Hi Folks,

I was a chaperone for a youth church retreat in southern Delaware this 
weekend, but wasn't needed on Saturday, so of course I went birding, and 
headed out around 4:20 Sat. a.m. for Worcester Co., arriving on Assateague 
Island an hour later.  It was just beginning to get light, and the chucks 
were calling as I headed south through the national seashore.  I was 
surprised to find a COMMON NIGHTHAWK flying around hawking insects, giving 
one good vocalization as it hunted.  A Yellow-throated Warbler sang once, 
and dozens of catbirds mewed as I drove toward the Off-road Vehicle (ORV) 
zone, now called the Over-sand Vehicle (OSV) zone of Assateague.  I arrived 
at the zone at 6 a.m., let the air out of my tires, and began the 15-or-so 
mile drive to the Virginia state line.

I had many target birds for the beach:  Sooty Shearwater, Roseate Tern, 
Wilson's Plover, the good stuff that would measure just how lucky I could 
possibly get.  I would find out.  Willets and Oystercatchers were plentiful, 
with more than a dozen of each noted, and scores of Sanderlings and Ruddy 
Turnstones dotted the beach as I headed south.  There were modest numbers of 
the common gulls, with only one Ring-bill, but there were five LESSER 
BLACK-BACKED GULLs, which included three adults and two third-cycle.  Terns 
included a few Royals and quite a few Leasts, but only two Commons.  There 
was often a nice tern and gull flock down at the Va. state line, so my plan 
was to stop there and spend an hour or two doing a sea watch.  When I 
arrived, a fisherman was occupying the spot where the larids hung out, so I 
stopped a few hundred yards short of the state line, and began my watch.

The air was still heavy with moisture following the previous few-days 
monsoon, but the visibility was quite good.  I don't think I was there more 
than 20 minutes when I saw what a appeared to be two large gulls interacting 
about a hundred yards out.  I looked at them, both with dark backs, and 
within a second I realized that one of them was not a gull.  One was a Great 
Black-backed Gull, but the other had wings that were a good 20% longer than 
those of the gull, and the wings were stiff, and formed an evenly curved arc 
from wingtip to wingtip; no breaks at the wrists.  I was running through my 
mind what this bird might be, and my heart began to race as I realized that 
I was looking at an albatross.  The bird would fly, and then sit down on the 
water, and as it moved, the gull would follow and harrass it.  The 
underwings were white, but completely lined with dark edging; the tail was 
dark, the back was dark, but there was a large white rump.  The bill was 
large and dark, set against a white face.  I didn't know what species the 
bird was.  I grabbed my little camera and attempted digiscopes as the birds 
flew, landed, got lost in the waves, and then re-appeared.  I was all thumbs 
trying to get documentation on this bird, and I thought I got some decent 
video, but I'm afraid I may not have been recording when I was finally able 
to get the scope and camera on the bird simultaneously.  I watched the gull 
and albatross for the better part of five minutes when they flew off to the 
north.  I got on the phone and called Jim Stasz, who happened to be at 
Devil's Tower, WY with Ed Boyd; I called Bill Hubick, who was away from his 
phone, and I called Mark Hoffman who asked me a few questions from which we 
determined that the bird was likely a YELLOW-NOSED ALBATROSS.  Neither of 
the field guides with me depicted any albatross, and I did not look at a 
field guide showing this bird until late last night, confirming that it was 
indeed a Yellow-nose.  Not trusting my simple photographic equipment, I 
began making some crude sketches, first while viewing the bird, and then 
continuing after the bird flew off to the north.  I've never sketched a bird 
before in my life, but it was critically important to get something down on 
this one.

It has been speculated that this may be the same Yellow-nosed Albatross that 
has been cruising the Atlantic coast for more than a dozen years.  At the 
early part of the decade, such a bird flew over the Garden State Parkway in 
New Jersey, and was later seen on multiple days at Reed's Beach in that 
state.  Reports of this species from Maine to North Carolina could be of the 
same bird, or a small number of them, with many of the sightings occuring 
from boats within sight of land, or else from land.

There are very few birds on the Maryland state list that I have never seen 
before, but Yellow-nosed Albatross is one of them, and it is a bird that 
always crossed my mind before every summer pelagic trip I would undertake. 
It has been five years since I had a life bird in Maryland, when the 
Northern Lapwing gave us all thrills.  This was as unexpected as any birding 
experience I've ever had, and ranks with the sighting of a Black-browed 
Albatross on a pelagic trip out of Virginia Beach a decade ago.  A photo of 
that bird adorns my bedroom wall.

I have to get to work now, and will continue the day's writeup at another 
time.

Best to all,

Stan Arnold
Ferndale (AA Co.)