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INSTITUTE FOR FIELD ORNITHOLOGY

2006 IFO East Coast Shorebirds Report

Instructor: Wayne Petersen • 19-26 August 2006 • Newburyport, Massachusetts

A workshop group of nine enthusiastic participants from all over the United States and Canada enjoyed a week of dedicated shorebird study and observation in coastal Massachusetts. Based in Newburyport, the indoor sessions of the workshop took place at Mass Audubon's beautiful Joppa Flats Education Center, strategically located on the banks of the estuary of the Merrimac River. In addition to the thousands of shorebirds visible literally visible out the windows of the education center, the group was only minutes from the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island, another superb shorebird and overall birding area.

Regular trips to Plum Island during the first and last part of the week were broken up by an all-day trip to South Beach in Chatham on Cape Cod, adjacent to the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge on the elbow of Cape Cod. Additional half-day trips were made to the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Concord and a half-day whale-watching cruise out of Newburyport to Jeffreys Ledge. Collectively these various birding venues provided opportunities to observe 100 species, and specifically 26 species of shorebirds, including a rare Curlew Sandpiper at South Beach. Even more unusual was the chance to observe a very rare Western Reef-Heron in nearby Newcastle, NH that was fortuitously present during the week of the workshop. The reef-heron was only the second-ever recorded in the United States.

The whale-watching trip gave workshop participants a chance to see several pelagic bird species that included Red-necked Phalarope, as well as several Fin Whales and a large pod of Atlantic White-sided Dolphins.

Special guest lecturers featured two scientists from the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, Dr. Charles Duncan, director of the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (WHSRN) and Brian Harrington, co-founder of the International Shorebird Survey (ISS) and one of the world's authorities on the Red Knot. Both speakers added immeasurably to the overall experience provided by the workshop.

The combination of lots of good New England seafood, fine shorebirding opportunities, and enthusiastic and compatible group dynamics made this an outstanding experience for all who participated.

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ABA Institute for Field Ornithology, ABA
4945 N 30th St, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80919
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