Happy Hurricane Season

As August came to an end, the fall migration of birds was nearing its peak. And it was the season of tropical storms. At any given time, I could turn on the weather channel and a series of storms were brewing in the equatorial regions of both oceans. Hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean and Typhoons in the Pacific meant trouble for those unlucky to live in their pathway of destruction. But for the rest of us, and especially us birders, these storms brought excitement. Some birds get caught in the powerful winds associated with these storms and get displaced, sometimes by hundreds or even thousands of miles. 

The storms are caused by warming of the oceans. The oceans are hottest in the tropical region. The hot water evaporates and forms storm clouds laden with moisture. These build up until they burst, spilling the moisture via torrential rains. With our planet getting warmer every year, climatologists note that the number and intensity of storms has increased. 

The first of these massive storms to cause havoc in 2023 was named Hillary, a Pacific Ocean typhoon that bore its weight into the American Southwest on August 18, driving seabirds from the ocean as well as the Gulf of California (northwest Mexico) into desert lakes such as the Salton Sea.  Birders there found Least and Black Storm-Petrels, species that normally forage in deep ocean waters miles away from the sea coasts. Seeing one on an inland lake is a special treat. Numerous lakes were visited briefly by tropical pelagic species such as Wedge-tailed Shearwater and Cook’s Petrel. Multiple Magnificent Frigatebirds were blown into Arizona. Unfortunately almost all of these lost avian souls perish, unable to find adecuate food needed to sustain them in freshwater ecosystems. 

The next storm was Hurricane Idalia which wound its way through the Caribbean Sea and into the Gulf of  Mexico. It made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend area on August 26 not far from where Nick Jr. and I had ticked Pinky, the American Flamingo that had been blown in by Hurricane Michael several years earlier. In the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia, small groups of storm-driven flamingos began showing up in a dozen eastern USA states from Kansas in the west, to Wisconsin in the north, and North Carolina in the east. Sightings of flamingos came from over a dozen locations in Florida. One of these birds carried a leg band and was proven to have come from the population that resides on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Oddly no other species appeared to have been displaced.  

It was during the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia that Adam Pickos visited the white sands of Dune Allen Beach in the town of Santa Rosa Beach on the Florida Panhandle, during the morning of September 3, 2023. I don’t know if he was looking for oddities. Nonetheless, he noticed an oddly plumaged gull begging for food scraps from beach goers among the Laughing Gull flock. It was just slightly larger than Laughing Gull with a slightly longer beak and longer legs as well. Its plumage was almost uniformly dark gray. Adam tentatively identified it as Gray Gull, a species restricted to the Pacific Ocean coastline of Chile and Peru. Well-known gull identification experts Alvaro Jaramillo and Amar Ayash weighed in on Facebook with their support of this identification based on the photographs published in eBird. 

I was eager to chase this gull, which once accepted by the ornithological powers that be would represent the first confirmed record of Gray Gull in the USA.  But first I needed to make sure it would stick. If it turned out to be a “one-day wonder”, a chase trip would be a terrible waste of valuable resources. That part of Florida is not easy to reach. Fortunately it turned up at the same location on September 4, although it proved to be somewhat unreliable and difficult to track down. I was very happy to receive an email message from the local eBird reviewer offering assistance if I decided to chase the bird for my Big Year. A few days later, I devised a plan. I would fly one-way to Atlanta Georgia on September 6, arriving after midnight. Rick Taylor, an acquaintance I had met in Adak, would pick me up at the airport and we would drive six hours overnight, arriving at the stakeout by dawn.

Rick was a retired Air Force meteorologist so I learned a lot about stormy weather during our overnight drive to the Florida Gulf Coast. When we arrived at the beach access we were quickly joined by another chaser who had driven four hours from Central Florida. His name was Wes Biggs, a well-known Birding Guide in Florida. As the sun rose, we scoured the beach for the dark gull with no luck. After visiting six other beach access points, we returned to the original stakeout location where about 15 birders were now assembled. A distant juvenile Herring Gull created some excitement because it was unusually uniform in color.  We had been searching for about four hours and no sign of the Gray Gull. 

Rick and I decided to split up. I hiked west into a secluded area of beach within Topsail State Park. Rick drove into the state park, and hiked about a mile to reach the beach. We met on the shore and together hiked west another mile. Unlike further east there were few people in this section of beach but many birds. We encountered several hundred Laughing Gull and a good variety of tern species including Royal, Caspian, Sandwich, Forster’s, Common, Black and Least Terns. A Snowy Plover was the highlight among shorebird species. A huge number (millions) of dead and dying minnows had washed ashore and provided evidence that the waters of the Gulf of Mexico were especially hot this year. The supply of food for any wayward gull was impressive. I felt very positive about finding our target species today but it was not happening. At about 2 pm we met up with Bruce Purdy, the eBird reviewer. Still no luck. We spent the last hour of daylight at a spot on the beach with a good sized gull flock. Rick brought the gulls in with popcorn. By the end of the day, I had been exposed to so much sun and heat I felt like popcorn. I decided it wasn’t worth spending more days in Florida searching, but rather I would go a day early to California where I was waitlisted on a San Diego pelagic trip for September 10. Arriving early would allow me to chase a Yellow-footed Gull at the Salton Sea. So after sundown Rick and I drove his vehicle six hours back to Atlanta arriving in time for me to catch a flight to Ontario (Southern California) via Denver.

I found out later that the Bosler twins (Justin and Devin, well known birders currently residing in Texas and Oklahoma, respectively) also had been searching for the Gray Gull that day. Indeed, they found it at the original stakeout location at daybreak the following day! I hoped for another opportunity to see Gray Gull in 2023. I also wondered what hurricane displaced bird species might get added to my Big Year list in 2023.