Common Checkered Skipper
This is the Common Checkered Skipper (Pyrgus communis), a lovely little butterfly that was a life species for Audubon Connecticut’s Director of Bird Conservation Patrick Comins and me this morning at Stratford Point. The early and late dates on the Connecticut Butterfly Association website indicate it is also the latest one has ever been seen in Connecticut with October 26 breaking an October 10 record from 2012. Stratford Point has been known to harbor late individuals thanks to it being a coastal site surrounded by the warm waters of Long Island Sound. We had another late record...
Read MoreAtlantic Brant
Songbirds are not the only flying objects on the move right now. All of this cold and now freezing weather will really push the waterfowl flights to get underway. Here you can see some Brant (Branta bernicla) geese flying by some still simmering fall foliage a few days ago. Thousands of the species are now migrating along with others like the Common Loon, Red-breasted Merganser, White-winged Scoter, Greater Scaup, Green-winged Teal, and plenty more. Wherever you are, look up! You may spot a very high flying waterbird or a sizable skein (flock in flight), even inland.
Read MoreParasitic Jaeger
Here are a couple greats photos of a Parasitic Jaeger (Stercorarius parasiticus) via our friend, superb birder and expert naturalist Frank Mantlik as seen from Stratford Point a couple of weeks ago. Long Island Sound has been alive with everything from humpback whale sightings to various uncommon or rare fish, turtles and birds. This Parasitic Jaeger looks like an intermediate morph juvenile, and you can see it chasing a juvenile Laughing Gull in one of the photos. We observed this behavior from at least a few individual Parasitic Jaegers over several days during feeding frenzies involving...
Read MoreStratford Point in September
Here is the end of summer at Stratford Point, looking west towards the lighthouse and out into Long Island Sound near sunset. It was a hot, dry and extremely busy season, and a very successful one for some of our waterbirds including the Piping Plover and American Oystercatcher as the former may have neared the all-time record for fledged birds that we set only last year at 116! Our work in the Audubon Alliance for Coastal Waterbirds undoubtedly did help an all-time record number of Piping Plover pairs attempt to nest in 2015. We will have more information on the results of our spectacularly...
Read MoreRed Knots
Last evening we found these juvenile Red Knots on the beach at Stratford Point along with Black-bellied Plovers, Semipalmated Sandpipers, Semipalmated Plovers and our first of fall Dunlin. In 2014, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announced that the rufa subspecies of Red Knot was officially added to the United States Endangered Species Act, designated as “threatened”. We are already identifying the most significant staging and feeding areas in Connecticut through our work in the Audubon Alliance for Coastal Waterbirds, and we know this is a very important location for them. It is so...
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