One for the list: Birders relish first-of-its-kind sighting in Scarborough

Birdwatchers on the Eastern Trail in Scarborough Marsh stand enthralled by the sight of a rare Little Egret, seen last week for the first time in Maine. Shown, from left, are Liz Southworth, Denny Abbott, Davis Finch, Doug Hitchcox and Frank Mitchell. Photo by Duke Harrington

A Little Egret

SCARBOROUGH — June 29 started out as just another Wednesday for Doug Hitchcox, leading a small group of birdwatchers on an early-morning walking tour of the Scarborough Marsh.

A committed birder, the recent UMO grad had spent the previous evening chasing down reports of a South American Fork-tailed Flycatcher in Bristol. He’d come up empty on that trip, so, this morning, at the head of a small group of four, he hoped to spot something else fairly rare – maybe the bright-orange face of a Nelson’s Sparrow, or the soft, purple S-shape of a Tricolored Heron.

The Hollis resident had to be seated at a telecommuting station by 9 a.m. for his day job – an internship at an insurance company, earned with his finance degree – so he was working fast, scanning back and forth across the salty pannes. Then, with the sun and the tide rising in time, Hitchcox saw something that made him take a step back from his telescope lens in disbelief.

A blink, a quick mental flip though the pages of birding books long ago committed to memory, and another furtive glance. He couldn’t believe it. He had to ask somebody else to take a peek.

What they saw looked like the common Snowy Egret. But, when the wind was just right, they could clearly make out the bird’s nuptial plumage – two “amazing, long” feathers streaming in the breeze from the nape of its neck.

Sure enough, what Hitchcox had seen was a Little Egret, an “old-world” bird normally found far across the pond, in Europe, Africa and Asia.

The nine-member Maine Rare Birds Committee, founded in 2005, lists 431 “positively documented” species of birds sighted within the Pine Tree State.

As of June 29, make it 432.

“This will be admitted to the state list immediately, without any quarrel, or argument,” said committee member Davis Finch. “It’s a slam dunk.”

Finch, venerated among Maine birders, actually lives in New Hampshire. He drove 90 minutes to stand next to Hitchcox for a view of a species he’d already seen in his own state. Why? The answer was simple, and echoed throughout the days as bird-watchers continued to trot down the Eastern Trail to take up spots next to Hitchcox’ telescope stand.

“This is a big deal,” said Finch. “I’ve seen it other places, but seeing it in Maine is a particular pleasure.”

For his part, Hitchcox could hardly stop beaming, even eight hours after his find.

“Really,” he said, “this has been one of the best days of my life.”

“Everyone’s dream is always to find a rare bird,” said Hitchcox. “Birders, we chase birds all over the state – all over the country – but usually ones that are found by other people. So, to find your own, especially this one that’s a state record, that’s pretty special.”

Hitchcox spent the first hour after his discovery confirming his find. There was no doubt, the two long plumes were the same once highly prized for lady’s hats, a mania which, in the 19^th century, decimated the Egret population. So many birds were culled, in fact, that its plight helped prompt the creation of Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in 1889.

Those feathers molt away after mating season. That’s about the time, in late summer, when the grey lore – or skin patches – under each eye become indistinguishable from those that form briefly on Snowy Egrets, as they enter adolescence. Had this bird been spotted a couple of months from now, it would have been practically indistinguishable from its snowy cousin.

Once he was certain of a positive match, Hitchcox wasted no time. He began to post his find on the Internet, thumbs speeding excitedly over his iPhone.

The word took flight, so to speak, and soon, binocular-wielding bird-watchers were racing to the marsh from several states away, each looking to cross a species off his or her personal “life list.”

“I was out doing my ‘long walk’ and I was like, ‘Damn!” said Liz Southworth, a biologist at Boston University, who got the news on her mobile device. “I ran home four-and-a-half miles. I was almost ready to keel over by the time I got back. But I grabbed a water, took some food, grabbed my scope and I was out the door.”

“I’ve seen the Little Egret in Europe,” said Southworth, “but I don’t have it on my North American list. It’s the thrill of the hunt. Life is measured in these rarities, I think.”

Southworth caught the birding bug during her honeymoon in Ecuador, 17 years ago. A tour guide loaned her his high-powered binoculars and, as she tells it, “that was all she wrote.”

Others grow into the sport more slowly, like Rob Speirs, of Cumberland, who took an interest in the wildlife he spotted during sporting trips.

“If you’re outdoors a lot, it’s fun to be aware of what you’re seeing, at least for me,” he explains. “It makes it a lot more interesting.”

Many more, however, get started like Frank Mitchell, of Wells – with a backyard bird feeder, like the one given to him 23 years ago. From wondering what he was looking at in his back yard, Mitchell’s interest built a slow burn to feathered fanaticism. Today, he keeps lists of the birds he’s seen in four states where he’s lived – Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York – as well as a “life-list” of all species seen anywhere in the American Birding Association area, which includes all of North America above the U.S./Mexico line.

Today, Mitchell has crossed 425 species off his ABA list. The longer one keeps track of birds, however, the harder it becomes to rack up new additions. That, says Speirs, is what brings birders sprinting to a find like last week’s.

“This is huge,” he said, as he focused his lens on the Little Egret. “To see this and check it off, it’s a bird you may never see here again. You really feel like you’ve hit a home run.”

But Mitchell kept searching, unsatisfied with his sightlines.

“Most birders are extremely critical of their own lists,” he explained in shallow breaths, so as to not unsteady his view while he waited for a clear impression of the nuptial plumes.

“When I first started,” said Mitchell, “if I saw a bird from 300 yards away and some birder said it’s a such-and-such, I’d be, ‘Oh great, I got that,’ and cross it off my list.

“These days, I’m a little more sophisticated,” says Mitchell. “I want to be sure I know what I’m seeing. If these 10 guys standing next to me start saying, ‘I got it,’ that doesn’t mean I’ve got it. I have to identify it myself.”

For Hitchcox, the person who will get credit for identifying Maine’s Little Egret first, the thrill of seeing such a rare bird is greater still. The smile fades from his face only momentarily, when he contemplates the bird’s fate.

The fact is, he explains, the Little Egret doesn’t really belong here. It’s what’s known as a “vagrant.” That’s a bird, usually one on its first homeward migration, who gets separated from the flock. Most likely, says Hitchcox, his Egret was born in Northern Europe last year, migrated to Africa and, when returning this spring, got caught in the trade winds and blown to Brazil. From there, instinct kicked in and it just kept flapping north until in ended up in Maine, even though it really wants to be somewhere just north of Spain.

It’s the avian equivalent of that proverbial wrong turn at Albuquerque.

“Fingers crossed, I hope he can fly back across the ocean,” says Hitchcox, “but honesty, most vagrants like this, it probably wont survive.”

And we’re unlikely to ever find out the fate of this one bird, says Southworth. Once it loses its plumes, and once the young Snowy Egrets match its coloring, it will simply fade into the crowd.

But Finch, who’s spied nearly 90 percent of the birds documented on Maine soil, says this Egret may be less vagrant that vanguard. The Little Egret won’t interbreed with Snowy Egrets, he says, so it probably has reached its own evolutionary dead end. However, whether accidentally or on purpose, it’s hardly the first Little Egret to wander off the beaten path. Most experts agree the Little Egret is now actively “colonizing the New World.”

It was first spotted in the Western hemisphere in 1954, on Barbados. By 1994, it was confirmed to be breeding there, while certain of its numbers continued to push northward.

“They started appearing on the Eastern seaboard [of the United States] about 30 years ago,” says Finch. “There have been many sightings in Quebec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Massachusetts, Long Island, New Hampshire and now Maine. But all have been sightings of individual birds. They are only suspected of breeding in Barbados and Tobago.

“A very similar thing happened with Cattle Egret a generation ago,” says Finch. “It, too, colonized the new world from Africa. So, people will see more and more of these, given time.”

Perhaps coincidentally, at about the same time the Little Egret began to appear in the Caribbean, it also started a push into Northern Europe. In 2006, four chicks hatched in London for the first time in living memory.

The Internet is thick with articles from British newspapers blaming the recent influx of Little Egrets on global warming. That may be true. However, it’s worth remembering that Egrets once populated England in numbers sufficient for 1,000 of them to line the celebrated enthronement table of George Neville as Archbishop of York in 1465.

They were harvested to near extinction by milliners mad for their decorative appeal, so the British invasion, at least, may be a simple recovery.

Either way, its appearance in Scarborough is something special, a fact attested to by the iPhone that buzzed more-or-less nonstop during a marsh-side interview with Hitchcox.

“Do you mind if I take this,” he asked, sheepishly, trying hard to suppress a smile. “This is what happens when people know you’ve seen a rare bird. It’s non-stop.”

Finch credits Hitchcox for standing by his find for more than eight hours, allowing his fellow aficionados a “definitive view” by saving each the trouble of having to re-find it.

Hitchcox admits he never did make it to work that day. Also, because capturing a picture is so critical to the modern identification process – despite a code of honor among birders, a first-find must be indisputable – he did wander briefly out into the marsh for a better view.

“I may have broken a few laws,” he says, as others crowded in to pear over his shoulder and at his elbow for a glimpse of his digital camera screen.

“But, I’ll pay the fines,” said Hitchcox, with a grin. “This is the coolest thing ever.”