Prothonotary Warbler, North Hampton, NH, November 2016

Earlier in the month I had an excellent birding trip to WA where I saw many rarities including finding a Prothonotary Warbler – only the 4^th for the state.  And amazingly a few days later came a report of a Prothonotary on the NH coast, with photos of the bird foraging in boulders right on the coast in North Hampton.  Although the species is not nearly as rare in NH as it is in WA, there are still only a handful of records for NH – there are only 8 accepted NH records since 1950 (according to The Birds of New Hampshire by Keith and Fox) and no prior reports in eBird.  Not surprisingly it’s one I needed for my NH list.  But the bird was not re-found the next couple of days so it appeared to be just a one-day wonder. 

Later that week I sent a note off to a couple of the folks I had birded with in WA to tell them of yet another very late Prothonotary, this one closer to home.  I was just hitting the send button when a text came across that the NH bird was re-found in almost the exact same spot it was seen 4 days earlier!  I wanted to run right out the door, but had commitments through early afternoon and wouldn't be able to make it there until mid-afternoon at the earliest.  But I wasn’t too worried.  After all it had stuck around for 4 days, so I was cautiously optimistic that it would remain until that afternoon.

I continued to check my phone as the morning progressed, and several positive updates came through.  But by noon the updates stopped.  I guess most everyone who wanted to see the bird must have already seen it.  So by the time I was finally able to head to the NH coast it had been a couple hours since the last report.  I tried to remain positive…

When I arrived at North Hampton State Beach I met up with local birder David Donsker.  He told me that apparently no one had seen the bird for a while, but it looked like a couple birders a few hundred yards up ahead might be acting like they had just re-found it.  I ran maybe a quarter mile north up the walkway and as I got to the birders they said they just had the bird down in the rocks.  Another minute later I got the first glimpse of the bird as if foraged for insects way down in the boulders.  The bird would disappear for a few minutes and then reappear near the surface a few rocks farther away – apparently the same thing it had been doing all day long.

After getting great looks at the Prothonotary as it hopped among the boulders we watched the bird fly out to the seaweed-covered rocks by the water line.  It was now near low tide, so it was pretty far out.  But even at that distance the bright orangey bird was very easy to pick out among the dark rocks.  At that point we left the spot and headed back to the cars.  Little did we know that we would be among the last birders to see the warbler, as it was not re-found after it headed out toward the water.  Boy was I lucky – a few minutes later and I would have missed it.

Prothonotary Warbler was number 362 for my NH list.  I’ve now seen this species in CT, MA, RI, and NH in New England, along with most of the states in its regular range in the southeast and central US, and of course in WA as a vagrant.  Interesting that in 2002 I had a singing Prothonotary Warbler in good breeding habitat in my hometown of Pepperell, MA just 3 miles from NH.  It took all these years until I finally got one north of the NH state line.

And a few thoughts on vagrancy in Prothonotary Warblers –

Interesting that both the WA and NH birds were seen at about the same time, as was one posted on eBird in northern CA.  This early- to mid-November timeframe is generally a couple months after birds have left their breeding grounds.  Throughout their regular breeding range there are only a handful of sightings in October – and most of these are in early October.  But there are actually a fair number of late October, November, and even December records scattered across the country.  Similarly, the three prior WA records were all from the fall, though averaging a bit earlier with one each in August, September, and October.  So it seems October/November could be a time to look for Prothonotary Warbler as an extreme rarity. 

It is also of note that the pattern for vagrancy in Prothonotary’s in New England and eastern Canada is a bit different.  Although there are a few fall records in the northeast in late fall, the bird is more likely to be found as a vagrant in Spring, likely as an overshoot of its regular southeast breeding grounds.  Plus Prothonotary’s are found occasionally as a breeder in the southern part of New England.  There was even a male Prothonotary that sang as if on territory this year in southern VT.

And one other thought on the 2016 sightings – the WA, NH, and CA birds are all at roughly the same latitude, though obviously on opposite coasts.  Additionally, the normal range for Prothonotary Warbler in the central US is roughly equidistant between the locations of the WA/CA sightings and the NH sighting.  Could these November, 2016 vagrants have been from the same population - with the NH bird taking about the same amount of time to get to its northeast location as the WA/CA birds needed to travel northwest to the Pacific coast?  Wonder where they might have been in the last couple months after leaving their breeding grounds.