This report details my sightings at First Encounter Beach in Eastham, Barnstable County, Massachusetts on 24 November 2020 from 0545 to 0945.
Highlights:
- Dovekie - 5743
- Razorbill - 13847
- Common Murre - 6
- Thick-billed Murre - 15
- Murre Species - 3
Preface: This past Sunday, the 22nd, Blair Nikula and Peter Flood recorded over 1000 Dovekie at Race Point under fairly benign weather conditions. The weather forecast for Monday was heavy rains followed by a very strong cold front moving through the area. In fact, on Monday afternoon at the height of the front, tornado warnings were issued for Barnstable County. With the afternoon passage of the front, the winds from the northwest were predicted to rapidly rise to a steady 20-25 mph with higher gusts upwards to 40 mph. Given that there were seemingly a decent number of Dovekie in the area AND the tide was scheduled to be high a few minutes after sunrise, I decided to take a day off (finally) and give FEB a chance. I was not disappointed.
Woke up around 0200 and had to get some work emails out. Headed out around 0300 to make the little over 2 hour drive to FEB. I stopped in Eastham for some coffee before arriving at the parking lot at 0515. The first words out of my mouth were "Oh Shit". There is some construction going on in the parking lot and there were some massive construction trucks in the area where one usually parks to sea watch. That is, on the northern side of the lot near the dunes so as to protect your windshield and car paint from being abraded and pitted. I put my truck in 4 high and was able to squeeze in the very corner. As I was setting up in the car, a Dovekie flew through the headlights out over the surf. I thought that was really odd but got my heart pumping. On some previous wind driven Dovekie flights, I've had them skim over my hood and windshield in the pre-morning hours but that usually is with gale force or high winds. Today's winds were nothing like that.
I picked up my first flock of Razorbill around 0545. It is really amazing what you can see and identify with these large, light-gathering scopes like my Kowa. I had covered all light sources in the car, shut the headlights, and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. THIS enables me to see and identify birds in the nautical dawn as well as the predawn time period. I was using a clicker for those first 45 minutes. Blair showed up at 0630 and that's when I switched to my D750 with my Sigma zoomed out to 600mm.
BLUF: 99.80% of all large alcid species were positively identified through photographs as Razorbill. Those birds that I had deemed "large alcid species" were converted to the Razorbill count given the almost complete lack of murres. (Nikula gives the same treatment in his eBird report). From a flight perspective, "1750 large alcid species" is rather silly when the data shows Razorbill to constitute 99.80% of the larger alcids. If you don't like or agree with this, tough. That's the reason why I stopped eBird. Reason and intellect are only extended to those who are deemed worthy to have said reason and intellect. Screw that. I bird for me.
Here are my Razorbill and Dovekie sightings broken up by intervals. A complete list is at the bottom with photos to follow.
- 0545 to 0630
- Clicker and 72 Photos
- Dovekie - 1
- Razorbill - 1209
- 0630 to 0700
- Photos - 1430
- Dovekie - 1
- Razorbill - 3142
- 0700 to 0730
- Photos - 1063
- Dovekie - 78
- Razorbill - 2059
- 0730 to 0800
- Photos - 776
- Dovekie - 186
- Razorbill - 1934
- 0800 to 0830
- Photos - 935
- Dovekie - 2633
- Razorbill - 1801
- 0830 to 0900
- Photos - 795
- Dovekie - 2026
- Razorbill - 1399
- 0900 to 0945
- Photos - 965
- Dovekie - 818
- Razorbill - 2291
