A Vagrant Wheatear on the Connecticut River Island Sandbar

This was not a New England mountaintop, but the sky was nearly as big. To each side of the wide river tall trees loomed along the banks, intruding on the horizon, and hiding the distant hills. To the north and up the river the tops of several buildings poked their foreign noses barely above the trees. It was the tiny skyline of Springfield.

To the south was a truly alien landscape, a city of skeletons rising silently in the distance, perhaps a graveyard of spaceships left behind by visitors to our sleepy planet. It was actually an 'amusement' park, where thousands of human bodies suffered agonies of torture, standing hours in long lines until allowed to undergo an instant of thrilling pain.

The river and the brisk wind were giving my body a bit of a natural thrill as I waded through the water, thigh deep and straining against the waves. It was in fact quite exhilarating, and the goal was just ahead, an island in the middle of the Connecticut River.

The night before three of us had stood on the shore and trained our telescopes on the sandy parts of the island, hoping in vain to see a northern wheatear. This is a thrush-like landbird that raises its young on the very northern edge of this continent, but then uniquely migrates to the tropical parts of two other continents, Asia and Africa.

One of these birds had missed its aim and traveled from Alaska or Greenland to this island sandbar, and someone searching for more common migrants had found it. The river level had been high all summer, so when it had finally dropped a bit and exposed some muddy sand, this island was a place to find such visitors on their way south from the Arctic.

I decided to make another try the next morning, but was not hopeful as I waded into shallower water and approached the island. The older, main part of the island was just downriver, covered with tall trees. Upriver a bare sandspit stretched away, dotted with lounging gulls.

The bird had been seen in this middle section of the island, walking between the thickets of willow trees that had taken root in the drier sand and grown to human height. There was only a single tame least sandpiper, staying practically underfoot.

The sandpiper was a bird that had a more normal migration route, nesting on the Arctic tundra, but traveling in huge numbers to warmer winter shores in America. Often, we see 20 or 30 of these little beach birds on this island flat. This one didn't want to fly, but scurried into the willows and out again at the water's edge.

When the wheatear visits us, it comes alone, and only 40 or so have ever been reported before anywhere in Massachusetts, all but two right on the shoreline beaches. This bird was the third one here in western Massachusetts, and all of these have been found in mostly open habitat near water.

The wheatear has a gray back with dark wings and face mask. It is dull white underneath, but its rump and tail are distinctive. In fact, its name is thought to derive from the bright white rump and upper tail. The 'wheat' is a form of the word "white' and the 'ear' is a very old slang term for a person's butt.

Later that afternoon, some friends also walked out to the island and found an even rarer open country bird called a Sprague's pipit. It was another testament to the attraction of this special place in the river between Agawam and Longmeadow. I found neither bird, but walking back to shore through the warm, clear river water I was still cheered by the exotic aura of this miniature wilderness.

A spirit whispered in my ear, telling me to look up, and there was a peregrine falcon, circling over the river bank, leisurely searching for a meal. I stopped and drank it all in, the sky, the river, the breeze, and the falcon, more thrilled by these and the whispering spirit than by any gut-wrenching ride in a mechanical monster.

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