THE CHANGING SEASONS; CORNUCOPIA 
Table 1. Selected Atlantic tropica! cyclones active in August through November 2008, most of 
these noted for association with bird records.’ 
Storm iiamci dates 
Mai. wind 
Min. pressure 
Strike(s) 
IS. Edouard, 3-6 Aug 
65 
996 
Gilchrist, TX 
IS. foy, 15-27 Aug 
70 
986 
El Cabo, Dominican Republic 
Gonave 1., Haiti 
Cabo Cruz, Cuba 
Cienfuegos, Cuba 
Key West, FL 
Cape Romano, FL 
Flagier Beach, FL 
Carabelie, FL 
Gustav (4), 25 Aug-4 Sep 
150 
941 
Jacmel, Haiti 
Manchioneal, Jamaica 
Lionel Town, Jamaica 
Little Cayman and Cayman Brae 
Isla de la Juventud, Cuba 
Los Palacios, Cuba 
Cocodrie, LA 
Hanna [I], 28 Aug-7 Sep 
85 
977 
Providenciales 
Inagua, Bahamas 
Northern Hispaniola 
Middle Caicos, Turks & Caicos 
Myrtle Beach, SC 
Islip, New York 
Border ofCT/RI 
/fe (4), 1-14 Sep 
145 
935 
Grand Turk 1. 
Inagua, Bahamas 
Cabo Lucrecia, Cuba 
Punta La Capitana, Cuba 
Galveston l.,TX 
^y/e(1), 25-29 Sep 
85 
984 
Yarmouth, NS 
Omar [4), 13-18 Oct 
135 
958 
St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Is. 
Paloma (4), 5-10 Nov 
145 
944 
Grand Cayman 1. 
Little Cayman and Cayman Brae 
Cayman Brae 
Santa Cruz del Sur, Cuba 
’ Notes: Tropical storms are prefixed with "T.S."; hurricane names are followed by a number in 
parentheses indicating the maximum Category level on the Saffir-Simpson Scale reached by the 
storm during its activity as a tropical cyclone. Wind intensity is given in miles per hour; baro- 
metric pressure is given as millibars. 
effects on ecosystems, we suggest 
a few hours surfing websites de- 
voted to hurricanes, which in re- 
cent years have begun to offer a 
dizzying amount of detail on the 
characteristics and effects of each 
tropical cyclone, formerly materi- 
al that could be difficult to locate. 
We must save our pages here to 
devote primarily to the bird 
records associated with selected 
autumn-season storms, whose es- 
sential characteristics and landfall 
sites are provided mostly in sum- 
mary here (Table 1). Of interest 
to us in this table is that while the 
brunt of these storms’ destruction 
is often borne disproportionately 
by residents of Mexico, Central 
America, and the Caribbean — at 
least in terms of loss of threat- 
ened habitats, reduction of threat- 
ened/endemic bird taxa, and hu- 
man life — the dollar figures we 
read that gauge the “destructive- 
ness” of these storms refer dispro- 
portionately to areas of the Unit- 
ed States mainland, where fewer 
people are killed and fewer bird 
taxa are threatened with extinc- 
tion by the storms. The disparate 
concentration of wealth in the 
United States also means that 
leisure activities such as birding 
are far more widespread there, 
and so most of the hurricane-bird 
records received by this journal 
come from areas well populated 
with birders. We cannot stress 
enough in this column, therefore, 
how little we know about the move- 
ment of birds around and through 
these storms, as we have just frag- 
ments of data, mostly from the 
end of the storm’s life as a tropical 
cyclone: we know almost nothing 
about what happens to birds in 
these storms over, say, 90% of 
their existence and very little in 
the remaining tenth. 
Before we plunge into the par- 
ticulars, we should note that bird- 
ing activity (“coverage” as we like 
to say) of sites along the tracks of several hur- 
ricanes was especially extensive this season, 
as more and more observers become aware of 
the potential for unusual birds transported by, 
or grounded by, these weather systems. How- 
ever, it is worth noting that huge areas tra- 
versed by the two strongest landfalling Sep- 
tember storms (Gustav and Ike) — including 
all of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Ten- 
nessee, Kentucky, Michigan, Ontario — 
recorded virtually no birds attributed to these 
storms, even though birders positioned them- 
selves in what seemed ideal wind- 
ward sites on large lakes and 
reservoirs for finding seabirds. 
The respective regional reports 
dutifully mention this hard-won 
“negative data.” 
At and near the areas of land- 
fall, the storms’ destructiveness 
made birding of any sort impossi- 
ble, as Steve Cardiff writes in the 
Arkansas & Louisiana regional 
report. As we have noted in past 
columns, the Gulf of Mexico’s 
pelagic avifauna mostly lacks the 
large aggregations of tubenoses 
seen in the Gulf Stream off North 
Carolina, for instance, so there 
may simply be fewer seabirds af- 
fected by such storms. In the 
enormous geographic area that 
lies between the lower Midwest 
and the immediate Gulf coast, 
birders are comparatively few, but 
those few who got out were 
sometimes stunned by the 
seabirds they did encounter. And 
so once again this season, one les- 
son seems to be that most birds 
recorded in the storms come from 
areas just inland, where the storm 
strength has begun to lessen — 
and not on the immediate coast, 
which is typically inaccessible 
until well after the effects of the 
storm (and the birds) have 
passed, except for moribund and 
dead birds. Another lesson is that 
we should keep our eyes open, 
assume nothing, and keep that 
camera handy, as observers in 
Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Col- 
orado will tell you. 
FAY 
On 15 August, the day Tropical 
Storm Fay was named, the storm 
produced heavy rains on Hispan- 
iola. Over the next several days, 
Fay crossed Hispaniola, Cuba, 
and then hit southern Florida 18 
August, moving northeastward 
across the peninsula and flooding 
parts of eastern Florida. After 
crossing into the Atlantic, Fay turned west- 
ward again and crossed northern Florida 22 
August. It became the first storm to make 
landfall in Florida four times (Table 1), and so 
hurricane birds were strewn from Mississippi 
to Georgia, along both Gulf and Atlantic 
VOLUME 63 (2009) ■ NUMBER 1 
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