FreeLists / va-bird / [va-bird] Chesapeake Bay CBC results

[Phoebetria@xxxxxxx]

The ninth annual Chesapeake Bay Christmas Bird Count was held 26 December 
2002 in fair weather, with temperatures ranging between 34 and 48 degrees F.  
 The National Audubon Society website is malfunctioning, so I thought I'd 
post the results of this CBC here:

Common Loon  17
Red-throated Loon  54
Horned Grebe 5
Northern Gannet  860
Double-crested Cormorant 3
Great Cormorant  28
Brown Pelican  34
Great Blue Heron 3
Northern Pintail 5
Green-winged Teal 4
Mallard 3
Long-tailed Duck 14
Surf Scoter 2120
Black Scoter 1975
White-winged Scoter 38
Red-breasted Merganser  690
Bufflehead 7
Common Goldeneye 1 male
Lesser Scaup 9
Greater Scaup 1 male
scaup sp. 5
Common Eider 1 female
King Eider 1 male (found by Todd Day, seen by all at 0930)
Harlequin Duck 1 male
Ruddy Turnstone 8
Sanderling 4
Purple Sandpiper 41
American Oystercatcher 1
Bonaparte's Gull 5
Great Black-backed Gull 350
Lesser Black-backed Gull 12
Herring Gull 2200
Ring-billed Gull 2600
Glaucous x Herring Gull 1 first-winter CW (ph. 25 Dec, 28 Dec, m. ob.)
Thayer's Gull 1 ad. CW (ph. 28 Dec; found by Paul Lehman, Eileen Mathers)
California Gull 1 first-winter CW (ph. 25 Dec)
Forster's Tern 1
Peregrine Falcon 1
Merlin 1
American Pipit 2
White-throated Sparrow 1
Song Sparrow 1
Red-winged Blackbird 6
Cedar Waxwing 1
Brown-headed Cowbird 15

Also of note was a marvelous Harbor Seal that put on a show off Island 3 for 
several hours, at one point feeding on a large fish, possibly Menhaden.  
Thanks to all who came out for the Christmas cheer and great birding -- it 
was a happy occasion, blessed by weather perhaps *too* good for finding the 
numbers of gulls we hope for, but a Royal Flush on sea ducks this year, for 
the first time in years, made up for our misses of the rarer gull species on 
count day.  

Ned Brinkley
Cape Charles, VA 

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