[va-bird] VA Beach Trip - large number of gannets

  • From: "Scott F. Bastian" <ScottNJill@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: VA-Bird <va-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 01:36:29 -0500

Hi VA Birders;

My family and I made a trip to VA Beach this past Sunday and Monday.

The birding highlight had to be the Northern Gannets we saw from our 17th hotel room balcony far out from the beach. First, we were very pleased to see snow on the beach Monday morning. Then a couple hours later we spotted the gannets. There must've been between five and ten thousand of them! I've never seen anything quite like it - 50 birds or more were diving into the surf every second; a couple thousand birds (easily) in one field of view. I took pictures, but the distance precluded anything real nice. Unbelievable.

Island one of the CBBT yielded one Purple Sandpiper, good numbers of Brant, Oldsquaw, Surf Scoters, Scaup, and Ruddy Turnstones.

Both Common and Red-throated Loons were in the surf. Gull numbers were low everywhere - didn't see even one Lesser Black-backed this trip.

Also nice to find were harbor porpoise, river otter, and good numbers of particular small shells (Jersey marginellas, augers, eastern nasas, cross-hatched lucines, et al) that we're often hard put to find at all.

Scott Bastian
Somerset County - SW PA

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  • » [va-bird] VA Beach Trip - large number of gannets