After the roseate spoonbill event in Marshfield that I wrote about last week, the “anything can happen” fall migration continues.
Last Saturday, the Mass Audubon Wellfleet Bay Sanctuary bird banding group looked and spotted a white pelican flying high overhead! Photographs were taken of the large bird with black flight feathers and large yellow bill, as the bird soared out into Cape Cod Bay. Unfortunately, it was never seen, or at least reported, again.
Closer to home that day, a scissor-tailed flycatcher was seen at the maintenance area on Plum Island by Eric Labato. Margo and I were working our way down the island at the time when we saw the report. We had seen, and Margo photographed, a handsome rusty blackbird in fall plumage just south of Lot 1. We had waited for others to come see this handsome, and less common of the blackbirds.
Our lingering cost us the flycatcher. We sped down to the “warden’s” (as we still call it) and found that we were a few minutes too late. Eric had left his camera in the car, and went back to get it when the bird flew, apparently heading north. A few other people saw and photographed the bird before it flew. It was a handsome bird, gray with bright pink underwing and sides, and a long, streaming black and white tail.
Eric headed north to trying to re-find the bird and we decided to stay a bit to see if the flycatcher returned and to check for sparrows. Another tactical error. Shortly thereafter, a post came that Eric and Harry Wales found the bird on a wire just north of the refuge entrance gate.
We jumped in our car and headed north without delay. As we drove, we received another report that the flycatcher had flown again! We arrived outside the gate to where Eric and Harry were standing and they explained that they lost site of the bird over the Plum Island bridge. We decided to continue driving and to see if we could locate the bird on the other side of the bridge.
We scoured back and forth along the causeway all the way to the Plum Island airport. We stopped at the airport and looked everywhere without success. We decided to check Salisbury in case the bird crossed the river but we found few birds, and no flycatcher over there.
We were on our way back when we saw another post from Harry that the bird was at the Plum Island Airport! We headed straight there and found a few people looking, but Harry had left. We spent the next hour looking up and down the runway from the lot, walking up and down the causeway to view beyond the end of the runway, but there was no sign of the scissor-tailed flycatcher. They say the third time is the charm — not that day. Just a third miss, by just minutes.
The scissor-tailed flycatcher was spotted near the airport again on Monday morning by four young birders driving by in a car, and again at the maintenance area shortly thereafter. Needless to say, we never saw it, and the bird hasn’t been reported anywhere else since.
Other rarities that appeared this past week included several cattle egret. This small, white egret is common in Florida and hangs around farms and cows as its name indicates. It use to occur in Massachusetts more regularly in decades past, but has become more rare. One has been hanging out at Pikul’s Farm, (now Tendercrop,) just over the line in Rowley south on Route 1A. There have been no cattle there, so the bird has looked a bit lonesome this past week.
Two other cattle egrets were found with the cattle at Appleton Farm in Ipswich and one was also associating with livestock at Bothways Farm on Southern Avenue in Essex. Single cattle egrets were also seen in New Hampshire and on Martha’s Vineyard.
A Say’s Phoebe, another western flycatcher, has been seen at the Cumberland Farm fields in Middleton the past few days and a rare Townsend warbler is visiting a yard in Chestnut Hill. The latter is at the same residence that hosted a rare rufous hummingbird four years ago!
Also on Plum Island this past week, a lark sparrow and a clay-colored sparrow have been seen near the maintenance area and two Eurasian wigeons have been seen among the American wigeon on Stage Island Pool. As the fall migration continues into November, so does the chance for rare birds to appear!