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frozen birds
- To: carolinabirds@duke.edu
- Subject: frozen birds
- From: HALWB@aol.com
- Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2002 23:38:34 EST
- Delivered-to: pardo@metalab.unc.edu
- Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
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