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[caveat: initial off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts about this event, mostly to raise awareness and prompt discussion] **rare; photos and video of 2-3 adults on rocks at tip (I forded the channel to access the island off the tip for my first time). One first seen dropping in behind a rock when I first arrived and then another spotted and digiscoped identifiably at extreme distance before I sacrificed mph shoes and crossed the channel. Once out there I saw at least three: one that left and flew out to sea and two that at one point sat together on a rock with a lone Roseate. Many SLR photos. Birds preened almost the entire time and did not call much or at all. A long overdue patch bird for me and one I have come seeking on multiple spring events with E or SE winds. Instead, this uncommon and unexpected setup seems to have been the perfect recipe for the species here! Final count of five includes two seen in flight only arriving from feeding flock to E. Potentially many more in area but beyond limits of perception. This was an **epic** Arctic Tern event (see checklist notes for birds that I had heard about as of 9pm 13 May). Note that I am only jotting what I heard from friends and misc. channels; a complete listing from eBird reports and other channels will take additional days to compile but will be a helpful chronicle of the event. Also, for the tl;dr, I'll go ahead and predict that today was just the beginning of this event. I think Arctic Terns will continue to be found widely, both inland and coastal especially south shore of Long Island and southern New England) for several days (3-7?) to come. These birds were not blown inland by weather or grounded by squall lines, which have been prior mechanisms for inland Arctic Tern sightings. So what happened? My take is this: massive numbers of Arctics were displaced into the mid-Atlantic Bight Sunday-Thursday. The winds stayed strong and kept them pinned near the coast, until Thursday when the wind speeds started to lessen. Last night was a decent migration night and a good number of Arctic Terns, which have been flying north from Antarctica and surely wanted to continue the migration, started to head north, probably overnight. Presumably, the birds that had been battered by the winds were less able to make a long overland flight and maybe more prone to stopover at lakes because of their depleted resources. The fact that terns were moving north up the Hudson and also seen in coastal areas (e.g., Gooseberry Neck) further indicates that this was not just an inland fallout but rather involved massive numbers of Arctic Terns migrating on a broad front and stopping over at much higher rates than normal. The geography of this event, with terns inland from Maryland and se. Pennsylvania to the Hudson River, western Massachusetts, and even ponds in se. Massachusetts suggests that it involved birds from the mid-Atlantic Bight moving N or NNW (Pennsylvania, Maryland) and the fact that some were well inland in Berkshire Co., MA, Quabbin and Wachusett Reservoirs in central Mass suggest that this was not just a minor displacement from the coast. Two points worth noting. This was NOT an inland displacement of terns from easterly winds. No Arctics appear to have been found inland with the strong winds and instead they were found inland when the winds lightened up. This shows that the birds were moving inland intentionally. This also was not a fallout, in the sense that bad weather can sometimes ground seabirds that migrate over land (e.g., scoters, Brant, jaegers, Sabine's Gulls, and sometimes Arctic Terns). Waterbird fallout events tend to happen with strong weather systems that have a lot of precipitation--not at all the recent weather pattern. Furthermore, they tend to involve a cross-section of multiple species that move at the same time of year and would have involved loons, White-winged Scoters, Bonaparte's Gulls, and more. Instead this seemed to be a huge Arctic Tern--and only Arctic Tern--event. Given that I did see several at Gooseberry Neck though, birds were seeing flying past Camp Cronin in Rhode Island, and given that many of the records were quite close to the coast, I expect that BOTH things are happening. Some Arctics are trying to head inland, over land, and not making it very far leading to stopover at lakes. Others are trying to move east, maybe with groups of Common Terns. These birds are also tired and feeding a lot and resting a lot. They are not able to migrate in long hops right now and so they are trickling along the coast. Hopefully Long Island and Rhode Island birders will be able to confirm this in coming days; the Massachusetts coast is not a good place for watching movements like this because of the many offshore islands. However, perhaps some will move up Buzzard's Bay, where they are easier to observe. It also seems possible that coastal fog could have interfered with high flying flocks of Arctics and resulted in some inland drift, which could account for birds at ponds in southeastern Mass and other sites in CT and RI that are close to the coast. Whether those birds are more similar to birds moving east (e.g., presumably those at Gooseberry) or birds moving N and NNW (e.g., those at lakes in central and western Mass) is a question that maybe can be clarified in the coming days. Final note: Be sure to continue checking lakes, rivers, and coastal tern concentrations for the coming week. I would predict many more Arctic sightings to come. I have no idea if we will see more, or fewer, Arctics in the coming days. I am willing to bet that there will be more in the following days and that we'll have a lot to learn above and beyond today's amazing totals. It goes without saying that these birds should be documented well, identified with care, and reported to eBird...
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