Posted by Underground Holistic Birding Movement on November 04, 2001 at 18:55:22:
Hi Folks,
A bunch of us done some sea-watching from RED REEF PARK in Boca Raton (A1A just north of Palmetto Park Road) today from about 9:30 till about 1pm. It turned out to be quite a productive few hours. We didn’t do any absolute counts but it was much the same as the species in the report from Boynton except we saw considerably more Jaegers and no Audubon Shearwater types. All the large Shearwaters appeared to be Cory’s with many feeding/landing fairly close off shore. The highlight was a juvenile Sabine’s Gull also feeding fairly close off shore loosely associating with 6 Royal Terns.
Anyway, here are some numbers:
~ 20 Northern Gannets (no adults).
~ 50 Cory’s Shearwaters
~ 70 Pomarine Jaegers. There were at least four large flocks, one contained 22 individuals. At least two birds had “spoons” at the tip of their tails, the rest matched them in size and flight style, being heavy bodied with strong wing beats- generally holding up well in the strong winds. There was one lead individual that may have been a Parasitic in one of the flocks but the birds passed so quickly it was tough to tie the identification down.
1 Sabine’s Gull
~20 American Wigeon (south)
1 Lesser Scaup (north)
Observers: David La Puma, Gerard Phillips, Michelle Davis, Rafael Galvez, Jennifer Gamber, Vanessa Neuerburg