Diario de billhubick

The distinctive Black Skimmer is a rare but regular visitor to Monterey County.
They're most frequently detected in the northern part of the county around Elkhorn Slough, including Moss Landing and Zmudowski SB. I found one roosting at Jetty Road at low tide last Saturday (7/27).

If you're first learning about skimmers, you're almost certainly interested in that unique bill. Black Skimmers fly with that longer lower mandible skimming just below the surface of the water, snapping shut when they encounter a fish! Check out videos at eBird: https://media.ebird.org/catalog?taxonCode=blkski&mediaType=video&sort=rating_rank_desc&regionCode=US-CA

Don Roberson notes the following in "Monterey Birds" (2002): "Black Skimmer began a dramatic range expansion into California in the mid-1960s. The first individuals were in coastal southern California in 1962, and there was nesting at the Salton Sea within ten years, including breeding at San Diego by 1976, and the formation of a colony in coastal Orange County by 1985... During this range expansion, two adults flying south past Pt. Pinos on 26 Aug 1971 (W. Reese) established the first MTY record."

📸: (c) Karen Kreiger - Monterey Co., California (7/9/2022).
eBird report - https://ebird.org/checklist/S114803355

• Bill

Woohoo! MBP and our partners like MOS are delighted to announce the kickoff of the Turkey Point and Dans Rock Bird Counts.

Our amazing counters will once again document fall migration each day from August 1st through November 30th. The data we collect is invaluable, an important window into eastern U.S. migration that becomes more valuable with each passing year of data. The data is shared in near real-time via Trektellen (embedded on the MBP web site), daily in eBird, and seasonally in the peer-reviewed journal Maryland Birdlife.

Please welcome new lead counters Josh Ward (Dans Rock) and Levi Parker (Turkey Point). They'll be supported by primary alternates Ben McGrew and Aaron Reb. Many others will lend support, including nearly all of our previous counters, who are all passionate about documenting bird migration and about 2024 being another big success. We'll also be in close communication with our collaborators at Cape May, New Jersey.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Turkey Point is closed to public access until further notice due to ongoing construction. We spent most of the year expecting an inevitable gap year in the Turkey Point data, but received a last-minute approval to proceed, which is awesome. We'll keep you posted on any updates.

DAY 1 HIGHLIGHTS: Aaron Reb is covering the first days at Dans Rock and had GOLDEN-WINGED WARBLER, an early SHARP-SHINNED HAWK, and a PURPLE MARTIN (rare in Allegany Co.). Levi Parker had a strong showing of early migrants!

We'll have the 2024 MBP pages live soon. Near real-time updates via Trektellen are already flowing:

Dans Rock
https://www.trektellen.org/count/view/3411/20240801

Turkey Point
https://www.trektellen.org/count/view/3157/20240801

You can see our previous season reports linked here on the MBP bibliography:
https://www.marylandbiodiversity.com/bibliography.php#bird_counts.

Any support is truly appreciated as we continue to reach for greater impact! Please consider a donation and spread the word about these counts!
https://marylandbiodiversity.com/donate

📸: (c) Carl Engstrom - Sunrise at the Dans Rock Bird Count, Allegancy Co., Maryland.

Bill

I love how early we can detect migrant Red-breasted Nuthatches in some years in western Maryland. Ben McGrew already had one at the Dans Rock Bird Count yesterday (8/6). Neat!

📸: (c) Mark Johnson - Anne Arundel Co., Maryland (10/11/2016).

More at Maryland Biodiversity Project:
https://marylandbiodiversity.com/view/1202

Bill

Please join us in welcoming Josh Ward as our 2024 lead counter at the Dans Rock Bird Count in Allegany County. We're excited to work with Josh and know he's going to do an awesome job. Here's a short bio that will be up on the MBP Dans Rock page in the next day or so.

Welcome, Josh!

A native of Howard County, Josh has been fascinated by the natural world - birds in particular - since before he could even talk. He has considered himself a birder since the first time he saw a Prairie Warbler singing in an overgrown field behind Triadelphia Reservoir. Those woods remain one of his favorite places to explore! Josh spent nearly five years living in the Blue Ridge of southwestern Virginia while pursuing a degree in wildlife conservation from Virginia Tech, with which he graduated in the fall of 2022. This time spent in Appalachia inspired within him a deep love of all the wild places the world has to share. This love has taken him to many special places, from breeding bird surveys in Virginia to Marbled Murrelet surveys in Oregon, and from shorebird nest-searching in the Alaskan Arctic to assisting with big cat research in Belize. He is excited to once again be birding in the mountains he has come to love, this time in his home state of Maryland. Outside of the natural sciences, Josh is a passionate writer and composer of poems about his experiences in nature. He hopes not just to contribute some of this work towards the conservation and education goals of MBP, but to one day make it his career. He is honored for this opportunity to contribute valuable data to the field of ornithology, and welcomes anything the mountains of Maryland have to offer him this season.

Bill

Today we introduce our other lead counter for the 2024 season, Levi Parker. Welcome, Levi!
Levi is our lead counter for the Turkey Point Bird Count, which is located at the top of the Chesapeake Bay at Elk Neck SP. Please note that Turkey Point remains closed to the public until further notice during ongoing construction. (Big thanks to all involved for making the 2024 bird count possible despite the challenges!)

Levi is a birder from the Cincinnati, Ohio area, and is excited to lead the Turkey Point Morning Flight Count for 2024. From a young age, Levi turned his completionist attitude into the natural passion of birding via his school’s birding club, and evolved into a prolific lister in Southwest Ohio. He’s surveyed Black-backed Woodpeckers in California and has volunteered as a guide for the Biggest Week In American Birding, and most of the time, he can be found birding his local spot, East Fork State Park. He hopes to further the legacy of Turkey Point, to contribute to the Maryland Biodiversity Project, and to find a bunch of awesome rarities. He’s honored to lead this count and to be giving the opportunity to translate the patterns of Maryland’s fall migration.

Bill

Sooty Shearwaters are one of the most widespread and abundant seabirds in the world. They are at or perhaps just past peak abundance offshore right now, often appearing in flocks and flight lines that defy most counters' abilities to count, sometimes to even estimate. Recently a group I was with estimated a minimum of 30,000 birds, sheepishly noting there were probably well over 100,000. They formed a dense and swirling band across the wide horizon, our eyes parsing the specks like "gnats" or "pepper". Sometimes you just have to marvel, and that's the best. We should celebrate this spectacle and cherish this continuing abundance of the world's oceans. There should be a Sooty Shearwater festivals in their honor. We should sing songs and write poems. When we float back down from the exultation, we should get to work promoting seabird studies and protecting our oceans, which face so many threats.

While so familiar here on the coast, "our Sooties" nest in the Southern Hemisphere during our local winter. They are wintering here in the northern hemisphere, completing the northern part of a grand figure-8 around the Pacific Ocean. These incredible seabirds may cover 40,000 miles each year. They can migrate over 1,000 miles in a day and dive over 200 feet below the surface in search of fish prey.

Support the Monterey Audubon Seawatch!
https://www.montereyaudubon.org/seawatch

Join us on the water on Sunday (8/11) with Alvaro's Adventures.
Pelagic dates for Alvaro's Adventures and Monterey Seabirds are below:
https://www.alvarosadventures.com/pelagic-dates-2024.html
https://www.montereyseabirds.com/

📸: (c) Blake Matheson - 9/12/2020 (close-up)
📸: (c) Brian Sullivan - 9/4/2017 (flock)

Bill