Brig 9/24--Sora and the Saga of the Mystery Bird

Zirlin's Second Law of Birding (the first one has to do with pick-up trucks and eagles) states that you will never see the bird until you truly give up on seeing the bird. You cannot fake giving up; it must be a sincere abandonment of your quest, an abject acknowledgment that the bird will forever elude you. Today, Mike and I excessively forfeited  hope. We were making our 2nd pass around the Wildlife Drive at Brig when Mike said, "I guess I'm not going to see a Sora this year." "Me either," I replied, "and it won't be the first year I've missed it." "And it won't be the last," Mike said. "Oy," I thought, "I could go to my grave without ever seeing a Sora again, I'm old, how many years do I have left to see this bird? Aieee, this won't be the last year I miss Sora!" We drove on in silence, the car slowly inching forward through a miasma of despair.

Five minutes later, between Goose Markers 4 & 5, Mike said, "Oo Sora!"

We had just been looking at a domestic duck that had insinuated itself onto a little island in the marsh when Mike saw the bird. I looked but it was gone. Ten seconds later, after he told me where the bird was in relation to some goldenrod, the bird came out, gave good looks, then disappeared into a tunnel of reeds. No pictures, of course, but Zirlin's Second Law had once again been demonstrated. Perhaps we didn't have to take it to the existential extreme that we did and we'd have still seen the bird but who can really say?

Our first loop around took a lot longer than normal because we spent about 40 minutes at Turtle Cove, studying one bird in a flock of about 500 sandpipers, mostly semis, but with quite a few Western Sandpipers in the mix. The Westerns were what stopped us, but it was the much larger bird among them that intrigued us:

As you can see, the bird is a monster compared to the other sandpipers. It has long thick legs, a bull-like neck, and long primaries that come to a point past the tail. Color is problematic. The photo above shows a grayish bird with brownish legs.

This photo, a digiscope, has much warmer color. The legs, in all my photos, do not match my memory of them looking at the bird through scope and binoculars--they seemed darker, more of reddish brown than these photos show, almost the color of dried blood.

At first we considered the bird might be a gigantic Western, then perhaps Red Knot (too small), or perhaps a wayward, early, Purple Sandpiper (too big), or some exotic sandpiper (unlikely). Because it has no supercilium (eyebrow) we discounted White-rumped Sandpiper. Because it is on rocks, not grass, we doubted Baird's.

Here's the true frustration. Most of the time with shorebirds I'm looking at them from a good distance, in bad light for a short time before they fly, so I can't see a lot of the field marks described in the books. With this bird, we had enough time to actually eat lunch while we studied it and we could see every detail of every feather, we could photograph its toes, we could watch its nicitating membrane in its eye (see top photo)--and I still can't tell you what kind of bird it is!

One field mark I did notice was color at the base of the bill and Sibley seems to indicate that this is a diagnostic field mark for White-rumped Sandpiper. Mike doesn't think so. I listed it as Baird's on eBird because that would flag it as a rare bird, whereas White-rump is expected. That way, I can expect a reviewer to contact me and tell me why I'm wrong and with luck, what the bird actually is.

It was fun, though, to go through virtually every possible shorebird in Sibley's comparing and contrasting field marks with the bird before us. It was not fun to come up more or less empty. What I learned this afternoon was that I know a lot but not nearly enough.

For the 9 hours we spent driving and walking around Brig, I came up with 73 species, not including Mystery Bird; Mike had a few more that I either missed or didn't feel comfortable counting. I hope to add an update soon as to Mystery Bird's true identity.

Snow Goose 1 the continuing injured bird
Canada Goose 50
Mute Swan 15
Wood Duck 6
Blue-winged Teal 2
Northern Shoveler 1
Mallard 15
American Black Duck 15
Northern Pintail 20
Green-winged Teal 10
Pied-billed Grebe 6 Actual count
Double-crested Cormorant 100
Great Blue Heron 7
Great Egret 90
Snowy Egret 30
Little Blue Heron 2 immatures at Gull Pond
Black-crowned Night-Heron 3
Yellow-crowned Night-Heron 3
Glossy Ibis 1
Turkey Vulture 1
Osprey 2
Northern Harrier 3
Sharp-shinned/Cooper's Hawk 1
Sora 1 South dike between goose markers 4 & 5
Semipalmated Plover 2
Stilt Sandpiper 6
Least Sandpiper 1
White-rumped Sandpiper 1
Pectoral Sandpiper 2
Semipalmated Sandpiper 540
Western Sandpiper 20
Short-billed Dowitcher 2
Greater Yellowlegs 25
Lesser Yellowlegs 15
Laughing Gull 125
Ring-billed Gull 1
Herring Gull 50
Great Black-backed Gull 3
Caspian Tern 3
Forster's Tern 50
Black Skimmer 2
Mourning Dove 2
Belted Kingfisher 1 Dogleg
Red-bellied Woodpecker 2
Downy Woodpecker 1
Northern Flicker 3
Merlin 1
Peregrine Falcon 1
Eastern Phoebe 4
Red-eyed Vireo 1
Blue Jay 9
American Crow 5
Fish Crow 7
Tree Swallow 25
Carolina Chickadee 10
Tufted Titmouse 2 Heard
White-breasted Nuthatch 1 Heard
House Wren 2
Carolina Wren 2 Heard
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 1
American Robin 3
Gray Catbird 3
Brown Thrasher 1 Leeds Eco-trail
European Starling 25
Black-and-white Warbler 1 Leeds Eco-trail
Common Yellowthroat 2
Saltmarsh Sparrow 1
Savannah Sparrow 15
Song Sparrow 10
Swamp Sparrow 1
Northern Cardinal 2
Red-winged Blackbird 125
Boat-tailed Grackle 3
American Goldfinch 5