April 2025

Hot Birds: April 2025

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:15 GMT

On January 16, Miles Brengle spotted a Swainson’s Hawk between Ipswich and Plum Island. Erik Schiff had photographed what may have been the same bird on Plum Island in late November, but it had not been seen since. After a brief showing the next morning, the hawk disappeared again, but this time for only a couple of weeks, until Elizabeth Davis spotted it in Gloucester near Good Harbor Beach on February 2. It was more cooperative there and appeared almost daily until the end of February. Sam Zhang took the photograph.

Ted Gilliland, who found the first Tufted Duck documented west of the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts in fall 2023, found the second one, too, on March 1. It was near the Longmeadow sandbar in the Connecticut River, one of western Massachusetts’s most magnetic spots for rare shorebirds, seabirds, and waterfowl. Two other Tufted Ducks appeared this winter in more typical locations: Nantucket and Harwich. Trish Pastuszak took the photograph.

Fourteenth Report of the Maine Bird Records Committee

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:10 GMT

Maine’s overdue first Anhinga was discovered at a beaver pond in Somerville. Photograph July 23, 2024, by Louis Bevier.

The Fourteenth report of the Maine Bird Records Committee (hereafter ME-BRC or the committee) summarizes 64 reports involving 34 species (plus one species pair) that were evaluated and decided during 2024. The committee accepted 52 records for an acceptance rate of 81%. Although most reports were recent, the years of occurrences ranged from 1971 to 2024.

Five new species were added to the state list: Anhinga (Anhinga anhinga), Ferruginous Hawk (Buteo regalis), Western Flycatcher (Empidonax difficilis), Hepatic Tanager (Piranga flava), and Spotted Towhee (Pipilo maculatus). Hoary Redpoll (Acanthis hornemanni) was removed since it is now considered conspecific with Redpoll (A. flammea). The total number of documented species on Maine’s state list is now 475. The official list of bird species recorded in Maine, our review procedures, and the list of members can be found at the committee’s website: <http://sites.google.com/site/mainebirdrecordscommittee>.

Records in this report are grouped by species; records accepted and those not accepted are listed within the same species account. Each record provides the location, county (italicized), date(s) of occurrence, names of observers or contributors, and committee record number. Documentation was provided by the observers listed or, in some cases, was obtained from publicly published websites. All reviewed materials and member comments are archived. If known, the names of finders are listed first and separated from other names by a semicolon. Photographic, video, or audio evidence reviewed is denoted by a dagger (†); written notes are denoted by an asterisk (*). As always, the committee strongly encourages written submissions even when there are photographs. Species accounts follow the current taxonomic classification and sequence adopted as of 2024 by the American Ornithological Society (list available at <http://checklist.americanornithology.org/taxa/>).

Species Accounts

About Books: A Deep Dive into Gull Identification

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:07 GMT

The Gull Guide: North America.

Amar Ayyash. 2024. Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

“Gulls are arguably the greatest evolutionary success story in the avian world.” (p. 1)

Birders have a variety of strategies for looking at any flock of gulls. Many beginning birders are happy just to identify our regularly occurring species (Ring-billed, Herring, and Great Black-backed in the northeast) and then move on to other birds. Birders with more experience will search a flock for species such as Lesser Black-backed or perhaps Iceland or Glaucous. Birders with even more experience will start searching for migrating gulls uncommon for their location, such as Bonaparte’s at Wachusett Reservoir. True larophiles will see a large flock of gulls and set up their scope, get their camera ready, and begin to pore over more subtle differences among the gulls, looking at field marks, including orbital color, bill pattern, feather mirrors, and exact color of gray of the mantle. These birders are hoping for something really “sexy” like a European Herring Gull. There are also serious birders who will flatly state that they don’t “do” gulls. Amar Ayyash writes about encountering such a birder in his massive new identification guide, The Gull Guide: North America.

Amar Ayyash is well known in the North American birding community, especially to larophiles. He is one of the leading authorities on the gulls of North America. He hosts the website www.anythinglarus.com and has written many articles and papers on gulls. He is therefore the perfect person to pen a detailed—some might say obsessive—guide to gulls. This book is his first attempt at an identification guide, and he has succeeded in putting most of his considerable knowledge in the text.

I do not look at this book as a true field guide, in the sense that one would lug it out into the field. This book is hefty, large, and long (518 pages), and it is crammed with many photos and pages of dense text. Just look at pages 402–3. These two opposite pages have only dense text with no maps, photos, or illustrations. The Gull Guide is more typical of what has been called an identification guide—second level books that contain much more information about field marks. This is a book to keep in the car or to have handy at home. The Gull Guide is the perfect companion while you review your digital photos of the gulls you noticed that day. That said, recently when I interviewed Ayyash, he said he has seen birders out in the field using this guide!

At a Glance: April 2025

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:03 GMT

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Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:02 GMT

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