My favorite hurricane

While we were standing on the pier at Powers Park this morning, Scott Flamand asked me, “Is this the best day of hurricane birding we’ve ever had in Alachua County?” I allowed, “It’s better than average.” Several hours later I’m thinking more along the lines expressed by Scott. Though I’m still inclined to rank 2008’s Tropical Storm Fay ahead of it – Red Phalaropes, Parasitic Jaeger, Leach’s Storm-Petrel – I’m not sure I can think of another storm that sent us more birds than Hermine.

We started at Palm Point around seven. I was delayed by a fallen tree on Lakeshore Drive, and when I got to the Point the half-dozen birders assembled there had already seen several coastal species, including two Gull-billed Terns. John Martin pointed out a group of 13 Magnificent Frigatebirds sailing above the tree line to the south. There were Royal Terns and Forster’s Terns and a couple of Common Terns, but Sooty Terns were the most abundant, flying south in a long line.

Ryan Terrill was scoping the lake when he noticed that several birds were perched on the fishing pier at Powers Park. He decided to go check them out, and almost everyone else at Palm Point tagged along. Upon arriving at the fishing pier, we found a Sandwich Tern perched on the railing, surrounded by Forster’s Terns and Laughing Gulls. It was the county’s seventh Sandwich Tern. We crowded up onto the pier and spent the next hour scanning the lake. We saw Least Terns. We saw Black Terns. We saw a Caspian Tern. It dawned on me at some point that during 130 years of keeping bird records in Alachua County, nine species of terns had been recorded – Sooty, Least, Gull-billed, Caspian, Black, Common, Forster’s, Royal, Sandwich – and that every last one of them was present on the lake as we stood there. I announced to the birders on the pier that if we saw another species of tern, it would necessarily be a new species for the county. This is called foreshadowing…

Other birds provided occasional distractions. A steady stream of swallows passed overhead, mostly Barns, but a surprising number of Purple Martins and some Banks. Flocks of Eastern Kingbirds flew over the treetops, heading south, and we saw two flocks of Bobolinks as well. A Short-billed Dowitcher flew over, giving an identifying “tu-tu!” call.

Ryan declared that he was going to check out some other bodies of water. He and Bryan Tarbox and Mitch Walters drove off. The rest of us hung around for a little longer, but we reached a point where we felt we’d seen everything, and people started to drift away, to go home or try another birding spot. Hurricane Hermine was over. So we thought.

I went home, took off my shoes, and listened understandingly as my wife explained that she didn’t much like this whole birding thing. Then the phone rang. It was Mike Manetz, calling from the observation platform at La Chua. Ryan Terrill had phoned him: there was a Bridled Tern on Lake Wauberg! A first county record! Poor Mike had to hike all the way from the observation platform to his truck in the La Chua parking lot and then drive to Wauberg. Driving from my house, I got there ahead of him and found a cluster of birders at the Wauberg boat ramp picking through more terns. Lots of Forster’s, five Sooties, a dozen Leasts, at least one Common, another Sandwich – but no Bridled that we could see. This was explained a few minutes later when John Hintermister got a call from Jonathan Mays, who’d just photographed the Bridled Tern – at the La Chua observation platform!

When I heard that, I cursed that Bridled Tern, his parents and his siblings, and all Bridled Terns that ever existed or ever will, and I called it a day and headed home. I made it nearly to University Avenue when my phone rang. It was my daughter: “Bob Carroll just called. There are four Brown Noddies at Newnans Lake.” Another first county record! As of yesterday, nine species of terns in 130 years. And today, eleven species of terns in six hours! I turned east on University and headed for Powers Park. I walked out onto the fishing pier that I’d just left a couple of hours previously – because there wasn’t anything left to see – and Bob Carroll, Bob Holt, and Scott Robinson tried to find me a Brown Noddy among dozens of Sooty Terns. They had seen from one to four earlier – Scott wrote, “It had the rounded tail, entirely brown plumage, paler forehead, and paler brown under the wings. The time I saw four birds, only one of them was definitely a Brown Noddy; the others were nearby and looked all brown, but were not in great light” – but now all the birds were too far out for any details to be visible. I could see that a few of them were dark, but at that distance I was unable to distinguish a noddy from a juvenile Sooty.

I called Mike and he put the word out, and before long the pier was filled with birders. We were such an amusing sight that an amateur photographer was taking pictures of us. I had a chance to talk to birders who had gone elsewhere and seen other hurricane-blown birds. Phil Laipis had photographed two Red-necked Phalaropes at the Windsor boat ramp. Ted and Steven Goodman had found a Black Skimmer at Orange Lake and a Sanderling at Lake Lochloosa. John Martin had photographed a Black Skimmer and a Willet at La Chua. Jonathan Mays had seen 22 dowitchers at La Chua, and said that the American Golden-Plover was still around.

I thought to check my watch, and found that 2:30 was rapidly approaching, the time when I’d agreed to meet Tom Tompkins at the airport’s air traffic control tower to scan the grassy strips bordering the runways for grasspipers. So I left Powers Park without seeing the noddy and headed for the airport. As he activated the automatic gate to let me in, Tom came out on the walkway that encircles the top of the tower and shouted, “There are two Black Skimmers on the runway!” I hurried up to the top level and there they were, an adult and a juvenile, out there on the asphalt along with six Laughing Gulls – and two Willets! When a small Delta airliner came down the runway for its takeoff, all the birds flew out of the way and then returned to the exact spots where they’d been. I knew that Mike Manetz was working on a county year list, and that he still needed Willet, so I gave him a call and he hurried over and saw them. I told him about the skimmers too, but he thought I was joking until I actually pointed at them sitting on the tarmac. We scanned for grasspipers for a few minutes, but we saw nothing more interesting than Pectoral Sandpipers, Least Sandpipers, a Solitary Sandpiper, and a few Killdeer. And then I did call it a day.

So I think maybe Scott Flamand was right, or pretty close to it. All in all, Hurricane Hermine was probably the birdiest tropical storm to hit Gainesville in the 21 years that I’ve been paying attention.