Top Five Birds seen at Manomet’s Plymouth Headquarters in 2020

Red Crossbill

In the birding world, 2020 will be remembered as the year of the “Superflight.” Once every decade or so, the whole suite of irruptive boreal species travel south searching forfood resources, adding a great deal of excitement to the winter birding scene. This event happened in epic proportions in fall 2020, and Manomet was able to get in on the action. It all started with Red-breasted Nuthatches in late summer, followed by large flocks of Pine Siskins and American Goldfinches. As late fall approached, so came the redpolls, crossbills, and grosbeaks! All told, we recorded seven finch species, with the highlights being multiple encounters with Red Crossbills and Evening Grosbeaks (including both on the Plymouth Christmas Bird Count). By the stats, Red Crossbill was the rarest Superflight-species detected on campus, only recorded once in the previous ten years. Megan Gray, Lead Bander, recalls a highlight of the invasion, “One of the most memorable morning flights that I witnessed was in mid-October while we were opening nets. I was heading along the bluff nets to start the day. It was still a little dark but clear. As the sun began to peek over the horizon, I could suddenly hear Pine Siskins calling, a lot of Pine Siskins! I estimated that I heard over 100 siskins calling their distinctive rising buzz. Some birds were landing along the bluff, but most were flying, following the bluff inland.”

Vesper Sparrow

While spring arrivals trickle in during March and April, the first large, diverse wave of species usually arrives around May 1^st. Thankfully, ISS Coordinator Lisa Schibley was visiting Manomet on May 3^rd, 2020, and intercepted one such wave. During her survey, she recorded 75 species, including large numbers of several newly arrived species—27 Hermit Thrushes, 94 White-throated Sparrows, and 26 Ruby-crowned Kinglets, to mention a few! The highlight, however, was a Vesper Sparrow. As Lisa tells it, “The area in front of Holmes Farm was my last stop, and I knew it had excellent potential for sparrows. Lots of movement in the weeds with White-throated and Songs, then a Chipping Sparrow. A tight little group of Savannahs was working in the gravel. A single sparrow just beyond the Savannahs was probably another. But it wasn’t. A white eyering and touch of rufous at the shoulder and immediately I knew: Vesper!”

While the Holmes Farm is a magnet for rare sparrows such as Lark Sparrow and Clay-colored Sparrow, Vespers are even harder to come by. This is the first recorded in the last ten years.

MacGillivray’s Warbler

Manomet’s Lead Instructor Evan Dalton had the surprise of a lifetime while performing a bird survey of the property on April 29^th. As he tells it…

“I initially heard a dry, husky chip from a small thicket over a stream. Investigation revealed a bright yellow bird with a dark blue hood actively hopping about in the bare thicket and chipping. As the bird turned, I got a clear view of bright-white, bold eye-arcs. Proportionally, the bird wasn’t husky and leggy like a Connecticut, and it appeared slighter and longer-tailed than the Mourning Warblers I’ve seen. I got a brief but very clear view of this bird before it flew into an extremely dense honeysuckle thicket. Upon realizing this was a MacGillivray’s Warbler, I was able to get my phone out and record the bird chipping from this thicket. Between recordings, the bird sang (a thin, weak song) and I was able to catch one song and a few more chips before it went silent and (presumably) moved on.”

To put in context, this is the first spring record for Massachusetts and northeast North America, and only the second spring record for the East Coast north of Florida. The other spring East Coast record was photographed in Georgia in April 2012, and several spring records exist for Florida. There are 13 records in the Massachusetts Avian Records Committee database, all of which are from September-December. How did this bird end up here? While it is speculation, it’s possible the bird arrived to the area in the fall, and due to the exceptionally mild 2019-2020 winter, it survived through into the spring. It’s also possible this bird was in the middle of active migration from points southward, as it was a “one day wonder,” and could not be found the next day.