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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