Shy sparrow, gullchaser make Birds of the Year

STAMFORD — Connecticut last year had an odd but beautiful visitor.

It was a large bird with a snowwhite breast, pale pink wings that stretch 4 1 ⁄2 feet, and a long beak shaped like a spoon.

It was a Roseate Spoonbill, which usually lives in tropical places such as the marshes of South America, along the Central American coast and in the southernmost United States.

But for about three weeks at the end of summer 2018 a Roseate Spoonbill hung around the coast of Stratford, a firstever siting that created quite an entry for the Connecticut Audubon Society’s inaugural Birds of the Year list.

This year’s list doesn’t contain anything quite that flashy, though the nine birds that made it are every bit as interesting.

Perhaps the best place to observe in Stamford is the Cove

Island Wildlife Sanctuary, five acres of waterfront that the city opened in 2006 after cleaning up the tree limbs and other streetcleanup debris it had dumped there for years.

The Connecticut Audubon’s executive director, Patrick Comins, worked to establish the site as an Important Bird Area, said Tom Andersen, the Audubon’s communications director.

“He helped persuade the city that it should be a preserve. He did a planting plan for shrubs and trees and grasses to attract birds throughout the year,” Andersen said. “Many people in Connecticut who are interested in birds know about it and go there.”

There’s a side benefit to that, he said.

“We think that an interest in birds is in many cases the portal to an interest in conservation,” Andersen said. “That’s the connection we try to make.”

Birds now may depend on humans for survival. In September the journal Science published research showing that 2.9 billion birds have disappeared from the United States and Canada since 1970. It

Connecticut Audubon’s Birds of the Year for 2019

⏩ Barred Owl ⏩ Sandhill Crane ⏩ Piping Plover ⏩ American Avocet ⏩ Parasitic Jaeger ⏩ Eared Grebe ⏩ LeConte’s Sparrow ⏩ Brewer’s Sparrow ⏩ Bicknell’s Thrush

means that if you were alive in 1970, one in four birds has disappeared in your lifetime.

More than 90 percent were from 12 of the most common bird families, including sparrows, blackbirds, warblers, and finches, the research showed. Habitats increasingly altered by humans are becoming less able to support bird life, it found.

It’s a reason the Connecticut Audubon began its Birds of the Year list, Andersen said.

Two sparrows

On Nov. 23 a tiny, dainty Brewer’s sparrow was spotted at Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison, far from its home in the American West. Its coloring is a subtle dusky graybrown, perfectly suited to its habitat — sagebrush country in the summer and desert grasslands in winter, according to allaboutbirds.org, The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s website. The bird’s coloring is so unremarkable that it’s remarkable, according to the website.

The Audubon reported it as the first recorded sighting of a Brewer’s sparrow in Connecticut.

The same day in Preston volunteers spotted a LeConte’s sparrow, a small orange bird so elusive that it’s rarely been tagged. It hides in dense grass, often running along the ground, and rarely appears in the open, according to The Cornell Lab. The sparrow was discovered in 1790 but the first nest was not found until nearly a century later, the lab reports.

A thrush

Autumn also brought a rare visitor from the mountainous forests of northeastern North America. On Oct. 9 an antenna at the Audubon’s Deer Pond Farm in Sherman picked up a ping from a tag on the leg of a Bicknell’s thrush, a shy bird known for its lovely song.

Because its habitat is vulnerable to the effects of climate change, the Bicknell’s thrush is in danger of extinction. Tracking data for the bird showed that it nested for two years on Kibby Mountain in Maine.

A grebe

On Oct. 13 Milford Point got a visit from an eared grebe, a small water bird with bright red eyes. They usually breed in wetlands out West, and during fall migration, they amass by the thousands at the Great Salt Lake in Utah or Mono Lake in California.

It’s not clear how or why birds that usually make their homes thousands of miles away appear in Connecticut, Andersen said.

“There are always rare birds showing up. What the reason is, nobody really knows,” Andersen said. “One possibility is they might get blown off course if they migrate during a storm. Another is that even though birds are born with a sense to migrate to the right place, some just might not have that ability and they become vagrants, which is the word they use for birds that are in the wrong place.”

It makes for excitement among the untold number of birdwatchers in Connecticut, who range from experts to casual observers.

Matthew Brown / Hearst Connecticut Media Vanessa David, of Stamford, a fiveyear birding enthusiast, observes a bald eagle nesting at the Cove Island Wildlife Sanctuary in Stamford on Dec. 21. The Connecticut Audubon Society's Birds of 2019 is a list created each year to spur interest in conservation, because the state’s bird population has fallen dramatically since 1970. Based on the reports of the society’s many volunteers, the top birds of 2019 are the barred owl, the sandhill crane and the piping plover, but it also highlights many of the birds you find in the sanctuary.