by Gregg Gorton January 27, 2015
http://www.dvoc.org/Personnel/GortonG.htm
When Johnny Miller left his house the morning of October 19,
1979 to conduct his weekly shorebird census at “Tinicum,” a birdy patch of
freshwater tidal marsh just a stone’s throw from his door, which he knew better
than anyone had before (and, likely, since), he had no inkling that he was
about to discover a feathered traveler from across the world. He drove over to the main entrance of the
roughly 700-acre preserve that in 1972 had been designated the Tinicum National
Environmental Center (TNEC), the first such entity in the U.S., and, since
1991—as the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge--the most urban among all U.S.
wildlife refuges. Per his routine, he
made his way out along the gravel surface of the dike surrounding the main
water impoundment, ticking off species and numbers of migrating sandpipers and
plovers. Then he came to a vantage point
from which he could scan northward in a nearly 180-degree arc across mudflats
where the tide-driven water from the Darby Creek was rapidly rising. His 9x35 bins (he did not carry a scope)
revealed a group of yellowlegs that looked to him to be the Greater species (Tringa melanoleuca). But among them was a slightly different
shorebird that he figured to be a Hudsonian Godwit (Limosa haemastica). He had seen that species in past years at
Tinicum in the early-to-mid-Fall, and—though a very “good bird”—it’s presence
was not too surprising. But this bird
didn’t look quite right: some of the
field marks didn’t jibe with his mental image of Hudsonian Godwit. As he watched it forage in the marsh by
probing—dowitcher-like--he jotted down key features such as the “rufous-buff color
on its neck” and “the bill longer and straighter than a Hudsonian’s would
be.” Then, suddenly, the odd bird took flight—as he had no doubt
hoped it would, eventually—and as it flapped away he was able to glimpse its
“white and gray underwings, with broad white wing stripes,” as he wrote later in the report he prepared
for his bird club’s journal, Cassinia
(the journal of the Delaware Valley Ornithological Club, or DVOC). That was it! --Suddenly he flashed back to
the hundreds of Black-tailed Godwits (Limosa
limosa), or “blackwits,” he had seen in Australia during a birding trip
there five years previously. That had to be the answer to the question
that had formed minutes before in his mind:
what the heck is this thing?
After Johnny returned home to Prospect Park later in the
day, he called a few fellow birders, hoping they could help confirm his
identification. One of them, Keith
Richards, also a member of DVOC, managed the “phone chain,” that erstwhile system
once used to alert other birders to rarities.
Two others, Frank and Barb Haas, were playing bridge with yet another
avid birder, John Ginaven, and his wife, Peggy, when the phone rang. The Haas’s were not members of DVOC because
Barb was not eligible, and Frank (Superintendent of Ridley Creek State Park)
had therefore refused to join until the club voted to accept female members
(which it did, finally, in late 1982).
Johnny’s call got their attention fast; in fact, Barb and John suddenly
realized that an odd-looking, godwit-like shorebird they had seen only the day
before at the Philadelphia sewage ponds might have been the very bird Johnny
was now describing! Barb recalls that on
that prior day she had said to Ginaven when they both were stumped by the
unknown bird that “it has enough white in the wings to be a Willet, but in all
the wrong places!”
After having assured Johnny that they would help, the three
birders in the group jumped up from the table and rushed over to the Haas’s
extensive library of bird books.
Thumbing quickly through a few of them, they finally found an
illustration of Black-tailed Godwit to scrutinize. It certainly looked like the mystery bird two
of them had seen! (Today, Frank and Barb
can’t recall the exact book they used to make the ID, but it may have been “some
book on birds of South Asia or Australia that we had.”) Then they called a few other members of DVOC
and some birders from New Jersey, and arranged for a return trip the next day
to the “scene of the crime,” as Barb calls it, which was the original place she
and Ginaven had seen the bird—the sewage ponds.
October 20th was “quite sunny, and not particularly cold or
windy” when they arrived at the Water Treatment Plant gate. Surprisingly, they were able to “walk in
unobserved,” rather than having to convince the security guard to let them
enter yet again. Other birders also
showed up, and many had spotting scopes.
Once inside, they were able to re-locate the “suspect” bird as it flew
overhead, and indeed it displayed crucial features of Limosa limosa, the Black-tailed Godwit. This apparition had to be that suspected interloper from a far land because its
bill was longer and straighter than a Hudsonian’s, its underwings were pale
(neither sooty, nor with black axillaries), and it had a broad white wing stripe. And, since its plumage was generally gray and
its tail was white with a black tip—but not barred—it was certainly not a
Bar-tailed Godwit (Limosa lapponica),
either. Thus, this now less-mysterious
bird appeared to be a winter (basic) plumage Limosa limosa, albeit with a trace of alternate-plumage color still
left on its neck. In fact, they figured
this had to be the very bird Johnny had seen, and it must have been flying back
and forth between the two nearby locations where it had now been spotted thrice
and identified twice. But how could they
really be so sure that the birds seen at the two places were actually one and
the same? Well, it just so happened that
this was the very first Pennsylvania record for this species, a fact that by
then had been loudly bruited among the assembled gawkers--so the chances were
pretty darned good…. --But suddenly the guard spotted the group of birders,
some of whom were carrying those long devices that he told them could be
“weapons or something,” and that was it!—they were all summarily kicked out.
IMAGE: Figure 30 from Pratt, et al. (1987): Black-tailed Godwit (above) and Hudsonian Godwit (below), by H. Douglas Pratt (used with permission)
This godwit even turned out to be only the fourth record of
its species for all of the mainland U.S.
The very first record of Black-tailed Godwit in that region of 48 states
had been a bird discovered feeding in a flooded field about a mile north of
Buzzard’s Bay in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts on April 23, 1967. First thought to be a Hudsonian, it lingered
for a week and was eventually seen and photographed with wings upraised and
correctly identified by James Baird of Massachusetts Audubon, who listed some
of the key features differentiating the two species in the brief report about
it he wrote for The Auk a year
later. However, he erroneously stated
that it was the first record for the (entire) U.S. and the second for North
America, not realizing that there were some obscure records of the Asian
subspecies (L. l. melanuroides) from
as far back as 1907 in Alaska--on Little Diomede Island in the Bering Sea and
from 1961 on Amchitka Island in the Aleutian chain. (The melanuroides
subspecies is now sometimes treated as a full species, the Eastern Black-tailed
Godwit, half the total population of which winters in Australia after breeding
as far north as Siberia.)
(Continued)
