Perhaps it was the unusually good shorebird migration in Ohio, but in any event the turnout for our shorebird trip to the East Coast was small enough for five of us to occupy a comfortable van on a trip to visit marshlands and oceanfronts from Bombay Hook in Delaware to Chincoteague NWR in Virginia. Matching individual schedules with maximizing birding time led us to leave Columbus at 7 pm, then stop for a luxuriant four hours of sleep in Annapolis before meeting the dawn at Bombay Hook NWR, where we spent several happy hours peering into fresh- and saltwater marshes. The mosquitoes were bearable, usually not a problem after the CO2 from the engine exhaust had dissipated. Though we saw no killdeers, we found 19 shorebird species and five waders under sunny skies there. Especially numerous, striking, and satisfying were many avocets, godwits, ibises, and the strafing falcons who regularly set them aloft. There were good numbers of drably-plumaged ducks. Out in the cordgrass and mud on the saltmarsh side, we saw a number of clapper rails, gulls, and terns in addition to shorebirds.
We peeked into Taylor’s Gut to little avail, and stopped for a shore dinner at Sambo’s in Leipsic, after which we found Port Mahon Rd in Little Creek productive, even though it held few shorebirds. Dozens of northern gannets, all but one adults, were feeding offshore, and terns and large gulls by the hundreds were perched on a mile-long string of decaying pilings along an equally decaying road; this was unusual enough to elicit some disbelief from the editors when our eBirders reported them. After a stay in Milford catching up on sleep, we explored Prime Hook NWR, finding more shore- and marsh birds, whereupon we opted to skip the slow and commercialized coastal highway to head directly to our companion venue to Bombay Hook—Chincoteague NWR in northern Virginia.
The last few miles of road toward the little town of Chincoteague crosses a vast salt-marsh laced with “guts,” the rivulets of open water that change from water to mud with the tides, and a favorite refugium for marsh birds; here we saw our first tricolored herons and oystercatchers. We dodged an invasion of motorcyclists to dine at Don’s, where the world-famous Chincoteague oyster may be had among its seafoods.
Unlike the serene Hook, the Chincoteague Refuge was jammed with humans, few of whom were there for the birds; here the famed wild horses were the attraction, as well as the beach, thirty-some miles of pristine uncommercialized sand. Hurricane Leslie had brought some wind, and the surf was up, with four-foot waves that kept most of the hordes of weekend beachers sitting on their towels. Our hearts fell as we saw literally miles of parked cars stretching south toward the hook enclosing Tom’s Cove.
We forged on, and as we passed a brushy area on the north side of the traffic noticed birds gathered on a sand spit we pulled up short of the crowds. Here, at our first stop on the Atlantic shore, we found many hundreds of birds we had little hope of seeing the previous day—pelicans, gulls, terns, and other shorebirds given to loafing on sandy shores. This was the biggest gathering I’d seen here, and it seemed likely that all the human beach-goers had usurped their customary territory. We spent over an hour going carefully going through the flock, starting again whenever some dread sent them wheeling. New shorebirds for us included piping plover, willet, and sanderling, and sandwich and common terns and black skimmers were new as well. Though they are regularly common here in fall, we found no western sandpipers, but nothing else expected escaped us.
Retreating inland, we quickly encountered black clouds of mosquitoes, which hampered us at every stop. [Editor’s note: “hampered” seems a little strong. We are, after all, the Avid Birders, so we avidly slapped off the insects and slapped on copious amounts of repellant, forging through the winged flocks in search of larger winged beings.] We put up with them as we birded a large sweetwater marsh, where we added some duck, shorebird, and tern species. A scan of the offical checklist of the Refuge indicated that the Bicknell’s thrush is “Common” in fall at the Refuge. A check on the internet indicated that in September this scarce species follows a coastal route on its fall migration, and that studies in the Delmarva peninsula had consistently found lots of them in September. Apparently these birds—nearly impossible to separate from the gray-cheeked thrush by sight—had been identified by its call. So we downloaded the call, and gave it a try when we passed through a patch of the appropriate habitat….and one answered! Only three of us—less exhausted by the black clouds of mosquitoes—got out of the van in time to hear the response, but common as it may be locally it was, for us, the choicest rarity of the trip.
We had a couple of hours on Sunday morning before we had to leave, so we did another sweep of the Refuge. It was drizzling, and the beach was thronged with birds rather than bathers: we estimated 1500 willets, along with similarly heroic numbers of the other expected beach-haunting birds. The absence of whimbrels was irksome. At last, on our way back, we spotted ~twenty of the famous horses, and picked up some more species while we took a look at them. I saw a flight of white birds, which I wrote off as more egrets, but they alit near the horses, some on their backs, the only cattle egrets of the trip. We stopped near the nature center and picked up a few birds among the clouds of mosquitoes; even the locals regarded them as unusually bothersome. We split, and returned to the Columbus area about sundown. A fine trip, with good birds and good company. Our list of 112 species follows.
Pied-billed grebe
Brown pelican
Double-crested cormorant
Great blue heron
Great egret
Snowy egret
Little blue heron
Tricolored heron
Cattle egret
White ibis
Glossy ibis
Tundra swan
Mute swan
Canada goose
Wood duck
Green-winged teal
American black duck
Mallard
Northern pintail
Blue-wnged teal
Northern shoveler
Gadwall
Hooded merganser
Black vulture
Turkey vulture
Osprey
Bald eagle
Northern harrier
Cooper’s hawk
Red-shouldered hawk
Red-tailed hawk
American kestrel
Peregrine falcon
Northern bobwhite
Clapper rail
Black-bellied plover
American golden-plover
Semipalmated plover
Piping plover
Killdeer
American oystercatcher
Black-necked stilt
American avocet
Greater yellowlegs
Lesser yellowlegs
Solitary sandpiper
Willet
Spotted sandpiper
Hudsonian godwit
Marbled godwit
Ruddy turnstone
Sanderling
Semipalmated sandpiper
Least sandpiper
White-rumped sandpiper
Pectoral sandpiper
Dunlin
Stilt sandpiper
Short-billed dowitcher
Laughing gull
Ring-billed gull
Herring gull
Great black-backed gull
Caspian tern
Royal tern
Sandwich tern
Common tern
Forster’s tern
Black tern
Black skimmer
Rock dove
Mourning dove
Ruby-throated hummingbird
Belted kingfisher
Red-headed woodpecker
Red-bellied woodpecker
Downy woodpecker
Hairy woodpecker
Northern flicker
Great crested flycatcher
Eastern kingbird
Tree swallow
Northern rough-winged swallow
Bank swallow
Barn swallow
Blue jay
American crow
Fish crow
Carolina chickadee
Tufted titmouse
Red-breasted nuthatch
White-breasted nuthatch
Brown-headed nuthatch
Carolina wren
Marsh wren
Blue-gray gnatcatcher
Eastern bluebird
Bicknell’s thrush
American robin
Gray catbird
Northern mockingbird
European starling
White-eyed vireo
Yellow-rumped warbler
Pine warbler
Comon yellowthroat
Northern cardinal
Blue grosbeak
Indigo bunting
Eastern towhee
Field sparrow
Song sparrow
Bobolink
Red-winged blackbird
Boat-tailed grackle
Common grackle
Brown-headed cowbird
House finch
American goldfinch