STORM CASUALTIES: Storms 'slaughter' kills over 21,000 birds on French coast

More than 21,000 sea birds have died since the end of January on France's Atlantic coast due to storms in the worst "slaughter" in a century, the national Bird Protection League (LPO) said Wednesday.

A total of 21,341 dead birds had been counted up to February 24 on the southwestern Basque coast and in Brittany in northwestern France, a statement said.

The worst affected species were the Atlantic Puffin, the Common Murre or Common Guillemot and the Razorbill, it said.

Nearly 2,800 were housed in bird protection shelters in these areas, the LPO said, adding that this was a provisional toll and the final numbers could be much higher.

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Birding In The National Parks: Rare Bird Shows Up At Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

Picture: RSPB

So, you’re a birder looking to add a nifty pelagic species like the Great Shearwater to your list. Where do you go? Most of us would head to the Atlantic coast, charter a boat, and float around a few miles offshore.

I can’t think of anyone who would go to Lake Michigan and stand on the beaches of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore expecting to see shearwaters. It’s a bird of the open ocean that plunge-dives for squid. There aren’t any squid in Lake Michigan.

Michigan birder Alice VanZoeren knew all of that and wasn’t expecting to see a Great Shearwater from near the mouth of the Platte River in Sleeping Bear Dunes, but that’s exactly what she saw and photographed on September 8th from that precise spot.


Continued: http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2012/09/birding-national-parks-rare-bird-shows-sleeping-bear-dunes-national-lakeshore10574

More on the great shearwater (Puffinus gravis):

http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/speciesfactsheet.php?id=3932

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/g/greatshearwater/index.aspx