October 2025

Hot Birds: October 2025

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:14 GMT

Peter Flood, at his usual haunt on Race Point, spotted a Brown Booby feeding with a flock of gulls near shore on July 5. It was photographed again later that day, and twice on July 14 by people on whale watch boats offshore. The photograph is by Yiming Qiu.

Just after Hurricane Erin passed offshore, Erik Nielsen visited Gooseberry Neck near Westport and found several hundred terns of at least five species resting on the beach. One of them was a Bridled Tern. Erik was the only birder to enjoy this tropical visitor before it disappeared back into the masses of Common, Roseate, Forster’s, and Black terns. Erik Nielsen took the photograph.

Sixth Report of the Rhode Island Avian Records Committee

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:12 GMT

American Flamingo, Briggs Marsh, Little Compton, Newport County, RI; August 11, 2024. Photograph by Peter Modest.

For this report, the Rhode Island Avian Records Committee (RIARC) welcomed two new members, Alan Kneidel and Sam Miller. They take the places of Peter Paton and Doug Wilson, whom we thank for their years of service and expertise. This report presents an evaluation of 61 records. These records were primarily from 2022 but also included two records from 2021, a re-review of a previously accepted record from 2006, and two records from 2024 and 2025 that received expedited review. Highlights include Rhode Island’s first Tundra Bean-Goose and American Flamingo, its first fully documented record of Common Gull (Larus canus canus/heinei), and subspecific resolution of a record of Larus canus kamtschatschensis from 2006 (previously accepted as Mew Gull: RIARC 2006-3, Mitra et al. 2010). Other highlights include the state’s second Gray Kingbird and a historic spring incursion of Arctic Terns.

The 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 from Ferren (2024), the Checklist of Rhode Island Birds (Rhode Island Ornithological Club 2002), 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 2003–2021, including those published in RIARC’s five previous reports (Mitra et al. 2010, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024), plus additional records from that period published in the present report.
d	the number of accepted records from 2022—or more recently, in the case of records receiving expedited review—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 2022.

For each record below, we list the RIARC report number; the vote of the Committee (accept–not accept); the number of individual birds reported; the location; the date(s) of occurrence; and the observer(s), with the following codes: I (initial finder), R (reported details), P (obtained photograph), and A (obtained audio recording).

Status of the Mew Gull Complex in Massachusetts: Special 28th Report of the Massachusetts Avian Records Committee (MARC)

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:10 GMT

Common Gull (Larus canus canus)—Ringer—and Short-billed Gull (Larus brachyrhynchus) together at Sandy Beach, Cohasset, MA; April 15, 2018. Photograph by Marshall J. Iliff. https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/94808371

Mew Gull (Larus canus) has been known as a vagrant to Massachusetts ever since the first specimen was collected in Chatham in 1908. By 1857, its four distinct populations had been described, but reliable field marks for identification to subspecies level remained extremely poorly known until the 1980s. Veit and Petersen (1993) categorized the records of Mew Gulls in Massachusetts by subspecies—L. c. canus and L c. brachyrhynchus—and by distinct seasonal patterns. Only in the past decade or two, with advances in digital photography, have North American birders been fully equipped to identify and document the various taxa in the Mew Gull complex. In the process, a more complicated and interesting picture has taken shape in Massachusetts and along the Northeast coast.

At a Glance: October 2025

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:03 GMT

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