While away on a business trip a post came
across the ME listserve of a Clapper Rail near Pine Point in Scarborough. The post mentioned that the bird was
“continuing” from 8 days earlier – I must have missed that earlier news or
perhaps it wasn’t posted on-line. So the
good news was that it was sticking around.
The bad news was that it would be at least a week until I could get
there to give it a try.
I kept monitoring the listserve and eBird
alerts from the road and would see occasional posts of birders still seeing the
Rail. Most birders mentioned it was seen
3-5 hours after high tide in Jones Creek, and in most all cases the bird was
only visible for a few seconds. Although
all that may sound pretty specific, I couldn’t even find Jones Creek on a
map. And given that the likely viewing
time would be very brief, and there was a broad expanse of marsh in the area in
which to look, it would be very easy to miss the bird when it did come out into
the open unless you happened to be looking at the exact right spot.
I noticed that Louis Bevier was one of the
birders who had seen it, so I reached out to him for details. He offered to come to the site the next
morning to help me find the bird. I also
contacted Denny Abbott to see if he needed the bird for his ME list. It turns out Denny already had Clapper Rail
for ME. If I’ve got the story right, the
2015 bird may well be only the second record for this species in ME, and Denny
found the first state record about 40 years earlier. But Denny agreed to come along anyway. Since there had been no updates for a couple
days I also sent a general message to the listserve to ask if anyone had tried
for it recently. I got two replies –both
birders had tried for it unsuccessfully at the right tide cycle in the last 2
days. So although I was happy that Louis
would be along to point us in the right direction, I wasn’t too optimistic that
we would find our bird.
Denny and I arrived at Pine Point a short
time after high tide, and found another birder, Rob Speirs, already on
site. A few minutes later Louis arrived
and suggested we all go to a slightly different location, along Jones Creek
Drive, to have a closer view of the best spots for the bird. Louis pointed out a small island of spartina
grasses roughly 200 yards to the northwest of our location – apparently the
bird was spending it’s time at higher tides in this island, and briefly coming
out to the nearby flats at lower tides.
So we all set up our scopes and began our vigil.
About an hour later, and at about 3 ½ hours
after high tide, Rob yelled – I’ve got the bird! Sure enough there was the Clapper Rail
walking along the edge of the island of vegetation exactly where Louis told
us. A few seconds later it disappeared
back into the island, just as it had previously. But this time it soon came back out, and we
were able to watch the bird off and on for the next several minutes as it kept
walking in and out of the grasses. It
even stayed out in the open long enough to snap this passable phonescoped
photo.
Many thanks to Louis Bevier for his expert
help on pointing us in the right direction – I doubt we would have been able to
find the bird on our own. And thanks go
to Rob Speirs for first spotting the bird.
Clapper Rail is #337 for my ME list, and
New England total tick #2,014. I’ve now
seen this species in every coastal state touching the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf
of Mexico (see my statebird map below).
Plus I’ve seen the recently split Ridgway’s Rail in CA and AZ.
After seeing the Rail Denny and I went to
Hills Beach in Biddeford where we found an adult Little Gull and a Hudsonian
Godwit. All in all a very nice day!
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