Our second Sunset Birding at Stone Harbor Point field trip of the season was a great one! We had weather that was almost too good and this week's leaders were Warren C., Gail D., David L., Shaun B, and Mike Fritz. We started the trip by going to the "free bridge" at Nummy Island to view the mud flats for shore birds. We had a fast rising tide and we rushed to see what we could before water covered all the feeding areas. We had scope views of a Clapper Rail, nine Marbled Godwits close by, and thousands of other shorebirds and terns. There was even a flock of over 500 Red Knots on the back side of the bridge. We left there as the water became too high and next walked the dune trail and beach by the parking lot. Before we even got to the beach, we flushed a sparrow near the viewing platform. We expected it to be a Savannah (we did have one later), but when we put the scopes on it we saw it was an immature Lark Sparrow! It even stayed put long enough for everyone to get nice views through the scope. When we finally made it to the beach we came upon a nice group of Piping Plovers right at the end of the path. I was able to see 15 in one binocular view! We also saw six Brown Pelicans, a 1st-winter Lesser Black-backed Gull, and great looks at Royal and Caspian Terns. There were lots of shorebirds here too, but a Peregrine kept them flying about as he tried to get a meal. We ended the walk with a nice sunset over the marsh while a Whimbrel flew right overhead calling nonstop. -Mike Fritz
49 species
American Black Duck 2
Double-crested Cormorant 18
Brown Pelican 6
Great Egret 8
Snowy Egret 4
Green Heron 1
Osprey 4
Peregrine Falcon 1
Clapper Rail 2
Black-bellied Plover 24
Semipalmated Plover 120
Piping Plover 16
American Oystercatcher 30
Greater Yellowlegs 3
Willet 25
Whimbrel 1
Marbled Godwit 9
Ruddy Turnstone 6
Red Knot 540 Huge flock on flats behind "free bridge".
Sanderling 400
Semipalmated Sandpiper 2
Western Sandpiper 16
Short-billed Dowitcher 30
Laughing Gull X
Ring-billed Gull X
Herring Gull X
Lesser Black-backed Gull 1 1st winter
Great Black-backed Gull X
Caspian Tern 12
Common Tern 6
Forster's Tern 28
Royal Tern 36
Rock Pigeon 6
Mourning Dove 24
Belted Kingfisher 1
Fish Crow X
Tree Swallow 30
Barn Swallow 2
Northern Mockingbird 4
European Starling X
Lark Sparrow 1
Savannah Sparrow 1
Song Sparrow 4
Northern Cardinal 4
Red-winged Blackbird X
Common Grackle X
Boat-tailed Grackle X
House Finch 12
House Sparrow X
This report was generated automatically by eBird v2 (
http://ebird.org/)
Piper mania! Twelve of the fifteen Piping Plovers at Stone Harbor Point this evening [photo by Harvey Tomlinson]
