From a birder’s perspective, nothing can leave you quite so deflated as when visitors to your regular site, and in my case that would be Cape Sable Island, see a really, really good bird but it doesn’t stick around, and you are left ruing what may have been the only opportunity to see such a species on your local patch in your entire life.
Living on Cape Sable Island, this is something you have to get used too, it’s happened twice to me at least and I expect it will happen again.
When I say really, really good bird, I don’t mean to suggest that all birds, with the exception of Flamingos, are not really, really good birds, they are, but good and rare, very rare, that is the detail, that is why that hollow feeling at missing it sits like an elderly soufflé, and leaves you sagging in the middle a bit.
The first time this happened was on July-09, 2017. I remember the day well because it was foggy, but it wasn’t the fog that was memorable, it was a few Leach’s Storm-Petrels that danced offshore off Daniel’s Head that cause me to remember. I also remember a couple of birders dropping by and we chatted away, as birders do, until I’d just about run out of time. I had intended to look at The Hawk as a part of my route but didn’t.
A guy from Maine was visiting Cape Island and, with his cell phone, snapped a doc-shot of an adult Brown Booby on rocks off The Hawk. I have a copy, I hate it.
Fast forward to Aug-15, 2021 and two Ontario birders were at Daniel’s Head hoping for American Oystercatcher, when a Magnificent Frigatebird flew over them and began to circle. The alert went out in a round-about way and island birders converged. Unfortunately, the frigatebird kept going. It may have been possible to gamble and try to intercept it as it worked the coast west, none of us did though. It was seen again in New Hampshire Aug-20, and nowhere in between, you wonder how.
The photos of the frigatebird can be seen by clicking on this checklist. I try not to weep.
https://ebird.org/checklist/S93285513
That’s birding though, you win some and lose some but the losses sting, really sting, and this year has been particularly cruel, but more of that in what will, at the moment, be a very brief round up of the rarity year when I post it here in December.
In general terms, and gauged by species numbers, the year is going a little over par. I get that information by using the eBird feature that tells me how many species I’ve seen in Nova Scotia by this point, in previous years. I did the math, over five full years the average to Aug-20 is 243.8 species, I am on 250 exactly now.
I can console myself that there are more birds to come, we might get some more special days yet and, because I’m not stupid and got double-vaccinated against Covid, I stand a better chance than many of being around to see them, because waves 4, 5, 6, ad infinitum are on the way.
Those of you who like to get out birding and exploring, might like to know that I’ve written a short guide to birding in the vicinity of the town of Yarmouth. The eBook is very good value and you can read it on any device provided you use the free Kindle app. The paperback I haven’t actually held yet but I’m fairly pleased with the on-screen view.
For those of you who do not know what Amazon is or have not used it before, have you been living in a cave for twenty years?
My last post covered our pelagic, a couple of days later a birder put a photo of a Little Blue Heron on Facebook, it was nearby so we went for a look. The bird is white because it is an immature.
Year birds are being added fairly frequently now. This Pectoral Sandpiper was my first for the year and, it being an adult, was unusual. Mostly we get bright immature birds.
Besides publishing site guides, there is also one for Cape Sable Island, I write novels. It surprises me how few people actually read books for leisure these days. I guess the Internet has stepped in somewhat. The good news there is that the app from Kindle to read any of my books is free and you can read on your PC, tablet, phone or even Fitbit. That means, for mere cents, you could own the entire ten books of my published works and still have enough left to eat.
Of interest to Canadians, particularly Nova Scotians are, or should be, my Nova Scotia birder-murder mysteries. Three have been published so far, tales of murder, mystery and some day-dream bird scenarios all set in Nova Scotia. Obviously all my characters bear no resemblance to anyone living or toast. Buy one, read it, you won’t be in it, probably.
For the record, the first Nova Scotia books is called The Frigatebird, followed by Nor’easter then Sea Glass. All available from Amazon.
Sometimes year ticks fall in your lap, and that is exactly what happened with a White-winged Dove. Technically, the species is a Nova Scotia rarity, but in real life this is a yard third for me, and my sixth in six years, so not that rare, or perhaps it is the same bird coming back?
The prospects for the next few weeks are quite good. We might get a hurricane, it has been suggested that this year will be very active and that may mean at least one bit of weather will come our way. With weather come birds, albeit knackered ones. Ideally, any fast-moving hurricane will whip up to us, drop the birds quickly and then push off, leaving us to enjoy them and them in a fit state to relocate.
I’m not even going to mention climate change here, and how it is biting now and how the next generation should invest in rubber boots while the price is low. Sentient people have known that climate change is real for years, I was aware back in the late 1980s and said so. What we do about it is up to you and we can’t afford any slackers. Those left over from Covid will have work to do.
The blog posts on this blog go back to 2015. In the links on the side bar is a link to my Quebec blog. Obviously I stopped adding to it in 2015, when we moved to Nova Scotia, but it does have a ton of stuff on it that you might enjoy, especially if you are not very sensitive.
Cape Sable Birding 