In addition, a rare European shorebird called the northern lapwing was found by Charlie Fitzpatrick in the Goulds on April 28. Three more took up residence on the lawns at Deadman’s Bay, near Cape Freels, while two others were seen briefly on Beth Ryan’s lawn at Cappahayden. Five or six were with sheep on a field at St. There were a half dozen plovers in the Goulds farm fields. A total of nearly two dozen European golden plovers and one northern lapwing were discovered on Newfoundland turf. Despite this one little, but important, glitch in the wind design, it was far from a complete water haul in Newfoundland and Labrador. It is true the winds were blowing from Ireland to Newfoundland and Labrador, but there was also a hard north wind blowing into Northern Ireland.īasically, migration between Ireland and Iceland would be shut down with such a strong north headwind. If we had paid closer attention to the weather maps, we might have realized there would not be so many Transatlantic vagrant birds coming our way. It is during that flight across the expanse of water between Ireland and Iceland that migrating birds are most likely to get caught up in a northeast wind and drift off course toward Neverneverland: a.k.a. These attractive shorebirds overwinter in large numbers in Ireland and in spring migrate to Iceland to nest. Several people got there in time to see it resting in the middle of a large farm field.Īndrej Chudý from Slovakia, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsĮuropean golden plover is the default vagrant to show up during these northeast blows of spring. John Alexander found a European golden plover on the Pipeline Road in Goulds on April 22. It did not take long for the first nugget of gold to land on our side of the Atlantic. While the majority of the human population were dreading the rain, drizzle and fog, birders were rubbing their hands together in delight. Having the highway of wind blowing directly across the entire Atlantic to our side of the ocean is a relatively rare event. Northeast and east winds are common in a Newfoundland and Labrador spring, but typically they originate from the mid-Atlantic Ocean only. The winds would be more or less direct all the way from Ireland to Newfoundland. There was a prediction of far-reaching northeast and east winds. The long-range forecast on April 21 looked sweet. The right winds can send a gold mine of seriously rare birds to Newfoundland and Labrador. In spring, watching the weather has more meaning. Veteran birders are tuned into the weather forecasts year-round, trying to predict when interesting birds will be sent our way. The weather outlook is more of the same for the foreseeable future. The cold northeast winds started on April 21 and continued without a break until the time of this writing on May 2.
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