Upland Sandpiper, Richmond, RI, May 2019

Upland Sandpiper is a rare migrant through New England, and a recent nester only in a few grassland locations in MA, NH, and ME.  In RI, this species is rare in migration, with just 3 eBird sightings in the last decade – one in spring and 2 in fall.  Most sightings occur at the sod farms in the southern part of the state, along with the slightly more likely Buff-breasted Sandpipers and regular (in fall) Golden Plovers.  I’ve been able to catch up with Buff-breasts and Golden Plovers in RI over the years.  But the Uplands have been a different story – not only are they rare but most sightings have been one-day wonders which I didn’t chase after.  And the only one I did go for was seen for just 2 days – I tried for it on day 3. 

Then on April 24, 2019 came a report of an Upland at the sod fields in Slocum, RI.  Although this bird was once again only seen for that one day, there was a report of another Upland on the 25th along Heaton Orchard Road in Richmond.  (Or I guess there was a chance that this was the same bird visiting the 2 sites 7 miles apart “as the Sandpiper flies”.)  I wasn’t thinking about chasing after this one since it too was likely to be a one-day wonder.  But then came reports that the bird was continuing the next day, and then the next.  Unfortunately, I was super busy at home with no time to try for one of the few truly chaseable Upland Sandpipers in RI in recent memory.

I finally had a window of opportunity to try for the Upland on May 2nd or 3rd.  I had planned a birding trip to eastern CT on the 2nd and RI on the 3rd with birding friend Blair Bernson of WA.  Blair was on a quest to see 50 species in each of the 50 states, and I was helping him out in CT and RI.  In theory I could swing by the sod farms either of those days, but wasn’t too optimistic that this bird would still be around by the time I could finally get to the area – 7 or 8 days after it was first reported.  However, amazingly, the sightings continued and the bird was apparently quite reliable.  So I crossed my fingers that I could successfully add a stop at the Heaton Orchard Road sod farms to my pre-planned CT/RI trip itinerary.

Our CT birding on the 2nd went exceptionally well – in fact better than expected.  We ended our day at Hammonasset Beach State Park where a planned brief stop turned into a 3-hour visit as we ran into a tremendous fallout of migrant passerines, giving us well over 100 species on the day.  But that cut into my time to try for the Upland.  I only had time for a brief stop there that evening, but would have much more time the next day.  Not wanting to take a chance on whether the bird would stay yet another day, I decided to head to Richmond for a brief stop on evening of the 2nd to give it a go.

Several posts mentioned that the bird was being seen in the fields east of telephone poles 43, 44, and 45 – can’t get much more specific than that.  So as I pulled onto Heaton Orchard Road from the north I started scanning the numbers on the poles, and pulled over between poles 44 and 45 to start my search.  A quick binocular scan to the east netted no birds at all.  I suddenly remembered how big the sod farms were – roughly a square mile of likely habitat.  A sinking feeling started to set in as I started to wonder whether I would actually be able to find this one bird in so many acres of habitat.  But then I remembered one post that the bird was frequenting the taller grass – which was actually in the closer fields.  I had been looking farther out which happened to be the shorter grass.  So I changed my focus to these nearer fields, and with the next scan I quickly found the target Upland Sandpiper no more than 100 feet from me.  I got this phonescoped photo of this most cooperative bird.

This bird continued to be seen in this same sod farm through May 4th – 10 consecutive days.  During most of this time the weather was cool, gray, often rainy, and rarely with any southerly winds.  Maybe that’s why it decided to make such a long stop in RI on its way to a breeding site somewhere to the north.

Upland Sandpiper was #333 for my RI list.  In my statebird map below the 31 dark-shaded states are those where I’ve seen this species; the cross-hatched states are those where Upland is regular though not yet on my statelists. 

Trumpeter Swan (But is it Countable?), April 2019, Candia NH

I was working outside in the garden early on Sunday morning 4/14 when I received a text from NH birder Steve Mirick that the Trumpeter Swan was continuing in Candia.  Trumpeter Swan?  What Trumpeter Swan?  I hadn’t seen any posts about what might be the first modern-day record of Trumpeter Swan in NH.  I came inside to check e-mails, and with some research noticed that the bird was first spotted the day before but initially reported as a Tundra Swan.  I don’t need Tundra for my NH list so it didn’t pop up in an eBird Needs Alert.  And with less people using the listserves, it wasn’t until the text the next day that the news got out in a big way.

Now I needed to free up some time to chase after the Swan.  Often Trumpeters will stick around for a while, so I wasn’t too worried that I couldn’t leave right away to chase after it.  Instead I planned to give it a try right after church.  I did a bit more research and found that the bird was being seen in the wetlands of the Abe Emerson Marsh Wildlife Sanctuary, and then downloaded a map of the trails at the site.  That was just a 45-minute drive away – less than half the distance of most of my normal New England chases.  I coordinated with NH birder David Donsker and it sounded like we would both arrive at about the same time.  More eyes the better.

By the time I left church there were a couple more posts, including photos of the bird swimming close by the photographer.  And while in route I called another NH birder David Deifik to make sure he knew about the bird.  He had just seen the Swan but it wasn’t in view at the time.  So I was optimistic though it might take a bit of searching.

I arrived at about 1 PM just as yet another NH birder Davis Finch got to the site (after all it could be a first recent NH record – everyone was descending on the site!).  Davis said he saw the bird as he passed by the marsh on Route 101; it was same story from David Donsker who had just arrived.  But stopping on the highway is likely to be frowned upon by local police, so we all started our searches from the trails in the sanctuary.  After about 20 minutes of increasingly anxious searching Davis and I finally spotted the Swan at the far southern end of the wetlands.  We were on the northeastern water’s edge about 1,000 ft away, and the bird was at least partially obscured, so the sighting wasn’t the best.  But we were able to get occasional views of the head/bill shape to ensure the ID and eliminate Tundra Swan.

Now the question was whether this bird could be countable in NH.  There is apparently one historical NH record of Trumpeter Swan, based on an account in "History of New Hampshire" by Jeremy Belknap written in 1792.  As a result, this species is on the NH state list based solely on the summary contained in that 200-year-old book.  But since then, Trumpeters had been extirpated from virtually all of their former range, and in fact hunted to near extinction.  That was until very successful re-introduction programs were begun in the 1980s in several Midwest states and Ontario.  This species is now successfully breeding in many locations throughout this region, including birds breeding as close as the Finger Lakes region of NY. 

Not surprisingly Trumpeters are showing up in increasing frequency in New England, and recent sightings have been deemed to be countable from viable re-introduced populations by the rare bird committees of VT, CT, RI, and MA.  At least one set of photos of the Candia bird showed that it was not banded, and had no wingtags, so the NH bird is not likely to be an escapee, and most likely from these re-introduced populations.  It will be up to the NH Rare Bird Committee to decide if this bird is indeed countable, but it would sure seem that based on the recent countable records elsewhere in New England, that the Committee members will decide to count this record as well.

If accepted by the NHRBC it would be number 370 for my NH list.  In my statebird map below, the 18 dark shaded states are those where I’ve seen Trumpeter Swan, including several midwestern states associated with the re-introduction program.  The cross-hatched states are those where this species is regular though I haven’t caught up with it yet.  I’ve also seen it in 2 Canadian provinces – BC and ON.  And with the increasing eastern populations Trumpeters will undoubtedly become regular in additional eastern states and provinces in the near future.