Re: [SBB] Red-necked Phalaropes

[Bill Bousman <[[email protected]]>]

Folks:

The Santa Clara Checklist, http://www.scvas.org/pdf/checklist.pdf, shows 
that there are both spring and fall movements of Red-necked Phalaropes 
though the South Bay.  It is the nature of checklists to be vague and what 
this checklist does not make clear is that the spring movement is 
irregular, whereas the fall movement is regular and larger.  The spring 
movement is generally in the last two weeks in April and the first two 
weeks of May and there are many years where we see concentrations of fewer 
than a hundred birds and not a few years where there are none.  By 
contrast, the fall passage normally records well over a thousand birds and 
is regular.  I've not calculated the mean of the peak spring movement, but 
I suspect it is between 20 and 100 birds, so the numbers this year are 
exceptional.  But note that on 15 Apr 1981, Richard Jeffers, a frequent 
contributor to this list, recorded 1000 Red-necked Phalaropes in Crittenden 
Marsh.  This is the highest count I know of in the South Bay in the 
spring.  In contrast, the fall passage in August and September often 
results in counts of well over a thousand birds.  Noteworthy in this regard 
are 3000+ at the Sunnyvale WPCP on 1 Sep 1987 (Paul Noble), 4000 there on 
14 Sep 1997 (Peter Metropulos), and 4100+ birds on the Alviso Salt Ponds on 
24 Sep 2000 (Mike Rogers).  I believe that careful censuses would result in 
significantly higher counts if the coverage was more complete (which, of 
course, is impossible, as so many of the salt ponds are closed to public 
access).

This begs, of course, Alvaro's main point, which is why do we see this 
variability from year to year.  On that issue, those of us who are the 
humble counters of these amazing specks of colored feathers, flesh, and a 
drive to fly to the arctic to reproduce once again, remain ignorant.

Bill

At 11:22 PM 5/5/06, Alvaro Jaramillo wrote:
>Folks
>
>   Is is me, or are there just tons of Red-necked Phalaropes around? Just in
>the Alviso area today I estimated nearly 500 in various ponds. I don't
>recall seeing anything quite like this, although often I am not around at
>this time of year in the South Bay. There are also numbers on the coast in
>unexpected areas. It all suggests that they are reacting to something that
>is going on offshore.
>
>Regards
>
>Al
>
>Alvaro Jaramillo
>[[email protected]]
>Half Moon Bay, CA
>
>Field Guides - Birding Tours Worldwide
>http://www.fieldguides.com/home.htm
>
>
>
>--
>No virus found in this outgoing message.
>Checked by AVG Free Edition.
>Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.5.4/332 - Release Date: 5/4/2006
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
>South-Bay-Birds mailing list      ([[email protected]])
>Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
>http://plaidworks.org/mailman/listinfo/south-bay-birds_plaidworks.org


_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
South-Bay-Birds mailing list      ([[email protected]])
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
http://plaidworks.org/mailman/listinfo/south-bay-birds_plaidworks.org