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frozen birds



CBirders,

Eric's query about the frozen plover reminded me of a 
mid-to-late-nineteen-eighties CBC on which we found numerous frozen birds.  
The count was the Southport-Bald Head Island CBC, and I was on one of the 
teams counting on Bald Head Island.

That year, we had a winter storm move through right at Christmas and the 
weather remanned bitter cold through New Year's.  The canals and ponds at 
Bald head were all frozen solid.  There was about six inches of snow on the 
ground.

We found sparrows frozen to branches, a couple of gulls and a pelican that 
seemed to have frozen dead in flight and dropped to Earth, and a mockingbird 
lying on the ground under what I guess was its nighttime roost.  Under a 
tussock of ornamental grass on the golf course, we found a group of about ten 
dowitchers frozen in huddle.  The dowitchers formed a circle with their tails 
in the center and their bills pointing out like the spokes of a wheel.  One 
of our group picked up the frozen mass and passed it around intact.  For a 
while that morning, we had a list of dead species that rivaled the bird count 
list. 

I have not encountered anything like that morning since, thank goodness.  The 
only thing that comes close is the frozen, but 
still-standing-at-the-water's-edge, great blue heron that I found on an 
especially cold Cumberland County CBC.  I should have suspected something was 
wrong when he allowed me to come so close.

Hal Broadfoot
halwb@aol.com
Fayetteville, NC