Subject: [Tweeters] Hurricanes and Vagrancy
Date: Oct 31 08:47:31 2005
From: Brett Wolfe - m_lincolnii at yahoo.com


Hi Steven, all,

When I was in Pennsylvania a couple of years ago, there was a hurricane (I think it may have been Dennis) that was roaring up the east coast and looking like it would come right up the Delaware River. People were freaking about the weather, but the folks on the PABirds listserv were going nuts, talking about the best places to try to find grounded birds, what they'd seen from past hurricanes, etc. When it finally went through the middle of the state, the next 2-3 days was slammed with posts about who was seeing what (frigate birds, storm-petrels, I believe a skua, all sorts of weird stuff) and where (all the way to Pittsburgh, which is some 300 miles from the coast), and more people wanting to know how to get there! Since we never see hurricanes out here in the west, it seems a poorly discussed topic, but trust me. Back east, the hard-core birders know all about hurricanes and the birds it can blow in.

Brett A. Wolfe
Seattle, WA
m_lincolnii at yahoo.com


SGMlod at aol.com wrote:
Greetings All

Actually, hurricanes are not associated with passerine vagrancy. Ned Brinkley and others published a couple papers in North American Birds/Field Notes on the subject a few (3-6) years back.

The bad weather can ground migrants, something which Ryan Shaw, Charlie Wright, and I experienced when Otis passed Cabo San Lucas while we were there in early October (huge numbers of Western Tanagers and OC Warblers). But passerines are smart and have options. They lay low. If they are migrants, they drop into the best cover they can find.

Seabirds, on the other hand, do get pushed around, but there are very interesting trends. Frigatebirds, terns, storm-petrels and pterodromas show up not only out of range, but inland. Boobies and shearwaters do so much less frequently. One of the hurricane-and-vagrancy articles discussed wingloading as an explanation for this.

When we were in Baja, we had a Juan Fernandez Petrel in the Sea of Cortez (aka Gulf of California) between San Jose del Cabo and La Paz. We had another pterodroma too far out to ID, but it was large and likely another JF Petrel or, less likely, a Hawaiian/Galapagos Petrel (or something even more peculiar). We also had Baja's second record of Mississippi Kite -- a flock of 8.

Single vagrants are thought to arrive at their errant locations due to inborn genetic errors or disease that effects their ability to navigate or gives them (immatures) the wrong set of initial instructions. Multiple birds are thought to usually be related to weather phenomenon.

MS Kites occur mostly in eastern and southern Mexico during migration, and I believe Otis passed by sw Mexico, where it could have encountered the kites, though it would have meant the kites travelled a huge distance (but if they were over water, they had no choice). Interestingly, MS Kites are similar in structure to those seabirds that get swept inland: storm-petrels and terns.

Anyway, I've strayed off the initial topic. As surprising as it may seem, vagrant passerines rarely seem to appear due to hurricanes.

Best Wishes and Good Cheer
Steven Mlodinow
Everett WA _______________________________________________
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