Shorebirding friends,

Yesterday morning, Sunday 21 August 2005, David Hughes, Mike Iwanik,
John Fox, and I studied the shorebirds and other species at Craney
Island in Virginia.

Craney Island is a rectangular, 2500 acre, artificial peninsula, i.e.,
it is not really an island. Located in Norfolk Harbor near Portsmouth,
Virginia, it is only a few miles from the Chesapeake Bay and the
Atlantic Ocean. Craney Island consists of material dredged from the
Hampton Roads channels over the last 45 years. There are three large
basins or cells that can provide excellent shorebird habitat, and the
drier, short-grass areas adjacent to the basins have often hosted
"grasspipers." Numerous rarities have been seen at Craney Island, and it
is one of the best shorebirding locations in Virginia.

An aerial view of Craney Island and its three basins is on-line (scroll
down a bit) at:

http://www.hq.usace.army.mil/history/vignettes/Vignette_72.htm

Though the sun was working hard to bake us, we enjoyed a very productive
3.5 hours on Sunday morning. Among the species we studied that are seen
less often in Virginia were 4 BLACK TERNS, a well-marked WHITE-RUMPED
SANDPIPER, 4 WILSON'S PHALAROPES, 11 AMERICAN AVOCETS, 10+ BLACK-NECKED
STILTS, and 2 WESTERN SANDPIPERS. The number of LEAST TERNS (100+) was
notable and encouraging.

The list below includes all the species we saw that are of particular
interest to SHOREBIRDS subscribers, with abundance estimates. Given the
size of the Craney Island basins, these estimates are undoubtedly lower
limits.


CRANEY ISLAND, VIRGINIA, U.S.A.
Sunday 21 August 2005

Black-bellied Plover, 2
Semipalmated Plover, 50
Killdeer, 50
BLACK-NECKED STILT, 10
AMERICAN AVOCET, 11
Greater Yellowlegs, 15
Lesser Yellowlegs, 25
Willet, 1
Spotted Sandpiper, 8
Ruddy Turnstone, 3
Sanderling, 20
Semipalmated Sandpiper, 200
WESTERN SANDPIPER, 2
Least Sandpiper, 150
WHITE-RUMPED SANDPIPER, 1
Stilt Sandpiper, 1
Short-billed Dowitcher, 4
WILSON'S PHALAROPE, 4
Caspian Tern, 20
Royal Tern, 12
LEAST TERN, 100
BLACK TERN, 4
Great Blue Heron, 15
Great Egret, 10
Snowy Egret, 6
Tri-colored Heron, 1


Mark Adams
Charlottesville, Virginia U.S.A.
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