Avocet in New Hampshire, August 2011

I'm sitting at my desk and my cell rings - it's from Len Medlock who is out birding in NH virtually every day.  An Avocet has been found on the NH coast!  Within 2 minutes I'm out the door for the quick 45-minute ride to Meadow Pond (making calls to alert a couple other birders along the way).  When I get there, Len and Steve Mirick are on the Avocet just a short distance away.  And the pond is alive with birds - peeps, yellowlegs, short-billed dowitchers, stilt sands, semi plovers, great and snowy egrets, shovelers, teal, and several Forster's Terns.  During my short visit both a Merlin and a Peregrine also pass though the peeps.  Although I could only stay a few minutes, it was an amazing quick stop not only with a new statebird (the Avocet), but also good NH birds like shoveler and Forster's terns.  And this is a new spot that I've never birded.

My statebird map for American Avocet is below (shaded states are those where I've seen this species).  NH is my 4th New England state for Avocet, not only indicative of how often it strays from it's normal range, but also that it can generally be chaseable when a vagrant. 

Brant and Long-billed Dowitcher – Dead Creek Wildlife Management Area, VT – August 2011

The greatest possibility for new statebirds for me in Vermont is generally in the northwest part of the state.  Between Lake Champlain’s waterbirds more typically seen on the coastal, a wide assortment of shorebirds at Dead Creek Wildlife Management Area, and the grassland birds of the Champlain Valley, there is a lot of potential.  Unfortunately, northwestern Vermont is more than a 3-hour drive for me, so I don’t get up there very often.  So when a rarity shows up there, although it is very tempting to make the trek to give it a try, I don’t often go. 

This summer there have been frequent posts of a Brant hanging out at Dead Creek, along with a Snow Goose, mixed in with the local families of Canada Geese.  Brant is certainly a good bird for Vermont, especially in summer, and it would be a new statebird.  Plus this is the first long-staying, reliable Brant I can remember for VT.  So with all these factors coming together, I decided to make the drive and give it a go.  With the company of my good birding friend Denny Abbott of NH, we headed to Brilyea Access at Dead Creek to look for the Brant.  When we arrived, several other birders were there looking at some shorebirds at the edge of the marsh.  We asked if anyone had seen the Brant, and one birder mentioned it had just flown to the west with a flock of Canadas.  Remembering that our goal was to find the Brant, we quickly got back in the car and took a short drive west to look for the geese.  There is a large farm pond just a couple hundred yards west of the Brilyea Access, so we expected to find the geese there.  However, there were no geese there of any species.  We continued to drive a bit farther west and noticed a small flock of Canadas “grazing” in some tall grasses along the road – it has to be in this flock, right?  But Denny and I easily searched through the geese and only saw Canadas, even though the birds were somewhat obscured by the grass.  Then I wondered if we weren’t seeing the smaller Brant because it was completely hidden by the grass.  Sure enough, with some closer scanning, I saw a small black head (but only the head) stick up above the grass.  And it was only visible for a few seconds at a time.  Not the best of views, but still a definitive Brant.  We would have never seen the Brant if we hadn’t gotten the tip from the other birders at Dead Creek!

Denny and I then went back to Brilyea Access to join the other birders and thank them for their information on the Brant.  When we returned, they were looking at the shorebirds on the nearby mudflats.  There were only a few, but with considerable diversity – both yellowlegs, a Dowitcher, several Least Sands, a couple Semi Sands, a couple Baird’s Sandpipers, and of course a couple Killdeer.  We spent a lot of time on the peeps, and eventually felt good about the IDs.  Then one birder started asking if the Dowitcher could be a Long-billed.  (Amazing that during all that time we didn’t pay much attention to the Dowitcher!)  Then with a little scrutiny, we saw that the bird was an adult, and rather uniformly orangy below, which would mean if it was a Short-Billed it would have to be one of the Henderson’s race.  Then we noted how dark the back was – no pale edges to the scapulars.  Could that be a reasonably definitive field mark for Long-billed?  There was some limited barring over much of the flanks. 

I took a couple phone-scoped photos of the bird shown below – the first shot shows the very dark back. 

I can't figure out how to turn this picture!

Then I took the following picture and was lucky enough that the bird had its entire bill exposed from the mud.  Wow – it’s really long!  I showed the photo to the other birders and none of us realized how long the bill was until then since it was actively feeding and at least a portion of the bill was always in the mud. 

Another sideways photo - ugh!

After I got home I reviewed a really good article from the Sep/Oct 06 Birding issue on dowitcher identification.  Here's a link to the article -   http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~ctlee/LeeBirchDowitcher.pdf

A few salient features that I didn't know about until reading this article -

·         Loral Angle - the angle between the bill line and a line going through the eye (my poor description).  Basically, the Short-billed eye averages being higher on the head than the Long-billed.  The photo I took with the bird facing us shows a very low loral angle indicating Long-billed.

·         Bill Shape - Short-billed more likely to be a bit downcurved and Long-billed is very straight.  This bird had a very straight bill as shown in the picture with the entire bill exposed

·         Scapulars and Greater Coverts in Worn Alternate Plumage.  Wear of these feathers on Short-billed results in deeply pointed appearance to the feathers - on Long-billed the appearance is square or blunt-tipped.  Again a vote for Long-billed based on the photo showing the exposed bill.  "Because Short-billed shows more extensive white edges than Long-billed, this feature is often still preserved in worn alternate plumage, such that late-summer Long-billeds appear very dark-backed while Short-billeds appear lighter-backed from a distance."  I had not noticed this in the past, but other birders there seemed to key in on this very quickly.

·         Molt Timing - "Long-billeds molt their primaries during migration whereas Short-billeds wait until they arrive at their wintering grounds to molt their primaries."  The molted primaries are visible in my photo showing the exposed bill.  Another Long-billed vote.

·         I really think that the color of the undersides, and the patterns on the side, are inconclusive except that it's either Long-billed or Short-billed hendersoni. 

So along with the really long bill, I've got to believe it was a Long-billed.

I didn't realize that all the North American dowitchers were considered to be 1 species until the 50's - I can certainly understand why.

That gives me 3 new statebirds for VT this year – 246 now.  My statebird maps for Long-billed Dowitcher and Brant are below.  My sightings of the dowitcher are especially spotty in the eastern US.  While for Brant, VT is my first inland state - otherwise my sightings are in all the typically Pacific and Northeast states.



Statebird maps - colored blue in states where I've seen it



White Ibis in Rhode Island, August 2011

There have been quite a number of extralimital White Ibis sightings up the east coast this summer, so I was not too surprised to see a post about one in New England - a juvenile in a marsh in the southwestern corner of Rhode Island surrounding Winnapaug Pond west of Weekapaug.  Over the next several days there were several posts from birders chasing after it, but with as many negative posts as positive ones.  So despite not being very reliable, I decided to give it a try.  One birder suggested trying for it at high tide minimizing the chance that it could be hidden in a channel off in the marsh, so I targeted an afternoon high tide.  I arrived at the key spot where it had been most often spotted (see location link below) and saw two birders with a scope trained on the nearby marsh.  Sure enough - they had the bird in sight feeding in a salt panne right next to the road with 3 Glossies.  If only they were all that easy!  We watched it for the next 20 minutes and was able to get the phone-scoped picture at the bottom of this blog. 

The flock took off at one point when we were looking away, so I started to try to refind it.  Over the next 30 minutes I drove around the edge of the marsh only to realize that it is almost completed surrounded by houses, with only a very small portion of the marsh visible from public property.  Now I see why so many posts were negative.  I never did find it again, though it was likely very close.  Boy was I lucky to see this one.  It was #282 for for me in RI and the third time I've seen it as a vagrant outside its typical southeastern range (see my statebird map below).

Statebird Map

Phonescoped photo

Block Island Ferry, RI - 3 Shearwaters and 2 Storm-Petrels! July 2011

Seeing most pelagic species in Rhode Island has been a challenge for me.  The local RI birders do organize some pelagic trips into RI waters, but I've never gone on one (yet!).  I have been lucky enough to see Razorbill and Common Murre from shore, but the real pelagic species likely require a boat trip.  So it was with great interest that I read a post a couple years ago about local RI birders having some pretty good success seeing pelagic birds from the Block Island ferry out of Point Judith.  Sort of a poor-man's pelagic trip.  The trip is only about an hour each way, moves pretty quickly (even on the slower traditional ferry), and of course won't chase after anything you see.  So you've got to be lucky to have the pelagic birds pass pretty close to the ship as you go by.  A positive is that the ship is very large, so you generally don't have to worry about rough seas.  Over the last couple years I've taken one ferry in summer and one in early spring, and with the exception of a flyby pair of Whimbrels, and the ubiquitous Wilson's Storm-Petrel, I haven't really seen too much.  That was before this trip! 

I took an early morning trip out of Point Judith to beat the heat.  The first Wilson’s Storm-Petrel was just barely outside the Point Judith breakwater, and the birds just kept coming from there.  Soon thereafter a Cory’s Shearwater passed right by the bow the boat, then another, then 4 more.  My first RI shearwater!   A short time later a Manx flew by with its classic fast, fluttering wingbeats.  A couple more Cory’s later, I saw a pair of shearwaters on the water up ahead.  The boat got close enough to see that 1 was a Cory’s and 1 was a Great.  On the way back there were more storm-petrels and less shearwaters in the air.  One of the storm-petrels caught my attention as soon as I saw it – noticeably longer wings than the Wilson’s.  And it was doing a fair amount of soaring with wings on a dihedral, then deep flaps – a Leach’s Storm-Petrel!  I watched it for over 30 seconds until we passed it by.  At one point we passed by a flock of 22 shearwaters sitting on the water that were just a bit too far away to ID.  Likely most were Cory’s, but who knows what else may have been mixed in.  The final tally was 3 species of Shearwaters and 2 species of Storm-Petrels with just 2 hours on the water.  And interesting that there were as many shearwaters as storm-petrels.  To round out the experience, we passed closely by a Mola mola which I pointed out to others on the ferry.

I've had worse whale watches and pelagics! 

Here are the details -

Trip to Block Island - 9:30-10:30 - winds S 5-10, Seas <2 ft

Wilson's Storm-Petrel - 14

Cory's Shearwater - 9 (including 4 together, all flying except 1 on the water)

Manx Shearwater - 1

Great Shearwater - 1 - sitting on the water with a Cory's

Shearwater sp. - 4 (distant flybys, most likely either Cory's or Greats)

Trip Back to Point Judith - 11:30-12:30 - winds S <5, Seas almost calm

Wilson's Storm-Petrel - 25

Leach's Storm-Petrel - 1

Cory's Shearwater - 2

Shearwater sp. - 23 - including a distant flock of 22 on the water (likely Cory's and/or Greats)

Short-billed Dowitcher - 8

Mola mola – 1

My statebird map for Cory’s Shearwater is inserted below (the shaded states are the ones where I’ve seen this species).  As you can see, haven’t done much pelagic birding outside the northeast.

Vermont Whip-Poor-Will, July 2011

For years I've been collecting posts on the locations of Whip-poor-wills in Vermont so that I could someday try to add it to my VT statelist.  But since all the posted locations are quite distant from my house, it would require an overnight stay in VT, and I just I haven't had the opportunity.  This July I had a business trip to eastern NY that would include an evening trek through VT, so of course I wanted to give it a try.  But is mid-July too late to still hear Whips? 

With the help of information from several local VT birders, I headed to Long Swamp Road in Brandon near sunset to try for Whips.  Skies were cloudy and threatening with occasional light rain falling, but winds were light so I was hopeful that I'd be able to hear even distant birds.  At 8:50 1 bird started to call in the distance off to the north - success!  Now I have Whips in each New England state - my 202nd species that I have in all 6 New England states.  My statebird map for Whip-poor-will is inserted below - shaded states are those where I've heard/seen Whips.  The Brandon location is also provided in the link at the end of this post.

While in VT I also tried for 3 other possible statebirds but without success.  Each one was a real long shot - Sedge Wren seen in the Spring but no posts since late June, Ruddy Duck reported on a lake in early June, and Clay-colored Sparrows nesting at a South Burlington site for a couple years but without any posts this year.  I guess I need to get to VT more often if I'm going to get a better statelist. 

The next day while driving to the client's facility an American Bittern flew over the road - a new statebird for my NY list - #263.  A consolation for missing those VT longshots.

Rhode Island Trip Yields 2 of 3 Target Statebirds

An early summer day in Rhode Island with good birding friend Denny Abbott yielded 2 new statebirds for me.  First was a pair of Common Moorhens at Sisson Pond in Portsmouth, which had been reported earlier in the week.  That was my first trip to this location, so thankfully Denny knew the spot well.  The moorhens were swimming in the open at the edge of the cattails, making the spotting pretty easy. 

Next we headed down to Trustom Pond in South Kingstown in search of recently reported Least Bitterns.  I've tried for them there in the past but with no luck.  When Denny and I arrived at the end of Otter Point trail 2 other birders were there with just negative reports.  Undaunted, we camped out at the observation platform and waited.  A few minutes later one of the other birders saw one fly by, but unfortunately no one else saw it.  Luckily a few minutes later another bird flew in, and even perched in the open for all to see.  It appeared that there was a pair of birds possibly coming to/from a nesting site, and likely flying off to feeding spots nearby.  Great views of such a secretive bird!  The location of the likely nest is shown on the attached map.

Then Denny and I headed up to East Greenwich, RI to give a try for Mississippi Kites.  For the last several years a pair has nested in that town, but the location has not been divulged to protect the birds and to avoid bothering the local residents.  We drove around East Greenwich for 3 hours but with no luck at all.  There were plenty of neighborhoods that looked very similar to the New England Kite nesting locations in CT and NH and those I've seen elsewhere in places like VA, IL, and NE.  The only raptors we found were 2 Red-tails and an Osprey.  Needless to say we neither bothered the birds nor the local residents during our little trip to the town.

Inserted below are my statebird maps for both Least Bittern and Common Moorhen with those states where I've seen the birds highlighted in blue.  I've got each species now in 5 of 6 New England states.  (You might want to click on the maps to get expanded views of the small New England states.)

Little Egret – Scarborough Marsh, Maine – June 2011

The e-mail came across that a Little Egret was spotted in Scarborough Marsh in Maine – the first state record.  Now the key question is whether it will stay around long enough for me to get there to look for it.  Although it was only around for 2 days, I was able to see it – other birders weren’t so lucky.  The bird was nearly ½ mile out in the marsh, but the plumes off the back of the head were very evident as they moved around in the breeze, and the large/heavy bill was easy to see as well. Statebird #313 for me in Maine.

Scarborough Marsh is one of my favorite birding locations in Maine.  It’s a tremendous spot to see both Nelson’s and Saltmarsh Sparrows, as well as hybrids.  A few years ago a Seaside Sparrow was there as well.  As for waders, it’s probably the best place in Maine for Tricolored and Little Blue Herons, and Glossy Ibises are occasionally joined by a White-faced.  And this was the spot where the Eurasian Golden Plover turned up a few years ago.

My statebird map for Little Egret is copied in below.  That was only my second Little Egret – the first one was in NH back in 1998.  (click on the map to expand it to see the small New England states)