dgraham@kean.ucs.mun.ca (David Graham) (12/16/90)
First Christmas count of the season yesterday, for Newfoundland at least. We headed down to Cape Race, the extreme SE tip of the island, about 120 km S of St. John's. Weather was cold (-8 Celsius at 5:45 a.m.) and there was a brisk breeze from the west blowing which turned to strong westerlies by mid-afternoon. No snow on the ground to speak of, but bogs were frozen quite hard, so there weren't many available berries, and the cone crop is poor, so food generally was not abundant for land birds. Pamela and I had only 16 species for the day (last year we had 23), 17 if you count our one Dovekie, which was being eaten by a first-winter Herring Gull on the beach at Portugal Cove South (the strong winds were keeping the Dovekies well offshore on the part of the coast we were doing). *Best bird of the day was an Ivory Gull seen by four birders in two parties. [Not including us :-(]* Here's our list: Common Loon 2 (31 seen: a new high) Oldsquaw 33 Common Eider 32 King Eider 1 (immature male) Black Scoter 4 Surf Scoter 1 Black Guillemot 16 (several hundred seen) Thick-billed Murre 2 (plus 4 Murre sp.) Herring Gull 8 Iceland Gull 4 Glaucous Gull 4 Greater Black-backed Gull 31 Bald Eagle 3 (2 imm., 1 adult; 7 seen in all) Northern Raven 4 American Crow 3 Snow Bunting 15 Pretty slim pickin's, but it was good to get out anyway! The count totalled only 32 species this year (44 last year). Only 1 Boreal Chickadee was seen (no Black-caps), no finches of any kind, and (this must be a N.A. first!) *no Starlings*, despite the fact that the towns were thoroughly combed. Could this be the first indication of continent-wide population crash in Starlings? :-) We got skunked on Purple Sandpipers (usually dependable on our part of the coast), though decent numbers were seen by other parties, and no Snowy Owls were seen, duplicating last year's result. Whether this is a continuation of the population crash noticed last year, or whether the relative absence of Purps and Snowies can be put down to the very mild fall we've had, I don't know. Other good birds seen included Grasshopper Sparrow, White-winged Scoter, American Pipit. Mammals included Caribou (several hundred in all), Moose, Red Squirrel, Red Fox, Harbour Seal. *************************************************************************** David Graham dgraham@kean.ucs.mun.ca ***************************************************************************