Smith’s Longspur, Saugus, MA, January 2016

A post came across the MA listserve describing a Smith’s Longspur seen at the Bear Creek Sanctuary in Saugus.  This site is a closed landfill that is only open to the public as part of formal weekly birdwalks led by Soheil Zendeh.  Because of the rarity of this bird (only the third MA state record), Soheil offered to lead another walk just for this bird in a couple days.  I certainly was interested in trying for the Longspur, but wondered if it might stick around.  And even if it was still there, how easy would it be to find in acres of suitable habitat at a closed landfill.  And then there was the issue of the cold and windy conditions forecasted the day of the trip.  But despite more than just a few reservations, I decided to join the next walk and give it a try.

Wind chills were close to zero when 30 other birders and I assembled outside the entrance to the landfill that morning.  Soheil told us that this bird was actually first seen about a month ago on the day after the local CBC, and a couple times since then, but only definitively identified 3 days ago.  So it sounded like the bird may well be wintering at this spot.  That eliminated one of my reservations.

As our group headed out into the landfill we soon came upon a small group of Horned Larks and 1 Longspur that turned out to be a Lapland.  Then another group of Larks flew by and disappeared in the distance.  And soon we saw a flock of mostly Snow Buntings in the distance as well.  That was my next concern – how would we find that one Smith’s Longspur in all this habitat, and with so many Larks and Buntings it could mix with? 

Several other birders and I continued to look at the Lark group in front of us trying to pick out another Longspur.  But after a couple minutes I realized Soheil and several others had moved over to the right about 50 yards and had scopes trained on a another spot.  I walked over to them only to find out that they were looking at THE spot where the Smith’s Longspur had always been seen – I didn’t even realize there was a key spot to look for this bird.  And better yet – they had the Smith’s!  Sure enough, at the edge of a dirt road a short distance away there was one lone bird feeding in some short grasses and it was the Smith’s.  The field guides say that Smith’s like to feed alone, and that was certainly the case with this bird.  Later we moved to a closer location with a better sun angle, and the bird continued to feed no more than 3-4 inches from its original spot.  I got these phonescoped photos of the bird –

 
Smith’s Longspur is #408 for my MA statelist, and the 432nd species I’ve seen anywhere in New England.  MA is only my 5th state where I’ve seen this species, though I’ve yet to see it in breeding plumage in AK (see my statebird map below). 

Also, this was the 500th species that I’ve photographed.  Most of those pictures were taken in the old pre-digital era – I have boxes of slides of many of the first 400+ species I’ve photographed.