Thursday, September 4, 2008

Cormorant quandary

These are the rest of the pics from yesterday's NW winds (I'm having trouble getting blogger to put more than 3 in a post right now).

This was the tail end of a good sized flock of cormorants that flew over that I was late getting on because I was walking down the beach to try to confirm some distant shorebirds (   ... they were sanderlings).  I looked up hoping they were geese so I could look for a smaller bird as I still need cackling, but they were cormorants, no use right? Wrong!!!  The bird 3rd from the right near the end of the flight line was clearly much smaller than the other birds.  Unfortunately I was late getting on them and never saw the bird well on a full side-view.  SO, this is either a runty double-crested (similar to how Canada geese sometimes have runty birds that can be mistaken for cacklers if plumage details are not considered), or a 2nd state record neotropic.  Probability would seem to favor the former, though I've never noticed a runty cormorant before, something I'll have to continue to watch for...



This is the juvie turnstone I was watching when the buff-breasted appeared.  It seemed to focus on little clumps of zebra muscles in its foraging.

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