After getting in late last night from seeing some live music I did not get out as early as I normally would and with a slightly later start than usual I decided to stay close to home. I made Winsor Dam my first stop of the morning. I arrived to find a fairly steady breeze blowing in and I honestly didn't expect to find much. Nonetheless I did a quick scan and immediately noticed a small white bird trying to balance on the large orange buoy and by the size I knew it was something unusual. I quickly set up the scope and was able to see it was a tern. I studied it for a bit and it appeared to be either a Common Tern or a Forester's Tern and I was leaning toward COTE. I sent out a few messages regarding the bird and then studied it for a bit. It was having a tough time staying on the buoy and eventually flew around a few times before coming back into land on the buoy again and it looked more and more like a Common Tern. A nearby Ring billed Gull tried to take the buoy over but the tern would eventually reclaim it. The distance and early light made it tough to pick out a lot of detail but eventually I became confident enough in the views to ID it as a Common Tern...a decent bird in the county at any time. The photos and videos I got of the bird were very poor but showed some of the field marks.
I then spent the rest of the morning exploring a few other nearby areas and I had a fairly good morning with migrants with a good number of Northern Parula and Blackpoll Warblers as well as others. Hardly a blockbuster morning but one of the better ones in what is looking to be a fairly poor fall for migrants (mainly due to lots of great migrations conditions that have kept birds moving past without stopping...good for birds, bad for birders).
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