“I saw a kingfisher rising up over the creek, a green crab shifting over the shelving bank; and on the beach were the remains of a black duck, sodden, bedraggled, the feathers loaded with wet sand, the breastbone sticking up like the white prow of a helmet, flies buzzing over it–the smell of salted carrion around it.”

An ocean perch in living color.

I am most grateful to eminent fish experts Willy Bemis and J.B. Heiser, current and past Directors of the Shoals Marine Laboratory respectively, for helping with this identification. While the head-on posing of our mystery fish was ideal in an artistic/compositional sense, it was sub-optimal for making the i.d. Despite this, Drs. Bemis and Heiser both concur that the fish Kristin found is a redfish, specifically Sebastes marinus, known colloquially as an ocean perch. You can check out details of the skull structure in this group of fish, and also read more about any fish of interest at FishBase, which is a cool reference provided to me by Willy.

Features of note in the Sebastes genus: big eye, and spikes on operculum.

One feature even a fish neophyte like me can appreciate in Sebastes marinus is the presence of numerous spikes on the operculum (the shield like structure over the gills behind and below the eye). I can persuade myself that these spikes are actually partially visible in the head-on shot provided by Kristin.

In any case, I’m lucky to have contacts at Shoals Marine Lab, including Christine Bogdanowicz, who facilitated the communication on this fishy query. Also, an additional plug: anyone can visit, volunteer, or take courses at Shoals, and the season will be fast upon us! Now is the time to check out their offerings, and with any luck, I’ll see some of you out there this Summer!

Frozen fish in Maine. Photo by Kristin Cattrano.

Linda Woodard, our Local Coordinator in Maine, started up a Maine Seanet facebook page to offer another virtual conversation into the mix for our farflung volunteers. It’s been great to follow the finds and comments of our downeast Seanetters via this medium, and this week, Kristin Cattrano posted a very cool photo of a dead fish. The carcass was a foot to a foot and a half long, by Kristin’s estimation, and the photo has stirred up a debate as to the i.d. of this dead beast with the mouthful of ice.
I know extremely little about fish identification, and I would be delighted if any of you pisciphiles (which may not be an actual word) would weigh in on this. And I will take this opportunity to learn something about fish i.d. and share whatever rudimentary knowledge I gain next week.

You may notice that some photos have not yet migrated to the new site. Please be patient; Megan is slaving away on this, and she’ll get it done! If you have any questions or problems as you use the new link, let us know and we’ll fix you right up1

Structure circled in yellow: dragon skull, or bird sternum?

Seanetter Libby Rock can always be counted upon to identify potential supernatural or phantasmagorical finds on the beaches and on this blog. Noting the bony structure attached to the wigeon wings on the last post, she suggested dragon skull for the i.d. In fact, the structure is a severely displaced sternum. While the sternum in mammals like ourselves is a thin, flat bone, in birds, it is a wide, shield shaped bone with a deep keel projecting out to give a sturdy attachment zone for the massive pectoral muscles birds require for flight.

A bird's sternum in profile (left) and head on (right). Bonus points: can you spot the fracture?

Another evolutionary adaptation for flight is demonstrated by a bone photographed by Jack Renfrew, who sent in a pic of a mystery specimen much like the one in the second photo. The structure shown in this photo is actually the fused lower vertebrae and pelvis of a Northern Fulmar. Flight is a very energy intensive and demanding activity, and the sheer force of the powerful downbeat of the wings would cause a very flexible skeleton (like ours) to bend ineffectively making the bird incapable of taking off. The fusing of multiple bones together through evolutionary time is a theme throughout the avian skeleton; where humans have 206 bones, birds typically have fewer overall, though the loss of flexibility in the mid and lower spine is compensated for by additional vertebrae in the neck. These “extra” bones (compared with mammals) are responsible for the ability of birds to turn their heads as much as 270º, though the common belief that birds can spin their heads all the way around is nothing but a goofy, Exorcist-style myth.

Razorbill in breeding plumage. Quite striking.

Bird A didn’t really stump anyone; all respondents knew this was a Razorbill. These guys can be tricky though, especially when it comes to distinguishing them from murres. When the carcass is intact, check the bill. While breeding Razorbills have a distinctive vertical white stripe on the bill, and a white line running back to the eye, Seanetters are unlikely to encounter birds in breeding plumage as the species nests only from Maine northward. In non-breeding adults, the bill is more subtle, but still shows the deep, arcing profile, and some trace of a white line. Young birds have a shallower bill and bear the most resemblance to murres. In those cases, the tail can be of help. In Razorbills, the tail is long, pointed, and extends beyond the feet. In murres, by contrast, the tail does not extend beyond the feet.

A more demure looking Common Murre. Oh, that's a terrible pun! Sorry!

Bird B was an entirely different story. We did get a correct response, all the way from Europe, from Wouter van Gestel who correctly identified Bird B as an American Wigeon. It’s our very first of the species here at SEANET, so this bird is big news! Tell-tale field marks here are the black secondaries with a white wing patch. This is a male American Wigeon, which is the easier to identify of the sexes. As you can see from these two photos from the Wing and Tail Collection of the University of Puget Sound (a spectacular resource), only the male has that broad white patch, and a small, iridescent green area on the speculum. The female’s wing is more muted, with only a thin, white bar.

On Thursday, this blog will address the topic of weird bird bones and how they look nothing like the bones you’re used to, and more like, as Libby Rock has pointed out to me, dragon skulls.

Male American Wigeon wing. Photo from University of Puget Sound collection

Female American Wigeon wing. Photo from University of Puget Sound collection.

Bird A: Found by Mary and Steve Gulrich on Cape Cod last month.

Bird B: Found by Becky Bartel in North Carolina last month.

Here it is: the first DBQ of 2012. Bird A turned up late last month on the Cape Cod beach of Mary and Steve Gulrich. Bird B is the inaugural find of Becky Bartel, walking a brand new SEANET beat in North Carolina. Wing chord on Becky’s bird is 26 cm.
Now, give me some guesses and we’ll see what we can do!

It takes a great deal of patience to record the full combination of plover color bands. (photo by G. Graves)

Alice van Zoeren, who handles reports of banded plovers up at the University of Minnesota, sent us the full scoop on the bird spotted by Georgia Graves on St. Simons Island in Georgia: the bird hatched in 2010, and nested along Lake Michigan this past summer when it was captured and tagged with the elaborate color band pattern that allows each bird to be individually identified via photo. The system is well explained and illustrated at the UMN plover research site, and you can also learn more about what they’re up to with both their plover work and their studies of other waterbirds.

The recorded history of Georgia's banded Piping Plover

The UMN folks have determined that the Great Lakes Piping Plovers overwinter from North Carolina south to Texas, so now is the time for our southern Seanetters to be on the lookout for tagged and flagged birds. The plovers are also banded by other agencies and programs, like the US Fish and Wildlife Service and Bird Studies Canada, so take careful note of the bands you see, get a good photo whenever possible, and start the detective work of figuring out where your bird came from. Of course, we want to hear about your sightings too, so pass them along. And as the folks at UMN say, happy plovering!

The winsome Piping Plover of winter. Photo by G. Graves.

Georgia Graves, Seanetting down on St. Simons Island in Georgia, sent along a few pictures of the goings-on down there. Last week, she spotted a few Piping Plovers sporting on the sands, two of which wore orange flags above the ankle, and colored bands above the foot. Knowledgeable in the ways of plover banders, Georgia knew that the orange flag marks a bird from the breeding population on the Great Lakes. This is not the first time a marked Piping Plover has turned up on a southern beach in winter; back in 2008, a pair of siblings turned up in Florida, wintering on the same beach–a highly unusual thing for this species. Dr. Francesca Cuthbert at the University of Minnesota studies these birds, and I’ve dropped her line to try to get some specifics on Georgia’s sighting. While we wait for word, here’s a festive little Christmas scene schooling us in how that holiday gets done on the Georgia coast. What more could I ask?

An East Beach Christmas: how Georgia does it up!

Dick Jordan and the rescued loggerhead he assisted.

We’re into the northern winter now, and the ocean tends to churn up more in these cold months than at any other time in the year. November is also known as sea turtle stranding season here in New England, and Seanetter Dick Jordan has sent in a report; a couple of weeks ago he went out to do his beach walk on Cape Cod and ended up assisting a cold-stunned Kemp’s Ridley and a loggerhead! The chilled loggerhead paused for a photo op before his conveyance to the sea turtle rescue center at the New England Aquarium in Boston.

Sea turtles and dead seabirds are by no means the only things tossed ashore in winter; Mary Myers, who also walks the bay side of Cape Cod, sent in a photo of some now very familiar detritus. The sewage discs released from a Hooksett, NH treatment plant back in March. Seanetters have found them as far south as New Jersey, and while their appearance is sporadic, when the wind and waves are right, we get a reminder that millions of these discs were released and they’re still floating around out there, buffeted by the currents.

Whether it’s something you find on your SEANET beach or not, and whether you’re a Seanetter or not, we’re always curious to see what oddities you find out there. So send in your pictures and reports–’tis the season for weird stuff to wash up out there!

Spent shotgun shells and sewage discs: must be the holidays!