Sunday, March 17, 2019

Golden Eagle - But Just Barely, Montague, MA, February 2019


One of the best ways to find Golden Eagles in New England is to spend time at fall hawk watches and get lucky to see one of the small number of birds that pass by each year.  But I’ve never done much in the way of birding at fall hawk migration spots so my chances to find Golden Eagles as fall migrants have been limited.  The other option is to be able to find a wintering bird.  Often a wintering Golden will stick around in a general area for a few days, though these birds will frequently cover large areas and may not be very reliable.  However needless to say, even an unreliable wintering bird will be more chaseable than a fall migrant that’s just passing through.   

As a result of these challenges, I have a rather checkered history with Golden Eagle in New England.  On the positive side, I have seen this species in NH and VT based on the sighting of a single bird on 3/25/14.  The bird had been reported in VT the previous couple days, and I was lucky enough to not only find the bird, but also to watch it fly back and forth over the stateline to add it to both statelists (I happened to be standing in Vernon, VT at the time).  Can’t get much better than that!  At the other end of the spectrum was a frustrating fall sighting I had years earlier as I was birding on Mount Agamenticus in Maine.  The bird was very far to the west and little more than a speck, though it seemed like it could have been an immature Golden.  Then there was the 7-hour roundtrip I made up the Maine coast in January 2013 to Flood Brothers Dairy in Clinton for what was generally described as a reliable wintering bird.  Alas the bird was totally unreliable the day I was there.  Ugh. 

Then on February 15, 2019 came reports of a Golden Eagle in central MA in the town of Montague, feeding on a cow carcass with numerous Bald Eagles.  Two consecutive days of sightings and photographs meant that the Golden was quite reliable.  But I couldn’t get out until after church on the 17th, so I crossed my fingers that it would stick around till that afternoon.   

The actual location where the birds were feeding wasn’t very clear from the posts, but many sightings were from Will’s Ferry Rd.  So when I finally arrived in the area a bit before 2 PM, I drove right to Will’s Ferry Rd to begin my search.  And within a few seconds I saw a large mixed flock of Ravens and Crows milling about.  After just a few seconds I realized most of the activity was focused around a distant field which was the likely location of the carcass (maybe it was a good thing that a slight rise in the field obscured the actual site of the cow’s remains).  Then I started noticing a few Bald Eagles in the area – first one, then two more, then a group of at least six.  And just then I spotted a pair of Eagles flying low over the field – one seemed a bit smaller than the other.  Both then rose up to head to the distant tree line along the Connecticut River and the slightly smaller bird had a white tail with a dark terminal band, and white patches at the base of the primaries on the otherwise dark wings.  I had the Golden Eagle!  I watched it for just a few seconds before it went behind the trees, and then followed it along the river for a few more seconds, mostly obscured by the branches, until it disappeared in the distance to the southwest. 

Now I just waited for it to return to give me better looks.  But over the next 2 hours I never did see the Golden again.  Though I had great views of Bald Eagles, with 10 in view at one time.  Plus I had a calling Fish Crow to give me a sweep of the Corvids.  And a small flock of Redpolls feeding nearby was a nice addition. 

I have to admit that as I continued to wait in vain for the Golden Eagle I began to doubt my sighting.  On the negative side, no one else spotted the Golden that day, and my sighting was brief.  But I was able to see every key field mark except for the golden hind-neck.  And the bird seemed to be passing through the area and then flying off to the south down the Connecticut River, instead of feeding at the carcass.  In other words, perhaps it wasn’t in the area for long that day, giving other birders next to no time to spot it.  So rather than doubting my brief but good sighting, I decided to stick with my initial ID and added it to my MA statelist. 

Golden Eagle was number 415 for MA.  And although MA was my 20th state for this species (the dark shaded states in my statebird map below), I still need it in quite a number of other states especially in the eastern and central portions of its regular range (the cross-hatched states). 





Statebird map

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