Tourist spots red-billed tropicbird on island

I’d like to interrupt your regular programming of “common backyard birds and their life histories,” to bring you this special broadcast: a red-billed tropicbird was spotted on Machias Seal Island earlier in the week.

I was able to get a first-hand account from Judy Ettenhofer of Spring Green, Wis. She happened to be in Maine for a family reunion. An avid birder, Ettenhofer had booked space on the tour boat “Barbara Frost,” out of Cutler to visit Machias Seal Island. She was excited to see the Island’s nesting puffins and terns, but this bonus came as a complete surprise.

Ettenhofer described how one of the passengers, a professor from Evergreen College in Olympia, Wash., reacted once he had identified the bird.

“He was just beside himself. He started jumping up and down, yelling, ‘tropicbird, tropicbird!’ People were gasping with surprise. It was really an astounding moment.”

As you can see, the bird’s name indicates its origin and explains why it was so astounding to see one around these parts. It normally is found around the Galapagos Islands and tropical latitudes of the eastern Pacific, the Caribbean, and in the Indian Ocean.

Red-billed tropicbirds (and their relatives, the white-tailed and red-tailed tropicbirds) are birds of the open ocean. As do other pelagic seabirds, they only come in to land when it is time to produce and raise young. They are a long-lived species (a record exists of one red-tailed tropicbird living 28 1/2 years) that lays only one egg per nesting attempt. They may nest year-round, thus producing two young per year (if everything goes well).

These birds are striking. Stark white plumage is offset by black wingtips, a black eye stripe, fine, black barring over their back feathers, and a shocking red beak. In addition, adult birds have long central tail feather “streamers” that can grow to almost two feet in length. Their wingspans can measure more than three feet.

Imagine seeing one up close, as those on the Barbara Frost did that day. Captain Andy Patterson reported “we had excellent looks at the bird flying alongside the boat,” and others, writing on a birding mail-list, described the bird circling both the boat and the island several times.

Although Machias Seal Island is not far off the Maine coast, it is actually part of Canada. David Christie, secretary of the New Brunswick Bird Records Committee, reports this sighting is the first authenticated record for Canada. Maine already has a record of a red-billed tropicbird, at Mount Desert Rock in August of 1986.

The question now is, will the bird stay or go? And if it leaves, where will it go?

Judy Walker, staff naturalist at Maine Audubon’s Gilsland Farm Center, in Falmouth, says people in Maine should be on the lookout.

“If it’s going south, it’s got to go through Maine somehow. It’s possible the bird could show up somewhere such as in Casco Bay.” Chrisite added, “It also could be that this adult-plumaged bird is a widely wandering failed breeder or non-breeder that has not been displaced by bad weather.

“If carried off-course by winds the bird may head back whence it came and quickly disappear from the Gulf of Maine, but if it’s been in full control of its travels it might linger for some time.”

As of this writing, the bird was also spotted at Seal Island National Wildlife Refuge in outer Penobscot Bay.

Speculation continues to abound as to what brought the bird here in the first place. In the past, white-tailed tropicbirds (which live relatively closer – around Bermuda – than the red-billed) have shown up as far north as Nova Scotia after the passage of hurricanes. It’s possible this bird was blown off-course by recent storms, although Walker questions this since they are known to be such strong fliers.

“Who knows?” Walker said. “Poor navigational skills? To me, that’s one of the best mysteries of the whole thing.”

Poor navigational skills or not, Judy Ettenhofer was just glad to see what is likely a once-in-a-lifetime bird for her. Her surprise was still palpable when I spoke with her.

“And we had been thrilled just to see the puffins!”

NEWS bird columnist Chris Corio can be reached at bdnsports@bangordaily

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