Little Blue and Tricolored Herons, VT, May 2017

On April 27^th there was a most intriguing post on the VT listserve that someone had sighted not one but two Tricolored Herons at Lake Bomoseen.  That is an extremely rare species for VT, with perhaps just 2 prior records in the state.  I was a bit skeptical at first, but follow-up posts confirmed the ID.  I don’t normally chase after birds that far away (these were nearly 3 hours from home) so I only casually monitored the updates.

Then on May 2^nd came a post that an adult Little Blue Heron was spotted in Shelburne – not quite as rare as the Tricolored but still very rare in VT.  That spot too was beyond my normal chasing distance (a bit more than a 3 hour one-way drive).  But could I justify one trip to go after both herons?  Several posts that day and the next suggested the Little Blue might be quite reliable.  I rechecked the Tricolored posts and 1, and sometimes 2, were still being seen reasonably reliably.  I looked at the maps, and it would require a lot of driving – 7 hours total.  But that’s less than the driving distance for one trip each for two rarities 2 hours away (8 hours total).  So with that admittedly twisted logic I decided I could justify the long trip to go after these 2 rarities.

The next morning I was out the door early and heading toward Lake Bomoseen in Castleton.  One Tricolored and occasionally 2 birds were being seen at a small park at Crystal Beach.  When I arrived at the park there was another birder there, but no herons were in sight.  He said he saw the target bird a few minutes earlier, and showed me his excellent photos of the bird as it foraged just a few feet away.  Some recent reports had mentioned watching a bird fly a short distance to the north and out of sight.  In doing my research I had noticed that most of the lake had no marshy habitat at all except for the small immediate area at and north of Crystal Beach.  So I bet myself that the bird was at most just a couple hundred yards to the north though certainly out of view from the park.

Now what to do?  Sit tight and wait for one or both birds to return, or try to find it just to the north?  I decided to head north to look for where the bird had gone, and I traded phone numbers with the other birder who stayed at the beach – so we had both areas covered.  But access to the north was very limited behind houses along the lake.  Luckily I found a trail along the lake edge behind the houses and I didn’t feel like I was trespassing too much.  And within just a couple minutes a heron flew right in front of me – it was the Tricolored.  I got this phonescoped photo of the heron as it began to forage in a small cove nearby. 

 

VT was only my second inland state for this typically coastal species (see my statebird map below).

 

A few minutes later I was back in the car and was driving north heading to Shelburne Bay to try for the Little Blue.  This rarity was being seen in a relatively small marsh along the LaPlatte River.  Most sightings appeared to be from a hiking trail called the TiHaul Trail adjacent to the marsh.  That seemed straightforward enough.  But as I walked south down the trail and neared the marsh I met 3 birders coming back who did not find the heron.  They took me down a side-trail with a different view of the marsh but still no luck.  Though we did get spectacular views of this juvenile Great Horned Owl. 

 

So I decided to head back to the TiHaul Trail to wait to see if the bird would return.  On my way back I noticed two birders quite a distance farther down the trail staring intently into the marsh.  Did they have the target bird?  As I continued down the trail I met those birders coming back – they had indeed spotted the bird, and gave me specific directions to the spot farther south than its normal location.  Within a couple minutes I reached the spot they described, but couldn’t find the bird.  Where did it go?  Did I get the directions wrong?  But then I changed my location a bit allowing me to search a portion of the marsh out of view initially, and there was the Little Blue Heron in the distance. 

And with a bit of hiking off the trail I was able to get this much closer look at the bird. 

That's two really nice rarities in one day in VT.  Good thing I talked myself into making the trip.

VT was my last New England state for both Tricolored and Little Blue Herons, giving me 245 species in all 6 states.  And now my VT statelist stands at 279.