Birders spy tropicbird off coast of Maine

Thirty eager birders boarded Maine Audubon’s boat, the Puffin V, at Hog Island last week, in hopes of seeing a rare bird off the Maine coast. The bird had been reported on and off for six weeks by biologists studying puffins and other coastal birds on Matinicus Rock. Common in the tropics, this bird almost never appears in the Gulf of Maine.

The weather forecast was for rain and thunderstorms.

Avid birder and Audubon field trip leader Bob Duchesne and I left the Bangor area at 5:45 a.m., hoping that the bad weather would hold off. We had to be at Maine Audubon’s dock near Hog Island off Bremen by 8:30 a.m.

At Hog Island, Maine Audubon offers many wonderful classes and camps in Kayaking Along the Maine Coast, Youth Camp to learn land stewardship, field ornithology and much more.

Our destination from Hog Island was Matinicus Rock, a massive piece of rounded granite that protrudes from the water of the Gulf of Maine, far from land. The tropicbird was last seen there.

The boat left the dock and threaded among and between many islands. The weather was foggy, and Wilson’s Storm-petrels, usually far out to sea, were flying around the islands.

An intriguing bird, they are about the size of starlings, and are thought by some ornithologists to be the most abundant bird on earth. They were everywhere, by the hundreds. The total estimate was 5,000 seen that day.

Most are out on the Gulf Stream in our summer, not in the Gulf of Maine. They nest on islands in the South Atlantic and the Antarctic Ocean in our winter.

As we watched, they often stopped to patter their tiny webbed feet on the water surface and stir up tiny insect-like animals to eat.

It’s a long trip to Matinicus Rock from Hog Island, but there were many other birds to see along the way – eagles, gannets, loons, Eider ducks, black Guillimots. As we drew near Matinicus Rock, puffins and their relatives, the razorbills, were everywhere – swimming and flying and standing on the rock.

Usually the puffins are the stars of the show, but not on this trip. These birders had one bird in mind – the red-billed tropicbird. We all watched and watched the water, the rocks, the sky, the terns and gulls swirling around in the sky.

When we went around the island, the joyful cry came out: “There’s the bird! Flying over the round rock. Over the square rock. The highest rock.”

The bird swirled back and forth over the island with terns and gulls. Finally everybody picked it out from all the other birds. A cheer rose from 30 birders.

From a distance, this bird looked white with a black mark on it wings, a black mask and a bright red bill. Two long white streamer feathers trailed from the middle of its tail. The whole bird was a yard long due to the long streamer feathers. This was one classy bird.

Peter Vickery, ornithologist and dean of Maine birders, who was on the trip, said that this bird constituted the fourth recorded sighting. However, it probably only involves two individual birds.

One was photographed back in 1986. The one we saw in 2007 was likely the same individual seen in 2005 and 2006 – although he points out that this is not proven.

Fortunately, the rain held off until we had seen the bird. Then, thunder rumbled and lightning flashed. Birders crowded happily into the small cabin, standing, swaying, holding the straphangers, and joyfully discussing this fine, rare bird.

For information on Fields Pond Audubon Center, call 989-2591.