Corvo 2024, Days Three and Four, Hurricane Isaac

We have been waiting patiently (or not) for Hurricane Isaac to pull in some mega yanks and we are still waiting.  

There have been a few 'signs', yesterday a Lesser Yellowlegs flew in-off and today I found a new Red-eyed Vireo in the Lighthouse Valley. 

However following what was overall a rather boring day and hopes and light were fading Isaac served a curveball this evening when a dark and a pale morph Trindade Petrel were off shore, presumably pushed in by these persistent and very humid south west winds. Typical Corvo. days of boredom and then...wallop! 

Dark morph Trindade Petrel- I found this in the most appalling way. Max and Co saw a Sooty Shearwater flying past the Windmills so I waited for it at the end of the runway. I picked up a dark seabird with my bins coming in and then took a couple of scenic shots of it flying in with the Cory's and then carried out walking round without looking at the pics or even the bird with optics. I got back to the guesthouse and started going through my pics and that's when I noticed it wasn't a Sooty Shearwater but a dark morph Trindade. I sent the photos to Pierre to confirm the identification and moments later he had already found the bird but it was now in the company of a pale morph Trindade too. 

Nice to find this Red-eyed Vireo this morning- hopefully the first of more to come American passerines

Cory's Shearwaters performing beautifully in the windy conditions. We also had an Arctic Skua go south yesterday and there have been 4-5 Manx Shearwaters in with the Cory's. Others have also seen a few presumed Band-rumps.  

Hurricane Isaac is to the north west of us and moves gradually north over the next couple of days while maintaining a westerly airflow from the US as it interplays with another area of low pressure which is drawing strong north west winds off Nova Scotia. There are two large frontal systems which are presumably acting as barriers for vagrants but these should move through over the next couple of days. The longer this wind bridge between us and the US is maintained the more chance there is of new american vagrants coming in- we will see what happens. I've found Trindade Petrel on here before (in 2006) so my gamble of twitching the weather to find or see a new mega has yet to pay out. 

Pierre-Andre Crochet (back) and Paul Dufour in Lighthouse Valley. Paul works at Pierre's Lab at Montpellier University and together are leading academics in vagrancy theory. We have a paper due to be published soon on the results of our vagrant ringing project and isotope analysis which has revealed some interesting and surprising results on the origins of some of the vagrants here.