Hi folks,
Years ago on right whale whale watching trips off Grand Manan Island in the lower Bay of Fundy (about five to seven miles from the island), we would run plankton tows along the surface and subsurface, which were full of flying ants (surface tows). We also captured ants in surface tows through tidal 'slicks' or lines of floating seaweed fragments and other odds and ends that concentrated along lines of sinking currents in Head Harbor Passage (located off Eastport between Campobello and Deer Islands, New Brunswick). At the time, there were hundreds of thousands of red-neck phalaropes feeding in the passage. We captured many ants among the copepods we collected. We always wondered if the phalaropes were chowing down on ants (Formivorours).
Back to the present, my daughter noticed about 50 Bonaparte's and 100 ring-billed gulls eating flying ants around the Rim Road Bridge in Machiasport last weekend.
On Monday, I heard a pied-billed grebe in Cutler. Also in Cutler, a group of 12 whimbrels flew from Little Machias Bay to a high tide roost in Machias Bay. Otherwise, the woods and low shrub areas were quiet (one redstart, one white-throated sparrow and two savannah sparrows were heard singing (once)).
Happy birding,
Norm Famous
On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 10:06 PM, Louis Bevier <lrbevier@colby.edu> wrote:
Both Ring-billed and Bonaparte's Gulls were actively hawking flying insects (ant emergence I think) along the Hancock and Washington County coasts this past weekend. I caught one Bonaparte's Gull in the act, but the wee beast it was after is not identifiable. There were also a couple of Common Nighthawks after the same bugs Saturday evening in Lubec.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lrbevier/9612379072/
In mid-August, an emergence of a yellowish ant, probably a cornfield ant (Lasius sp.), attracted swarms of European Starlings. After passing over an ant, one of the starlings bent its tail downward and arched its head backward to corral the bug. The strange posture of this hawking starling is shown here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lrbevier/9609190819/
And this shows the ant in the beak:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lrbevier/9612424858/
I put together a set of photos from this year called In the Beak. Included are a kingbird toying with a dragonfly, a cuckoo crazy about fishflies, a guillemont with its favorite fish, and a Northern Shrike that chased down a Meadow Vole when all that white stuff was on the ground.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lrbevier/sets/72157635261027929/
Good Birding!
Louis Bevier
Fairfield
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Norman Famous, Wetlands and Wildlife Ecologist
513 Eight Rod Road
Augusta, ME 04330
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