updated plover numbers

Latest official piping plover numbers on Plum Island:

• Refuge beach: 17 pairs, 4 nests, 19 chicks, 5 fledged
• Sandy Point: 5 pairs, 8 chicks,  3 fledged
• Town beach: 1 pair, 3 chicks

Stuff in the Merrimack

Time for another Stuff in the Merrimack post:

• A guy with either a dangerous drug or a woman superhero: Manchester man charged with heroine possession after pulled from river New Hampshire NEWS07 (they fixed the headline after I posted this)
• Some big plans: Planners expanding Merrimack River trail
• Creosote: Creosote pollution may last for years
• 17 tons of debris: Clean River Project moving from Methuen to Haverhill for cleanup

July Already

Shift:  AM, South
Coffee of the Day: French Roast
Bird of the Day: little gull
Invisi-bird Status: Refuge Beach: 18 pairs, 9 nests, 22 chicks, Sandy Point: 5 pair, 1 nest, 12 chicks,  Town Beach: 1 pair, 2 chicks. Number actually seen by me: 0.
Weird Wrack Item of the Day: a 15 foot piece of black plastic tubing.
Refuge Biological Staff Sighted: 0.
Coast Guard Assets Sighted: 1.
Gorgeous day. No toddlers throwing tantrums, no rain, polite visitors.

looking north

I was busy most of the time so didn't get to do a whole lot of birding. The usual suspects were all there: great black backs, herring gulls, ring-billed gulls, Bonaparte's gulls, laughing gull, common terns, least terns, double crested cormorant, northern gannet, and eastern kingbird.

looking south

There was a huge feeding frenzy involving all of the above species except the kingbirds just offshore to the south in the general vicinity of the channel marker. Boats started to converge on the same spot by mid-morning. Bait fish fleeing for their lives before bigger fish create quite the bird show.

weird wrack item of the week

So there was this piece of tubing or pipe or hose all tangled up in the wrack. What I could see of it was about 15 feet but one end was buried in the sand so it could have been even longer. I can't even guess what it's for or where it came from.

there's a little gull in there somewhere

Whenever I had a free moment, I scanned the flock of gulls for the little gull that Tom Wetmore reported earlier in the morning. A couple of times I thought I saw it, but wasn't 100% sure.  I took several pictures of the flock, but couldn't pick it out of the photos either.

some fisherman is missing a glove