[CT Birds] About the Northern Lapwing
Roy Harvey
On Saturday morning Phil Rusch was scouting the Storrs Barnacle Goose for a visiting birder. While driving his truck on the dirt road that crosses the north end of the field adjacent to Lot W, a bird took off and flew away from the truck, with just an impression of a lot of black and white. He stopped the truck, got out with his binoculars, and found the bird - barely - just seeing the head. It was not close. He thought he saw a crest. The idea of a lapwing popped into his head and he went back and got his scope and camera to get better looks and documentation. The bird was gone when he returned. By the end of the day he had spent hours (1) trying to relocate whatever it was that he had seen, (2) getting covered with mud, as the field was not frozen that day, (3) wondering if it could have been what he was thinking, and (4) wondering if he was crazy.
On Saturday afternoon, still wondering if he was crazy, he did what anyone would do when on the horns of a dilemma. He called a friend to talk it over. He called Nick Bonomo and told him the story. As he put it to Nick, he couldn't even be sure it was not a "fancy pigeon". Nick agreed that it was too vague to put out on CTBirds, but that they should tell more people about it. particularly local birders. Phil called a few people, and so did Nick. One of the people Nick called was me. Nick convinced me that a lapwing was plausible, but didn't really make the point of just how rare it was.
I was ready for what I expected to be a Quixotic adventure, so Sunday morning I headed out to Lot W, not my usual stomping grounds. I guess I started scoping the field by 8:20 or so. Eventually I found a few Killdeer, but that was it. Phil, who had been looking long before I arrived, came by and said something like "Yeah, I'm the guy with the crazy report!" and filled in the details of the story. We talked for a while and then he got back in his truck to drive that same route and check out some distant areas, while I started across the edge of the field to scope the hidden parts. Phil's truck disappeared down that dirt road. Only a couple of minutes after that I saw something in my scope and was pretty sure I had what Phil had seen! In a state of excitement and panic, I fumbled around for the phone number Phil gave me, called the wrong one (at 8:52), and left a message that Phil got at work on Monday. Then I called Nick (8:53). With the bird in
the scope I was telling him the field marks I could see - the crest, the green back, the pure white belly and chest, the black band in front of the neck, the beige face, what appeared to be black edging to the wing against the belly... and he was asking about this and that detail, mostly things I could not see. After a minute or two of that Nick - who, unlike me, actually understood how rare this was - said it was a lapwing. Nick was pretty excited. I asked him to call Phil for me and we hung up.
So Nick called Phil, put the report out on CTBirds (8:56), started the informal phone-chain, and got himself headed for Storrs. From the time I first saw the bird well enough to identify it, to when it was out on CTBirds, was under ten minutes, probably more like eight.
A couple of minutes later Phil's truck was coming back the other way on that dirt road - toward the bird. He stopped and got out, walking toward it. I was trying to point and wave my hands to stop. The bird took off, and I tracked it in the scope. It was flying toward me and I switched to bins, and then naked eye, as it went right over my head. It was about to fly out of view behind some trees and I started running to get a better view - and landed flat on my face, hard. (Binoculars are very uncomfortable to land on, if you were wondering.) By the time I got up the bird was out of view.
When Phil reached me he was ecstatic - he wasn't crazy after all!!! He'd been so full of doubts since those glimpses and now we were both going nuts. We both started making phone calls. One of the first people he reached was Steve Morytko, the closest birder he knew. Steve was there in a few minutes, as was another local birder, a woman I did not know who had seen the report on CTBirds. The general direction the bird had headed in was toward Horse Barn Hill. Steve knows the area thoroughly so he and the woman went off to look. Phil started back across the field to get his truck, stopped half way to take a phone call, came back to tell me Steve had the bird on Horse Barn Hill, and then started back again to his truck, still back on that dirt road. I stayed at Lot W in case the bird returned or any other birders arrived. It was around then that the battery in my cell phone gave out - my apologies to those I did not get to call.
I waited a half hour or more without any birders arriving, so I drove over to Horse Barn Hill Rd, where I found the group (Phil, Steve, Nick, Mark Szantyr, probably others) walking back to their cars. The bird had flown back toward Lot W. I did a U-turn and was back where I started mabye five minutes from when I left, but now there were a bunch of birders there, including Glenn Williams. They had seen the bird fly in!
From then on the crowd grew. Sometimes the bird was visible; much of the time it wasn't. After a while the bird was mostly out of view and I thought there was a better angle to see behind the rises if we went down the right side. No luck. With a couple of others we started down that road, and the bird took off, again headed back toward Horse Barn Hill. I said something along the lines of "Man, is everyone going to be mad at us!". Dave Provencher saw the bird take off and said it took off from a spot we could not even see, but it sure wouldn't look that way to all those birders on the other side of the field. I admit I didn't really want to face any of them just then so I took my time getting back to the cars. I was (still am) hurting from the fall I took, and headed home shortly after, before noon. For the rest of the day the bird was around, here and there.
I'm sure Phil and Nick and others would recall some details differently, but that's what I can reconstruct from my memory, cell phone log, and CTBirds.
I applaud Phil for the way he handled his sighting. First, he went after something he just got some glimpses of in flight. When he wasn't getting good enough views he tried to get his scope. When it was gone he kept on searching. When he was completely unsure of what it was, he talked it over with someone knowledgeable. He was out at first light the next day trying to find it again. This was not a smooth oh-look-at-that like I had with that western flycatcher, it was an uncertain ID based on bad views that involved telling an unlikely story of a failure to nail it down, and a lot of perseverance to reverse that. For that matter I headed there without expecting any great find, just doing a bit to follow up on an outside chance that seemed worth checking out. Sometimes things work out.
Anyway, that's how it went down. What a bird!
Good birding!
Roy Harvey
Beacon Falls, CT
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Many thanks to Phil for his amazing find and for having the perseverance to follow through it when most would have given up. And thanks to you, Nick, Steve and all the other birders involved in getting on the lapwing again that morning and getting the word out so incredibly fast so that so many people, myself included, could share in this great rarity here in Connecticut on Sunday.
Steve Ballentine
Glenn Williams
pulled into W lot around 10am Sunday and immediately saw this mega rarity in
flight and landing. I was all alone and wondering where everyone was. I
expected 50 or more to be already there and showing me the bird in
their scopes! Shortly, a few new arrivals appeared, followed by the others who were already there and had relocated it at the second location before it returned to the first spot.
Just to further clarify, this bird was not being kept a secret Saturday. Who among us would publicly report a mega rarity without knowing if we had indeed seen the bird?
Glenn Williams
Mystic
--- On Tue, 11/30/10, Roy Harvey <rmha...@snet.net> wrote:
From: Roy Harvey <rmha...@snet.net>
Subject: [CT Birds] About the Northern Lapwing
mcava...@comcast.net
I thank phil and roy and nick and all involved for getting the word out and. Sharing the exciting news with everyone about the lapwing and my friends also that contacted me to give me the heads up on this rare bird
I feel so fortunate to be part of such a wonderful birding community here in CT!!!!
Mona cavallero
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
James Taylor
Saturday, and Phil pointed me to the correct flock. We chatted for a bit
and he told me about having seen a possible Lapwing, but that who knows? it
could have been a crazy pigeon!! (I've never met Phil before, but I'm sure
it's him based on your account) Unfortunately I didn't have time to stick
around and I didn't search that day. What kills me, is that I didn't go
take a look, or check my computer, Sunday morning!! Urgh!!! By the time it
was clarified to me, I was on my way home to Boston for a prior committment
from my family's home in Coventry. so close ... so close .... my only
consolation being I had wonderful views of the two geese.
James Taylor, Boston (formerly Coventry)