Sandhill Crane, Somers, CT, November 2013

As 2013 was nearing an end, I was disappointed to have just 20 new birds this year for my New England lists.  That is way below by recent average of about 32 per year.  So I was hopeful that a mid-November pelagic trip out of Rhode Island would deliver on several realistic statebird possibilities.  My plan was to head south the day before the trip with my birding buddy Denny Abbott, chasing after any rarities that may be around in RI, and then take the boat trip the next day.

Weather is always a concern for cold weather pelagics in New England, so I watched the NOAA forecasts daily as the trip neared.  Everything was looking pretty good until early morning the day before the trip, when NOAA put up a small craft advisory for the next day.  Now the boat trip was in jeopardy, but the decision wouldn’t be made until early afternoon, after we were planning to head south.  And another cloud over the trip – no rarities were around to chase after.  Do we just wait for a decision from the captain, or start heading down to RI and do some speculative birding from land, watching e-mails along the way?  Then at 8:30 AM came a post of 3 Sandhill Cranes in northeastern CT.  I have tried for Sandhills in CT at least twice before with no luck, so this was a key target.  So my decision was obvious – at the very least head into CT to try for the Sandhills, and watch for news on the pelagic as the day progressed.

We arrived in Somers, CT just after lunch and easily found the corn stubble field where the Sandhills had been seen that morning.  Although there were no birds in that field, there were many other cornfields in the area, so we were still hopeful that they could just be a short distance away feeding in a nearby field.  We were just about to start searching other fields when a car pulled up next to me.  I was fully expecting the driver was going to be a local resident asking what we were doing.  Instead it was another birder also in search of the Sandhills, who said he just saw 3 large birds drop into a marsh just a short distance away.  Because he couldn’t stop on the road he couldn’t be sure they weren’t Great Blues, and he was about to double back to check them out.  So I turned the car around and followed him to the spot. 

The area was a large cattail and grassy marsh, pretty typical of habitat where Sandhills might nest.  I’ve looked for nesting Sandhills in very similar habitat in Messalonskee Marsh in ME, and even though they are very large birds, they can be really hard to see in a marsh.  In fact it took me 4 tries before I saw them at Messalonskee – and that was in Spring and Summer when the gray birds should have been noticeable in a green marsh.  And now in November, this marsh was mostly shades of gray, so even more difficult to find Sandhills.  That is even if they were Sandhills at all, because the first bird I saw was indeed a Great Blue Heron.  But just a few seconds later I noticed some gray colors that didn’t quite match the rest of the marsh.  And then there was movement – a Sandhill!  Within a few seconds I could see all 3 Sandhills moving together in the marsh.  By then there were 5 birders there, and we all got good views of the birds, though mostly obscured as they fed in the marsh.

We only found those birds because of an amazing string of luck .  First there was an early and timely post from the birder who found the Sandhills, then the other birder was in the right place at the right time to see them fly overhead, then that birder ran into us and passed along the news just before we were going to wander around the cornfields in the area.  And the birder that saw them fly over was actually also planning to go on the cancelled RI pelagic.  Pretty amazing.  I guess the “birding gods” felt sorry for us given that the RI pelagic got cancelled.  Little did I know that I would end up adding Sandhill Crane to my CT list instead of adding pelagics to my RI list.  I guess those RI fulmars and alcids will have to wait. 

Sandhill Crane is the 222^nd species I’ve seen in each New England state.  Despite good coverage in New England, my statebird map shows very spotty coverage for this bird elsewhere across the country even though it’s a regular species in virtually every state.  That's part of the fun of statebirding - always more statebirds to go after.