Happening NOW: Storm-Blown Birds from Hurricane Dorian

Every September, people in the Caribbean and the eastern (and sometimes even southwestern) United States direct their focus towards the weather; early fall is hurricane season, and the storms that come with it are becoming more and more intense. With recent hurricanes like Irma, Maria, and Harvey pounding southeastern states and often totally devastating islands in the Carribean, it’s hard to view these storms as anything other than killing machines powered by climate change.

Yet, for many birders, the view is more complicated. As morbid as it sounds, landlocked southeastern birders can get antsy to see the seabirds that their Floridian neighbors see regularly, and a tropical storm is often a remedy for that. While I’m sure the excitement from finding a Brown Noddy or a Sooty Tern on a Piedmont lake is always tainted with some level of guilt, looking for storm waifs can help us better understand seabird biology and the processes behind hurricane entrapment.

When Hurricane Dorian first hit the news, the Caribbean was the immediate concern for many storm-watchers. Unfortunately, the storm did live up to the dire predictions; Dorian ravaged the Bahamas, permanently affecting its infrastructure and people, and potentially eliminating the endemic Brown-headed Nuthatch subspecies. Meanwhile, as people mourned for the Bahamas, Dorian also let many hopeful inland birders down. Even decidedly less interesting than some past storms have been think back to hurricanes that produced inland records of Black-capped Petrels or Great Shearwaters. By hugging the coastline, Dorian was able to continue its path of destruction and yet only produce a mediocre showing of wayward, storm-swept waifs. Not until after September 7th, the day Dorian passed over Atlantic Canada, did the birding community begin to become truly interested in the hurricane for its birds.

While Nova Scotia gets a fair share of southern migrants and seabirds normally, the number of rare seabirds that seemed to drop out of nowhere following Dorian’s passage was extraordinary; Forster’s, Black, Caspian, Royal, Sandwich, and Gull-billed terns suddenly appeared on the coasts of the peninsula and flocks of Laughing Gulls filled small ponds miles inland. Swallows thought long gone, such as Bank Swallows and Purple Martins, suddenly reappeared. Brown Pelicans, stilts and avocets, multiple Bridled Terns, Marbled Godwits, a flock of two hundred Black Skimmers Dorian was finally paying off. And that’s not even counting what was found in Newfoundland.

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