THE CHANGING SEASONS: CORNUCOPIA 
the northern Gulf Coast was peppered by small numbers of American Flamingos, including 
several unprecedented birds in Mississippi. This bird was at Waveland, Hancock County, 
Mississippi 6-B (here 8) September 2008. Of the several dozen reports of flamingos north 
of Florida in the East (1818-1 986), relatively few (under 1 0) records can be conclusively 
linked to hurricane activity. Photograph by Claire English. 
Table 2. Flamingos reported in Florida, Mississippi, and Mexico, September- 
December 2008, with possibly associated tropical cyclones. 
Nyinber; plumage 
Locatian 
Date(s) 
Stsrm? 
Eight ads. 
Pascagoula, Jackson Co., MS 
24 Aug 
Fay 
Two ads.' 
Long Beach, Harrison Co., MS 
2 Sep (1 on 3 Sep) 
6ustav 
One ad.^ 
Waveland, Hancock Co., MS 
6 Sep 
Gustav 
One ad. 
Destin, Okaloosa Co., FL 
5 Sep-1 Oct 
Gustav 
One imm. 
Halifax River, Volusia Co., FL 
11 Oct 
Ike 
Fourads.^ 
Altamira, Tamaulipas, Mexico 
14 Oct-18 Dec 
none 
Nates: Lack of photographs of the eight birds seen 24 August prevents identification to 
species; all others here listed have been confirmed as American Flamingos. 'These birds 
are distinctly different from the bird seen 17 kilometers away at Waveland. ^This bird 
stoned to death by Iota! boys and found dead 1 3 September; Figure 5. ^These birds were 
accompanied by one Greater Flamingo and were also documented to have been present 
here 5 December 2006 and in October-November 2007. 
Figure 6. This Brown Noddy was one of six found during a pelagic trip off the coast of Georgia on 1 4 September 
2008; records of the species are increasing sharply in the Southeast in recent years, as is also true of Brown Boo- 
by, making it difficult to tie records of these scarce species to tropical storm activity, as is true of other species 
exploring or expanding northward outside the context of discrete weather events. Photograph by David Hollie. 
report of eight flamingos in Mississippi and 
one juvenile flamingo in Florida suggest. 
But in truth there is no way to say with cer- 
tainty, and the same is true of many species 
whose tendency toward northward dispersal 
appears to be increasing of late, whether wad- 
ing birds (egrets, herons, ibis, storks, includ- 
ing Jabiru) or seabirds, such as frigatebirds, 
considered above. Six Brown Noddies count- 
ed off Tybee Island, Georgia 14 September 
(Figure 6) were attributed to Hanna of the 
previous week — ^plausible, surely, but records 
of the species had been increasing off that 
state in recent years, even during quiet peri- 
ods for tropical weather. The non-birders’ fa- 
vorite bird name. Brown Booby, seems to be 
popping up everywhere: this season’s stars 
were near Jekyll Island, Georgia 30 August, 
one at Surfside Beach, South 
Carolina 6 September, one 
off New Jersey 14 Septem- 
ber, and some 13 resting on 
the Navy towers off Georgia 
the same day. In Florida, 
where also increasing, five 
were seen on Atlantic 
beaches and two in the Pan- 
handle 14-15 September. As 
for the flamingos, it would 
be possible to stitch some 
storm names to these 
records, but the gradual ex- 
pansion of the species 
northward has been inde- 
pendent of tropical storms, 
it seems. And how does one 
explain the adult Brown 
Booby found in the moun- 
tains of Virginia at Claytor Lake, Pulaski 
County on 4-28 October? Ikel The storm was 
indeed huge, as Mark Adams and Matt Hafn- 
er write in the Middle Atlantic regional re- 
port, but Ike's main weather was two or three 
states away! There is no precedent for such a 
record as far as we know. 
It is always important to keep in mind that 
seabirds make bizarre appearances not associ- 
ated with storms, such as the Leach’s Storm- 
seen inland at Titusville, Florida 6 October. 
Eleven Cory’s Shearwaters found dying on 
Volusia County and Brevard County beaches 
in Florida in late September could have been 
birds exhausted by tropical storms, particu- 
larly Ivan, but it is hard to say. Some seabirds 
and shorebirds observed during the passage 
of tropical weather systems are “locals” — pas- 
sage migrants that might not be detected 
without the rain, wind, and plummeting pres- 
sure, or might not be detected in such unusu- 
al settings (ball fields, farm fields, small lakes, 
etc.). Some seen along lakeshores or ocean 
coasts are merely moved a few kilometers in- 
shore, such as the jaegers, non-pelagic terns, 
phalaropes (many!), Sabine’s Gulls (only a 
few this season) mentioned in many reports. 
But at least a few species do appear to be dis- 
placed some distance: hundreds of Black Terns 
away from the Gulf of Mexico had probably 
been foraging in the Gulf just prior to being 
found inland in mid-September after Ike 
(numbers were also elevated at Long Island 
and at Chatham, Massachusetts after Hanna). 
Often remarkable is the diversity of displaced 
terns during hurricanes: highlights of this sea- 
son, in addition to the Royal and Sandwich 
Terns noted above, include scattered Least and 
Common Terns in odd places in Louisiana af- 
ter Gustav and Ibe; 150 Roseate Terns at Mon- 
tauk Point, Long Island 7 September after Han- 
na', an Arctic Tern in upstate New York at Ham- 
lin Beach the same day; a Gull-billed Tern at 
Jamestown, Rhode Island 7 September after 
Hanna, plus Royals into southern New Eng- 
land after that storm. (Marvelously not con- 
nected to any storm that we can discern, a 
Sandwich Tern at the aptly named Cap-du- 
Bon-Desir, Quebec 22 August was chased 
around until pinned down at Tadoussac, where 
observed through 8 October, a provincial sec- 
ond.) We direct the reader to the fine print of 
the Gulf coast states’ regional reports to see the 
even more diverse panoply of shorebirds put 
down in odd places and high numbers — there 
are simply too many to digest here! 
VOlUME 63 (2009) • NUMBER 1 
23 
