Well, another weekend has come and gone, and we still have not had any shorebird presence to speak of in the Black Dirt Region. I was out both mornings, but essentially came up empty. Outside of Killdeer, the only other birds I was able to locate were a couple of Least Sandpipers, a Solitary Sandpiper, and a Lesser Yellowlegs. Jeanne Cimorelli was out this morning also, and she had a couple of Semipalmated Plovers. I also tried 6 1/2 Station Road Sanctuary. Shorebird conditions have improved ever so slightly there, and I had about a dozen Least Sandpipers, a Semipalmated Sandpiper, and 3 Lesser Yellowlegs.
The bird of the weekend, however, was Laughing Gull. Bruce Nott reported one at the Newburgh Waterfront on Saturday morning. When I arrived, it had been joined by another, so I had two juvenile Laughing Gulls. I thought they were pretty sharp looking birds; the lighting was terrible when I was there, but that didn’t stop me from taking a bunch of photos. On Sunday morning, Travis Rubio reported unfortunately that one of the LAGUs had been taken by a Peregrine Falcon.
