Brown Pelican, Hampton, NH, June 2017

A post came across the Maine listserve that a Brown Pelican was spotted off Prout’s Neck in southern ME.  There were also a couple Pelicans being seen on the northern MA coast – that’s quite a movement of birds into New England!  Ordinarily I would want to chase after the ME bird (I already have Pelican in MA), but I was away on a week-long business trip and wouldn’t be able to go for it.  That is unless it stayed in the area until I returned.  And when the posts for the ME Pelican (as well as the MA birds) continued through the week, I started to get more optimistic that perhaps I had a chance for it.  I flew home Friday and that evening checked the ME listserve again – the Pelican was still being reported, though access to its preferred perches was a bit limited.  So early Saturday I put together a plan to head out to try for the bird the next morning, and I sent an e-mail to my NH birding colleague David Donsker to see if he wanted to come along.

Less than an hour later I received this text from Steve Mirick along the NH coast - “Brown Pelican flying south past Concord Point.  NOW!!”  And just a minute later I received this update – “Pelican LANDED ON CONCORD POINT!!”.  That would be a great bird to try for in NH, but realistically the chances were pretty slim that it would stay put for the next 90 minutes that it would take me to drive there.  So I lamented how I would miss another possible NH statebird, and went back to my chores.  Though of course I was still planning to head to ME the next morning to try for the Pelican there.

Then just a few minutes later I got a call from David Donsker – he was at Concord Point looking at the NH bird.  He said the Pelican was sleeping on rocks well above the high tide line, so perhaps it would stay.  That was enough to push me over the edge, and 5 minutes later I was out the door to begin my drive to the upper NH coast. 

My drives to chase after a rarity are nearly always quite stressful.  I always want to drive faster than I ought to, and can’t ever understand why a slow driver would be in front of me.  And then I always hope there will be positive updates as I make my drive making me feel more at ease.  One of those updates came from David about half way along my trip – the bird was still there.  But then as I was just 15 minutes away, he called again - but this time I could tell from the tone of his first few words that it wasn’t going to be a good update.  He reported that the bird had just taken off and left Concord Point, flying south.  My heart sank.  If only I had left right when I received the first texts I would have made it in time. 

What to do?  I was half-tempted to just turn around and head home.  But I was so close, why not try to re-find the bird?  I knew it was a long shot, but worth the try.  My first stop was at Eel Pond, a couple miles south of Concord Point.  I quickly scanned the beach, any rocks in view, the ocean, the pond, but found nothing.  Then I went a bit farther south and made another stop, but still nothing.  I realized that my access to the coastline was pretty limited, and there were many possible resting places that a Pelican might favor that were simply out of view.  Re-finding the Pelican was definitely going to be a needle in a haystack proposition; that is if the bird was even still in NH at all. 

Then I continued my trek to the south and arrived at the beach at North Hampton State Park.  I parked at the north end and scanned first north up the coast, then east out to sea, but found nothing.  Then I looked to the south and far in the distance I could see a couple Cormorants perched close to shore.  And next to them was another taller bird, or at least I thought it was a bird, that seemed about right for a Pelican.  I quickly pulled the scope from my car, and even though I later realized that the birds were 1.1 miles away, I could tell that I had indeed re-found the immature Brown Pelican!  I called Steve so he could get the word out.  He suggested that maybe the bird would be close to Bicentennial Park, so I made that my next stop.

A couple minutes later I pulled into the parking lot at Bicentennial Park in Hampton.  The lot was marked for residents with town stickers only, but I didn’t care.  I quickly set up the scope and looked north toward a rocky outcrop near Plaice Cove and there was the Pelican swimming first with some Cormorants, and then later with some Eiders.  Good thing the bird was standing when I first spotted it from the State Park as I doubt I would have been able to pick out a swimming bird at that distance.  And speaking of distance, I had re-found the bird 6 miles south of Concord Point, and 30 minutes after the Pelican had started its trek south.  I got these miserable phonescoped photos of the bird as it bobbed in the swells.

Later I was able to get a couple other birders on the target bird.  And while comparing notes a parking enforcement officer showed up and suggested we leave since we didn’t have the required resident stickers.  Not wanting to risk getting a parking ticket, we all headed out very happy to have seen the bird.

Soon after we left there was a report from another birder who watched the Pelican fly from Plaice Cove heading further south.  And later yet there were reports of the bird at Hampton Harbor and then near Seabrook Beach.  The bird was definitely making its way south.

On my drive home I wondered whether the NH bird was yet another Pelican in this mini-invasion, or perhaps one of the MA birds, or the worst option – that it was the bird that had been in ME for the last week.  Later that day there was one negative report from ME, and no positive reports at all.  So I decided not to head to ME the next day to try for that one.  And good thing I didn’t – a later post concluded that the NH bird was actually the one that had been at Prout’s Neck in ME the previous week.  Unfortunately there were no more reports of the Pelican returning to ME.  Oh well – I missed the chance to add Brown Pelican to my ME list, but got it in NH.

Brown Pelican was #363 for my NH statelist (after removing Thayer’s Gull which was just lumped with Iceland Gull).  And NH was my 3rd New England state for Brown Pelican – in addition to MA and RI.  Plus I’ve seen it throughout its regular range on the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts, not to mention AZ.