Although it's from the opposite coast and describes a phenomenon unlikely
to be seen by us (although we *do* get big coastal storms, perhaps with
some comparable effects), this was too interesting not to post on tweeters.
Van Remsen, from the LSU Museum of Natural History, kindly forwarded it to
me.

>Date: Tue, 16 Jul 96 15:02:08 CDT
>From: Remsen <NAJAMES at LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
>Subject: HURRICANE BERTHA'S BIRDS (PART 1) (fwd)
>To: Peter <phyga at jazz.ucc.uno.edu>
>Cc: Dennis <dpaulson at ups.edu>
>
>FYI - Van:
>
>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 23:00:33 -0400
>To: HURRICANE BERTHA NET <jwcoffey at tricon.net>
>From: jwcoffey at tricon.net (HURRICANE BERTHA NET)
>Subject: HURRICANE BERTHA'S BIRDS (PART 1)
>
>From: Ned Brinkley
>Date: Mon, 15 Jul 96 19:40:35 EDT
>Subject: Hurricane Bertha's Birds (PART 1)
>[LONG MESSAGE CONT. WITH PART 2]
>
>HURRICANE BERTHA'S PROGRESS THROUGH THE TIDEWATER AREA OF
>VIRGINIA: SEABIRDS AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS
>
>
>This is a compilation of everything I have been able to find out
>about the effects of this tropical cyclone on the Hampton Roads
>area (the confluence of the Elizabeth River, the James River, and
>the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and its associated river systems)
>in the Tidewater, Virginia, area. I will speculate shamelessly
>and will invite countertheories!
>
>First, here is a log of events of the three days (before, during,
>and after) that Tidewater area birders covered.
>
>Friday, 12 July 1996
>
>The storm was still nearly 200 miles south of Wilmington, NC,
>gathering strength in warm Gulf Stream waters.
>
>I arrived at Cape Henry (specifically 87th Street), Virginia
>Beach, from Charlottesville, VA, at 5:40 a.m. Bev Leeuwenburg
>arrived there from northern Virginia at about 9:00 a.m. We
>covered this spot, Rudee Inlet, Sandbridge Beach, and Little
>Island City Park (north of Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge)
>until about 4:10 p.m. Bob Anderson covered Cape Henry earlier in
>the afternoon and Little Island from about 4:30 until 6:00, when
>the winds became too strong to stand, even with shelter. I do
>not know of any other coverage on this day that preceded the
>storm.
>
>0550-0730 LOG Sky overcast, wind due E 25-35 knots
>
>SOUTHBOUND species
>
>Laughing Gull 340+
>Brown Pelican 39
>Royal Tern 23
>Common Tern 7
>Black Tern 1
>Herring Gull 2
>Ring-billed Gull 4
>Great Black-backed Gull 4
>Whimbrel 15 (noteworthy)
>Willet 26 (all apparently the nominate form)
>Black-bellied Plover 1
>
>NORTHBOUND species
>
>Band-rumped Storm-Petrel 1 (very noteworthy)
>Laughing Gull 4
>Red-necked Phalarope 1 (noteworthy)
>Black Skimmer 1 juv.
>Royal Tern 1
>Herring Gull 1
>
>
>After 0730, the push of terns and gulls and shorebirds stopped,
>and few birds were noted moving, other than 110 Laughing Gulls,
>which were now NORTHBOUND, with no exceptions.
>
>At Rudee Inlet (wind ENE 15-20 knots), we observed gulls at roost
>at the breakwall (including one second-summer Lesser Black-backed
>Gull) and terns feeding normally, including both Sandwich and
>Least Terns, which we had not seen at Cape Henry.
>
>By 11:00, we were at Sandbridge/Little Island (winds ENE shifting
>to ESE, variable 10-40 knots, highest in rain squalls), where we
>remained the rest of the day. We saw only what looked like
>normal gull and tern and pelican activity, and only 10 Whimbrel
>passing to the south. Noteworthy were 2 adult Roseate Terns from
>the fishing pier at Little Island, but I do not believe these to
>be storm-associated, as Don Schwab finds them annually in small
>numbers in this area, late July and early August, sometimes
>later. They have been considered rare migrants in Virginia.
>Despite powerful onshore flows of 15-40 knots at various times
>during the day, we saw no other tubenoses -- not even a Wilson's
>Storm-Petrel, which are usually fairly common in the inshore
>waters in mid-summer, moreso on easterlies.
>
>The strong easterly winds may have been responsible for the
>southbound flight of seabirds at dawn. The gulls, terns, and
>pelicans may have assumed the passage of a front from the north
>and instinctively flown south, only to counter higher wind
>velocities to the south, as we had, and then (in the case of the
>most numerous species, Laughing Gull) returned north to more
>sheltered areas. No aggregations of birds were noted that
>suggested storm-preparation behavior, other than a flock of
>Sandwich, Royal, Common, and Least Terns and Laughing Gulls in
>the parking lot at Little Island. Bob Anderson saw no unusual
>birds at Sandbridge and only one storm-petrel, possibly an
>Oceanodroma, at Cape Henry.
>
>The Band-rumped Storm-Petrel and Red-necked Phalarope may have
>been "sling-shot" around the eastern side of the storm and pushed
>inshore from deeper and warmer waters many miles to the southeast
>of Virginia Beach. Bertha's girth was tremendous, and such a
>journey would have been arduous. I have seen many hundreds of
>Band-rumped Storm-Petrels in the central western North Atlantic,
>but none so exhausted as this bird appeared. In a 30-knot wind,
>usually a joy to this strong-flying species, this bird struggled
>to stay 100 meters off the beach. It passed to the north and
>presumably west into Chesapeake Bay, whose mouth lies only a few
>hundred meters to the north.
>
>This pair of birds was interesting not just because they are
>unusual for this location (Band-rumped Storm-Petrel has been
>recorded only twice in Virginia previously) but because they were
>flying in a direction contrary to the bulk of the birds that
>morning. All the other birds appeared to be local species and
>unstressed (very unlike gulls and terns observed the following
>day). From this single observation, it is absurd to draw any
>conclusions -- and if observers had been stationed at Fort Story
>and on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, we might be in a real
>position to speculate here. But might not some of the birds that
>graced the lower Chesapeake Bay have arrived the day before the
>storm on these powerful easterlies? I do believe that birds are
>transported in the storm, ahead of the storm, and in the eye.
>But might there not be another means of transport (such as Murphy
>describes in Oceanic Birds of South America, 1936), in which
>birds are catapulted around the far side -- driven first east,
>then north, then west, in the case of the eastern seaboard of
>North America? The mouth of the Chesapeake is about 15 miles
>wide here, enough to look like part of the ocean to a storm-
>driven storm-petrel.
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>
>Saturday, 13 July 1996
>
>"Nel mezzo del cammin' di nostra vita...." Dante Alighieri could
>perhaps have guessed the sanctity and anticipation that eastern
>birders associate with a hurricane -- no one has ever described
>the autumn wheeling of a Starling flock with more artistry. For
>some of us middle-agers, who for decades have come closer to
>prayer with the passage of these storms than on almost any other
>occasion, hurricane season has been a time of near-misses and
>enormous disappointments. Finally, finally, this was not the
>case in the Old Dominion.
>
>I phoned everyone I could think of the night of the storm's
>projected passage through western Tidewater. I left messages on
>machines, the jist being to check anywhere and everywhere for
>storm-blown waifs. I recommended, following Brian Patteson's
>advice, that we all meet at 5:40 a.m. at the South Toll Plaza of
>the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel to stand watch at the channel.
>For those of you not familiar with this engineering marvel, the
>CBBT spans the mouth of the bay from Cape Henry (or west of it,
>really) to to the tip of the Delmarva Peninsula at Fisherman
>Island/Wise Point. It is an enormous bay, and the bridge and
>tunnel system boasts four artificial islands, wonderful for
>vagrants of all types (insects, bats, birds, and the human kind)
>in migration season, which form the buttresses for the two
>underwater tunnels which permit the passage of the world's
>largest vessels into the bay. The area has the world's largest
>naval base, and all active vessels, including all submarines, had
>been sent offshore to avoid the hurricane. All returned on the
>13th and 14th, adding to the spectacle through the channel.
>
>I rose at 4:40 and was at the South Toll Plaza by 5:30. Bob
>Anderson had agreed to meet me there, as excited as I was. His
>electricity had been knocked out, though, and he was not there at
>5:40, the rendezvous time. I phoned his house but could not
>rouse him.
>
>In the parking lot of the Toll Plaza, birds of all stripe
>streamed southwestward -- into the 35-50 knot wind overhead. An
>informal list estimated in 20 minutes of waiting:
>
>Sandwich Tern 35
>Royal Tern 60
>Common Tern 5
>Laughing Gull 240
>Herring Gull 8
>Purple Martin 60
>Tree Swallow 40
>Barn Swallow 100
>Chimney Swift 22
>Common Grackle 10
>swallow sp. 100
>Lesser Yellowlegs 7
>Snowy Egret 24
>Great Egret 31
>Little Blue Heron 2
>
>After telephoning Anderson from the Toll Plaza office itself at
>6:05, I returned to the parking lot to find a Common Ground-Dove,
>a species that is now a genuinely rare vagrant to Virginia after
>its precipitous decline in the southeastern states, sitting on
>the blacktop not 10 meters from my truck. I studied the bird for
>five minutes and showed it to a CBBT policeman coming off duty.
>Efforts to photograph it were not successful: the bird flushed
>and was blown northeastward into the nearby neighborhood by the
>strong winds.
>
>The dove convinced me to stop waiting and start birding, as did
>the mass of birds flying INTO the wind overhead. I drove to Fort
>Story and began to scan the mouth of the bay from the
>Harbormaster's Quarters. Nothing. At 6:35 or so, I heard a
>familar call that I could not place immediately. I scanned the
>ocean and saw that it was an alternate-plumaged Long-billed
>Dowitcher (by no means a "normal" mid-July species) flying toward
>me. It flew directly overhead and landed amidst a group of
>huddled Least, Common, Sandwich, and Royal Terns in the baseball
>field across the way, which had Starlings, Common Grackles, and
>Killdeer in puzzled attendance on the fringe.
>
>Seeing no seabirds here, other than an adult Lesser Black-backed
>Gull on the beach, I drove back to the CBBT, paid the full $10.00
>toll, and arrived at the southernmost island at 7:40. God knows
>what had already flown by. A Greater Shearwater flew through the
>channel almost immediately. Bob Anderson arrived at about 8:20.
>Mike Stinson, a superior birder from Longwood College who has
>moved back to the area after nine years in Kentucky, arrived at
>12:30 or so and remained with us for the day. I phoned David
>Hughes's house after noon, and his wife Linda raced out of the
>house to find his party, which had been at Fort Story, where
>George Harris, who arrived earlier than the others, had seen a
>suspicious but unidentified storm-petrel. (After paging his wife
>from home, Hughes got the word and joined us on the island at
>2:00 p.m. or so, along with Harris, Tom Gwynn, and Joyce
>Livermore.) Later that evening, at 7:30 p.m., Butch Pearce was
>to see one Black-capped Petrel and one gadfly petrel pass Fort
>Story.
>
>The storm had passed over the Tidewater area just before first
>light, with Poquoson, on the Peninsula (Hampton/Newport News
>area) being in the eye of the storm around 4:30 a.m. It also
>passed over Craney Island, which (lamentably) was never checked
>on the morning or the day of the storm. It then moved north-
>northeast up the Chesapeake Bay and eventually back onshore at
>dawn on Maryland's eastern shore. The storm was intact, with the
>wall of the eye showing up clearly on the radar images broadcast
>by the Weather Channel (which, by the way, refused to acknowledge
>by name the passage of the storm over the million-plus people in
>Tidewater, discussing only NC and then describing the storm
>entirely in terms of Delaware and New Jersey -- really an
>outrage, I think).
>
>What follows is the hourly log of our 11 hours out there (I avoid
>the spreadsheet format because the various servers would play
>havoc and spill numbers everywhere). The flight of terns noted
>from the South Toll Plaza was still in progress in the morning,
>consisting of a single-file line of tremendous numbers of terns
>and gulls and pelicans flying directly into the southwest wind
>from the west side of Island #2 to the west of our vantage point.
>All were just inches above the water's surface. This flight
>continued to a lesser extent all day and through the next day,
>with Sandwich Terns diminishing sharply in the morning, Royal
>Terns less sharply but noticeably, Least Terns peaking about mid-
>day, and Laughing Gulls, the most numerous species, diminishing
>in numbers most gradually throughout the next two days. As had
>been seen from the parking lot, terns and herons and swallows
>were all seen moving in the direction from which they were,
>presumably, displaced, to the south-southwest. We stood in the
>lee of the maintenance building, which broke most of the heavy
>winds of the morning. I will comment on flight lines of
>tubenoses and tropical terns below, which were far more
>intriguing and less consistent with such a strategy for return.
>
>PERIOD I 0740-0900 Wind SW 40-50 kts, some sustained about
>55
> perhaps, with gusts to 60 kts
> Sky cover heavy, complex, low ceiling
>
>Sandwich Tern 86 (SATE)
>Royal Tern ~400 (ROTE)
>Laughing Gull ~650 (LAGU)
>Least Tern 1 (LETE)
>Herring Gull ~65 (HEGU)
>Great Black-backed Gull 14 (GBBG)
>Ring-billed Gull 2 (RBGU)
>Common Tern ~70 (COTE)
>Forster's Tern ~15 (FOTE)
>Brown Pelican ~45 (BRPE)
>Greater Shearwater 1
>Band-rumped Storm-Petrel 4
>Wilson's Storm-Petrel 8
>Black-capped Petrel 4
>Oceanodroma sp. 1
>Pterodroma sp. 1
>
>
>PERIOD II 0900-1000 Winds continued strong from southwest,
> probably about 50 knots sustained;
> very difficult to stand up on the
> pier as Black-capped Petrel flies by the
> fishing pier, about a meter from it.
>
>SATE 49
>ROTE ~250
>LETE 9
>FOTE 5
>COTE ~60
>LAGU ~300
>HEGU ~50
>GBBG ~20
>RBGU 4
>BRPE ~50
>
>Cory's Shearwater 1
>Band-rumped Storm-Petrel 1
>Wilson's Storm-Petrel 9
>Leach's Storm-Petrel 1
>
>PERIOD III 1000-1100 Winds shift slightly westward, but still
> in the 40+ knot range, at 1009, when the
> skies break in a manner I've never seen
> before: it was like a chemistry
> experiments in high school, in which two
> drops of clarifying agent into the
> solution produces instant clarity. The
> trailing feeder bands dissipated in a
> matter of seconds. The blue sky left
> behind was the most intense Anderson and
> I have ever seen. Areas like Windmill
> Point, the barrier islands, Buckroe,
> the high span at Fisherman Island looked
> like miniature toys that one might reach
> out and touch. No haze or pollution
> marred the view for the next several
>

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 206-756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 206-756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416