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JOCASSEE WINTERBIRDS REPORT.

The Boney’s have arrived! That’s what we gull loving bird nuts call the magnificent Bonaparte’s gulls, the smallest, most agile and acrobatic gull we see in our part of the world. They are the harbinger of fall and spring winterbird migration here. They come and go with the loons, every year. They do not winter with us, but leave for parts farther south, only to return every spring, right along with loons who are migrating to the Gulf of Mexico. On Thursday of this past week, November 20, we saw our first Boneys, in the middle of a feeding frenzy with the formidable cormorants, clearly holding their own against a much larger bird. Later that same day we saw them again, joined into a frantic feeding with loons. And, prepare yourselves, my crazed bird-listing friends, we saw a Red-necked grebe smack in the middle of the cormorant frenzy! A bird that is way south of its route to its winter waters. Oh, how I love this time of year. Jocassee water comes alive with birds. ~B