Dear Tweeters and anyone heading for Massachusetts:

This is for anyone who does not receive the BWD Skimmer or read Bird
Observer (Vol. 25, No. 1, pp 16-22 by William E. Davis); it's in the latest
issue and I was most impressed:

"Every evening in the winter something close to 250,000 oldsquaw fly past
the west end of the island to spend the night somewhere in Nantucket Sound.
The flight has been known for a long time, and hunters as far back as the
turn of the century took advantage of it. Surprisingly, though, little
else is known except that the birds go past in the evening in a period of
about an hour and return in the morning, typically in half the time.

Where they are going to roost is not known, and precisely where they are
going to feed in the morning is also unknown. If the estimate of the North
American population, which is 3-4 million birds, is correct, about one in
12-14 oldsquaws on this continent fly past the island most evenings.
Counts have varied considerably over the years, in part because the only
systematic effort to determine the numbers is usually done on the local
CBC, and weather conditions are not always perfect. There is also debate
over whether the apparent increase in the past few decades is real or
merely reflects better coverage."

Wouldn't that be a sight?! In all of the nine years I lived in New
Hampshire, never did I hear of this flight.

Diann MacRae
Bothell
tvulture at halcyon.com