Birdwatching (birding) is a multi-billion-dollar industry in the United States. All those billions of dollars are pumped into the economy from the purchase of bird identification guides, bird finding guides, binoculars, spotting scopes, ridiculous clothing like funky hats and vests, and other necessities. I hope the calculation of economic impact also includes airfare, rental cars, hotels, and food while traveling especially when a rare bird has been seen on the other side of the continent. If these categories are not included in the economic impact analysis they should be!
Long ago in birding history (I’m talking about the 1970s) news of a rare bird was painstakingly difficult to find. Many local or regional bird groups maintained weekly telephone recording updates of rare birds on a weekly updated message. Although useful and helpful, these phone updates were not in real time. Let’s say a rare bird alert was changed on Monday and a rare bird showed up on Tuesday. Unless you had Superman’s eyes you wouldn’t find out about the bird for 6 long days and it may very well have departed before the next update.
Two friends of mine, one from Norfolk, Virginia, the other from the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC discovered a way to cope with last minute sightings of rare birds. In those days, when there were no penalties for cancelling flights, they booked flights almost every Friday to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tucson, Houston, and Miami. Then they waited through the week to find out if any rarities had been discovered. If a rarity was found in Southern California, then on Friday night these two flew to Los Angeles and spent the weekend looking for the bird. If no rarities were discovered during the week, they cancelled their reservations and waited for something exciting the next weekend.
Later, an industrious man in North Carolina developed NARBA – the North American Rare Bird Alert. This subscription service allowed you to call a phone number and receive rare bird updates almost in real time. I recall several times checking the alert in the morning then calling back in the afternoon only to hear that a newly reported bird had been added to the alert since my morning call. NARBA revolutionized the art of chasing birds.
In contemporary society the distribution of rare bird information is almost instantaneous. Platforms like Twitter (screw Elon Musk – I refuse to call it “X”), Facebook Email, and others now allow birders to find a rare bird and instantaneously distribute information about its location. Many times, these updates are accompanied by digital images of the bird confirming the identification. In 2010 I did a “Big Year” in Florida to see how many species I could find inside the boundaries of the state from January 1 to December 31. Courtesy of Facebook, one day I learned about a Red-legged Thrush in Palm Beach County. This West Indies endemic had never before been seen in North America so this was major news. Learning about the bird I dropped everything and drove three hours across the state to the birds location where I easily found the Red-legged Thrush. The next day the bird was gone never to be seen again. Had it not been for electronic alerts I would never have participated in the first record of this species in North America.
The Chase
All hell breaks loose when a rare bird is discovered. Airline websites are scoured for the cheapest fare to the airport closest to the bird. Rental car reservations are made, hotels booked, and local contacts are contacted. Then you board a plane and fret for an hour to six hours as you speed along at 40,000 feet worried with the passage of each mile that the bird departed before your arrival. All manner of scenarios run through your mind as the plane begins its descent. Safely on the ground you grab a rental car, race to the bird’s location and if you believe in the supernatural you pray that it has not departed.
I was sitting in my office space in the United States Embassy in Nassau, Bahamas, when I learned about a Bahama Mockingbird near Del Ray Beach in south Florida. I had seen gobs of Bahama Mockingbirds while traveling throughout the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands that winter but I had never seen a Bahama Mockingbird in North America. I was fortunate that the bird was discovered on my last day in Nassau so I booked a flight to Fort Lauderdale for that afternoon. The following morning, I was at the house in Del Ray where the bird had been found. So, also, was maybe 50 other bird watchers. We sat there all day and the Bahama Mockingbird never appeared.
That same evening, I flew from Fort Lauderdale to San Antonio, Texas, for a previously planned trip into the Texas Hill Country. While we sat in the yard in Del Ray Beach, someone found a Garganey, a Eurasian duck related to the Blue-winged Teal, on a wetland south of Corpus Christi. Quickly changing plans, I drove down to the coast and was parked on the road by the Garganey wetland at dawn the next morning. I sat there all day and the duck never appeared. In late afternoon, an attorney from Denver showed up at the wetland. He had been one of the 50 or so people waiting for the Bahama Mockingbird the day before. Unlike me he gave it another day and the Mockingbird appeared at dawn. The attorney then flew to Corpus Christi hoping to find his second mega rarity of the day separated by 1,000 miles of airspace.
Before retirement, I did some serious chasing. Luckily, I was living in the Washington DC suburbs maybe 5 miles from National Airport (never ever call it Reagan National). There were numerous nonstops out of National each day and airfares were relatively cheap. If some rare bird showed up on the other side of the continent or closer to DC, I would book a flight, leave that evening, call in sick the next day, and chase the bird. Sometimes I scored. Many other times I returned home with nothing except more frequent flier miles. Three of my most memorable chases were a two-night trip to Alaska for Great Spotted Woodpecker, a day trip from Nebraska to San Francisco for a Brown Shrike, and a day trip in winter to Long Island for a Northern Lapwing. Those chases are described in the verbiage below.
An old friend, commenting on a recent post about birds said, “So many tales to tell from a life of chasing birds.” His words, plus those in Jimmy Buffett’s song “Stories You Can Tell” were the spark I needed to prepare this blog post. My very first chase was a four-hour drive through a Wisconsin snowstorm in 1972 hoping to find a Varied Thrush. My most recent chase was a Red-flanked Bluetail in New Jersey. There have been hundreds of chases between them. Below I describe 30 of the more memorable ones. These birds are each Category 4 or Category 5 according to the American Birding Association ranking of rarity. These two categories include the rarest of birds in the ABA area.
Some Birds Worth Chasing
Garganey
Not long after missing the Garganey on a wetland near Corpus Christi, I learned about another one in the desert of Arizona. Quickly booking a flight to Tucson I drove to the appropriately named “Sweetwater” sewage treatment plant and found the Garganey with a large flock of closely related Cinnamon Teal. Garganey remains a rarity in North America and isn’t all that numerous in its native Europe and Asia. The Arizona bird was the only one I have ever seen anywhere in North America although I saw one on Oahu, Hawaii where it was really out of place!
Key West Quail-Dove
Mark Oberle called me in Nebraska with the exciting news that a Key West Quail-Dove, endemic to the West Indies, had been found on Vaca Key near Marathon in the Florida Keys. Mark was bound for the airport in Atlanta after he hung up the phone and told me he had reserved a room at a bed and breakfast in Marathon. I was welcome to stay with him if I could make it. A few hours later I landed in Miami where I caught a flight on Provincetown-Boston Airlines to Marathon. The aircraft was an ancient DC-3. Flying through the Florida night while seated by the window over the wing I noticed a steady stream of sparks blasting out of the engine. A bit alarmed I told the pilot about it after we landed. He told me that the time to worry on a DC-3 is when there aren’t any sparks flying out of the engine.
Early the next morning Mark and I joined a large contingent of bird watchers lining the county highway looking for the elusive skulking denizen of the underbrush of the West Indies. Eventually one of the others found the bird, announced it to the assembled masses, and we all were able to watch it slowly foraging on the forest floor. My first Key West Quail-Dove was at Nassau in the Bahamas in 1984. Since then, I have found it on six islands in the Bahamas, in Cuba and in the Dominican Republic. The Florida Keys bird has been the only one I have seen in North America.
Northern Lapwing
Quite common and widespread in Europe, this cousin of the Killdeer is a mega-rarity in North America. One shows up on this side of the Pond about every five years. On a cold for Washington DC February morning word reached me that a Northern Lapwing had been found and was easily seen about an hour east of New York City on Long Island. American Airlines had reasonably priced flights from Washington National airport to JFK airport in New York. There, securing my rental car the next morning I headed east in the deliriously heavy commuter traffic until I found the road leading to the Lapwing. This was before GPS was standard on cell phones so navigation was by written description and a map. The Lapwing was vigorously foraging just a few meters from the road when I arrived and everyone enjoyed extended and convincing views of the bird. Everyone, that is, except the numbskull who argued unconvincingly that the Lapwing was in fact a Sandhill Crane. It wasn’t until someone showed him an image of a Northern Lapwing next to an image of a Sandhill Crane that he agreed on the species identity. Not everyone on a bird chase has the same skill level!
Photo © Abhishek Das
European Golden-Plover
Delaware may be tiny in geographic area but it is a giant when it comes to attracting rare birds. We can thank Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge and the abundance of bird watchers who frequent it for so many records of species rare in North America like European Golden-Plover.
I had flown from southern California to Philadelphia to chase a White-winged Tern that had been found at Bombay Hook. Standing on the main refuge road waiting for the White-winged Tern to appear, a flock of shorebirds flew in and settled on an exposed mudflat. The shorebirds were quite vocal and one person claimed to have heard the distinctive and loud single note call of European Golden-Plover. Search for the tern quickly vanished as everyone put their spotting scopes on the shorebirds and found the wayward plover. Never having seen a European Golden-Plover before I waited for someone who knew the species to identify it. As I waited I noticed several plumage characteristics that were not carried by either American Golden-Plover or Pacific Golden-Plover. I told myself “I bet that’s the bird” and it was.
Eurasian Dotterel
It is difficult to think of a shorebird as being “pretty” but the Eurasian Dotterel really is. Another ornithologist and I had been sent by helicopter 110 miles north of Nome, Alaska, and dropped off on the tundra to do research on Bristle-thighed Curlew. The plan was to spend five days at the first location then hook up with the helicopter and be moved to another location where we would spend five more days looking for the elusive curlew. Not long after setting up our tent home for the next five days, a curiously squat-looking shorebird landed on the tundra maybe 20 meters from us. The bird began giving a call-note that reminded me of some passerines but it was a call I had never heard before. Putting my binoculars on it, the bird was easily identified as Eurasian Dotterel. Five years later I saw one in Marin County, California not far from San Francisco. Despite being widespread in western Europe and patchily distributed in Arctic Russia, these are the only Eurasian Dotterel I have ever seen.
Little Curlew
A Berylline Hummingbird had appeared in southeast Arizona and I flew to Tucson to begin my search for the bird. While in Arizona word reached me that a Little Curlew, the smallest of the curlew’s, and a species from East Asia, had been found in San Luis Obispo County, California not far from Santa Barbara. Nonstop flights from Tucson to Santa Barbara did not exist but flights to Los Angeles were numerous. I was on the first one I could find after observing the wayward hummingbird. As with so many chases of mega rarities one of the simplest navigational landmarks to the bird is a group of people with binoculars swinging from their necks, all pointing in the same direction. So, it was with the Little Curlew in California. Five years later, while at Gambell on Saint Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, within sight of Russia, a Little Curlew descended through the clouds and landed in front of a flock of stunned bird watchers. The Gambell bird and the one in California are the only Little Curlew I have ever seen.
Eurasian Curlew
A highly unusual (for North America) Eurasian Curlew showed up on Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge, an island off the southern “elbow” of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. I was on Cape Cod for a work-related meeting that lost all importance when word of the curlew arrived. Access to Monomoy is restricted because of its refuge status. About the only way to approach it is by boat and I had none. I didn’t feel confident in those days renting a boat and traversing even a small bit of open ocean to reach the island. Instead, I visited Chatham airport and found a pilot willing to fly me slowly over the beach of the island looking for the bird. Most refuges in the system restrict air traffic to a flight level of 500 feet or greater. This pilot broke the rules, dropped us down to 100 feet as we slowly circled the island. It didn’t take long to find the curlew because of its size and its giant scythe-like bill.
Spotted Redshank
A Spotted Redshank was observed in Jefferson County of eastern Kansas while I was in Alaska for a meeting. Quite by accident my return flight to Nebraska made a connection in Kansas City. There I claimed I had missed my connection to Grand Island and had to wait a day for another flight. Instead, I dashed over the state line and found the species that was much more likely in Alaska where I had just been. It was foraging in a prairie wetland with Dickcissels singing all around it.
Long-billed Murrelet
The startling find of a Long-billed Murrelet from Asia, swimming around among the barges on the Ohio River at Louisville, Kentucky, was too tempting to pass over. I called in sick to work, caught an early morning nonstop from Washington National Airport to Louisville where I found the bird in late afternoon energizing itself in the warm November sun.
White-winged Tern
Without doubt this was and remains my most frustrating chase bird. I made one unsuccessful attempt for this tern in Quebec, once in New Jersey and twice in Delaware before I finally saw this Western Palearctic species. I found it on the same trip where I saw the European Golden-Plover. Once the identity of the shorebird was confirmed we returned to searching for the White-winged Tern. Eventually it showed up on Shearness Pool completing several slow laps around the wetland's edge before settling down in some emergent vegetation for the night.
Roadside Hawk
Philip Olsen and I were on a multi-species chase to the Lower Rio Grande Valley where we spent part of one day traversing Bensten-Rio Grande State Park searching for a Blue Bunting. On one of the laps on the wildlife drive we saw a medium-sized Buteo type hawk land in a tree. Putting binoculars on it I said to Phil, “Well it’s not a Broad-winged Hawk but I certainly don’t know what it is!” Some time with the Peterson Mexico bird guide helped us pin down the identification as Roadside Hawk. Since this initial sighting I have seen hundreds if not thousands of Roadside Hawks from Mexico down to South America, however the Bensten-Rio Grande bird is the only one I’ve seen in the ABA area.
Great Spotted Woodpecker
This widespread Eurasian woodpecker had been seen eight times in the largely inaccessible Aleutian Islands before one was finally seen on the mainland. When one showed up it did so in February at a bird feeder near Talkeetna, Alaska, about two hours north of Anchorage. Hearing about the bird on Thursday I booked a roundtrip from Washington National to Anchorage with a connection in Minneapolis. I arrived late on Friday night in Anchorage and stayed at the Super 8 motel that has since been condemned. Saturday morning, I drove to Talkeetna where a large group of people stood in the kitchen of the family hosting the woodpecker. I watched it for an hour, and began my return to Anchorage about 11 a.m. Back at the airport about 1 pm I had nothing to do other than look at snow. I noticed on the Alaska Airlines departure board that they had a flight leaving for Bethel, a Yupik village on the west coast of Alaska. I needed the Bethel airport for my airport list plus the village is inside the boundary of Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, another missing checkmark on my numerous lists. I bought a ticket to Bethel with a return flight on the same plane an hour later. In Anchorage I caught a 9:00 pm departure for Minneapolis, connected there early on Sunday morning and was home in the DC suburbs by noon. Without doubt this chase holds the record for my longest distance chasing a bird in North America.
Red-footed Falcon
The spectacular sighting of this Red-footed Falcon on Martha’s Vineyard had the internet rare bird alerts and chat rooms on fire in August 2004. My first attempt was unsuccessful and I returned to Washington DC. Some in the group said the bird had departed but on my return home I learned that it had again been found. I was back on the Vineyard the next afternoon where I easily found it because of all the birders pointing in the same direction over an open field.
Variegated Flycatcher
I was still in graduate school when a Variegated Flycatcher was found at Biddeford Pond in southern Maine. A story about the sighting in American Birds was all the encouragement I needed to begin collecting information on this funky-looking flycatcher from South America. Following that introduction I have seen Variegated Flycatcher hundreds of times in South America but no opportunity to chase it occurred in North America until 2015 when one was found in a county park in Fort Lauderdale. We were scheduled to depart Fort Lauderdale on a short 7-day cruise to the West Indies but not until 5:00 p.m. We drove to Fort Lauderdale the night before, stayed in a hotel, and were in the park shortly after dawn. So too were about 30 other people who already had the bird located. This was one of my easiest-ever chases.
Brown Shrike
Although there had been several records of Brown Shrike for North America they all had been in the western Aleutian Islands of Alaska. That was until one showed up on Point Reyes in Marin County, about an hour north of San Francisco. Airfare from Lincoln, Nebraska (the nearest airport near my home town served by United Airlines) to San Francisco was ridiculously expensive on short notice but a roundtrip ticket was available for 25,000 frequent flier miles if I made the trip in one day! I left Lincoln at 6:00 a.m. and made a quick connection at venerable old Stapleton airport in Denver, arriving in San Francisco at 9:00 a.m. There I rented a car and took off for Marin. The bird was easily found exactly where the directions said it would be. I watched it 10 minutes then raced back to San Francisco. From there I connected in Denver to the last flight of the day to Lincoln, arriving back in the Cornhusker State at midnight. I made the roundtrip to the west coast in a day and saw a memorable rare bird in the process.
Brown Jay
The loud and obnoxious Brown Jay, a nearly crow-sized relative of the Blue Jay, was fairly regular in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas in the 1970s. It was regular enough that Jim Lane wrote in his first bird finding guide to the valley that the bird could be found fairly easily on a ranch west of McAllen. On arrival at the ranch, Lane said to “raise your binoculars so the man sitting at the front porch can see them, say “Pajaros,” pay him $1.00 and walk down to the Rio Grande". By the 1980s Brown Jay had become increasingly scarce along the Rio Grande but the Pajaro ranch was still the most likely place to find one. In the valley chasing another species I decided to try for the Jay. I said “Pajaros” (the Spanish word for bird) to the man (It was the first Spanish word I ever spoke) I handed him $1.00 then followed the trail to the river where I was overwhelmed by the heat. Leaving my car keys and wallet under a bush along the bank, I walked out into the cooling waters of the Rio Grande holding my binoculars over my head. Near the middle of the river with water up to my neck I heard the distinctive “kleer, kleer, kleer” call of a Brown Jay. This, the first bird species I ever recorded in Mexico, was sitting with three of its own kind in a tree on the Mexican side of the river. Eventually the four of them flew across the river, landed in Texas, and made a loud tick sound on my ABA area life list. Since then, Brown Jay has become increasingly infrequent in the Lower Rio Grande Valley although they are still common in Mexico. I’m glad I saw it when I did because now to chase one, you’d have to deal with tRump-loving “patriots” and other vigilantes trying to keep asylum seekers out of legally entering the country. That and steroid soaked Texas Department of Public Safety agents, nearly as well armed as the vigilante tRump supporters, looking to fulfill Governor Abbott’s decree to throw the Constitution in the garbage.
Photo by Joel Trick
Eurasian Jackdaw
A sizeable group of Eurasian Jackdaws, a crow-like European bird, showed up on the grounds of a prison in New Jersey. At almost the same time Jackdaw was also reported on Nantucket Island off the coast of Massachusetts. Bob Ake and I were in New England chasing after seabirds when we learned about the nearby Jackdaw. Our first attempt was after taking a ferry from Hyannis to Nantucket then walking the beach where the bird had been seen. We gave up about sunset and returned to the mainland. There I decided I wanted to chase the bird again and called Gull Air to book a flight the next morning because I didn’t want to waste time on a ferry. When you think of Gull Air think of the old television series “Wings” – same type of plane and same airport. I searched for several hours seeing lots of gulls and loons but no Jackdaw. I took a break for lunch and when I returned to the beach a group of birders from Washington DC had found the bird roosting in the sand dunes along the shore. I am not aware of any other Jackdaw being found in North America since the New Jersey and Nantucket birds.
Gray Silky-flycatcher
A Fork-tailed Flycatcher was found on Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge in South Texas. Having failed to find it on several other chases along the East Coast I booked a flight to Harlingen hoping to finally score. While looking at the flycatcher, one of the assembled masses asked me “Have you seen the Silky-flycatcher”? This was the first time I had heard of it. With directions written down I had little trouble finding this denizen of the Mexican mountains sitting in a small tree on the blazing hot coastal plain of South Texas. Considerable conjecture erupted among the so-called experts who had not seen the bird regarding its provenance. Certainly, a mountain bird on the Texas coastal plain had to be an escaped bird they said. Apparently enough naysayers saw the bird to be convinced it was not an escapee and the Texas Ornithological Society accepted the sighting. Since then, there has been only one other report from north of the border – a single bird near El Paso, Texas, several years later.
Bahama Mockingbird
The Bahama Mockingbird in Del Ray Beach. Florida, mentioned in the introduction to this story, was my first attempt to get the species for my ABA list and I failed. This failure occurred in 1985. It wasn’t until 1992 when I was on a detail to the Florida Keys National Wildlife Refuges that I had another chance. This time I was lucky. The bird was found in a city park in Key West not far from the ocean. It was easily found and for much of the rest of the summer each time I was in Key West (about every other day) I would check on the bird and report its status to the North American Rare Bird Alert. Since then, Bahama Mockingbird has occurred almost yearly in Florida and always as single birds. One was found as far north as Tampa Bay.
Dusky Thrush
I was in Portland Oregon interviewing for a position in Ventura, California, when I learned about a Dusky Thrush near Vancouver, British Columbia. To my knowledge this was the first observation of Dusky Thrush in North America away from Alaska. Plus, it was only a few hours up the road and the Portland office had paid for my fully-refundable and changeable ticket back to Grand Island, Nebraska. Alaska Airlines deposited me in Bellingham, Washington early the next frigid morning. There I rented a car, cleared Canadian customs (without a passport in those days!) and quickly found the house where the thrush was putting on a show. Once I found the Fern Ridge neighborhood all I had to do was look for a large congregation of cars to know I had found the correct home. There I stood in the biting cold waiting for the thrush to arrive. The homeowner felt sorry for us and invited us in for coffee and warmth. Eventually the thrush showed up, everyone made a check mark on their various lists and we all departed for home.
Fieldfare
A Fieldfare, a Eurasian cousin of the American Robin, was found in late November not far from Grand Marais, Minnesota, along the North Shore of Lake Superior. For it I flew from Nebraska to Duluth, Minnesota, rented a car and raced up Minnesota Highway 61 two hours to just outside Grand Marais. There in the late November afternoon sun I found a large group of birdwatchers standing by the side of the highway pointing into the forest. Exiting my car at 4:00 p.m., I followed the pointing fingers and saw the Fieldfare in a spruce tree. My view was brief but convincing. Sunset was about 4:15 p.m. and I planned to return in the morning the next day for a hopefully longer and more satisfying view. The same group of birdwatchers from yesterday afternoon was back at the spot. We stayed there all day. The Fieldfare was never seen again.
Redwing
I traveled to Iceland with the most recent mistake in my life at the time. We flew to Reykjavik on an overnight flight and on arrival she crawled in bed to get much needed sleep. Excited about being in a new country and continent, I went outside to look for birds. My very first entry on my Europe bird list was a stunningly attractive Redwing skulking in some bushes near the hotel entrance. I saw more Redwing on subsequent trips to England, Scotland and France but didn’t have an opportunity for North America until one was found in northeastern New Brunswick. The nearest airport I could afford to fly to was Halifax, Nova Scotia, a scenic five-hour drive from the Redwing. Being a thrush it was not surprising that it was a bit more difficult to find than most other chases. I spent two full days looking for it and finally scored. So far it’s my only North America observation.
Siberian Accentor
A Siberian Accentor was found near Sun Valley, Idaho, while I was “nearby” in Tucson, Arizona for a meeting. Usually found in North America only in Alaska, I quickly decided it would be much cheaper to Sun Valley than to buy a ticket to Siberia. As much as I despise Delta Airlines they had the cheapest short-notice fare from Tucson to Sun Valley. I was northbound from the desert at 7:00 a.m. the next morning. Finding the bird was relatively easy, again using the method of looking for a congregation of bird watchers. So too was the case with the Idaho accentor. Despite having traveled extensively in eastern Asia where it occurs most frequently, this was the only Siberian Accentor I have seen.
Common Chaffinch
If it sounds by now that I took advantage of my employment with the Federal government to score a lot of life birds you are correct. I did. Luckily, Federal government rules allowed travelers to take time off while on official duty. I took advantage of that rule when I was in Bangor, Maine for a meeting with the US Air Force. While I was there, a Common Chaffinch from Europe was found in a cemetery near downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The distance from Bangor to Halifax looked close on a map. In reality it was 426 miles (685 kilometers) one way. Driving at a normal speed the bird in Halifax was about 10 hours away from me when I stepped off the plane in Bangor. I was young, foolish, and had only been to Nova Scotia once before – the ferry terminal in Digby. It seemed logical to chase after this Chaffinch since I was relatively close.
The bird was much farther away than I originally calculated especially when I left Bangor airport at 3:00 pm eastern time. Sunset came around 4:00 pm at this northeasterly location, and Halifax was one hour ahead of Maine. It’s much farther from the Bangor Maine airport to Halifax Nova Scotia than the map suggests. That's especially true in the middle of the night in the middle of December.
I finally arrived in Halifax at 3:30 a.m. Nova Scotia time. I had considered stopping in Truro, Nova Scotia and crashing in a hotel but continued on since coffee was keeping me fortified and the bird was closer with each passing mile. Finding the cemetery in the middle of the night (it was the one where many victims of the sinking of the Titanic were buried) I parked under a tree, curled up in the backseat, and slept a fitful sleep.
About 8:00 a.m. there was a loud banging on my window. Each window was covered with frost from my breath against the frozen night and I expected the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to be checking out this strange person with Maine license plates parked overnight in a cemetery. However, it wasn’t the Mounties. A group of local bird watchers had descended on the cemetery to look for the Chaffinch. One of them opened my door and asked if I was ok. Feeling a bit churlish I said I had traveled there to look for the Chaffinch. The man smiled, pointed straight up from my car, and said “Check here friend!”
I had parked directly beneath the tree that the Chaffinch chose to roost in for the night. From the time I woke up until I had my new bird probably took 20 seconds. I wish all bird chases were that easy.
Eurasian Bullfinch
I have seen some beautiful birds in my travels. A Resplendent Quetzal in Costa Rica. A Bornean Tree-pie in Malaysian Borneo. A stunning Crab Plover in the United Arab Emirates. A Crested Barbet in South Africa. They have all been beautiful but none has been as striking as Eurasian Bullfinch. I first saw it in 1989. That comment is still valid today.
My flight from Nome, Alaska, arrived at Gambell on St. Lawrence Island almost on time which for western Alaska is a miracle in itself. Walking from the landing strip (it’s not really an airport) to the house rented for us, I found a group of bird watchers including Dwight Lee in what’s called the “West Bone Yard.” I asked Dwight what everyone was looking at. He just pointed at eye level and said “Look!” Pointing my binoculars in the direction everyone else was pointing I remember gasping when this brilliantly colored male Eurasian Bullfinch turned to face us. My first thought when I saw it was that whomever invented the color salmon did so after looking at a Eurasian Bullfinch. This was life bird #700 for the ABA area, a milestone level most bird watchers sought until Hawaii was added to the counting area. I have seen Eurasian Bullfinch in almost every European country I have visited (26 of them) and each time they take my breath away just like the Gambell bird did.
Little Bunting
Far from as colorful and gawdy as the Eurasian Bullfinch, the Little Bunting was a major find. One of the few North American records at the time away from Alaska, a Little Bunting was found at Cabrillo National Monument near the harbor entrance in San Diego. I was in Denver for the start of a yearlong training program when I found out about the bird. We put in long hours during the week and it would have been frowned on if I blew off the expensive training program to chase a bird. Instead, I booked a flight from Denver to San Diego for late on Friday night with a return on Sunday. Arising early on Saturday morning I waited for the gates of the National Monument to open and found the Little Bunting right where everyone said it would be. Rather than spend more money on a hotel, food, and a rental car, I drove to the airport. United Airlines was generous enough in those days to change my return to Denver a day early without any penalties. I was back in the hotel the government put me up in along Union Boulevard in Denver 20 hours after I left the day before.
Golden-crowned Warbler
Jon Andrew was the manager of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuges complex when I arrived in the McAllen airport. The plan was for Jon and I to spend a few days looking for Maroon-fronted Parrot and other elusive species in the mountains of northeast Mexico. That plan changed when I walked into the refuge headquarters and Jon said, “Did you hear about the Golden-crowned Warbler?” This was the first time I had heard about it. I had seen this warbler 5 years earlier in Costa Rica. The Rio Grande bird would be new for my ABA list. I left the headquarters building and found the trail to the warbler, but didn’t find the bird before sunset. Returning the following morning at sunrise I heard the warbler singing before I saw it then coaxed it out of the undergrowth. With Golden-crowned Warbler safely on my ABA list we left for the mountains of Mexico.
Blue Bunting
The subject of several chases to the Rio Grande Valley, I finally met up with this bunting that is so blue it looks almost black from a distance. Dwight Lee met me in the McAllen airport for a previously scheduled chase up the Rio Grande to near Laredo where we wanted to look for Gray-crowned Yellowthroat and what was then called White-collared Seedeater. While Dwight waited for my plane to arrive he learned of the discovery that morning of a stunning male Blue Bunting at nearby Bensten-Rio Grande State Park. Quickly changing plans, we secured our rental car and dashed up the highway to the park. There with a minimum of effort we found the bird feeder behind the pickup camper where it was seen that morning. Waiting only a few minutes the Blue Bunting arrived to the relief of all those assembled. Dwight and I then left for Laredo and hopefully two more lifers.
Bananaquit
If you spend much time in the Bahamas eventually you hear people talking about “de banana bird, mon.” De banana bird, mon, is the Bananaquit, a widespread and abundant bird on most of the West Indian islands south to South America. Just fifty miles west of the Bahamas, along the Florida coast, its exceedingly rare and worthy of a chase when one shows up. My North American bird was at Bill Baggs State Park on Virginia Key within sight of the skyscrapers in downtown Miami. I was there looking for a Key West Quail-Dove someone reported when a young woman walked up to me and asked, “Do you know bird sounds?” Well, yes I do. She said, “There’s this bird over here making weird noises. It has a black back, yellow stomach, and a curved bill.” As I suspected it was a Banana bird, my first and only for North America. Before this sighting I had flown down to Miami three earlier occasions chasing a Bananaquit and returned home empty handed each time. Now I finally saw one and I wasn’t even looking for it.
Black-faced Grassquit
The first bird I added to my Bahamas list was a Black-faced Grassquit “singing” from the security fence bordering the Nassau airport. This was my first trip to the Bahamas and many birds would be new. At first they were exciting but after four days of grassquits competing with Bananaquits for the title of “Most Abundant Species” the grassquits became old and commonplace. In February 1985 I took a weekend off from bird research in the Bahamas and flew to Miami to explore Everglades National Park. By this time, I had seen more Black-faced Grassquits than I could count so I wasn’t completely surprised when I found one in the grass along the park road not far north of Flamingo. At first I thought “oh, another grassquit.” Then it dawned on me that I was in Florida not in the Bahamas. I drove to the National Park Service station in Flamingo and told a biologist there the exciting news that I had found a Black-faced Grassquit. She said, “No you didn’t!” Paul Lehman said the same three words when I told him I saw a Wilson’s Plover at the Point Mugu National Weapons Station near Oxnard, California. When I sent him a picture of the bird he never replied.
Rather than argue I invited the Park Service biologist to come with me and we returned to the spot where 30 minutes earlier I found the bird. Parking and exiting the car we both heard the grassquit singing its distinctive song. Then it flew up on the stem of some salt marsh vegetation where it sang loudly and displayed. The experience was almost as if the grassquit knew about the Park Service employees doubts and wanted her to be doubly sure I knew what I was talking about. Watching the bird display a few minutes the Park Service biologist said, “Well I guess you’re right.”
After more than 50 years chasing rare birds in North America, my ABA area (continental United States, Canada, St. Pierre et Miquelon and for some strange reason, Hawaii) list is 942 species. My original ABA list, from before Hawaii was added, is 878 species. Sadly, I don’t have another 50 years left to chase birds. Instead, I will be content with those I have seen. I will check electronic sources daily and if something good shows up I will be on the next plane out of Sarasota headed in its direction.
Another fascinating set of stories from one of the most intrepid birders in the world. Well done, Craig!
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