BirdCapeMay.org

As the remnants of Hurricane "Noel" have become "extra-tropical" and currently (Saturday) track north-northeast well off the Atlantic Seaboard, there rises the question of what interesting avian events it might produce. Given it is so far offshore off the mid-Atlantic states, however, with mostly wrap-around north winds paralleling the coast, I'd guess that it will produce little south of southern New England. Strong northeast winds late Saturday may well drive a number of seabirds toward shore in Cape Cod Bay and points north. And with the storm forecast to make landfall in Nova Scotia (and presumably later move across PEI/w. Newfoundland) those areas might well receive some interesting migrant passerines from the south--at least those areas immediately to the east of the track of the storm, which will get southerly winds as the storm approaches. A late-season hurricane which tracked offshore from the eastern U.S. but then struck the Atlantic Provinces and then headed east all the way to the Azores and western Europe a couple years ago deposited all sorts of interesting species in those latter regions, including good numbers of Laughing and Franklin's Gulls, Yellow-billed Cuckoos, Chimney Swifts, and Barn Swallows. We'll see if Noel was too far east or not to suck up such landbirds and transport them northwards.

--Paul Lehman