THE CHANGING SEASONS: CORNUCOPIA 
we should be mindful not just of wind inten- 
sity and direction, rainfall, forward speed, and 
so forth but also gale diameter. A comparison 
of lowest central pressure may also be in- 
structive: Gilbeifs was the second lowest ever 
recorded (888 mb, second only to Wilma of 
2005, with 882 mb); Ivan’s was 910 mb; and 
Ike's was 935 mb. 
We should say, in excursus, that it is a tale 
of differing trends with Magnificent Frigate- 
birds in the East versus the West. In the East, 
sightings of wandering Magnihcents that are 
probably or dehnitely unrelated to tropical 
storm activity have increased noticeably dur- 
ing the past decade along the Atlantic coast. 
They are showing up almost anytime between 
May and mid-November, and this seasons 
rogue Man-o’-war birds came from New Jer- 
sey 27 October, from Ontario 12 October, and 
from Nova Scotia 25 August; no obvious con- 
nection to storms in these dates. However, 
frigatebirds may be displaced farther out from 
the center of tropical storms than most other 
tropical seabirds, including well to the north 
and west of the storms track (unlike most 
other storm-blown waifs. Sooty Tern a weak 
exception); and individuals discovered two or 
even three weeks after the storms passage 
may still be related to that event, such as the 
October birds in New Jersey and Ontario. 
Thus, many of the interior records of frigate- 
birds, west to the Great Lakes, may be storm- 
influenced, even if such a connection is not 
obvious. Given the possibility that other 
species of frigatebirds might occur, many in- 
dividuals, if not closely studied, are being left 
unidentified, as “Fitgata species.” In contrast, 
the number of Magnihcents turning up in 
California (and to a lesser extent in the inte- 
rior Southwest) has crashed. The species was 
formerly an annual summer wanderer in 
small numbers from western Mexico to 
southern California, both along the coast and, 
particularly, inland at the Salton Sea and to 
southern Arizona, but during the past 10-15 
years, occurrences have dropped to an aver- 
age of perhaps one bird per year. A likely ex- 
planation is the reported abandonment of the 
northernmost nesting colony in the Sea of 
Cortez. Recent records in California of both 
Great and Lesser Frigatebirds, combined with 
Magnificent’s substantial decline, has resulted 
in the placement of the latter back on the Cal- 
ifornia Bird Records Committee review list. 
Frigatebirds seen this season in Alaska and 
well off the Oregon coast were properly left as 
“frigatebird sp.,” as were almost a third of ex- 
tralimital records in the East. 
Back to Ike. Like Gustav, the larger storm 
was keenly attended by birders in the interior, 
who looked for another Oklahoma Miracle, 
but in fact relatively few other seabirds were 
found any distance (over 100 kilometers) 
from coastal areas, though eastern Texans 
found Brown Pelicans and Laughing Gulls at 
many reservoirs and had first-county records 
aplenty for Royal Tern, plus a few Sandwich 
Terns, even rarer inland. Arkansans found an- 
other Royal, after their earlier one during 
Gustav, and 16 made news in interior 
Louisiana. Sooty Terns turned up only in 
Louisiana (13 birds, 13-15 September), Mis- 
sissippi (eight birds, 14 September), and 
again Oklahoma (three, 14 September), but 
no Bridled Terns were reported. However, 
Mississippi’s seventh Brown Noddy was at 
Ocean Springs 13 September, the only one of 
the storm. Ike-driven Black Skimmers includ- 
ed 34 (a huge count) in interior eastern Texas 
and Arkansas's sixth in Pulaski County 14 
September. 
EDOUARD & PALOMA 
Tropical Storm Edouard was named on 3 Au- 
gust. It made landfall in Texas near Port 
Arthur on the morning of 5 August as a strong 
tropical storm, weakening into a tropical de- 
pression by afternoon as it passed inland. On 
6 November, just east of Nicaragua, Hurri- 
cane Paloma was named, a storm that eventu- 
ally became a Category 3 major hurricane — a 
rarity in the month of 
November in the At- 
lantic. The storm 
made landfall as a Cat- 
egory 2 near Santa 
Cruz del Stir, Cuba. 
Damage was also ex- 
tensive in the Cayman 
Islands. We include 
these storms here to 
make a point: there 
are no bird records 
mentioned in the re- 
gional reports in asso- 
ciation with them, 
though surely some 
birds were affected. 
Although probably no 
birders were present 
to study the impact of 
Paloma, it is surprising to see no Texas 
records as a result of Edouard. We encourage 
observers to send even scant or negative data 
to regional editors and to eBird 
(<wvinv.ebird.org>); there are surely scientific 
papers in the works about hurricanes and 
birds, and every checklist counts! 
Flamingos & other loose ends 
We never thought the day would come when 
we had to tabulate records of American 
Elamingos carefully (Table 2) in order to con- 
sider their relation to tropical cyclones, even 
though the records of the mostly distant past 
(see McNair and Gore 1998) suggest that 
these striking birds are subject to occasional 
displacement by these storms, both on the 
Gulf and more rarely on the East Coast. To 
save a bit of space here, we must direct the 
reader to large S. A. Boxes in the Alabama & 
Mississippi report and West Indies & Bermu- 
da report, where the matter of hurricanes and 
flamingos is taken up in greater detail. The 
question, ultimately, is a simple one: is there 
any way to connect any of the flamingos re- 
ported to tropical cyclones? We have seen at 
least a single American Flamingo, in compa- 
ny with an escaped Greater, roaming the 
western Gulf coast for several years now, and 
in the Mexico report this season, we read that 
documentation for at least four American 
Flamingos now present in Tamaulipas ex- 
tends back to December 2006! This area, not 
far south of Brownsville, Texas, could be the 
source of some of the adult flamingos found 
in Mississippi (Figure 5) and Florida 24 Au- 
gust through 1 October. Or there could be 
other wild flamingos along the coast of north- 
eastern Mexico that are tending to disperse 
northward in the Gulf, possibly birds from the 
Yucatan. However, it seems a bit more likely, 
given the storm tracks in 2008, that the hur- 
ricanes that passed through breeding areas of 
flamingos in Cuba, Hispaniola, and the Ba- 
hamas, then came directly to the Gulf coast 
(Fay, Gustflv, Ike), were responsible for dis- 
placing flamingos to the United States, as the 
Figure 4. This adult male Magnificent Frigatebird graced Myers Point on Cayuga Lake at Lansing, 
New York 21 September 2008, probably one of 700 or more displaced during the passage of Hurri- 
cane Ike. The species' propensity to wander outside the context of tropical storms — and its ability 
to wander great distances inland long after displacement by tropical storms — makes it especially 
difficult to speculate on the comings and goings of individual birds. Photograph by Tom Johnson. 
22 
NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS 
