next message in archive
no next message in thread
previous message in archive
Index of Subjects
Sea Mops: What feeds on these squid egg clusters that are washed up? Seashore Nature Notes (Merritt Gibson) mentions that the washed up "sea mops" can be placed in chilled fresh seawater and their development observed. So they must be fairly nutritious food for something. Nancy On 2014-08-22, at 1:19 AM, Jim Wolford <jimwolford@eastlink.ca> wrote: > >> AUG. 20, 2014 - EVANGELINE BEACH: Today’s daytime high tide was 9:41 a.m. with a very mediocre amplitude of 9 metres — I arrived late for my eastward shorebird-monitoring walk from the public steps at the shorebird viewing platform at 11:40, two hours after high tide, so the ebbing tide was already well receded from the top of the beach. >> >> Visible right away from the steps were 250 + 200 foraging peeps just to eht west and east of me — beautiful day, sunny & warm with nice gentle breeze, visibility good (except for very bright sunlight). >> >> Immediately I discovered lots of “sea mops” of transparent egg-sacs (like fingers) of long-finned or Peale’s squids, Loligo pealei, or whatever the current name is (Google long-finned squid vs. short-finned squid, Illex, which is the species in Newfoundland in the “squid-jiggin’ ground’ song) — I counted 85 of these “sea mops”, nearly all of which were near the uppermost sand of the beach, probably deposited within the past2-3 days? >> >> 11:45 a.m. — some small flocks of peeps were flying in both directions along shore, either westward or eastward; >> 11:50 - 500 more feeding peeps along low ebbing edge of water; >> 11:55 - 1000 more feeding, and 500 of them flew eastward; >> 12:00 noon - 1000 peeps feeding north of the east end of the cottages — then they flew but I didn’t see where; >> 12:15 p.m. - 2000+ feeding northeast of Merks’s house; >> 12:15 also - a few peeps are still arousing/waking up and emerging after having roosted among the big rocks at the top of the beach; >> 12:20 - feeding flocks appeared to be gradually splitting up and flying toward the west (gradual movement, flights short with quick re-landing); >> 12:25 - end of walk, at east end of trees and beach — 1000 densely packed peeps feeding? (distant) well on the mudflats but well away from the ebbing edge of the water, in lower intertidal zone; >> >> On my walk back toward the canteen etc., there was an impressive assemblage of 5000 peeps feeding north of the eastern cottages; >> 12:20 - the big dense feeding flock took flight and gave me a nice show of aerobatics for perhaps 30 seconds to a minute, then re-landed in the same spots and resumed feeding (no falcons nor other disturbnce seen); >> 1:00 — back to car and ice cream at canteen! >> ———————————— >> Numbers of peeps above to carefully add up: >> 450+500+1000+1000+2000 = 4950 as a minimum number; >> BUT my overall impression was of many more, particularly because of the massive flock of 5000 or so that gave me an impressive but very short aerobatics display 2.5 hours after high tide. >> ———————————— >> Cheers from Jim in Wolfville. >> >
next message in archive
no next message in thread
previous message in archive
Index of Subjects