On the Wing #21: Rare Birds of a Different Kind

An immature wheatear was the lucky find this weekend!
As the title suggests, I am in love. With birds, yes, but y'all knew that already. I went to the Cape this weekend for my girlfriend and my fourth anniversary together. It's been our first since we both graduated from Unity College in Maine and we wanted to go somewhere special. We decided that the best way to see the birds would be to spend a night in Orleans and be right in the middle of the action. On Saturday morning, we traveled from her house in Lakeville to Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. We then spent the afternoon browsing the shops and colorful boulevards of Provincetown. After all, we came for the rainbows and we got the rainbows! (Although to be honest, we also came for the birds.) Towards the end of the day, we got on a sailing ship to tour around the harbor. What a lovely trip it was with a lovely sunset and prime views of coastal winter bird life. While there I got to see bird #294; two winter plumage Bonaparte's Gulls (Chroicocephalus philadelphia) flying out in the main harbor. We also saw a large group of Common Loons (Gavia immer), many Forster's Terns (Sterna forsteri), several low-flying White-winged Scoters (Melanitta fusca), and three Great Cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo) among the loons. It was a lovely way to end the day.

We got up and left this morning, but not until we visited two more places that I'd been meaning to see. After breakfast we looked for and eventually found (thanks to a wayward GPS) the Birdwatcher's General Store. This is a store I've wanted to visit since reading about it as a child in the Bird Observer magazines. This store seemed to have everything birder and bird related; clothes, optics, feeders, books and more books, those Tilley hats, carving kits, bookmarks, cards, and bumper stickers (we both got one that read "I'd rather be birding"). Even the Big Year movie was playing on two screens! We toured the store marveling at the bird books, both guides and narratives, as well as various pieces of art, feeders, and clothes. We selected our gifts of choice and left with two pairs of pajama pants each with the words "stud puffin" (we are such bird nerds!) and pictures of Atlantic Puffins with sunglasses on them, four of Carl James Freeman's bookmarks, a 2013 Charley Harper engagement calendar, a Birdwatchers General Store t-shirt, and a copy of Scott Weidensaul's "Of a Feather: A Brief History of American Birding". It was from there that we got a tip about a very rare sighting at Skaket Beach which was just up the road in town. An immature Northern Wheatear (Oenanthes oenanthes) had been spotted in the prior days and was still present this very morning.

After a slight detour, we got the beach in good time to see other birders crowding to find the bird. A group of three hurried to see the bird and my girlfriend and I shadowed them like accipiters at a feeder. Other birders pointed towards a bench further up the beach and we hurried along after the main three. As we approached the aforementioned bench we encountered a pair with a Labrador off the lead. This wasn't good. If that wayward lab had gotten near that bird and made it fly, our quest was all for naught! Fortunately we were lucky on this day, because as we passed the bench, we saw the other birders line up in the signature formation that could only mean one thing; they had got the bird! We shuffled up to them and came upon a wonderful buff bird with the teetering tail. Well, my girlfriend technically saw it first. I had to be roughly positioned by another birder to get the sighting but that helped immensely. We watched as it twitched its tail and pattered up the beach. We reveled in its rarity as I ticked the bird off my life list. This was bird #295.

After a few minutes, I looked to the ocean. I was certainly excited to have seen the wheatear, but I was distracted by the huge numbers of Brant (Branta bernicla) and Common Eiders (Someteria mollisima) that were present on this blustery Sunday in October. I was feeling thankful for having a partner who not only put up with my birding obsession, but actively participated in it as well. As we walked back together, hand in hand, we were happy we got to see such a rare bird, but were equally happy that we were holding the hand of an equally, if not more so, rare bird.

Happy anniversary my dear, and as always, happy birding. ^_^

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