Storm Birding: Hurricane Arthur

With a month of the official hurricane season already on the books, Hurricane Arthur arrives on the scene. This Category One storm is forecast to graze the Outer Banks of North Carolina before shooting off to the Northeast through the Canadian Maritimes toward Greenland. This feature on BirdCast provides a short overview of what we may expect. Any birders chasing storm birds should exercise extreme caution and make safety the number one priority. Even a Category One storm can be dangerous. With this in mind, the best birding and the greatest chance to encounter entrained and displaced birds is in the hours directly after the center of circulation passes. Many storm birds seek to reorient immediately, and by the morning following the storm’s passage many storm waifs will be well on their ways back to their origins. However, it may be worth checking back bays behind barrier islands (e.g., Croatan, Albermarle, and Currituck Sound sin North Carolina) up to a day or two after the storm, since tubenoses sometimes seem to get “trapped” in such places. Please see the second half of our feature on Hurricane Irene in 2011, entitled “Hurricane Birding–an eBird Primer” for more detailed discussions about hurricanes and birding in and around them.