By Andres Picon GLOBE
CORRESPONDENT AUGUST 10, 2018
Hundreds of bird enthusiasts
flocked to Biddeford, Maine, this week to get a glimpse of a hawk that has only
been seen in the United States once before.
“There’s really no precedent for
one to show up all the way up here,” said Doug Hitchcox, the staff naturalist
at the Maine Audubon.
The great black hawk was first
spotted on Monday by a woman who was vacationing in the area. She took a photo
of the bird, not knowing much about it, and posted it on Instagram. By the
middle of the week, photos of the bird had made it to the “What’s This Bird”
and “ABA Rare Bird Alert” Facebook pages, much to the delight of birders across
the country, who confirmed that it was indeed a rare great black hawk, said
Hitchcox.
The great black hawk is native to
Central and South America, with the heart of its geographic range in Brazil, so
the fact that one was seen in Maine is astonishing, Hitchcox said.
Over the course of the week,
birders from across the country migrated to Fortune Rocks Beach in Biddeford
and the surrounding area to try to see the bird, causing traffic jams and
parking spot shortages. There were birders from all over New England, as well
as some from New York who got a speeding ticket as they rushed to see the hawk,
and at least two from Arizona, Hitchcox said.
The only other time one of these
birds was seen in the United States was in April, on South Padre Island off the
coast of Texas, and “birders went nuts,” Hitchcox said.
The relatively recent sighting in
Texas, combined with photos of the two birds’ underwings, are enough to make
many birders, including Hitchcox, believe that the two birds are actually one
and the same. The unique patterns that have manifested themselves on the bird’s
feathers are identical in the photos, Hitchcox said.
The patterns “are like a
fingerprint for the bird,” Hitchcox said. “That makes it even more exciting.”
Great black hawks have black body
feathers, a white tail with one or two black bands, yellow legs, and a yellow
cere above the beak.
The area the bird roamed before
it was seen flying out to sea Thursday afternoon is near several ponds —
perfect for the coastal bird.
“It’s kind of the perfect spot
for it to be, besides being in the wrong hemisphere,” Hitchcox said.
The bird was probably born last
summer. It has not been given a name, partly because the sex is unknown, and
partly because “when there’s only one of them, it doesn’t need a name,”
Hitchcox said.
The great black hawk, a raptor,
hunts for its food. It feeds on reptiles, other small vertebrates, and large
insects. Several people saw it flying around, raiding the nests of American
robins and American goldfinches throughout the week, snatching chicks to be
devoured, Hitchcox said.
The only other bird that compares
to the great black hawk, in terms of the rarity of its sightings in Maine, is a
variegated flycatcher, a South American bird, that was seen in 1977 a couple of
miles north of where the great black hawk was seen. It was the first time such
a bird was seen in the United States. Only a couple of birders have been able
to see both birds, Hitchcox said.
Because the great black hawk
sighting is so isolated, its presence in Maine does not appear to be part of a
new trend or a change in the bird’s normal geographic range. If anything, it
simply reinforces a pattern of vagrancy among birds, Hitchcox said.
