Early in June there were several posts about a pair of singing Clay-colored Sparrows in Charlotte, Vermont in the northwestern part of the state. I’ve tried for Clay-coloreds two other times in northwestern VT over the years with no luck. And just like when I chase so many of my other Vermont targets, each of these trips requires a long 3 ½ hour one-way ride to this remote “corner” of New England. So it took a report of a Western Kingbird in western VT to give me the incentive to make the long ride. My birding buddy Denny Abbott needed the Kingbird for his VT list as well, so we organized a VT trip together on what we hoped would be the third day of the kingbird’s stay.
We arrived mid-morning at the kingbird spot only to find that no one had seen the bird that morning despite lots of searching. Numerous Eastern Kingbirds were in the area, along with singing Bobolinks and Savannah Sparrows in the meadows, but no Western Kingbird. Looks like we were 1 day too late.
Our next stop was the Clay-Colored Sparrow spot. The location had some excellent early succession habitat with shrubs and small trees, and some open grassy areas. Soon after we arrived I heard a Clay-Colored singing in the distance. We walked down the road a bit to get closer to this bird, and although it continued to sing a short distance away, we never got any looks at it. And then a second bird started to sing close to our original location. We walked back to that spot and got some very nice views of this second bird as it perched in a nearby shrub. As they say - the third time was the charm!
On a whim, we next went to a nearby location where Sedge Wrens nested in 2012 – there were no sightings this year but still worth a try since we were in the area. We struck out on the wrens, but interestingly had Swamp Sparrows instantly come into taped Sedge Wren calls in two different locations.
This was my 255th bird for VT. And I now have Clay-Colored Sparrow in each New England state – my 218th species in each of these six states. Like these VT birds, the bird I saw in Maine was also nesting, though that bird was paired with a Field Sparrow. The Clay-Coloreds in the other states were wintering rarities. In my statebird map below, I’ve also seen this species in MD and CA as a vagrant, along with a number of central states in its normal migration and breeding ranges.
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