A number of birders spent the afternoon watching for rare seabirds at
Stonington Point.

While this storm has been largely disappointing compared to expectations,
there were still a few good birds around.

Most notable was a Parasitic Jaeger spotted by John Oshlick, and a massive
number of sterna terns and Laughing Gulls streaming by from the river NE of
Stonington Point towards LIS.

Conservative estimates of species and other highlights as of when I left
are below. Others are still searching for more!

-6,500+ Common Terns

-300+ Roseate Terns! Some close giving good looks and calling. Towards 3PM
they started trickling by in larger numbers.

-115 Black Terns (not a typo!) I did an exact count of BLTEs going by. What
a crazy experience! Most in ones or twos, with a few groups of 3 and at
least one of 4.

-~12 Forster's Terns

-3 Stilt Sandpipers in a flyby flock of Lesser Yellowlegs

-Flock of 4 flyby Red Knots

-Close flyby White-rumped Sandpiper.

By far the most terns I have seen in CT. Huge numbers of Roseate was an
amazing experience.

Thanks to many other birders on the watch for their assistance in counts
and expertise in picking birds out.

Henri may not be the incredible birding storm it was expected to be, but it
very well could be worth it to continue searching this evening and
tomorrow. Frigatebird comes to mind.

Good birding,

Aidan Kiley
Fairfield
With Glenn, Julian, Alex, Preston, the Rottinos, James Purcell, James Leone
and others whose names I did not catch.

Just to follow up on Aidan's post about storm birding from Stonington Point yesterday. After he left and despite the big slowdown of moving birds, there was still movement until at least 6pm. At one point, about 2000 terns rose up from the far side of Sandy Point to the east due to some unseen disturbance and then settled down again. At least 500 more Common Terns and other terns flew west by the point. The Common Tern numbers are a best estimate, but the less common terns were counted to some degree by us as a group and surely undercounted.

Common Terns - 9000
Black Terns - 135
Roseate Terns - 350
Forster's Terns - 42
Laughing Gull - 2200
Bonaparte's Gull - 27

There were usually two, but always at least one large feeding flock near the point. A fisherman informed that the bait fish were peanut bunker (the young stage of the Atlantic Menhaden) and that matched what we were seeing the birds eating. He mentioned that a pod of 100 Bottlenose Dolphins were in the Sound just south of Mason's Island last week. Who knows what the abundance of bait fish in the eastern Sound might bring in.

Glenn Williams
Mystic