For several weeks there had been occasional reports of 1 or more Long-eared Owls at Silver Sands State Park in Milford. I hadn’t really paid much attention to them since I just assumed they were at a roost at a secret location. But then I noticed several eBird posts from consecutive days that they were flying around at the park at dusk. So now that I realized that they might be rather reliable, it was time to get some directions. Unfortunately the directions on the eBird posts were not very detailed, and not very helpful since I had never been to the park. But I noticed Frank Mantlik posted some advice on the CT Listserve for separating Long-ears from Short-ears based on his observations at the park. So I reached out to him for directions, and he sent along some excellent advice, not only as to location, but also regarding the time the Long-ears come out to hunt.
The next day I was on my way to Milford. Since I didn’t need to be at Silver Sands
until after sunset, I decided to do a little late afternoon birding at
Hammonasset State Park along the way.
Just as I arrived at Hammo I decided to check my e-mail account and
noticed that I had just received an e-mail that a Thick-billed Murre had been
found from shore in Newport, RI. I went
to my map app to figure out if there was enough time to head east to Newport,
and still get back to Silver Sands for the Owl.
But there just wasn’t enough time.
So I decided to stick with my original plans, and try for the Murre the
next morning. (Unfortunately the next
day was snowy and I couldn’t get to RI.
And although I did try the following day, the bird was gone. If only the info on the Murre had come along
earlier…) In any case, I did a sea watch
for about an hour at Hammo, and got a Red-necked Grebe and a few Scoters as
flybys.
I arrived at Silver Sands about an hour
before sunset and started to familiarize myself with the park. I quickly found Frank’s suggested viewing
location, between the parking lot and the old landfill, and set up my scope to
begin my vigil. Frank mentioned that
they would fly very low over the landfill, and even roost on the chain link
fence at the landfill edge. Also, Long-ears
come out to feed later than Short-ears do, typically only a few minutes before
darkness. So likely with only a very
small window of daylight to see the birds, I was happy when three other birders
arrived so that there would be more of us searching for the targets. One of these birders very definitively
suggested a different spot to wait for them, saying he had seen them there on 6
of 8 tries. Reluctantly, I went along
with the other 3 birders, and we headed to a spot at least 200 yards west of
Frank’s suggested location.
As we set up at the new location I soon
realized that all 4 of us would end up scanning to the west, and we would never
see the birds if they actually appeared at Frank’s suggested location. Plus it just didn’t make sense for all of us
to be looking in the same general direction.
So I moved a bit to the east between the two sites, and trained my scope
back to east toward the first site.
It was now after sunset, and getting darker
by the minute. On one of my scans I noticed
what appeared to be a dark spot on top of the chain link fence. I zoomed in and there was the Long-eared Owl
– looking back at me. I got the other
birders on the bird and we all got good though very distant views. If I had only stuck with Frank’s directions
the bird would have been directly in front of me. Despite the distance and that
it was nearly dark, I could still see the ears and the orange facial
areas. I got this miserable phonescoped
picture at least 20 minutes after sunset.
The bird (and/or others) flew low over the
landfill a couple times later. But it
was now so dark that we could just barely see dark objects moving against the
pale snowy background.
CT is only my seventh state for Long-eared
Owl, and only my third for New England (see my statebird map below). And that was my New England total tick
#1,995. Five more to go to 2,000.
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