I’ve been anxiously awaiting a day with easterly winds – and some extra time – to do a bit of seawatching. Easterlies have been in short supply of late, so I was excited to spend the morning at Cape Elizabeth’s Dyer Point scanning the seas for waterbirds. There’s something I find relaxing about staring through a scope until your eyes hurt, while getting battered by a cold, wet wind, straining to see little specs in the distance flying by in the blink of an eye and desperately trying to identify and/or count them before they disappear into a trough or the fog. Maybe it’s just me.

So the weather was right for the morning, and I was thrilled to not be fogged in when I arrived at Dyer Point. Many an otherwise-perfect morning of seawatching has been ruined by a fog bank parked over the tip of Cape Elizabeth. Today, however, the visibility was very good. Unfortunately, the winds here were not perfect – southeast. I wanted northeast – to give southbound birds a little more incentive to be on the move.

But, beggars can’t be choosers, so grateful for the visibility, I camped out by the Lobster Shack for the next two hours. Unfortunately, my concerns about the wind rang true – birds were not in abundance this morning.

In fact, I only had one “tubenose:” a single Manx Shearwater. However, this individual made the trip worthwhile, as it remained in view, feeding, for about 5 minutes. Most of my sightings of Manx Shearwater from land have been brief fly-bys in howling winds. This bird, although not close at all, did allow sufficient time for studying its distinctive flight.

Most of the morning’s movement were Laughing Gulls, including lots of juveniles. Most of the adults were undergoing wing molt, and many of them were missing inner primaries. The missing feathers appeared as a large white patch in the middle of the wing, somewhat triangular in shape – and each and every one I attempted to string into a Sabine’s Gull!

Here’s the morning’s tally:
American Black Duck: 1
Common Loon: 4
MANX SHEARWATER: 1
Northern Gannet: 10
Double-crested Cormorant: 16
GREAT CORMORANT: 1
Laughing Gull: 74
Bonaparte’s Gull: 4
Common Tern: 3
Unidentified tern: 2
Ruddy Turnstone (mostly on the rocks): 27
Semipalmated Sandpiper (on the rocks): 8
Least Sandpiper (on the rocks): 2
Unidentified peeps: 2
Tree Swallow: 9
Barn Swallow: 6