Wild Goose Chase, Part 2: The Lon Guisland Express

Happy Thanksgiving! ¿Todavía ama pavo?

I hope your Thanksgiving was well spent with favored friends, family, or both, or neither if that's how you roll, and at the very least it was pleasantly calorie-laden.

Our Thanksgiving weekend has been extremely busy, and not due to the usual preparation of feasts, or shopping expeditions, or finally thinking about taking down last year's Christmas lights from the front porch before you realize that it's time to put them up again and feeling clever at your efficiency. Or whatever normal people do.

First, where are we? We spent the past few days in a wonderful place, Provincetown, MA, where the Mayflower landed in 1620, on the very far tip of Cape Cod:

The key thing to note about P-town, and the reason we made it our destination, is that it is located about 20 miles offshore of most of the rest of the continent, so it's a good place to look for ocean birds that you might otherwise require a boat trip to find.

[Aside: If you're from the Left Coast or geographically challenged, other key things you might notice include:

1. There are a lot of famous places all crowded together near Boston, like Salem and Plymouth. That's kind of cool.
2. I've heard of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. And those places are islands? Seriously?
3. But Rhode Island isn't really an island? That's messed up.]

So, our last three days have involved rising around 6AM East Coast time, so we could get outside by dawn, trekking to key locations, then poring over flocks of birds for ones we need:

Most all the birds were a few hundred yards offshore, so most of our "birding" was hunching over a scope, with one eye closed, peering at the mass while waiting for the waves to move them up and down for better visibility.

The number of new birds we saw for all this effort? Exactly zero. So while we had a great time on the Cape, the time was a bust as far as birds go. 

So, yesterday we heard about this goose... Yes, another rare visitor to North America, and this Barnacle Goose had been reported for a couple days in a row on Long Island, NY. The site was about 4.5 hours south of Cape Cod with a ferry ride (ANOTHER BOAT!), not a terrible distance given what we've done so far, and we've never been to Long Island, so...one hotel and one ferry reservation later, we were headed south, to Greenport, NY.

Rising at our usual pre-dawn time this morning, we guessed at which of two reported sites it might be at, and started scanning through hundreds of Canada Geese again...and voila!

Mr. Goose is the black and white bird right in the middle.

Woohoo! And off we went, to catch our ferry back to Connecticut.

[Aside #2: We wondered what came first, the Goose Barnacle or the Barnacle Goose, why their names were so similar. Long story short, the bird was named first, and in the 1100's somebody claimed they grew from driftwood and matured underwater during the winters in the form of a critter they named the Goose Barnacle. And we thought drugs were a problem TODAY...]

After striking out on a couple of other locations, we decided to chase a nearby report of a Black-headed Gull. If we didn't it, we would have to trek hundreds of miles south and east to Maryland or New Jersey, or scratch it off the year list, so we really wanted this one. Rain was starting to fall, but gulls live on water, so they wouldn't mind a sprinkle, right?

In eBird, the close bird was reported in two places, one being in the center of the town of Westerly, RI, and the other was about 5 miles away on the coast at a state beach. Fortunately, the town report had a comment: "Seen near the main parking lot with other gulls".  Google Earth views of Westerly didn't show anything we would call a "main parking lot", so we guessed that it was mismarked and headed for the state beach. (Doing a Big Year does require more than a little detective work!)

Arriving at Misquamicut State Beach as the rain picked up, we found this:

Why do gulls like to stand in parking lots? Are they just fascinated by cars? Do they secretly aspire to become valets? 

And a quick scan of the flock found this!

The Erudite Birder will acknowledge the deep red bill and legs, light back, black spot in front of and behind the eye, and dark wingtips, all hallmarks of a Black-headed Gull. The rest of you will be asking, "Why doesn't it have a black head?" To which I will say, "To make blog readers ask questions!"

Now, after having visited four states in one day, we're settled near Boston, getting ready for one more shot at some of those coastal birds tomorrow. 

Phew!