The e-mail I received from birding friend Ed Grew made me wish – again – that I had followed up on his tip to see some fall rarities earlier this week.

“As Paul must have told you,” he wrote, “it was quite dramatic out at the Witter Farm field yesterday. It would have made a great column for you. Perhaps you could still use it – write it up as a vicarious experience in late-fall birding?”

Since I had been slow to respond to Ed’s first sighting, and hadn’t arranged to meet him and Paul the very next day, vicarious it would have to be. Birds don’t wait around for when it would be convenient for us to go see them.

Ed had seen two sandpipers out in the field and was not able to definitively identify them. He thought they probably were pectoral sandpipers but wondered if there was a chance they could be a Eurasian species of shorebird known as a “Ruff.”

The former, while not a breeder in the states, is a possibility to see during their migration from their high Arctic breeding grounds to South America. The latter would be a bit more unusual to see, as they’d be far from any normal migratory path (in fact they’d be in the wrong hemisphere).

So Ed put in a call to Maine Audubon’s Judy Markowsky, and he, Judy, and Paul went out there the very next morning.

They eventually confirmed that the birds were, in fact, pectoral sandpipers, but that was not the highlight of the morning. That occurred when a merlin attempted to make a breakfast out of the sandpipers.

Ed recalled flushing one sandpiper from the grass, “and then I saw two birds fly by, which I thought were the two pectorals I had seen Sunday and Monday. However, one could have been the merlin, which I didn’t recognize at the speed they were flying.”

Paul recalled a short, dizzying aerial chase that followed, after which one of the sandpipers circled above the spectators before plunging back into the grass and disappearing. As the bird had passed overhead, Paul was able to make a positive identification by noting the clear demarcation of the bird’s dark feathers against its stark white breast feathers. According to field guides, this is the definitive clue, and probably what earned this bird its name.

But the excitement wasn’t over yet.

As the trio approached the area into which the sandpiper had disappeared, Paul saw the merlin come in low, flying the length of a shallow dip in the ground between two small hills – “like a fighter plane beginning its strafing run,” he recalled. As the merlin crested the hill, a few dozen robins exploded from the grass beneath it, rocketing toward the protective cover of a group of pine trees. The merlin gave chase, and another exciting air show took place. The merlin, however, was again unsuccessful in securing a meal for itself. It alighted atop the tallest pine in the stand where the robins were hiding – probably hoping to surprise its prey once they ventured from cover.

Yes, this is vicarious birding at its best.

BDN bird columnist Chris Corio can be reached at bdnsports@bangordailynews.net