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Tropicbirds from Dry Land



Dave Hewitt wrote:
<<I was down at Topsail Beach last weekend for a few days. While we were
there, some friends and I took a walk down the beach looking at the
terns, gulls, sanderlings, etc. Once i looked up and saw a largish white
bird (similar to larger terns we saw) with very long tail feathers fly
over. I could not retrieve my binoculars from a friend in time to sight
it in! Looking through Sibley, i cannot find anything but a tropicbird
with tail feathers that long and of that size. Any idea on species, or
other bird it may have been? I am unfamiliar with their occurrence along
the NC coast.>>

Tropicbirds from dry land!  Now, that's a gift to a lucky observer!

Presumably, it's just coincidental but another observer saw an adult
White-tailed Tropicbird at Hammock's Beach SP (Bear Island), NC on Apr 19,
1986 "after a storm". This old report is only 6-7 days subsequent to Dave's
sighting calendar-wise.

Within the last 50 years or so, there have been at least 9 other reports of
White-tailed Tropicbird or tropicbird sp. from NC where the observer had
their feet firmly planted on dry land.  Surprisingly (at least to me), only
3 of those were obviously associated with hurricanes (not counting the
"storm" mentioned above). Of the hurricane-related birds, 2 were at Jordan
Lake (9/6/79 - adult - Hurricane David and 7/25/85 - adult - Hurricane Bob).
The other inland report was an immature at Moss Lake (I think near Shelby,
NC) on 9/22/89 and associated with Hurricane Hugo.

The other NC non hurricane-related birds were:
White-tailed Tropicbird - Beaufort Inlet - 9/3/79
White-tailed Tropicbird - Hammock's Beach SP - 4/19/86 - Adult, after storm
(already mentioned above)
White-tailed Tropicbird - Hatteras Inlet - 9/2/85
White-tailed Tropicbird - Close to Oregon Inlet - 7/14/90 - Adult
Tropicbird sp. - Bogue Sound - 7/27/83 - Flying over bridge between Morehead
City and Atlantic Beach!
Tropicbird sp. - Cape Lookout - 6/16/83 - an adult, perched on a post!

There are over 97 pelagic reports of tropicbirds from NC.  All are within
the May to September time frame, except for one odd-ball bird: March 29,
1997 on a fishing trip out of Hatteras. (I don't think it was an organized
pelagic.)  

SC appears to get the short end of the stick when it comes to tropicbirds
from dry land --- I can only find 2 reports -- both of those birds were
either sick or already specimens.  (On the other hand, one of the birds was
a Red-billed Tropicbird, which makes up for a lot!)

As always, there could be other reports I don't know about.  I don't pretend
to have access to all information!

(If you find information like this as fascinating as I do, email me directly
for a recommendation on how you can easily gain access to more.)

-- 
Russ Tyndall
Wake Forest, NC
www.redshanksoftware.com