Visitor from afar
Unusual visitor sets birders aflutter
Bruce Mactavish: Making the most of the weekends is common among people who work a 9 to 5, Monday to Friday job. It is especially true for birdwatchers during the short days of winter, when getting your daily dose of birds is difficult with the limited daylight surrounding the workday.
Making the most of the weekends is common among people who work a 9 to 5, Monday to Friday job. It is especially true for birdwatchers during the short days of winter, when getting your daily dose of birds is difficult with the limited daylight surrounding the workday.
On Sunday, I planned a photo session with the purple sandpiper flock that spends the winter at the tip of Cape Spear.
I got there early in the morning but it was obvious there would be no photography on this day. It was too rough to get down near the shoreline. Five-metre high icy blue waves curled over, collapsing on the rocky cape and exploding with a thunderous roar, breaking into millions of white water droplets.
Iceland gulls were swarming over the surf feeding on tidbits of disoriented marine life brought to the surface. Small numbers of dovekies were diving outside the foam line. A group of 50 common eiders swam farther offshore looking for a good mussel bed underneath. It was a classic winter scene at Cape Spear and always interesting. Purple sandpiper photography would have to wait for another weekend.
I worked my way back to the community of Blackhead. I was pleased to encounter a flock of white-winged crossbills feeding in a heavily cone-laden spruce tree beside the road. Since they are a relatively tame species, with a little caution I was able to walk along the road and watch them from point blank range. There was the continuous sound of cracking cones accompanied by a light rain of little winged spruce seeds floating down to the ground around my feet, jarred loose by the crossbills. There were a few bright pink males among the olive-green females.
Then my phone chimed. It was my connection to the bird world. Someone had seen something. I opened up the text message. It was Alvan Buckley. He was with Ed Hayden and Alison Mews in St. Vincent’s on the southern Avalon Peninsula. They were claiming a Sabine’s gull.
This was an impossible bird in winter. It just cannot happen, as they spend the winter at sea south of the equator. But there was a fuzzy picture with the text message that showed an undeniable image of a Sabine’s gull.
The adrenaline started to flow thinking about the phone calls I had to make to relay the news. Everyone needs to know about a bird like this. It is a hard one to see in Newfoundland at any season, but in winter it was a totally ridiculous event. Even Newfoundland’s top bird lister, Paul Linegar, needed this one.
Before I knew it I was sitting comfortably with Chris Brown and John Wells in our favourite rare bird chase car, skippered by professional rare bird chaser Ken Knowles. Other people were headed to the scene in their cars. After we pulled into the lookout on the hill at St. Vincent’s it didn’t take long to spot the bird feeding over the surf with some kittiwakes along the shore out toward Cape English.
It was not close. Views through the spotting scopes were satisfactory to identify the species but the bird was too far away to photograph. We helped newcomers spot the bird. It was high fives all around. It looked possible to get closer to where the bird was feeding. It was a bit of a slog for Ken, John, Paul and I over the partially frozen bogland and tuckamore while carrying lots of optical gear.
We flushed up a white ptarmigan that flew over the brown barrens looking conspicuous and complaining about it all the way over a hill with its throaty call. The gamble paid off. From a bluff we watched the Sabine’s gull make several passes feeding below us in the surf. The cameras clicked wildly.
The Sabine’s gull is the butterfly among gulls. Its striking black and white wing pattern captures the imagination of birders. It migrates farther than any other species of gull. It nests in the High Arctic around the top of the world.
The migration route of the birds nesting in the Eastern Canadian Arctic and Greenland has been traced during migration with the use of data loggers. In the fall they migrate through the northern Labrador Sea to the Bay of Biscay off Spain where they spend some time stocking up on feed before continuing on to wintering grounds in the rich seas off South Africa. Yes, you read that right.
Now you know why a Sabine’s gull on the last day of January in Newfoundland is just not supposed to happen. And there is no obvious explanation. It was more than a weather event. It was one for the record books, entrenched in our minds and Newfoundland birding history forever.
Bruce Mactavish is an environmental consultant and avid birdwatcher. He can be reached at wingingitone@yahoo.ca, or by phone at 722-0088.