Delaware 2023: 10 – 17 May

Wednesday 10 May

The first team of Brits made it safely across the sea and by the evening were looking over Mispillion Harbour in Delaware Bay, a long way from the UK. The sun dipped lower in the sky and the calls of Laughing Gulls filled the air as shorebirds foraged on the shores. For those who had come many times before, there was definitely a sense of returning to a familiar home. Jet-lag fatigue setting in, it wasn’t long after we arrived at this year’s WWRG base, on Slaughter Beach, that we all went to bed.

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It was good to be back…

Our third week started with the next aerial count; this one was setting out from Cape May at 08:00 hrs. We were all on site on time and got some counts done before the plane came over at the expected time. Strangely, the plane didn’t do the second pass over Mispillion, which is the usual protocol. There were good numbers of Knot on Back Beach, so the Mispillion count team stayed out to resight there, as did the Brock team, while Cathy and Lys went out to trap the PIPLs at Fowler’s. With relatively good resighting in Mispillion through the day there were three boat trips, with the last crew leaving when it started to get dark – the rest of us ate our frittata before they got back!

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WWRG: back in the Bay

So it’s three years since the WWRG team last came out to Delaware. Back then we bought our plane tickets and booked cars early as we were sure we would be coming over – then the World shut down… The only good thing was we got most of the costs of the flights and cars back. Into lockdown and virtually no fieldwork – it’s been a rough two years in many ways and we are still not out of the woods now – but we’re very grateful for vaccinations. This year we had to do supervised Covid tests and are living in a ‘bubble’ in a separate house – although we can use the basement of Penguin Manor to go and do data entry, but there is not too much of that yet.

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