Great Cormorant

On this day in 1929, Joseph Harrison "secured" an immature Great Cormorant near Salem, NJ. The specimen made its way to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, and to Witmer Stone, who published a note about it in the Auk. The bird that Harrison collected was one of two that he saw.

Subsequently, Charles Urner published a note in the Auk regarding sight reports of Great Cormorants in the Barnegat Bay area. Although some cormorants in the area were strongly suspected to be Great Cormorants (or European Cormorants, as they were called at that time), it wasn't until 23 February 1931 that a Barnegat Bay cormorant was seen well enough to for the field marks for Great Cormorant to be made out. As Urner concluded his note: "Since identification of single cormorants in the field is so difficult unless the bird is in, or approaching, breeding plumage, or is seen very near at hand, this species is probably of more regular occurrence than the published records indicate (Urner 1932)."

Stone, Witmer. 1932. The European Cormorant in New Jersey. Auk 49:77. PDF here

Urner, Charles A. 1932. The European Cormorant in New Jersey. Auk 49:341-342. PDF here

Buller's Shearwater

On this day in 1984, a Buller's Shearwater was found on a pelagic trip off the Jersey coast. The bird was about 31 miles ESE of Barnegat Light, and remains a unique record. This species breeds on islands near New Zealand and the NJ record is the single North Atlantic record of the species. See Angus Wilson's Ocean Wanderers site for more info about Buller's Shearwater and its usual distribution.

David Sibley was the one who identified the shearwater, according to the account in Records of New Jersey Birds. I recently heard someone who was there at the time say that it was one of only two times he ever heard Sibley shout (the other was for a Mississippi Kite, which just shows how much times have changed).

Dunne, Peter. 1985. 1984 Fall Field Notes, Region 5. Records of New Jersey Birds 11:18-22.

Bridled Tern

On this day in 1951, Evelyn and Quintin Kramer found a carcass of a long-dead Bridled Tern at Island Beach State Park in Ocean County. Subsequent records of the species have been associated with hurricanes and tropical storms, when it is almost expected (if not quite as common as Sooty Tern in these circumstances).

The obituary of Quintin Kramer that appeared in Cassinia contains the following: "During World War II, Quintin and Evelyn did most of their birding by public transportation and shank's mare. They walked the Jersey beaches for miles and found numerous dead birds, including an occasional rare species" (Peniston 1976). Presumably, this tern was carried north with a tropical storm during the summer of 1950. Unisys shows 13 storms for that season; the likeliest candidates to drop a tropical tern in NJ would seem to be Able and Dog (but I'm open to contrary opinions from those who have studied the intersection of hurricanes and birds in more detail than I have). In any case, the Kramers came along after the fact, and the specimen in question now resides at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

Peniston, Howell. 1976. Quintin Kramer 1908-1975. Cassinia 56: 6. PDF here

Frigatebird sp.

On this day in 1926, Mrs. Emlen H. Fisher spotted an odd bird at the beach in Cape May. "The bird hung perfectly motionless facing the wind for fifteen or twenty minutes and did not move an inch in space nor move a feather except to turn his head and look down at the small group of people gathered below," Mrs. Fisher wrote in a letter to Witmer Stone, who published the report in a note in the Auk (Stone 1928). Her account also mentioned a wingspan of at least three feet, a forked tail, and a curved bill. In sum, it added up to a frigatebird (or Man-o'-war-bird, as it was then known). Stone's account in Bird Studies at Old May Cape concludes, possibly a bit regretfully, "The fact that I had been on the beach several times on the day that Mrs. Fisher saw her bird and on every other day for a week or more shows how easily one may miss these rare stragglers to our coast and doubtless many more of this or other species go unrecorded" (Stone 1965).

Of course, Stone had found his own rarity on the Cape May beach the previous day, an Audubon's Shearwater. The frigatebird was believed to be a product of the same storm that had dropped the shearwater in the area, a strong hurricane that blasted through the Bahamas and well inland after making landfall in Florida. Although the shearwater succumbed, the frigatebird was last seen moving southward.

Due to the difficulties of identifying frigatebirds, along with the fact that the expected Magnificent Frigatebird is not the only frigatebird species with North American records, the NJBRC opted for the conservative approach of calling this (and other subsequent records) frigatebird sp. It wasn't until 2005's influx of nine frigatebirds that the documentation for two individuals established that they were Magnificents (Barnes et al. 2006).

Barnes, Scott, Joe Burgiel, Vince Elia, Jennifer Hanson, Laurie Larson, & Paul Lehman. 2006. New Jersey Bird Records Committee - Annual Report 2006. New Jersey Birds 32:66-76. PDF here

Stone, Witmer. 1928. The Man-o'-war-bird (Fregata Magnificens) at Cape May, N. J. Auk 45:367-368. PDF here

Audubon's Shearwater

On this day in 1926, Witmer Stone was out for a swim at the beach in Cape May when he spotted "a bird that was quite unknown" to him (Stone 1926). His account continues, "Upon swimming out I was able to approach near enough to convince myself that it was a Shearwater but I soon lost sight of it as the sea was choppy and the bird was constantly disappearing in the trough of the waves." The shearwater alternated between flying and sitting on the water "beyond the breakers."

As luck would have it, lifeguards in a boat off the beach picked up a moribund shearwater later on; it went to Dr. T. S. Palmer and his wife, who presented the bird (now dead) to Stone. It turned out to be a female Audubon's Shearwater and the specimen went to the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Stone knew of only one previous NJ report of the species, "...Audubon's vague statement that he had seen them 'off Sany [sic] Hook'" (Stone 1926).

Stone may have been lucky to have a relatively uneventful swim, because the morning he chose for his dip was several days after a hurricane made landfall in Florida (and when another tropical storm was starting its trip up the Atlantic). The unnamed storm, the first of the season, wreaked havoc in the Bahamas before hitting Florida, continued inland as far as Louisiana, then reversed course and wound up at the Great Lakes by 2 August (storm track here).

Storm waifs were found in a number of Eastern states after this storm. South Carolina got White-tailed Tropicbird, Bridled Tern, and Brown Noddy, as well as multiple Sooty Terns and Audubon's Shearwaters (Sprunt 1926, Von S. Dingle 1927, Wayne 1926, Wayne 1927); two Sooty Terns were in North Carolina (Brimley 1926); and a Sooty Tern was in West Virginia (Johnston 1926).

Audubon's Shearwater was a good find indeed, but the storm had one last avian surprise in store for NJ. But that's tomorrow's post.

Anon. 1926. The Nassau Hurricane, July 25-26, 1926. Monthly Weather Review 54:296-297. PDF here
Brimley, H. H. 1926. Sooty Tern in North Carolina. Auk 43:535. PDF here
Johnston, I. H. 1926. Sooty Tern (Sterna fuscata) in West Virginia. Auk 43:535-536. PDF here
Sprunt, Alexander, Jr. 1926. The Sooty Tern (Sterna fuscata) at Charleston, S. C. Auk 43:535. PDF here
Stone, Witmer. 1926. Audubon's Shearwater at Cape May, N. J. Auk 43:536. PDF here
Von S. Dingle, E. 1927. Sooty Tern (Sterna fuscata) and Bridled Tern (Sterna anaetheta) on the South Carolina Coast. Auk 44:93-94. PDF here
Wayne, Arthur T. 1926. The Sooty Tern and Audubon's Shearwater in South Carolina. Auk 43:534-535. PDF here
Wayne, Arthur T. 1927. Two Birds New to the Fauna of South Carolina. Auk 44:94. PDF here