We have had a spate of dead seabirds along our shores. Most recently, Lanny McDowell found five dead razorbills and one dead common murre along a half-mile stretch of Cow Bay on Feb. 23. This is in addition to the several other similar reports from Lucy Vincent, Menemsha and Nantucket. What is going on?

It was early November when we received an invitation to participate in an American Birding Association rally in Albuquerque, N.M. What a great adventure I thought. Take the RV (aka the Bird Buggy) across country, birding as we went, and end up trying to find a group of rare finches in New Mexico. So we planned a route and expected to leave in late October. Ah, the best laid plans. We finally got underway on the first of February just before one of the nasty snow storms. We visited friends in Mamaroneck, N.Y. and Washington D.C.

Fortunately, we do not often get a chance to talk about how birds are affected by a major snowstorm. But 15 inches of heavy wet snow has provided that opportunity.

Birds can detect the air pressure changes that accompany an approaching storm, giving them time to prepare for adversity.

The Christmas Bird Count is behind us and there have been many interesting birds seen since. So let’s catch up with several of the attention-grabbing sightings. Dovekies have again caught people’s attention whether they are birders or not. In the recent easterly gales a number of these little alcids, which are about half the size of a football and weigh practically nothing, were blown onto the Island. Peter Huntington spotted a dovekie flying over Crab Creek at Quansoo on Jan.

This year 121 individual species were spotted by the 14 feeder-watchers and 60 official birdwatchers, up from 119 last year.

Here is the complete list of species observed on the Dec. 29, 2012 Martha’s Vineyard Christmas Bird Count.

The inevitable finally happened. Dr. James Riley’s ruby-throated hummingbird in Edgartown was last seen on Jan. 3, after about 48 hours of below freezing temperatures. The other two hummingbirds survived that cold snap but did not survive when winter came on with a vengeance last week, and we had several days where the temperatures stayed below 20 degrees. Joannie Ames’ West Tisbury ruby-throated hummingbird was last seen on Jan. 23, while the Allen’s hummingbird at Penny Uhlendorf’s and Scott Stephens’ in Vineyard Haven was last observed on Jan. 24.