Hull - 2/1/2014

10 people joined me on a 1/2 day trip to bird the ocean and bay around Hull. The weather was wonderful (for a change), spring-like, about 50 degrees, windless and sunny. Starlings and a song sparrow were singing. We began the morning looking at a large group of Horned Larks with a smattering of Snow Buntings on the HRA land in Hull. We also noticed a dead Ring-billed Gull that had a broken neck. Overall we had a nice array of seabirds on the ocean and the bay, including good looks at 3 Black Guillemots. Amazingly the day started and ended with bird death. At our last stop on the bay, an alert observer noticed a Snowy Owl on top of an arbor in a nearby yard. Upon closer observation, the owl sadly proved to be dead. Paul Fitzerald heroically retrieved the owl and delivered it to Norman Smith at Trailside Museum. Paul reported the following information from Norman - "Our Snowy Owl was a hatch year male, with a good healthy weight of 1700 grams. The bird died sometime during the night as rigor mortis was only just setting into the legs and the eyes were still clear and moist. There was some blood on the secondaries of one wing which would have come from the bird's last kill. Norman Smith agreed that poisoning is the likely cause of death but he'll do a toxicology and let me know." 

So if you like to be surprised, come on a SSBC trip. You never know what you might see.

Birded the bay and ocean sides of Hull from various locations

33 species (+1 other taxa)

Brant 34
Canada Goose 45
American Black Duck 5
Greater Scaup 1
Common Eider 605
Surf Scoter 46
White-winged Scoter 85
Black Scoter 4
scoter sp. 250
Long-tailed Duck 25
Bufflehead 37
Common Goldeneye 16
Red-breasted Merganser 25
Red-throated Loon 2
Common Loon 11
Horned Grebe 15
Sanderling 3
Black Guillemot 3
Ring-billed Gull 25
Herring Gull 87
Great Black-backed Gull 12
Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon) 35
Blue Jay 3
American Crow 2
Horned Lark 62
American Robin 5
Gray Catbird 1
European Starling 85
Snow Bunting 8
American Tree Sparrow 1
Song Sparrow 1
White-throated Sparrow 1
Northern Cardinal 1
House Sparrow 82

This report was generated automatically by eBird v3 (http://ebird.org)

Nancy Swirka