This was sent to me by Van Remsen. Easterners make up in fantastic birding
for what they lack in wilderness and grandeur, I think.

>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>Date: Mon, 09 Sep 1996 09:24:36 -0300
>To: Hurricane Net <jwcoffey at tricon.net>
>From: Hurricane Net <jwcoffey at tricon.net>
>Subject: Kerr Reservoir Hurricane Birds (VA)
>
>From: Ned Brinkley
>Date: Mon, 9 Sep 96 08:53:28 EDT
>Subject: Kerr Reservoir Hurricane Birds
>
>Here is the final tally for Kerr Dam area, Mecklenburg County, during and
>after the passage of Tropical Storm Fran on 6 September. All birds were seen
>stunningly well if identified to species; if not, "sp." is used. The
>similarity to the Jordan Lake list is most striking in the diversity of both
>lists -- although we did not see a Fregetta storm-petrel! Observers were
>Brian Patteson, Fenton Day, Brian Sullivan, Mike Stinson, and myself. Many
>of the numbers are probably 20-40% lower than they should be, but the
>circulation of birds within this part of the lake forced us to tally ONLY
>what we could see at one time, and with all the many, many coves in this
>manmade lake, we end up being very conservative. Consider also that this
>lake lay 15-20 miles EAST of the eye's passage; that it is over 35 miles from
>east to west; that we checked only 3-4% of the lake's surface; and that we
>checked only the easternmost extremes. More narrative on the day will follow
>in a later post (I have a soggy oriental rug to contend with here).
>
>
>Black-capped Petrel 5-6
>Trinidade (Herald) Petrel 1 light morph (studied close and far, for
> about 6 hours, off and on)
>Fea's (Cape Verde Is.) Petrel 1 slight molt in median and/or greater
> undersecondary and underprimary coverts,
> as seen in Sept. individual off NC 1995)
>Cory's Shearwater 4 (rarely storm-transported??)
> shearwater sp. 1
> tubenose sp. 1
>Sooty Tern 24 (about 11 juv.)
>Black Tern 15
>Caspian Tern 3
>Royal Tern 40+
>Roseate Tern 1 ad.
>Arctic Tern 1 first-fall
>Common Tern 35+
>Forster's Tern 20++
>Least Tern 2 (ad., juv.)
>Sandwich Tern 2
>Black Skimmer 1 (ad., MS only)
>Sabine's Gull 1 (ad. alternate plumage)
>Herring Gull 15+
>Laughing Gull 125++
>Great Black-backed Gull 2 (ad., first-fall)
>Ring-billed Gull 30 (often present here)
>Pomarine Jaeger 1 juv. dark morph, present 4 hours
>Parasitic Jaeger 1
> jaeger sp. 1 small sp.
>Willet 2 (prob. Western)
>Ruddy Turnstone 6
>Black-bellied Plover 25+
>Sanderling 60+
>Red Phalarope 1
>Red-necked Phalarope 43
> dowitcher sp. 4
>Spotted Sandpiper 1
>Least Sandpiper 1
>Greater Yellowlegs 1
> yellowlegs sp. 1
> medium-sized shorebird sp. 3 (prob. one Pectoral Sandpiper, two Stilt)
>
>
>My office flooded during the storm, so I will be in and out today, and the
>server here destroyed much of the mail sent to the University, so I'm not
>sure what happened out there (other than Will Cook's birds); my digital
>message machine was also scrambled by lightning storms that swept through
>here last night. Would be delighted to hear about other hurricane birds.
>
>Other Tidewater VA birders had the following:
>
>At Kerr Reservoir 9/7: two Cory's Shearwaters, 30+ Common Terns
>At Lake Anna, 9/7: one Sandwich, four Common Terns
>At CBBT, 9/6: 9 Sooty Terns, 1 Bridled Tern
>At Kingsmill on the James River: 5 Sooty Terns, 1 White-faced Storm-Petrel
> (congrats to Bill Williams on the latter!)
>At Carvin's Cove, near Roanoke, 9/6: white terns of two sizes (birders forced
> by police to leave the area)
>
>No one checked Smith Mountain lake, near the eye's passage. It is a very
>large body of water but bordered by much private land.
>
>Sullivan, Patteson, Brian Taber and I worked the CBBT on 9/7 and found 6
>Sooty Terns, 5 Bridled Terns, 2 Black-capped Petrels, and one Red-necked
>Phalarope. A pelagic trip off Virginia Beach the following day found no rare
>species but a state-high count of 2165 Cory's Shearwaters.
>
>I am very intrigued by rumors of a White-cheeked Pintail seen during the
>storm somewhere in northern VA. I think this should be reviewed by the
>records committee, as it is one of the few possible plausible modern-era
>occurrences of that species in the state.
>
>Ned Brinkley
>Charlottesville, VA
>

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