Luck, Kindness, and Rarities

Luck

This morning, I was not expecting to have a good day of birding. I planned on birding the 30 minutes before work. I overslept… Then my plan B was to bird the few minutes of sun after work. Luckily, I got off of work way earlier than I was expecting. So of course, I went birding. I had to get my year list off to a good start and I needed to chase that Bar-tailed Godwit at Tom’s Cove. This bird evaded me the last time its been seen in the area. I packed my gear, grabbed some McDonald’s on the way, and made it to the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.

Kindness

I wouldn’t say I was in full on chase mode for the Bar-tailed Godwit. I had the mindset of I’ll give it a try, but it won’t be that bad if I miss it for the second time. I slowly birded my way down to the Tom’s Cove visitor center, stopping at each pool for a bit and scanning the sides of the road as I drove. Mallards, Bufflehead, GBH, Great Egret, Black Ducks, more Mallards, woah a ton of Buffleheads, another GBH, another GBH, another GBH… and then the huge explosion of waterfowl at Swans Cove Pool. I just did a quick scan at the overwhelming Swans Cove Pool because I wanted to spend as much time at Tom’s Cove before the tide came in.

I made it to the Tom’s Cove visitor center area and posted up with my camera (super zoom camera, using it as a scope) and scanned the area. Greater Yellowlegs, Willets, Boat-tailed Grackles, 9 beautiful American Oystercatchers, more buffleheads, and a Bald Eagle eating a fish! I might’ve been there for about 15 minutes when all of a sudden a truck pulls up behind me and the driver asks, “Are you looking for the Bar-tailed Godwit?” The driver tells me that he’s going to go further down the south end parking lot to see if its there and he’ll give me a whistle if he sees it. I give up scanning Tom’s Cove from my vantage point, its cold and I still haven’t eaten my McDonald’s, so I move over to eating my food and scanning all of the waterfowl at Swans Cove Pool (there’s a Eurasian Wigeon somewhere in the hundreds of waterfowl). Shovelers, Black Ducks, Gadwalls, Canada Geese, Tundra Swans, American Wigeons, too many for me to count today.

The truck pulls up behind me again. The driver looks at me, makes the binoculars gesture around his eyes, and points back at Tom’s Cove. I’m psyched. He tells me that he’ll drive back and show me where it is. We make it to the spot and there’s a couple with binoculars leaving the exact spot the bird was at. They don’t mention seeing it as we pass by, bad sign. We don’t see it around the Willets, bad sign. But Rick sees a lone bird pretty far down the shoreline. There it is! Far and a bit blurry through my camera and his scope, but there it is. It eventually flies off. We talk a bit about birding and a little bit about our backgrounds. Rick is a retired metallurgical engineer (but worked in plastics engineering) and he’s seen hundreds of species of birds in his travels. The Godwit flies back and comes just a smidge closer. We get better looks. Rick says that he’s satisfied and is going to move on, but I want to get a little closer to see if I can get a decent picture. Rick and I say bye.

Rarities

I make it back to Swans Cove Pool to look for that potential Eurasian Wigeon. I see it! In the midst of hundreds of waterfowl, it was fairly close and out in the open at that moment. This is the second time in my life that I’ve seen a Eurasian Wigeon. Rick and his wife are parked about 30 yards away from me. I make some flailing waving arm gestures towards them to get their attention… I can’t tell if it worked. I decide to walk over and tell them about the Wigeon. They’ve already seen it and were about to let me know too.

My last bit of birding at the refuge ends with waiting for the Wildlife Loop gate to open and then picking up some Pintails and a few other waterfowl at Shoveler Pool. As I’m driving away, two Glossy Ibises fly in! I’ve seen hundreds of them this past year, but at this time of year they’re considered rare for this area. Today was definitely a great day to start off the New Year.

Recap: Leaving work early (good), Bar-tailed Godwit (really rare), Eurasian Wigeon (rare), Glossy Ibis (good), and Rick (the best)

I’m definitely going to try and be more like Rick in the future. He definitely made my day special. I hope you all can be more kind to others in small ways like stopping and chatting. It can mean a lot for someone.

Thanks again Rick.

Happy Birding!