The theme of this post is – flexibility.
As the weekend neared my birding plans first focused on getting to Nantucket to look for the Lapwings present for several weeks. Those plans changed when I was able to see one much more easily that was refound on the mainland in Bridgewater, MA. So then my plans changed to travel into southern Maine to try for a Western Kingbird that had been present for some time, though the most recent post was now several days old. I contacted Denny Abbott and made plans to meet him at his house and travel together to Biddeford, ME.
En route to Denny’s house my phone rang and it was Denny – a Say’s Phoebe had just been found in central NH in the small town of Penacook. A first NH state record! No one was sure of precise directions, but I figured that I should change my route to get to Penacook and by the time I arrived directions would be available. I got off 495, charted a route with my GPS, and soon was heading north instead of northeast to central NH. A few minutes later I got directions to the bird’s location and was good to go.
I arrived at the Penacook sewage treatment plant within an hour of the news, and found about a half dozen birders there but no one had seen the bird for a few minutes. It was great habitat for a flycatcher – open fields, lots of low posts to perch on, and a cattle farm and sewage treatment plant with presumably lots of insects even for mid-November. So the bird was likely still in the area. A few minutes later came word that the bird was respotted and I joined a group of now nearly 20 birders watching the bird cooperatively perched in the open.
Other birds in the area included a cooperative flock of at least 30 Common Redpolls and a flyover Lapland Longspur in a flock of Horned Larks.
That was my second Say’s Phoebe for New England – my first was a MA bird in May 2003. That gives me 348 in NH, out of a total statelist of 402. At 87% of the total, NH is by far my best statelist.
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