Sadowski.

Figure 20. Gray Flycatchers made a better-than-average show-ing in the Pacific coastal states during spring 2010 migration,with a peak count of 29 at the San Joaquin experimentalrange, Madera county, california 23 April 2010 (this individualphotographed there 27 April). This Sierra foothill locality consis-tently produces the highest spring numbers in Northern califor-nia. A month later, an “epic” fallout of Gray Flycatchers was doc-umented in eastern oregon, with some observers reporting 500or more seen in a day! Photograph by Gary Woods.

It is bracing to think of five of these beautiesflying northwestward from Grand Bahama to-ward Florida 28 February—into a 25-knotheadwind. Practically a pelagic kite! Finally,we should include here at least one tokensouthern raptor whose appearances fartherand farther north are not at all associated withsingular weather phenomena but are veryprobably related to the warming climate:Common Black-Hawk (Figure 18). Alongwith a few Short-tailed, Harris’s, White-tailed,Gray, and Zone-tailed Hawks, black-hawksappear to be pioneering very slowly north-ward, and yet another appeared in Colorado,an adult at Fountain Creek Regional Park inEl Paso County 16 May. Who will find thefirst Colorado nest of this species?

System 3:Gray Flycatcher falloutSpring in the West, especially west of theRocky Mountains, is remarkably differentfrom spring in the Maritimes, Great Lakes, orGulf coast states. Although birders certainlydo converge on oases of vegetation, hoping tofind migrants of all sorts, they rarely descendby the hundreds on coastal spots, waiting forthousands of tired, hungry migrants that havejust made a dangerous crossing of open water.Along the coast, there are numerous points ofland that offer excellent seawatching, as wellas concentrating points for migrants (includ-ing those coming from offshore), but thecoastline for much of its extent is geographi-cally more uniform than much of the Atlanticseaboard. California’s answer to Cape Codmight be Southeast Farallon Island!Still, the rules of fallouts apply in the West

as well. When a very large low-pressure areaswept across the Rockies on 22 May, it left awake of mostly northerly winds that extend-ed from British Columbia to southern Cali-fornia (Figure 19). Even so late in the sea-son, contrary winds can be good for ground-ing some of the later migrants on the move—especially where combined with precipita-tion. Looking at our weather map for thepredawn hours of that day, we see that south-eastern Oregon has a large patch of green onit. Snow! Birding the lonely Harney Basin,which marks the northwestern corner of theGreat Basin, Rich Hoyer and others that dayencountered hundreds of grounded GrayFlycatchers, not a species one expects to seein such numbers (Figure 20). Many of thebirds were weak, and some perished on road-ways. Interestingly, this species was the mostprevalent migrant observed that day; theremust have been a large push of Grays around


watching but that will perhaps fizzle. One in-teresting aspect of spring 2010 was the abun-dance of reports of mostly western shorebirdsin the eastern third of the continent, includ-ing the interior. Wilson’s Phalarope, WesternWillet, Hudsonian Godwit, Long-billed Dow-itcher (Figure 16), and Baird’s Sandpipermade appearances, sometimes in numbers,over a very large part of the continent this sea-son, from Ontario to Mississippi, with someeven out to the East Coast. These records mayhave little connection to one another, as theyare spread out over time, but one has to won-

der whether the strong westerly flow, both atthe surface and aloft, had something to dowith this phenomenon, which has receivedcomment in several recent spring seasons aswell. (Not included in this list, necessarily,would be Florida’s Surfbird and baueri Bar-tailed Godwit, though westerlies surelyplayed some part in their vagrancy, at somepoint.) One might wonder similarly about theexceptionally numerous records of Swallow-tailed Kite (Figure 17) east of normal, fromBermuda and the northern Caribbean islands,which spanned the better part of seven weeks.


Figure 24. A complete shock in far western Pennsylvania, two Arctic Terns were seen passing Dashields Dam on the ohio river inwestern Allegheny county on the afternoon of 29 May 2010, providing a first for both Allegheny and Beaver counties. Photograph byGeoff Malosh.

Figure 23. These Arctic Terns were among 64 counted off Ponce de leon inlet, Volusia and Brevard counties, Florida 15 May 2010. Thisnumber was greater than the total of all individuals previously reported in Florida. Photograph by Michael Brothers.


20 May, just before the winds shifted andrain/snow set in. Northerly winds persistedin the Pacific Northwest for almost a week,and coastal observers in Oregon attributedseveral records to the wind and rain, amongthem 200 Yellow Warblers that fell out atCascade Head 27 May and a fancy LarkBunting at Coos Bay 22 May.Well to the south, in southernmost Califor-

nia, the winds were lighter, but from sites be-tween Point Loma, which juts out on thenorth side of San Diego Bay, to Santa Barbara’smountains, a remarkable flight of over 1000Black Swifts was recorded 22-23 May (Figure21). One might guess that northerly windsand (on the coast) the “marine layer” of over-cast skies brought these high-flying birds low-er; very likely, too, the migrants grew tiredand hungry bucking headwinds and descend-ed to forage a bit as they moved northward.Normally, we don’t think of birders in San

Diego linked to birders in North Dakota by astorm system, but take a look at eastern NorthDakota, on the warm side of the low but alsowith wet weather. Western Great Lakes re-gional editor Peder Svingen was birding theDevil’s Lake area that day and counted awhopping 4256 Ruddy Turnstones 22 May, astate high count. Farther west, DavidTrochlell notes that the unseasonably cool,wet weather brought “numerous and dramat-ic fallouts of migrants.” In southern BritishColumbia, which was under the influence ofa lesser low-pressure area as well, theprovince’s third Acorn Woodpecker visited afeeder 24-28 May (Figure 22). This bird was

almost certainly not actively migrating andgrounded at the time but rather part of a low-level, very broad dispersal of the species thatstretches back many months; nevertheless,the unpleasant weather might have encour-aged the bird to attend the feeder, where itcame to birders’ attention.

Noted in briefArctic Tern • Since at least the early 1990s,we have learned much about the migration ofArctic Tern through the western North At-lantic, where once thought to be a rare mi-grant. Lee and Cardiff (1993) summarized thefive-dozen records in the Southeast through1991, narrowing the window of spring migra-tion mostly to the month of May, with peakpassage in the latter half of May. Since thattime, pelagic birders and seawatchers fromthe Atlantic side of Florida to Long Islandhave found that sustained onshore winds, es-pecially northeasterly and easterly winds, of-ten produce numbers of Arctic Terns, where-as periods of westerly winds yield very fewrecords of the species. In contrast to spring2009, spring 2010 had little in the way of on-shore winds, but there were brief exceptions,and in all such cases, Arctic Terns appeared,sometimes in record numbers. Florida seabirders tallied 64 Arctic Terns,

a record-high count, off Ponce de Leon Inlet15 May during a period of easterlies (Figure23); four were off Delaware 26 May; and upto 40 were tallied in the last week of May offHatteras, North Carolina, with a peak upabout 20 on 28 May, when eight were seen

off Chatham County, Georgia as well. On-shore, one was at Charlestown, New Hamp-shire along the Connecticut River 19 May,one at Moriches Inlet, Long Island, NewYork 23 May, up to four were in VirginiaBeach, Virginia 19-21 May, and one hungaround Fort Macon State Park, North Caroli-na 27-28 May. On a few days in mid- and lateMay 2010, “back door” cold fronts were ac-tive between Virginia and southern NewEngland. These are cold fronts that approachthe Atlantic coast from the east or northeast,rather than the west or northwest, and typi-cally bring onshore winds and sometimesrain, as cool maritime air interacts withwarmer air from land. While most of the on-shore/inshore records of Arctic Tern weremade during such conditions, the pelagicrecords were more variable—the peak offHatteras, for instance, came on southwester-ly winds, though winds had been northeast-erly the day before. The bottom line forcoastal birders who hear the phrase “backdoor” on the weather forecast: you need tobe out that back door. And what of the twoArctic Terns on the Ohio River in southwest-ern Pennsylvania 29 May (Figure 24)—just alucky interception of migrants passing overthe interior, birds that were brought down bya late-season cool front? Probably. But thecomplex combination of high- and low-pres-sure systems offshore may well have meantthat these birds followed prevailing winds,moving inland somewhere in the Carolinas,then northward up the Ohio River Valley.Rare interior records dot the eastern interior,

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Figure 25. on little egg island bar, Georgia, this large Brown Pelican withbright red pouch shocked researchers with the Georgia Department of Naturalresources 16 April 2010; the bird was relocated just once during further surveysthere, but it was not clear that it nested locally. Photograph by Brad Winn.

Figure 26. Possibly indicative of the Pacific subspecies californicus, this red-pouched Brown Pelican was found in a largenesting colony on Queen Bess island in Barataria Bay just north of Grand isle, Jefferson Parish, louisiana 6 May 2010. inthe past, about 3000 pelicans nested here. This small island, ringed with crude oil, can be seen in video shot by AndrewWheelan (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUVkBPGxAo0>). Many of the season’s most upsetting photographs ofoiled Brown Pelicans were taken in this vicinity, just after this image was taken. Photograph by Donna L. Dittmann.

and almost all are from late May. As in allbirding, it pays to be armed with such distri-butional data before heading out the door!Increasingly, eBird is the way to locate andlearn such arcana.

The “Iceland Express” • In Newfoundland,where Arctic Terns are familiar nesters, the lo-cal birders look to the east for their uncom-mon birds—and to weather forecasts fromacross the Atlantic. Their communicationwith colleagues in Greenland, Iceland, andIreland, and their ability to anticipate weath-er-related bird events, are admirable. In April2010, regional editor Bruce Mactavish lookedat the big picture in the North Atlantic (usingthe sophisticated but very accessible Met Of-fice website for weather maps, <http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/surface_pressure.html>) and posted his thoughts to the “NFBirds” listserve 24 April: “This morning, fan-tastic winds blowing from Scotland/Ireland toIceland and to eastern Newfoundland. Euro-pean Golden-Plovers should occur because ofthis. Check fields, lawns by the coast, light-houses, ball fields, school yards. Any shore-bird is likely to be a good one. A group of uswill be searching at Cape Bonavista on Sun-day. It will be surprising if we come backempty handed. These are exceptional winds.We often get a few European Golden-Ploversarriving on less obviously good winds. April26 has been the magic date with the biggestflocks over the past three decades. The weath-er set up and timing don’t get better than thisforecast. Be part of it.” Those who heeded thecall were not disappointed. From the next dayforward, a Northern Lapwing, nearly fifty Eu-ropean Golden-Plovers, a Black-tailed God-wit, and a Whimbrel of the nominate sub-species were found, with an unconfirmed re-port of Common Redshank as well.

Pacific pelicans east? • On 16 April 2010,Brad Winn and Tim Keyes of Nongame Con-servation Section of the Georgia Departmentof Natural Resources saw a big Brown Pelicanwith a red pouch on Little Egg Island bar,Georgia, among the local Brown Pelicans, andsent in a very nice photograph of the bird(Figure 25). Having never seen a similar birdin the Carolinas or Chesapeake Bay region, Iwas taken aback and began asking researchersand regional editors for their take on thisbird. What ensued was a fascinating, if incon-clusive, set of exchanges that revealed howlittle we know about this conspicuous andwell-researched species.In The Sibley Guide to Birds (2000), Cali-

fornia’s nesting Brown Pelicans (subspeciescalifornicus) are accurately depicted as havingbrilliant poppy-red pouches in high breedingcondition, whereas Atlantic (subspecies caro-linensis) nesters, like the small nominate birdsof the Caribbean, have mostly grayish pouch-es (see also Schreiber et al. 1989). Mark Lock-wood, Brush Freeman, John Arvin, and othersin Texas report that they see numerous red-pouched birds annually in their colonies, andBruce Anderson notes that reports of singlebirds, at least, are also annual in Floridacolonies. I inquired of Steve Cardiff and Don-na Dittmann as to whether such birds occurin Louisiana—and they promptly went outand found one (Figure 26)! Harry Armistead,who has had a hand in banding thousands ofpelicans in the mid-Atlantic region, has notseen such a bird, he reports.These red-pouched Gulf coast pelicans

have apparently been called variant carolinen-sis (Shields 2002) rather than birds from thePacific (or birds with some californicusgenes). In looking into the band returns, it’sclear that Atlantic Brown Pelicans from Gulfcolonies have made it across the Isthmus ofTehuantepec to reach the Pacific coast ofMexico (<http://www.fws.gov/breton/peli-can_web/pelican_maps.html>), and indeedthe last American Ornithologist’s UnionCheck-list to treat subspecies, in 1957, identi-fied Brown Pelicans breeding from southernMexico to northern Peru as belonging to sub-species carolinensis, so the evidence of geneflow across the isthmus should not be tooshocking. Bruce Peterjohn was kind enoughto check the U.S. Bird Banding Laboratory’sdatabase for band recoveries and found thatof 1246 recoveries of Californian or north-western Mexican Brown Pelicans, three camefrom Texas, two from the Florida Gulf coast,and one from the Atlantic coast of centralFlorida. There were additional recoveries ofPacific birds from the Gulf shores in Mexico,where Shields (2002) also mentions a sightrecord of californicus. Given the stunning re-cent increases in wandering Brown Pelicansin the interior Southwest (east to Texas) andinterior East (northwest to Minnesota), itseems likely that pacificus Brown Pelicans endup in the Gulf through the deserts, not justacross the isthmus. That’s not to say that allred-pouched birds documented in the Gulfare from Pacific populations, but it’s a very in-teresting question that has not been exploredscientifically, as far as I can determine.Whatever the story of this individual bird

in Georgia, or indeed of red-pouched birds inthe Gulf and Atlantic, our “Practiced Eye

Award” for the season goes to Brad Winn andTim Keyes for spotting and documentingtheir bird in Georgia, apparently a first forthat state and the northernmost photographicrecord for the Atlantic thus far.

The SpillAfter news of the Deepwater Horizon disasterstruck on 20 April 2010, I began the next daytrying to find out as much as possible aboutimpacts on birds, from as many sources as Icould locate. The intent was to publish a Spe-cial Interregional Report, such as we havedone for natural disasters, giving readers con-crete numbers, dates, and locations for birdsseen oiled, whether alive or not. After severalfrustrating months of hitting numerous stonewalls and dead ends, I have all but given upthe expectation that we will ever have even aclear understanding of what really happened,and what is still happening, on the Gulf coast,in the Gulf, and in adjacent waters.Those of us trying to find out about the

spill’s impacts are told by our governmentrepresentatives—called “trustees” in the legalproceedings that will unfold in years ordecades to come—that bird corpses consti-tute evidence and are thus subject to eviden-tiary rules that prohibit public access to them.The early lists of oiled birds that circulatedover the summer included “White-throatedLoon” and “Northern Tennet,” alongside re-ports of nesting Sanderlings. Available as thespill progressed was only a partial list pub-lished at the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Servicesite: <http://www.fws.gov/home/dhoilspill/collectionreports.html>. Black Oystercatcherremains on the most recent list. Bird expertshired by BP P.L.C. and other parties duringthe spill were compelled to sign confidential-ity agreements and instructed not to commu-nicate to the public what they recorded,whether the extent of oil or the wildlife af-fected by it. In the Gulf, seabird and marinemammal researchers were apparently not per-mitted anywhere near the oil spill site itself.Many qualified individuals who offered tovolunteer in efforts to survey birds wereturned away, and those who attempted tolearn for themselves the extent of the devasta-tion found access to most of the coastal areasblocked. Because so much of Louisiana’scoastline is accessible only by water, very fewpeople in the conservation community wit-nessed firsthand the extent of oiled islands,coastlines, marshes, and wildlife.Many people, including many who are not

members of the American Birding Associa-tion, sent donations to the Association, and



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all of this money went directly to the Gulf ef-forts to help birds there. We did this despiteour dread that it was too little, despite ourcollective sense of powerlessness to right aterrible and ongoing wrong. Thousands ofpeople contributed to wildlife conservationorganizations around the country, and someof these, too, sent representatives to the Gulf.Whatever the future of any information

gathered, my confidence in its accuracy is al-ready not high, and the final Natural ResourceDamage Assessment may be a long time incoming. That assessment, and related plans forrestoration of Gulf habitats, could take years tofinalize and many more years to implement,especially if litigation is required to have BPP.L.C. pay damages and for restoration work.The protracted legal battles surrounding theoil spill in Prince William Sound in 1989,which involved perhaps a tenth of the amountspilled in the Gulf, made their way to theSupreme Court and extended well into 2008,by which time Exxon had reduced punitivedamages to be paid by almost 90%.As most readers know, the American Bird-

ing Association did something unusual in re-sponse to the spill: it helped fund an inde-pendent, investigative journalist, AndrewWheelan, who almost daily produced firm ev-idence of deep problems with every aspect ofthe response to the spill, from the dumping ofmillions of gallons of toxic, carcinogenic dis-persants in the Gulf, to the almost completefailure of the recovery efforts for affectedbirds, to BP P.L.C.’s successes in halting infor-mation-gathering and even basic oil clean-upin critical bird nesting areas. His findingswere widely disseminated via Internet and na-tional news media, including CNN. Membersof the mainstream media widely acknowl-

edged Drew’s role as one of the very few voic-es of truth and reason on the Gulf coast overthe summer, and as a David among multipleGoliaths. If there was a silver lining to theevent, it was the realization that old-fash-ioned grassroots reporting, combined withthe convenience of the Internet, could at leastexpose shameless activities of a major multi-national corporation. Perhaps even more dismaying than the oil

company’s actions, the U.S. government’s de-cisions before, during, and after the spill haveshowcased incompetence, passivity, bureau-cratic sluggishness, and duplicity. The cherryon top came 2 August 2010, with the Obamaadministration’s announcement that “govern-ment and independent scientists” had report-ed that the “vast majority’” of the five millionbarrels of crude released into the Gulf hadevaporated or been burned, skimmed, dis-persed, or recovered by BP P.L.C. from thewellhead. At a White House conference thatweek, Jane Lubchenco, administrator of theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminis-tration, claimed that “at least 50 percent ofthe oil that was released is now completelygone from the system, and most of the re-mainder is degrading rapidly or is being re-moved from the beaches.” Scientists frommany disciplines disputed these claims al-most immediately; they received a solemn fewparagraphs in mass-media reports. Spinsteamrolled science. The destruction of somuch that we value, so much that we havefought for over the decades, was declared adead issue, in an effort to “get past this thing”before mid-term elections in November.We conclude the essay with images of oiled

shorebirds, taken by one of our own on theGulf, Donna Dittmann. We could not bring

ourselves to publish the many more disturb-ing photographs that caused us nightmaresthrough the summer.

AcknowledgmentsI thank Kimball Garrett, Bruce Peterjohn,Steve Cardiff, Donna Dittmann, Bruce Ander-son, Mark Lockwood, and Harry Armisteadfor assistance with many aspects of this essay.

Literature citedAmerican Ornithologists’ Union [A.O.U.].1957. Check-list of North American Birds.Fifth edition. Lord Baltimore Press, Balti-more, Maryland.

Lee, D. S., and S. W. Cardiff. 1993. Status ofthe Arctic Tern in the coastal and offshorewaters of the southeastern United States.Journal of Field Ornithology 64: 158-168.

Dinsmore, S. J. 2002. The Changing Seasons:Musings of a migrant birder. North Ameri-can Birds 56: 270-276.

McLaren, I. A., and J. D. McLaren. 2009. Ananalysis of unusual flights of Neotropicalmigrants to northeastern North America inApril 2009. North American Birds 63: 364-368.

Schreiber, R. W., E. A. Schreiber, D. W. An-derson, and D. W. Bradley. 1989. Plumagesand molts of Brown Pelicans. Natural Histo-ry Museum of Los Angeles County Contri-butions to Science no. 402.

Shields, M. 2002. Brown Pelican (Pelecanusoccidentalis), in: The Birds of North AmericaOnline (A. Poole, ed.). Cornell Lab of Or-nithology, Ithaca, New York. Retrieved fromthe Birds of North America Online: <http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/609>.

Sibley, D. A. 2000. The Sibley Guide to Birds.Knopf, New York. n


Figure 28. By mid- to late May 2010, many migrating shorebirds such as Sanderlingsand Dunlins were becoming fouled by oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster off thelouisiana coast, from the Grand isle area west to the isles Dernieres. Such was the casewith this Sanderling at Trinity island, Terrebonne Parish 14 May 2010. Photograph byDonna L. Dittmann.

Figure 27. This oiled American oystercatcher, at Trinity island, isles Dernieres, Terrebonne Parish 14 May 2010,was representative of a high percentage of individuals scrutinized on louisiana’s outer barrier islands duringmid- to late May after substantial amounts of oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill had begun washing ashorewest of the Mississippi river delta. Photograph by Donna L. Dittmann.

The Changing Seasons / Spring 2010

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