KEEPING COMPANY WITH MIGRANTS AND VAGRANTS ISN'T NECESSARILY BAD

Migrants and vagrants are what keep birders on their toes and send them on frantic, unplanned chases. Migrants and vagrants are just what their names imply, only they don't panhandle from the general populace, nor do they give the areas they frequent a bad name.

Migrants are birds on their way to and from their wintering and summering grounds. They follow fairly regular and predictable paths and are eagerly awaited each spring and fall by their admirers. Vagrants, on the other hand, are birds that turn up in places other than their ordinary haunts. The Ross's Gull that appeared in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1973 was perhaps the most heralded of all U. S. vagrants, being featured on the cover of Time magazine. Uncommon whether migrating off the coast of Alaska or in northern Europe, it was the first of its kind ever to be seen in the Lower 48 states.

Massachusetts is particularly favored by vagrant birds, and Martha’s Vineyard gets its share of birds from other continents. A western reef heron from Africa, a white-tailed tropicbird from the Caribbean, a Eurasian curlew, and a Eurasian lapwing come quickly to mind.

Plum Island, north of Boston almost on the New Hampshire line, attracts rarities, too. Out-of-place shorebirds, swallows, warblers – you name it – turn up there. As I write, a fork-tailed flycatcher from Latin America has been charming birders there for more than a week, and in the past, a couple of these handsome wanderers have appeared in Chatham, which situated as it is at the elbow of the Cape offers many vagrants much needed sanctuary.

No one can say for sure why birds like these end up so far from their usual places of business, but two factors are believed to be responsible. One is a young bird's inexperience. The other is strong and often unusual wind patterns that pick up a bird in one place and deposit it in another.

Not all vagrants, by any means, are exotic birds from another continent. Instead, most are birds from another part of the country that are seldom found far away from their normal range. Birds from our American West occasionally show up in the East, causing a great deal of excitement, especially among those of us who keep lists of birds we have seen in our own state. Nothing pleases a Massachusetts birder more than being able to add a bird to his state list that belongs thousands of miles away!

Cape Cod has a great record for attracting western avian oddities, such as the western kingbirds that show up almost every year at Fort Hill, Eastham, the rock wren discovered in Chatham nearly ten years ago, and the rufous hummingbird found in Sandwich in 1995. Perhaps you remember the crowd-pleasing wood stork from Florida or Louisiana that stayed in Centerville for several weeks in the late fall of 1994. Or maybe you heard about the Mississippi kite that favored Orleans? Certainly you saw the front-page photos of the white pelicans that hung out in Hyannis for weeks in the winter of 1996.

In 1995, a small flock of mountain bluebirds lured birders to Truro, and in 1997 a Townsend’s solitaire, a bird of our far western mountains, was found feeding on berries in West Barnstable. It drew birders from all corners of the state. Another westerner, a yellow-headed blackbird, hung out at Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Sanctuary’s feeders this past summer.

Some of Massachusetts’ most auspicious avian visitors come from the far north and often make the front page of local newspapers because of the huge crowds of birders they attract. The spectators who oohed and aahed over the great grey (correct spelling) owl in Rowley and the boreal owl which spent almost the entire winter of 1996-97 on Street in Boston could almost have filled one of our state’s sports arenas. For the past few winters, Bohemian waxwings, residents of the far north and close cousins to our well-known cedar waxwings, have been making forays out on to the Cape, where they find the bear berries quite to their liking. A lack of food to the north is the usual explanation for the appearances of these birds.

Whatever the reason, migrants and vagrants prove to be great company to keep, adding much interest to the sport of birdwatching. Telephone and Internet"hot lines" across the country keep birders connected and informed of these unusual occurrences because there's no telling what bird may turn up where. Can you imagine the disbelief on the part of the local people who discovered a flamingo in Newfoundland?