Gull Kettles

Last month,while fishing for Atlantic Herring off my boat club dock, I watched hundreds of gulls passing south out of  Norwalk Harbor as the sun began to set.

Where are they going? I thought to myself.

A week later, I am back on the docks, replenishing my herring food stock, again the same thing, one by one, then in groups of two, three and four or more, the gulls pass me, heading south out the harbor while the sun is setting on the horizon, again where are they going? 

Atlantic Herring, the whole fish on the left will be smoked, the fillet's to the right will be pickled.

Back to the gulls, marina docks and shorelines are often a daytime loafing place for gulls during the winter, as pictured here at the marina which my boat is docked.

Before or near sunset, these birds take flight and disappear to the south.

For a few days, I  have been following these gulls, as they fly out the harbor before sunset.

These daytime roosting gulls will not stay here long after the sun has set.

Nor these gulls at Calf Pasture Beach in Norwalk

Leaving the shoreline gulls, I briefly checked out these Great Black-backed Gulls on Long Beach, Norwalk.

These birds arrived within the last week or so and appear to be setting up shop for the upcoming nesting season.

There were thirty Black-backs on this tiny sand spit.

Following the Herring gulls over to Goose Island, I accidentally flushed these Black Duck.

At Goose Is. many gulls were moving here for their evening roost.

A few Black-backs thinking about future nesting areas on Goose Island?

There were eighty plus Great Black-backs here.

Their numbers have grown in the past week.

This small island is a local hot spot for their nesting activities.

To the west, the sun is setting behind the Norwalk Power Plant.

Manressa Island to many, Keyser Island if you've been around Norwalk for a very long time.

Magically, hundreds of  Ring-bills in these beautiful kettles start moving off the Norwalk shoreline, floating eastward towards Cockenoe Island

One incredible sight! A Ring-bill Kettle at Sunset!

It is mayhem as this flock needs room to settle at Cockenoe Island.

Coming to Roost.

Safety is in numbers, and for these birds finding a secure place all to themselves for the evening.

The Norwalk Islands provide this needed winter habitat.

Sorry, but with a long lens I cannot capture the thousand or so gulls that have moved out her for the evening.

These are mostly Ring-bills, the Herring Gulls seem to prefer Goose Island, but there are still many of them here,along with a handful of Great Black-backs.

I also have to imagine there may be other gull species out here, but in shortness of daylight, I haven't been able to check that out.

Calf Pasture Beach in the background, Calf Island in the foreground.

Peace.

Brant Oddity

While passing through Norwalk's Calf Pasture Beach late this afternoon, I came upon this odd looking Brant that was hugging close to the shoreline in today's forty plus mile an hour winds.

This guy was all alone, staying in tight within the lee of the mainland.

I noted the odd bump on it's forehead and started taking photograph's.

In the above photo, it appears as though the left eye has been pushed downward from this tumor like hump.

Right side eye seems normal

Another view of the left  side eye abnormality.

This bird seemed otherwise very healthy as seen here feeding alone the shoreline

Plus just to be a showoff it hauled out and posed for the camera.

The other bird of the day were these beauties.

Often, people think of these Ring-billed Gulls as merely seagulls....

In gale force winds, it would be difficult to come upon a more graceful dancer! 

Lastly, a local Oyster Boat calling it a day.

with Peck's ledge Lighthouse in the distance.

Would you believe that with today's gales, two hunters went out the islands and had to be rescued by the Norwalk Police Marine Unit!

                              http://www.thehour.com/story/517875/npd-marine-unit-rescues-hunters

Norwalk Island Razorbills

Nice boating weather is hard to come by this time of year.

I have a few winter boating guidelines that I try my best to stick to.

First 40 degrees is a great start, second little or no wind, third, the sun is shinning.

Today fit all three, I made a call to my friend Chris and suggested today's the day, since we have been trying, but not able to get out on the boat for a few weeks.

My reasoning for these guidelines are these: water freezes, when it's spray hits the deck in windy and freezing temps, an ice skating rink on the deck, is not cool.

The ray's of the sun always helps out to keep you warm, as opposed to a cloudy day.

With over thirty years of winter boating, regardless if it was for fishing, birding, seals, photography or whatever, we are on a twenty one foot boat, it has a small cabin but no heat.

 There is no warm car to run back to when frostbite and hypothermia start to set in.

 Today was somewhat pleasant and we headed out into the sound.

  

Just south of Goose Island we saw out first Razorbill.

While searching for White-winged Scoter several miles south of Cockenoe Island, we came upon several more Razorbill's feeding over sixty five feet of water

This bird allowed us to come fairly close.

As many diving birds do, this Razorbill dips it's head underwater in search of prey, we are in 65' of water in LIS, I'm not sure how far it can see? 10'?

Perhaps it's not about seeing?

Back inshore we spotted this Gannet flying from the shoreline area, to the deeper waters of the sound.

In the background is the western edge of Sherwood Island State Park 

Over a period of several minutes, we saw five adult Northern Gannets fly south from this very inshore area.

It looked as though they were flying out from the Mill Pond area.

I called a friend that birds this area almost daily to get her observations.

Tina, said that in the very calm waters off of Westport this morning, she saw fish breaking the waters surface.

Great Info! I have been doing well catching Atlantic Herring in Norwalk Harbor and other fishermen are catching these herring in almost every other harbor along the Fairfield County coastline.

Bottom Line... these birds don't travel far from the refrigerator.

Common Loon, inshore of Cockenoe Island, feeding on the flats, 3-4 ft of water.

A cold winter morning

While peering out my kitchen window, I notice that the hummingbird feeders had frozen up over night.

With this mornings temperatures being in the low twenties, I guess it's time to take these feeders down before the glass tubes break from the ice.

All was normal, White-throated Sparrows and Cardinals were under the other bird feeders, picking up seed that was being dropped to the ground by Chickadee's and Titmice.

Joining in on the feast were a number of Grey Squirrels.

Suddenly I saw a something spring out of nowhere, the wildlife that was just having breakfast scattered in all directions, I saw the critter that cause this commotion as it returned empty handed from under the junipers.

Although this is not the culprit, it was one of this guy's feral cousins that was looking for breakfast.

I saw where he went...

He appeared to go under the deck, I could see this place as a potential place for a surprise ambush.

I though he had gone back there to set up another attack.

Armed with a 2 million candlepower search light and my camera I set out to see if the cat was hiding in the dark shadows beneath the deck.

I didn't see anything obvious, but searching deeper into the darkness I saw something stir, however I didn't see the orange that was this cat's color.

Instead it was very dark...

...and with a black stripe.

I took a quick snapshot and feeling bad that I had rudely awakened this sleeping skunk from its winter slumber, I called off my feline search party.

As I was walking back towards the house, I saw one of our local Red-tail Hawks perched very close by in a neighbors tree.

Yes, this juvenile hawk was giving be a very stern gaze, not only had the cat interrupted his hunting, but I was certainly doing the same.

Back inside the warm comforts of the house, I could see the squirrels slowly inching their way back to the bird feeders.

I turned away from the window to leave nature to play out the remainder of this day on it's own terms.

Cockenoe Is. vs Irene

The Cockenoe Island Sand Spit did not fare well in it's recent bout with Hurricane Irene.

All of the islands vegetation is gone as well as a foot or so of the top of the spit.

Above is an old metal post, one of many that was exposed with the removal of the vegetation.

My guess is that these were part of a dune grass protection fence from a few decades ago.

Seems like I remember something of that sort.

In this post Irene picture we are looking south. You can use the back round trees as reference point for the next photo.

This photo is the same part of the spit, from summer of 2010.

Here is another shot from 2010, this time looking north towards the mainland.

Same north facing shot, after Irene.

Check out the small dark projection in the middle of this photo.

It is what was left to the root system of one of the beach plants, this root is about a foot or more in height, it is easy to see where the plant snapped off and how much erosion took place in order to expose the remains of the plant.

The USFW bird fencing has been either ripped out or snapped off and is now on the eastern side of the island.

The metal fence post were either bent 90 degrees or snapped in two.

I tried to pull this line out of the ground, impossible!

It is covered over with so much sand and rock, it might take a backhoe to dig it up.

I'll leave it for the next hurricane or for someone else to find in another fifty years

There is still bird life around, I found six American Oystercatchers at Cockenoe and another fifty three gathered on Crow Island, these were some of them.

A half dozen Osprey were feeding in Norwalk Harbor, here is one carrying an Atlantic Menhaden, one of the ospreys favorite dishes. This fish is locally know as "bunker"

There was a feeding frenzy near the Cockenoe Is. sand spit, not only by Laughing Gulls, but a number of Common Terns and Herring Gulls as well. 

The disturbance was from small bait fish being pushed to the top by bluefish.