Razorbills irrupt!

Last week, a non-Seanetter (a civilian, if you will) contacted me via this blog. Scott Clark, fishing off the Florida coast was the first to alert me:

“I was out fishing in my boat off a place called Peck Lake off Stuart FL about 50 yards off the beach I was catching spanish mackeral when I noticed a bird that was flying/swimming under water it reminded me of a penguin I had never seen a bird like it before it hung around the boat I threw it some pieces of fish and it readily ate them when I got back I started to look up what kind of bird it was the closest thing was a razorbill but the bird I saw did not have white in its beek when I ran across your website and saw the picture of the razorbill in winter plumage That was the exact bird I saw I guess its prity lost  we are used to snowbirds here in FL just not real ones.”

Scott went out fishing again a few days ago and reported seeing small groups of 7-8 of the birds foraging, as well as one dead one floating in the water.

Razorbill found in NE Florida. (photo courtesy of Birding Aboard).

Sure enough, Scott was observing a larger phenomenon, and Razorbills are being seen on both coasts of Florida. Local news has picked up the story, citing eBird’s Marshall Iliff on the event. We are, of course, in the business of tracking dead birds here at SEANET, and if you find a dead Razorbill during a planned SEANET walk, that data will be captured in our database. But we and other wildlife groups including the US Fish and Wildlife Service are interested in capturing a broader scale on this irruption. So, to our southern readers, if you see live Razorbills, I encourage you to report them to eBird so both numbers of birds and their geographic extent can be recorded. And if you see dead Razorbills while not on a designated SEANET walk, please report them to the Wildlife Health Event Reporter.

Our Facebook friends at Birding Aboard tell us that the Florida Museum of Natural History is interested in any specimens for their collection, which has been, up to now, rather thin on Razorbills. That may not be the case for much longer. If you find a specimen, please wrap it up in a plastic bag and keep it frozen. Contact the Museum to see if they are indeed interested. And remember, even specimens in rough shape can often be useful for their skeletal remains.

Keep your eyes and ears open, dear readers, and keep us posted on the latest and greatest news on RAZOs!

Beached Bird Field Guide: roundup of Flickr photo contributors

While some slippery species continue to elude me, I have been thrilled with the willingness of complete strangers to share their photos of dead birds with us. The photo sharing site flickr has proven a veritable trove of photos, and I have been pleased to find so many other people with an affinity for dead birds. All the photographers allowing us to use their images will, of course, be noted in the published Guide itself, but I wanted to give our readers a wider sense of the variety and depth of work some of these photographers exhibit, whether professional or amateur.

The first, known on flickr as “picklerevenge,” shared the story behind a series of photos of salt-encrusted American White Pelican carcasses:

“I’d be honored for you to use my picture, no problem. I wish you could see the place the photos were taken- it’s the far north end of utah’s great salt lake at a place called the spiral jetty. It’s just like mars there and it is a giant pelican graveyard, really beautiful and unique place. Anyway, just thought I’d give you a little background on where the picture is from. Good luck with your project, sounds interesting!”

Picklerevenge also has an entire photo series entitled, elegantly, “Dead,” and in it, I think all Seantters will recognize a kindred spirit.

Another talent discovered via flickr is Matthew Rodgers. Matthew takes beautiful shots of (mostly living) birds, and it was my great good fortune that he also encountered a dead Black-legged Kittiwake and took a picture of the bird in the most flawlessly ideal SEANET posture I could have asked for.

A third, Johnnylondon, is not exclusively or even primarily a photographer of birds living or dead, and his photo stream seems a reflection of all the interesting things he encounters in his daily travels. Lucky for us, one morning one of those things was a dead mallard he found under some power lines.

A winsome cow. One of Johnnylondon’s fine images on flickr.

I’ve tracked down photos from all sorts of strange places, and as I continue work on the Guide, I will share more of those with you, in recognition of our many generous contributors. I encourage you to visit the Flickr pages of everyone else who’s helped us out (thanks maddog04666, Hart Walter and Born.Free!) and see what else, aside from dead birds, these shutter-happy folks have posted of late.