Northern Lapwing, Cape Elizabeth, Maine, April 2014

The winter of 2012/2013 featured a major incursion of Northern Lapwings in the eastern US.  Many birders felt that they arrived as a consequence of Superstorm Sandy in October 2012 and its gigantic wind field which swept across Lapwings’ normal migration route as they were heading south.  As a result of this nearly unprecedented invasion, I was lucky enough to add Lapwing to my RI and MA statelists in the winter of 2012/2013, complementing the CT bird I saw in November 2010.  Unfortunately I missed two 1-day wonder sightings in Maine and another in New Hampshire.  Several of the birds overwintered staying well into Spring, with some of the last US sightings in Spring 2013 being of a group of 3 on Nantucket.  After first arriving on the island in October 2012, and going through some courtship-like activities in Spring, many wondered if the birds might actually stay to nest.  But they were gone in early April after a stay of 5 months.  And single May 2013 birds in Maine, Quebec, and New Brunswick were the last birds to leave North America.  Or were they…

It was now early April 2014 and Denny Abbott called me to say he just heard that a Lapwing was seen in a farmer’s field in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.  Even Denny as a long-time New England birder needed that one for his Maine list.  Early the next morning we were on the road, and as we pulled up to the target spot we could see at least a dozen cars and several birders with scopes all trained in the same direction.  We rushed out of the car and there was the Lapwing walking in the grassy field with a small flock of geese - #329 for me in Maine.  They should all be that easy.  Certainly makes up for the ones I missed in Maine the previous winter.  This Lapwing was only seen for 2 days, but was cooperative enough during that time that many birders got to see it. 

I took several phonescoped photos of the bird but they aren’t the best given the distance and the rainy and foggy conditions that morning.

So now the question is - when did it first arrive in North America?  As a late spring bird you might think it would likely be a north-bound migrant.  The normal wintering grounds for the westernmost Lapwings are in western Europe and northern Africa, so if this was a spring migrant that just arrived in North America, it would have had to stray off that route.  Perhaps a late spring Nor’easter blew it off course.  Instead, could it have arrived in Fall 2013 as a result of being blown off its southbound migration route, and just now be detected as it headed back north?  But there are no other Lapwing sightings in North America in e-bird since the May 2013 departures, so you wouldn’t think there were any birds newly arriving as fall migrants in 2013.  And what about the alternative that this bird was actually still in North America from the 2012-2013 invasion?  Of course it would have had to go undetected for about a year for that to be the case.  But with millions of acres of potential suitable habitat, one would think one bird could escape detection by birders for quite a while.  Of course we will never know for sure.  But it’s intriguing to think that the Maine bird in April 2014 may have actually been in North America for an extended period of time.  And if that was the case, could it have even nested in North America in 2013?