[Bristol-Birds] Saturday vanguard features 5,000 Ring-billed Gulls !

  • From: "Wallace Coffey" <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "Bristol-birds" <bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2011 21:21:21 -0500













 An estimate 5,000 Ring-billed Gulls swarmed over South Holston Lake in
 Sullivan Co., TN, Saturday evening.  They sometimes seemed like a great, 
 white, insect hatch.  Birds stretched across areas a mile wide.  The density 
 was unusually high and consistent along perhaps 10 river miles from the dam 
 to the stateline near Musick's Campground.  There, numbers declined to about 
 300 birds.  It's likely a spring flight arrived to rest.  

 I was in the area a few hours earlier and saw many less.

 This is the largest flight I have observed in the region.  They were
 so numerous large groups not only sat on points but many settled on 
 covered boat slips near US 421 bridge.  In every, visible and
 adjacent cove, gull groups swirled. 

 The Northeast Tennessee record of 1,850 at Boone Lake in Feb 2003
 left with the wind.

 It was entertaining to watch fishermen, casting from slow-drifting
 boats, who seemed almost stranded in a feather storm, looking
 over their shoulder for Hitchcock.  I wondered if this flight had suddenly
 descended because the anglers were constantly looking up into the swirl 
 with amazement (or maybe looking for a break from droppings :-)
 
  It doesn't go without note
  that a dominant, high
  pressure system is 
  pushing north and east
  against our region. It 
  tracks behind a winter 
  storm which was kind.

  Prevailing southwest and
  westerly winds, are flowing
  thru the upper Tennessee
  River Valley at a steady
  speed between 10-15 mph.
 A constant during Saturday's daylight hours.  We have been under its influence
 now, for more than 24 hours. This a classic weather pattern which favors and 
 stimulates northern migratory flights.

 Over the southern states, birders are appropriately finding scoters, not
 to be denied by our live reports. One state list announced a flock of 50 Fox
 Sparrows.  Ah! One for someone's record book ! 

 A second state record caracara was seen yesterday by David Plumb south of 
 Magnolia Springs in Baldwin County, AL.

 Thousands of Sandhill Cranes are winging north over the landscape.  If you
 look up in what you might consider non-traditional Red-shouldered Hawk habitat
 of hillside pastures throughout  the region, you may find more than one 
 Red-shouldered flying low over the landscape.  They are migrating.

 If you didn't say "I get it!  Well, yes, spring migration is underway.  I 
wonder
 if we have many Hooded Mergansers hanging around the Bristol impoundments ?
 Someone go find a woodcock or two singing and flying on their mating grounds.
 It may seem early but not with this weather.  Great Horned Owl nests have eggs.
 So will a few Red-tailed Hawks in a week or two.

 Sunday should be another great day to be birding !  Don't stumble over the
 fields full of male American Robins, feeding almost anywhere.  The girls are 
 mostly still packing for the spring return.

 As the mariner says, "smooth sailing ahead" with temperatures constantly
 soaring towards spring-like, 70-degree days next weekend. 

 Let's go birding . . . .

 Wallace Coffey
 Bristol, TN

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