[birdky] Re: Weather and Birds -- Counterpoint (Beware ... VERY LONG ...)

I'm sure it's all just to 'chance'.  Check back in 1000 years and see what the 
verdict is.

David Roemer
Bowling Green

--- On Mon, 11/2/09, Palmer-Ball, Brainard (EEC) <Brainard.Palmer-Ball@xxxxxx> 
wrote:

> From: Palmer-Ball, Brainard (EEC) <Brainard.Palmer-Ball@xxxxxx>
> Subject: [birdky] Re: Weather and Birds -- Counterpoint (Beware ... VERY LONG 
> ...)
> To: "BIRDKY" <birdky@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Monday, November 2, 2009, 7:24 PM
> [birdky]
> Weather and Birds
>  
>  
>  
> 
> Eddie Huber, Tom Becker, myself,
> and others can attest to what has been on the Ohio River
> around Louisville during the past few weeks ... a big
> NOTHING! Regular checks of the usual hot spots have revealed
> even less of interest than normal, which makes the
> remarkable occurrence of birds at Barren River Lake recently
> even more unusual. Likewise, there didn't seem to be an
> unusually high detection rate of similar
> "northwestern" vagrants in the region 10-14 days
> ago; if anything there seems to have been fewer than normal.
> So if weather systems brought the rarities to Barren River
> Lake, why not other places? I'm sure there have been at
> least a few other examples in the region lately, but there
> are rare birds scattered about everywhere all the time.
> Also, I noted on the TN listserv just yesterday that 2
> California Gulls were reported at Pickwick Dam in southern
> TN over the weekend, although none were found in a search
> for gulls there the week before. Maybe it is just as likely
> that there is something going on with California Gulls
> rather than a particular weather system that has brought
> them to our region???
> If one was to try to explain the
> occurrence of southern Indiana's recent Green Violetear,
> two Say's Phoebes in Kentucky in 15 days, and a
> White-faced Ibis in Henderson County all in recent weeks, I
> suspect that a bunch of assumptions would have to be made
> and at least several contradictory trails could be followed
> through the weather maps. It is easy to find a relatively
> reasonable explanation for the presence of a certain vagrant
> in our region based on the weather, but it may be just as
> likely to inaccurately attribute such an occurrence to the
> weather. Weather systems almost always progress across North
> America from west to east, but there are just as many
> eastern vagrants showing up in the west right now ... and
> most of them are eastern passerines that are bucking the
> same weather systems that one might be fooled into
> attributing the appearance of western vagrants in the east
> to.
> This is not to say
> that weather systems don't greatly affect what birds we
> see in Kentucky and that they can have relatively
> predictable results. Waves of waterbirds, shorebirds, and
> warblers all appear throughout Kentucky during favorable
> migration conditions created by weather systems and they
> conversely may totally shut off during periods of
> unfavorable weather. The fun days are those when birds get
> fooled into thinking conditions along their path are great
> for migration, but they run into winds or precipitation
> moving in the opposite direction that result in massive
> fallouts. Extreme weather events such as the passing of
> tropical cyclones certainly explain the presence of some
> vagrants in a given region, but those are birds of very
> different habitats (coastal and especially pelagic) that are
> carried *totally* off course by remarkably large and
> extraordinarily strong wind fields into totally unfamiliar
> conditions for attempting to navigate. Beyond these
> well-known scenarios, I think there are many pitfalls in
> attempting to do too much analysis.
> As a brief side bar,
> it should be noted that coastal species including Brown
> Pelican, Gull-billed Tern, Royal Tern, Sandwich Tern, and
> Black Skimmer have been found somewhat regularly in the
> inland central US *not* as the result of any known tropical
> system and that the report of a Sandwich Tern in Kentucky 5
> September 2008 was by no means certainly attributable to the
> passage of the remnants of Hurricane Gustav. That system was
> downgraded to a tropical depression while it was still in
> Louisiana, and most all vagrants deposited by it were found
> in Arkansas and Oklahoma. The only waif I recall in our
> region was a frigatebird (a species that sometimes gets
> flung inland great distances by such systems) in central
> Illinois ... actually the day *before* the main depression
> came through.
> It is my
> belief that vagrants are around us all the time and it is
> more a factor of getting out and finding them than it is
> predicting their occurrence based on passing weather
> systems. For especially strong fliers like loons and gulls,
> vagrancy would seem to me to be more an issue of
> "choice" or "mis-wired internal
> navigation" than one being dictated by weather.
> Patterns of movements within species or groups of similar
> species -- and the changes and exceptions to these patterns
> over time -- can be quite interesting to follow. The easiest
> examples of such are irruptive winter finches like last
> winter's White-winged Crossbills. An environmental
> factor in the species' normal range (in that case a food
> deficiency) results in an abnormal movement. A less apparent
> one is Rufous Hummingbird; the pattern of occurrence for
> this bird in the southeast U.S. was a steady increase over
> the past 20 years until last year when for no explicable
> reason the pipeline shut off and all states in the southeast
> had many fewer and Kentucky had none for the first year in
> nine. During the past month to six weeks, Plegadis
> ibis of both species have been all over the region, perhaps
> the result of good breeding success, poor environmental
> conditions in their normal ranges, or some factor other than
> weather. The internet and state listservs now make keeping
> one's pulse on how these trends are unfolding each
> season much easier. Last winter it was quite fun to watch
> with great anticipation the southward progression of
> White-winged Crossbills on the listservs and then finally
> read that they had reached northern
> Kentucky!
> As noted above,
> besides simply getting out and playing the admittedly very
> fun game of "find the vagrant," one can likely
> improve his or her chances of recognizing the possibilites
> by taking note of each species' or group's migratory
> periods and patterns. Most birds are remarkable navigators
> with abilities that we are only beginning to appreciate as
> banding and transmitter data accumulate. Moreover, vagrancy
> typically occurs within windows of time for a given species;
> that is, for example, most waterfowl move south from
> mid-October through early December, so one would most expect
> to find a vagrant of most waterfowl species during that
> period of movement. Although the recent Mew Gull at Barren
> River Lake is Kentucky's first, Indiana, for example,
> has 7 records during fall, winter, and early spring
> including one on of all dates .... *18
> October* 1997! So perhaps this is just the
> beginning of the period during which one might expect a
> wayward migratory Mew Gull -- a species that, by the way,
> happens to be relatively difficult to distinguish and may be
> largely overlooked (and thus under-reported) among our many
> thousands of Ring-billed Gulls??? -- to occur in our region
> based on the time of this species' migratory period.
> 
> Something else that
> was very likely going on recently at Barren River Lake was
> the "Patagonia Rest Stop" effect ... when one rare
> bird is found, occurrence of birding increases there,
> resulting in more rarities being encountered. Certainly
> there have been numerous times over the past 20 years or so
> that folks have birded on the reservoir when weather
> conditions have been conducive to a fallout of vagrants from
> every region conceivable. David Roemer, himself, has likely
> birded Barren River Lake several hundred times over the
> years, but probably the three rarest birds ever to be found
> on the lake all occurred in a recent 10-day period. And had
> David not found the Pacific Loon -- at the time the rarest
> bird ever reported on the lake -- would he or anyone
> else have happened to bird the state park beach to
> find the Mew Gull a few days later?
> 
> One final thought
> ... something that does appear to be significant regarding
> vagrancy is that certain locations seem to have a magnitism
> for rarities. These tend to be "oasis" type places
> (patches of green in deserts or lakes in areas where there
> are no others) that stand out from the surroundings. And
> even some of these seem to outperform others. For example,
> there is a sewage treatment plant Indiana birders refer to
> as Wakarusa in the northern part of the state that has
> hosted the following shorebirds in recent years: Mountain
> Plover (Aug 2002), Sharp-tailed Sandpiper (Sept 2003),
> Curlew Sandpiper (22 May 2007), and Red-necked Stint (23 May
> 2007)... the stint was found by birders looking for the
> Curlew Sandpiper that had been found the day before ... can
> anyone say Patagonia Rest Stop?! To me that screams of
> inexplicable, just as the three rarest birds ever to be
> found on Barren River Lake occurring in 10 days in the
> latter half of October 2009 does. 
> In summary, I think
> my perspective remains that you can certainly *sometimes*
> predict when there's a chance to find something like
> Sooty Terns or an Audubon Shearwater on Kentucky Lake, or
> even a good fallout of waterfowl on the state's
> reservoirs, but it is a crap shoot to try to figure out when
> a Long-billed Murrelet is going to be on the Ohio River at
> Louisville, or a Little Stint is going to appear on a
> relatively postage-stamp sized flood retention basin in
> southern Jefferson County. Sometimes I think we may be more
> accurate to say that it happened so simply because [a] god
> made it that way :o)
> bpb,
> Louisville
> 
> 
> From:
> birdky-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of David Roemer
> Sent: Sat 10/31/2009 9:58 PM
> To: bird ky
> Subject: [birdky] Weather and Birds
> 
> 
> 
> Those who are interested in the
> correlation between weather and the occurrence of vagrant
> birds may enjoy the information presented in the links
> below. 
> 
> The first shows weather maps beginning a few days previous
> to the arrival of the recent west coast birds at Barren
> Reservoir.  A series of high pressure systems across
> western Canada where these birds breed and migrate through
> moved east and southeast into the midwest.  Winds ahead
> of a high resulting from clockwise rotation can push birds
> off to the south and southeast.  Click on the Next Day
> link at the top right of the page to follow the progress of
> these systems.  A contributing factor was the rainy
> weather that was experienced in Kentucky at that time which
> often results in grounding migrants.  Scroll down to
> the bottom of each page for a precipitation map for that
> day.  With birds like this on Barren it would be
> interesting to know what dropped out along the Ohio River
> and Ky/Barkley lakes during that period.
> 
> Pacific Loon, Mew Gull and California Gull  13-19
> October 2009
> http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/dailywxmap/index_20091008.html
> 
> Also of possible interest regarding seabird vagrants are
> maps accessed by the links below which tracked hurricanes
> and tropical storms.  These are last plotted as they
> weaken and are downgraded from tropical depression
> status.  These low pressure systems usually continue to
> travel to the north and east and can carry birds with
> them.  Below are some species which have occurred in
> Kentucky and maps of the weather systems associated with
> them.
> 
> Black-capped Petrels  4-5 October 1898
> http://www.stormpulse.com/hurricane-seven-1898
> 
> Band-rumped Storm-Petrel  July 1994
> http://www.stormpulse.com/tropical-storm-alberto-1994
> 
> Sooty Terns  4 October 2002
> http://www.stormpulse.com/hurricane-lili-2002
> 
> Audubon's Shearwater, Sooty Terns, probable Brown
> Noddy  12 July 2005
> http://www.stormpulse.com/hurricane-dennis-2005
> 
> Band-rumped Storm-Petrels 31 August 2005
> http://www.stormpulse.com/hurricane-katrina-2005
> 
> Sandwich Tern  5 September 2008
> http://www.stormpulse.com/hurricane-gustav-2008
> 
> David Roemer
> Bowling Green
> 
> 
> 
> 
>      
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