For
many birders living in the US, this must have been the bird of the
year. We were in Arizona when the first news filtered through of this
remarkable find. Few could have predicted that
this Old World falcon would have made it to the Eastern US, and what’s
more, it stayed around to be admired by thousands of visitors.
We drove from Keene on our first available full day and
had a smooth journey to Falmouth, MA, and then an equally smooth
ferry ride across to Martha’s Vineyard. The local taxi drivers on the
Vineyard were primed and ready, and within minutes about seven of us were bundled into a van and dropped off at Katama airport.
Shortly afterwards, Simon Perkins spotted the falcon in the middle of
the airfield perched on a sign, and apparently being missed by a
gathering of birders on the opposite side of the airfield!
The bird remained in view for the next three or four hours,
disappearing for short periods, or occasionally engaging in high
soaring flights over the airfield. It always felt like the falcon was
flexing his muscles, getting ready for the next stage of a remarkable
journey, and I was given the impression that it could depart at any
point. The last sighting was made on August 24th, just
two days after our visit, and it was never seen again anywhere in the
US.
This observation will represent the first North American record of
Red-footed Falcon if it’s found to be acceptable. I don’t think that
the identification could be in doubt, but the AOU will no doubt look into the
greatest details of how such a bird could be unearthed on the Atlantic coast of America.
The
falcon was found on August 8th by Vernon Laux, and identified from
photographs on August 10th by Jeremiah Trimble. Red-footed Falcon is a
long distance migrant, breeding from Central
Europe, east into Central Asia, and wintering in Africa. It strays
annually to the UK (where I’ve seen three!), and there are four
accepted records from Iceland. Despite this known pattern of vagrancy,
I still find the Massachusetts record absolutely astonishing!
Included below are several images from August 22nd, and a
shot of a closer Red-footed Falcon (also a first-summer male), from
Estonia
in May 2003. My experience of this species runs into thousands of
birds, and most of those have been seen on autumn migration in Northern
Israel where I’ve taken part in numerous migration surveys.
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