Always birdwatching
Alison Mews was happy to be going to Bonavista for a few days. Bonavista is a good location for birdwatching but Alison’s excitement was tempered by the fact that it was a non-birdwatching holiday with family and close friends. This meant she would have to pull back on the reigns of her birding passion.
But a birder never turns off their radar. The group visited the scenic Cape Bonavista lighthouse as hundreds of people do each summer. The place has history and great scenery. It also has puffins. There is a rocky promontory separated from land by a narrow chasm of water. Puffins feel safe enough to nest in the soft earth on the top of the island. After a tour of the lighthouse visitors typically walk a short trail to the edge of the headland to look across at the puffins busy with nesting duties. This is what Alison and her group were doing when she spotted an out of place bird sitting on a rusty chain link fence behind one the lighthouse buildings. It had a white breast and dark back like an eastern kingbird. Surprised to see this bird here she took a second look. Alison’s mind began doing cartwheels and backflips when she saw its very long tail. It was not an eastern kingbird at all but it was a spectacular member of the flycatcher family known as the fork-tailed flycatcher.
This remarkably long-tailed bird is from South America. It has an extraordinary track record of occurring in North America, but there is a sound theory. It is called mirror reverse migration. It basically means that a few among the many fork-tailed flycatchers spending their winter season in northern parts of South America migrated north instead of south during their Southern Hemisphere spring. According to the theory this bird thought it was flying to the southern end of South America but instead flew north and ended up in Newfoundland. Whoops! This is the sixth time this has happened in our province.
Alison excitement was contagious. Being such a spectacular looking bird even the non-birdwatchers in her group found an interest in the bird. The fever ran over to the ladies working in the interpretation site. One of them, Brenda Taylor had her camera in the car and started taking pictures and spread the news among her group. The fever spread like wild fire through the birding community with just one text sent by Alison.
Myself, working in a St John’s office, heard about the bird seconds after Alison found it. Thirty minutes later Ken Knowles and I were on the way to Bonavista. This was a bird that could not be missed. It took an agonizing 30 minutes to locate the bird. After that is was all bliss. For the next 90 minutes we had some close encounters and some good photography opportunities.
The bird was doing well catching large flying insects and other insects, even caterpillars, on the ground. It looked healthy and comfortable even if far from home. Such an exotic bird could not be more out of place than the rather barren terrain of Cape Bonavista. But it was summer and insect life thrives during the Newfoundland summer. The bird remained for two more days allowing a good many Newfoundland birders to travel to Cape Bonavista to see the fork-tailed flycatcher. Tourist birders who happened to visiting the area also capitalized on the chance to see such a rare bird. We met a couple from New Hampshire who were thrilled to happen in on the scene of such a North American rarity. More on shorebirding Last week’s column was about migrating shorebirds in Newfoundland. This past weekend Ken Knowles, John Wells and I took a three-day weekend to visit the Burin Peninsula on a quest for shorebirds. There are some very good locations for shorebirds on the Burin Peninsula that rarely get looked at by birdwatchers because they are off the beaten track. It was good to get reacquainted with some of these sites.
I always liked L’anse au Loup, near Grand Bank. I had been there maybe six times in the last 30 years. The setup is wonderful. There is lots of space and the tidal flats are easily accessible. There was a good variety and volume of shorebirds. The tidal mud was so rich in marine life that we met several locals digging for marine worms to use for trouting. The birds were gorging nonstop. There was a continuous background sound of shorebirds coming mostly from the abundant semipalmated plovers, white-rumped sandpipers and ruddy turnstones. They hardly noticed us out there on the flats looking them over. Among the amazing 15 species of shorebirds present were no rare birds to be found, but the common species were so very common. We can only imagine what shows up at L’anse au Loup over the course of the autumn migration.
This remarkably long-tailed bird is from South America. It has an extraordinary track record of occurring in North America, but there is a sound theory. It is called mirror reverse migration. It basically means that a few among the many fork-tailed flycatchers spending their winter season in northern parts of South America migrated north instead of south during their Southern Hemisphere spring.