Ultra-rare bird spotted over Newfoundland

Bruce Mactavish

Published on July 23, 2016

The anything but common Common Swift spotted over Cape Race

In birding, like in any other sport, they say you have to be good to be lucky but sometimes nothing explains a great event other than pure simple luck.

Due to a compounding series of events Ken Knowles and I were driving through Portugal Cove South on the southern Avalon Peninsula at 1 p.m. on a Tuesday. There is a dead zone for cellphone reception between Renews and Portugal Cove South. The smartphoned chimed as we arrived back into the land of cellphones.

In the time it took to drive from Renews to Portugal Cove South a storm of emails and texts had been flying back and forth between birders in response to a photograph of a bird that Cliff Doran had taken at the Cape Race lighthouse. We checked out the picture on Cliff’s Facebook page.

It was a swift. A somewhat blurry photo with the tail cut off.

Swifts are worldwide group of birds built for flying at breakneck speeds in search of airborne insects. They tend to hunt high above swallows and other fly-catching birds.

There are no swifts native to Newfoundland and Labrador.

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Chicks starving in Newfoundland as warmer sea water imperils food supply for birds

Northern gannets are good parents. The seabirds mate for life, lay just one egg a year and dutifully feed and protect their chick until it leaves the nest in September.

But this year, thousands of gannets on Newfoundland’s south coast — on North America’s most southern gannet colony — abandoned their nests during the last few weeks of August. Many of the hungry chicks soon began tumbling off rocky cliffs and into the sea.

“It’s shocking,” says Bill Montevecchi, a biologist at Memorial University who describes it as one of the strangest events he has witnessed in his more than 30 years studying the seabirds. But, then, so too was the sea water near the colony that was several degrees Celsius above normal in August and appears to have triggered the abandonment.

It could be a harbinger of things, say scientists at the Audubon Society who have made the bold prediction that climate change could “imperil” nearly half of North America’s birds by the end of the century.

“It’s not so much that the adults are just going to die, but that they’ll not be able to successfully raise enough young to replace themselves over succeeding generations,” says biologist Gary Langham, lead author of Audubon’s grim forecast.

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Rare Bird Spotted in Torbay

Birdwatchers in Torbay had a treat this week when a rare Ross's Gull was spotted. Bird expert Bill Montevecchi says the seagull is recognizable for its pink colour, making it perhaps the flashiest gull on the water. Montevecchi says the bird, along with many European golden plovers, have made it here because they have been blown off-course by strong northerly and northeasterly winds.

He says birders looking for rarities are watching the weather. He says these winds are the most interesting because that's how European birds wind up here.

Montevecchi says for birds blown off course, Newfoundland is a welcome rest for them before they get back on their way.

He says a lot of the birds probably don't make it, and perish in the ocean. But for the ones who do, they get a chance to refuel. He says they most likely do get back on track after they rest.

http://www.vocm.com/newsarticle.asp?mn=2&id=45795&latest=1

A rare duck for the chasing

Bruce Mactavish Published on April 12, 2014

Last week, while checking my emails after supper, I came to one that I should have noticed first. It was from Tony Dunne in Renews. The subject line read “Rare bird in Renews.” When I opened it I nearly fell off my chair.

It showed pictures of a duck on the beach at Renews. It was clearly a common shelduck. This is a European species of duck, common in coastal estuaries in Europe. Recently it has spread to Iceland and is now becoming established as a nesting bird there.

It was on our radar as a potential vagrant to Newfoundland. In fact, one appeared briefly at Quidi Vidi Lake on Nov. 17, 2009. It was a feature of a Winging It column back then. The surprise appearance of such an unusual bird was tempered by the unknown fact about the origin of the bird.

Did it fly to Newfoundland aided by northeast winds prior to its appearance at Quidi Vidi Lake or could it have been an escape from someone’s aviary in Newfoundland? Common shelduck is widely kept by waterfowl hobbyists in North America. If you have the proper permits, anyone can buy their own shelducks. While hobbyists who keep exotic waterfowl certainly do what they can to hold on to their valuable birds, birds can fly the coop.

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