In Cricket, a game played by previously civilised nations, the bowler might deliver the ball into an area where the batter has to make a snap decision as to where the ball will go. Will it swing either way or will it kick on and pick up pace? This is called the corridor of uncertainty, in birding we have a similar thing, the arrival of overshoots late may through the first half of June. During this period, weird and wonderful species turn up out of range and outside expectations- it’s what gets us out checking the same bushes daily. The corridor of uncertainty principle was very active on 23rd May but only, it seems, in the yard of the farm at the end of Chebogue Point Road, Yarmouth County.
I mention Chebogue Point frequently in my blogs because it gets good birds. It is shown on maps from 1607 when Europeans first visited and essentially never went home. No doubt those early explorers were also captivated by the migration potential of the site, although there is little mention of it anywhere and besides, they had crap binocs in those days. Chebogue is the third oldest European settlement in Canada and the name, Chebogue, refers to the broad marshes and river system in Mi’kmaq, it used to be spelled Jebogue. For us it is a migrant magnet, a place to never ignore and where the local people are friendly, although Sandra and I recently got told to F%#@ off out of it when one of the cows on the farm went crazy and the herdsman was under a bit of bovine pressure to contain it.
The story of this post starts with a vireo, an odd looking one that demanded a thorough examination. It was in the farm garden, a place that holds migrant birds and feral cats in equal measure. The presence of the vireo was enough to get Sandra and I on the road directly after having got our Covid shots- follow the science people. If you die, don’t come complaining about it, you were told. Whether the vireo turned out to be rare or not wasn’t really a factor. If it was interesting enough to raise a comment, it was an educational bird and something to see. If it did turn out to be rare, well then good. We got half-way there when Ray, of Ray and Deb fame, messaged that it had been joined by a Kentucky Warbler, a real Nova Scotia rarity and new Yarmouth County bird for us. The race was on.
When we got there both were showing well. The Kentucky was quite straightforward and even showy although backlit- which is my feeble excuse for the poor shots. The vireo was harder to see because it never stopped moving and was even more backlit. Certainly, without analysis of images on a pc, the vireo gave the impression of ticking most of the boxes for Cassin’s, but this was Chebogue Point and we were in Nova Scotia and besides, when had any bird from Cassin’s Vireo’s general geographical area ever occurred in those same bushes?
Consensus, post-analysis of the images is that it is a Blue-headed Vireo in its second year. There is a good write-up as to why by Kathleen here: https://ebird.org/checklist/S176723641 In my own eBird checklist, think I’ll just treat it as being of the solitary vireo group, because some plumage features were a fit for what is known of Cassin’s, and some weren’t. I’m happy to admit that I don’t actually know enough to comment, based on my limited experience of Cassin’s. If I lose my NSBS Facebook designation as ‘expert’ because of that, I expect I’ll be ok.
These are my shots, along with a couple of May Blue-headed Vireos from previous years. Also included are shots of a Canada Warbler that was very busy in The Willows, and a Wilson’s Warbler that was more sedate.
For fun I thought I’d reproduce one of the accounts of birds seen from my UK birding memoire, ‘Twitching Times’. Some things to know before reading it, if you do. Spurn Point is a spit of land that juts out into the North Sea on the English east coast, a bit like Chebogue although lower, shingle and with lots of scrub. It is famous for migration and rarities. Nancy’s was a cafe in Norfolk, England, where rare bird information was noted in a page-a-day diary and the phone never stopped ringing. A blocker is a species that is rare and hard to see, so is blocked on some birders’ lists. BBRC stands for British Birds Rarities Committee, meaning they who decide. They’re a bit like eBird reviewers, but stricter. Getting a rarity accepted by BBRC could be hard but, when it was, it would appear in a species rarity Report edition of British Birds, a monthly birding magazine that has been going for many years.
To get to Spurn I’d hitchhiked, then caught a bus, I had no car at the time. I stayed in the observatory for about $3 a night, then got a ride home on the back of a motorbike, it seemed a long way.
BLACK KITE Milvus migrans
East Riding, Yorkshire Spurn, Apr-19th, 1985. My first BB rarity find.
Some places are harder to find a ‘first’ for than others. Places like Spurn Bird Observatory tilt towards the very difficult end of that equation, due to their often saturation coverage during the migration seasons and site-loyal denizens. There is, however, a glimmer of hope because Spurn attracts vagrants and someone has to find them. Although I knew that there had been a Subalpine Warbler present and I had high hopes of seeing it (I did), I also had a hunch based on a sketchy message from Nancy’s. On the basis of that vague snippet of information, I just knew that I was going to either find something or be there when something was found.
So, what was the mystery message? The birder in Nancy’s that had answered the phone told me of a Black Kite that had been reported in the north-east of England and logic, well my version, had suggested that it might fly south down the coast and arrive at Spurn at the same time as me arriving there, more or less. In truth, it didn’t matter who found it so long as I saw it. Black Kite was a major blocker back then as most were either fly-through’s or single-observer records. At 16.45 it arrived from the north at Spurn, flying directly over my head before settling on a post in the area known as the Triangle. I was delighted, I had found my first BB rarity.
I knew that other birders were still around, back towards the obs and looking at the Subalpine Warbler that was just 500 yards away, so I waved frantically shouting “Black Kite, Black Kite”. They misheard this as a racist slur and made their way towards me to seek clarification. It was only when 50m away they saw the Kite and firmly welcomed it onto their UK and, more importantly, Yorkshire lists. I rushed off to drag Barry Spence, the Spurn warden, out of his hut so he could see the kite, too.
It was still there when we got to the growing group of admirers, staying just under an hour and entertaining the local Magpies before sloping off, job done. After the excitement of finding the kite came the admin, and I spent hours writing up my notes for the submission to BBRC, I even did a drawing. Black Kite in 1985 was still a quality rarity, it was also one of the species BBRC rejected most frequently, not this time they didn’t.
As a postscript – when the BB rarity report for 1985 was published, there was my kite and my name. Out of interest I checked the date for the northern bird, and it was only in for Apr-21st, so my bird was not the one from the north-east after all.
If you want to read a lot more then Going for Broke, my 1984 Big Year eBook and Twitching Times are available for pennies from Amazon wherever you are. You can also get them in print, but they cost more.
Cape Sable Birding 
Part of being an “expert” is knowing what we don’t know, IMHO.
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