Boreal Chickadee

On this day in 1913, Charles R. Sleight collected a Boreal Chickadee of the hudsonicus race in Ramsey, Bergen County (Fables 1955, Miller 1920). The specimen currently resides in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History.

Boreal Chickadee is one of those species that has vanished from NJ in recent history. At one time, it could be counted as a winter irruptive like Evening and Pine Grosbeaks, Red-breasted Nuthatches, crossbills, and various other birds of the "northern but enjoying an occasional southern winter holiday" persuasion. Heck, even Black-capped Chickadee is a winter irruptive in south Jersey. There were strong flights of Boreal Chickadees in the winters of 1913-1914 and 1916-1917 (Stone 1965).

The NJBRC put Boreal Chickadee on its review list in 1996. The only report the committee has had to review since then was one from 1981 in West Milford, Passaic County, from Dave Sibley et al. The 1996 NJBRC Annual Report says, "At least two individuals present for weeks before and after this date. There were other records as well during the winter of 1980-1981 in northern New Jersey" (Crossley & Sibley 1996).

One interesting aspect of Boreal Chckadee occurrence in NJ is the subspecies involved. The 1913 record was of the hudsonicus subspecies, but birds from the 1916-1917 irruption were of the littoralis and nigricans subspecies (Fables 1955, Miller 1917). The nigricans subspecies, however, has not stood the test of time, since it is not listed in the Boreal Chickadee account in Harrap & Quinn (1995).

Witmer Stone may get the award for NJ birder optimism for his statement: "...it has, of course, not been seen at Cape May but, inasmuch as Evening Grosbeaks and Red Crossbills occurred with the Hudsonian Chickadees at Plainfield, both of which have been recorded from Cape May, its occurrence there, in some future wave of northern bird life, is not beyond the range of possibility" (Stone 1965).

Crossley, Richard, & David Sibley. 1996. New Jersey Records Committee annual report - 1996. Records of New Jersey Birds 22:94-98.
Harrap, Simon, & David Quinn. 1995. Chickadess, Tits, Nuthatches and Treecreepers. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Miller, W. DeWitt. 1917. Rare winter visitants in the vicinity of Plainfield, New Jersey. Auk 34:218-219. PDF here
Miller, W. DeWitt. 1920. The Hudsonian Chickadee in New Jersey. Auk 37:593-594. PDF here

Hoary Redpoll

On this day in 1960, a Hoary Redpoll appeared in a flock of Common Redpolls that were at a feeder in West Englewood, Bergen County. Frank B. Gill noticed the bird's paleness compared to the other birds in the flock and collected it. The bird was subsequently identified as a Hoary Redpoll. The specimen is now at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology (Gill 1961).

Hoary Redpoll is one of the rarer vagrants to New Jersey. This northern species occasionally moves south with irruptions of Common Redpolls, but many Hoary Redpolls do not come as far south as New Jersey. Adding to the difficulty of finding a Hoary Redpoll in NJ are identification issues. Redpolls of both species are variably marked, and sorting out which is which can be an exercise in frustration, even for those with previous redpoll experience (Czaplak 1995).

There are only two other accepted records for NJ; one from Plainfield, Union County, in 1974, and one from Rockaway, Morris County, in 1994 (Hanson 2005).

Czaplak, Dave. 1995. Identifying Common and Hoary Redpolls in Winter. Birding 27:446-457.
Gill, Frank B. 1961. A Hoary Redpoll Specimen for New Jersey. Wilson Bulletin 73:388-389. PDF here

Barnacle Goose

On this day in 1926, George Hix found a Barnacle Goose at Overpeck Creek in Bergen County. "Over a score" of others saw the goose; on 21 March 1926, the unlucky bird was collected (Cruickshank 1942). For a time, the specimen was thought to be lost, but it has resurfaced in the collection of the US National Museum (Hanson 2005). The bird was thought to be unusually tame, which cast an added measure of doubt on the bird's origin.

Welcome to the contentious world of the Barnacle Goose, the goose that birders love to hate. Although it shows a marked pattern of occurrence similar to what one would expect from genuine vagrant waterfowl, it is also kept in captivity. On the third hand, Eurasian Wigeons and Tufted Ducks are also kept in captivity; the Barnacle Goose happens to be the species that has had the "escape" term stick to it like glue. One reason for this is the existence of a notorious family of Barnacle Geese that were released by a waterfowl collector on White Rock Island in Nova Scotia and then proceeded to turn up in various places in the Northeast as they migrated (including NJ).

It has long been birding conventional wisdom that any birder who counted a Barnacle Goose on his or her list was no better than someone counting known exotics. Now, however, the pendulum seems to be swinging back a bit. Wild goose populations have exploded recently; the Barnacle Goose is but one of several species currently enjoying increased numbers. The winter of 2001-2002 saw a positive "flight" of Barnacles across the Northeast, although NJ got only one record from this influx. The Massachusetts Avian Records Committee (MARC), when considering a record of a bird from this flight, voted to add the species to the state list without qualifiers about origin (Rines 2003).

I could go on and on about Barnacle Geese (and did, in Hanson 2004-2005). The deeper one looks, the more interesting the quirks of conventional wisdom get. Tameness, it turns out, has been used not only to argue against the wild origin of Barnacle Geese, but FOR it as well (Tufts 1986). There is nothing wrong with taking a conservative attitude toward waterfowl origin, but if that is the case, why do we tend to doubt Barnacles but give Eurasian Wigeons a free pass? With little hard knowledge apart from known banded European birds (one of which was shot in Ontario in fall 2005), it is possible for two intelligent people to look at the same evidence and come to opposite conclusions about a Barnacle Goose's origin.

To conclude on a regrettably personal note, the sketch above is of a Barnacle Goose I found at NJ Audubon's Plainsboro Preserve on a day when I was really in the neighborhood to attend to some business before moving to Plainsboro. This goose was one bird in a winter with a good bunch of NJ Barnacle Goose records. I already had a legitimate Barnacle Goose on my life list from southern Finland in 1999. I'd seen another in eastern Pennsylvania in 2000. But I have to admit that such a good find on such an opportune day went on my personal NJ state list. Ever since then, I've had a weakness for Barnacle Geese. But that doesn't mean you have to count them if you don't want to.

Hanson, Jennifer W. 2004-2005. Status of the Barnacle Goose (Branta leucopsis) in New Jersey. New Jersey Birds 30:86-92.
Rines, Marjorie. 2003. Seventh Annual Report of the Massachusetts Avian Records Committee. Bird Observer 31:95-103. link here
Tufts, Robie W. 1986. Birds of Nova Scotia. 3rd edition. Nimbus Publishing/Nova Scotia Museum, Halifax, NS. link here

American Three-toed Woodpecker

On this day in 1918, Charles Johnston found an American Three-toed Woodpecker near West Englewood in Bergen County. The bird was a male and was carefully described by Johnston, who had previous experience with the species. A few days later, what was probably the same bird was seen by J. M. Johnson's sister; Johnson was a local birder but his sister remains nameless (at least, in the account of the record found in Griscom 1923).

Griscom noted that the winter of 1918 was "the severest winter on record" and gave plenty of bona fides for the observation and Johnston's abilities. However, he placed the woodpecker in the "Hypothetical" section of Birds of the New York City Region, saying, "...the writer feels that a specimen had better be obtained, before so unlikely a species is definitely recorded from New Jersey." This was a sign of the times; although Griscom was an early proponent of sight records, he believed that some birds were too unusual to let their documented occurrence rest only on a sighting.

Were Griscom alive today, he would still be waiting for that specimen. This 1918 observation is the only accepted record of American Three-toed Woodpecker for NJ, and there have only been a couple of other reports of the species in the state (Halliwell et al. 2000).