Dave Ziolkowski and I covered the Aberdeen Area of APG yesterday.  Conditions from
midnight to 0230 were fantastic -- over 30 whips, 2 rail species, the usual owls,
and 3 woodcocks.  But then the wind kicked in and everything went silent.   Day
birding was tough as anyone outside yesterday knows.  Nearly impossible to hear
anything calling unless it was close.  For the first time in 20 years of May Counts at
APG, I did not get either a meadowlark, bobwhite or Field Sparrow.  We also got
skunked on Carolina Wren -- the blizzards of 2010 seem to have crashed their
population.  But there are always highlight at APG, even on a bad day.  Ours
included a Barn Owl nest with 4 chicks, a cormorant rookery with about 75-100
nests, a Pectoral Sandpiper (first count record), a Red-headed Woodpecker, and
3 Summer Tanagers.  The best bird of the day was also one of our last, around
4:00 -- we found an American White Pelican flying into a gusty headwind as it
headed for shelter in a cove of Mosquito Creek, just south of Spesutie Island.
Totals for the day were just over 1100 individuals and 102 species.

Dave Webb