Cormorants and Phoebes

Cormorants continued to gather on Saturday with a raft of perhaps 1000 sitting in the bay just outside of Weesuck Creek in the bay and many birds flying up and down the creek). On Sunday morning there a flock of several hundred overhead moving to the southwest and birds roosting all over the docks on the creek. There were even cormorants swimming and fishing in our pond. But by this morning, they were mostly gone.

There was a lot of other activity Sunday morning, somewhat less this morning. On both mornings, migrants were still coming in at daybreak. The dominant bird is still Yellow-rumped Warbler but there were many Eastern Phoebes and both kinglets were present on both days in some numbers, Golden-crowned outnumbering the Ruby-crowned. In the birds-of-interest category, there was a probable (by sound) Red-breasted Nuthatch this morning, a Northern Harrier soaring along the shore at dawn on Sunday and an Eastern Towhee calling in the underbrush today. Blue Jays are everywhere and Eastern Phoebes were hunting right out the kitchen windows -- on all three exterior sides of the kitchen in fact. At one point, it was possible to sit at the kitchen table and see Phoebes hunting outside both windows and back door.

Eric Salzman