August 2024

Hot Birds: August 2024

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 00:00:15 GMT

Fifi Gifford photographed an American Flamingo in Dennis, on Cape Cod, June 2. It left the area, but returned June 15 and was more cooperative, allowing several birders to see it. It reappeared in Dennis and Yarmouthport on July 15 but has not been seen again as of press time. Birders on Long Island, New York, have reported what seems to be the same individual several times this summer. This bird seems likely to become our first accepted state record. A flamingo in Natick in 1965 was determined by MARC to be an escapee from captivity, and a 1964 record from Plum Island was considered a probable escapee as well. Mary Jo Foti took the photo.

Dave Adrien came upon a flock of seven Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks beside the Norwottuck Rail Trail in Amherst on June 24. Although the eastern part of the state has had many records, this appears to be only the fourth west of the Quabbin Reservoir, the second for Hampshire County. The flock disappeared the next day; multiple reports of “juvenile” whistling-ducks from subsequent days turned out to be misidentifications of other duck species. James Teitgen took the photo.

Fifth Report of the Rhode Island Avian Records Committee

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 00:00:11 GMT

Varied Thrush. February 10, 2021. Exeter. Photograph by Sue Palmer.

This report presents the Rhode Island Avian Records Committee’s (RIARC’s) evaluation of 35 records, primarily from 2021, but with two from 2019 and an additional record from 2022 receiving expedited review. Highlights include no fewer than five first records for Rhode Island. Keenly anticipated owing to the species’s recent meteoric surge in occurrence in the Northeast, a Black-bellied Whistling-Duck was seen by many at Apponaug Cove, Warwick, but only on August 8, 2021. Even more obliging from the birder’s point of view was a juvenile Sharp-tailed Sandpiper that spent a week in the Galilee marshes during November 2021. Conversely, Rhode Island’s first Heermann’s Gull was only briefly seen in the state by observers tracking it from adjacent Massachusetts. Similarly, the Spotted Towhee found by Sue Palmer at Brenton Point, Newport, was seen only by its discoverer. Finally, the MacGillivray’s Warbler found by Dan Finizia and Sue Talbot at Blackstone Park, Providence, was seen and photographed by many during its one-day stay, November 7, 2022. Other highlights include Rhode Island’s fourth record of Varied Thrush and multiple Brown Boobies, which continue to increase in occurrence here and elsewhere in New England.

The publication this year of Richard L. Ferren’s Birds of Rhode Island: Seasonal Distribution and Ecological History marks a milestone in Rhode Island ornithology. Cited for decades as “Ferren, in litt.” or “Ferren, unpubl. ms.,” this uniquely detailed historical summary and compendium of records forms the core of what is known about birds in Rhode Island—for instance the “b” numbers described below, which for most rare species in Rhode Island constitute the great majority of all known records.

These records are grouped by species, with each species entry followed by four numbers in parentheses (a, b, c, d), defined as follows:

a	the number of records cited by Howe and Sturtevant (1899).
b	the number of records accepted from 1900–2002. This number is derived principally from the Checklist of Rhode Island Birds (Rhode Island Ornithological Club 2002), which represents a synthesis of information from early drafts of Ferren (2024), Conway (1992), and records accepted by a pre-RIARC committee of reviewers for Field Notes of Rhode Island Birds through 2002 (Raithel 2001, 2002). The symbol “++” represents relatively frequent historical occurrence of the species, which could be replaced with a number pending ongoing research.
c	the number of accepted records from 2003–2020, including those published in RIARC’s four previous reports (Mitra et al. 2010, 2021, 2022, 2023), plus additional records from that period published here.
d	the number of accepted records from 2021—or more recently, in the case of first state records, published in the present report.

The sum of a, b, c, and d represents the total number of verified records in Rhode Island through December 2021. For each record below, we list the RIARC report number; the vote of the Committee (accept–not accept); the number of individuals; the location; the date(s) of occurrence; and the observer(s), with the following codes:

I	initial finder
R	reported details
P	obtained photograph

About Books: Chasing Phantoms

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 00:00:07 GMT

The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction. Gísli Pálsson. 2024. Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey.

According to most accounts, the last of the great auks (Pinguinus impennis) were slaughtered on Eldey, an island off Iceland’s southwest coast, in June 1844. About eighty taxidermic examples of great auks exist in museum collections, and most of them came from Eldey. (p. xiii)

The Great Auk has been a talisman for me since I was young. I was always fascinated by the natural world, even as a very young child, especially reptiles, amphibians, birds, and invertebrates. To me, it was a wide world of diverse natural wonders to enjoy almost everywhere I looked. But when as a young teen I read The Last Great Auk by Allan Eckert, I changed. It was the first time I learned that human-caused extinction was an event that had happened. At the end of Eckert’s novel, it even gave the date of the killing of the last Great Auk on Eldey island and named the persons responsible. I hated Ketill Ketilsson, the boy who smashed the last Great Auk eggs. Beginning with that book, the lives of extinct birds became a grim passion that is still with me today. I read everything I could find about the Dodo, the nine species of moas, the Huia, and the countless other species that were wiped out because of humans. I knew about “natural” extinction, of course. I had the typical childhood love of prehistoric creatures, and still do, and therefore understood, simply at first, that extinction was part of the slow evolution of life on earth. But the story of the Great Auk was something different. The auk’s extinction happened quickly and could have been prevented. Its obliteration was fueled by reckless greed and a disregard for the natural world. I did not realize it then, but I was radicalized at a young age by an extinct alcid.

At a Glance: August 2024

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 00:00:03 GMT

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Thu, 01 Aug 2024 00:00:02 GMT

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