The Curse of Viera...

My job offers me fantastic opportunities to travel and bird. When travelling across the country to the many bird festivals, local rarities are always a buzz among participants. To me, this is just a bonus... The icing on the cake, among the exciting parade of the many different local specialty species I'm lucky enough to see at these events! I'm typically very lucky when I chase one of these local rare birds, and over the last few years it seems I've been able to easily document most of these events. These aren't my best images and likely won't appear on any magazine covers, but they provide me with a digital keepsake as memory of the sighting as well as offering irrefutable evidence for local records committees and others wanting to document the occurrence of these rare birds!

Here's a handful of recent examples:

pair of Curlew Sandpipers near Cape May , NJ

just before the World Series of Birding, May 2006

Leica APO Televid 77 spotting scope & D-Lux 2 camera

immature male Rose-throated Becard
Santa Ana NWR, February 2005

adult male Tufted Duck, Vallejo, CA, Jan 2006
Leica APO Televid 77 spotting scope & D-Lux 2 camera

female Aztec Thrush , Madera Canyon, AZ, August 2006
Leica APO Televid 77 spotting scope & D-Lux 2 camera

Of course there is at least one spot where it appears my luck just doesn't work, Viera Wetlands in Brevard County, Florida. I first noticed it in November 2002, I had just led trips for the Spacecoast Bird & Wildlife Festival. I'd been there all week and had led trips to Viera, but even as I was driving out of town an odd bird was spotted. It was about 5 days before I finally stopped to see what had transpired in FL birding online and I scanned the post titles in turn. The first few read, "Violet-Green Swallow at Viera...", then switched to, "Odd swallow at Viera...", and finally came the post with images attached. I opened the images and was in shock!

I don't remember exactly what happened next, but I vaguely remember running out to the car with binocs in one hand and my young son in the other. We arrived back on the central east coast some three hours later, and pulled up to the crowd of happy birders. "We just saw the bird last a few moments ago. It will be back!...." Unfortunately they were wrong. That was the last sighting of the first and only Mangrove Swallow in the US and I missed it by minutes! This was the way the Viera curse came to be. In the years since, there were other incidents but none so dramatic as this.

Given the history, it wasn't surprising that when I decided to finally chase the female Masked Duck that had been so reliable here for over a month, that things would go wrong. On my first attempt near the end of December, I hit traffic and darkness fell about 30 minutes before my arrival. I wasn't worried though because I had to be back in Orlando two weeks later so I could try again then. Well needless to say I dipped... The bird was last seen about 10 days before my visit.

Despite my bad luck though, I always enjoy my visits to this wonderful water reclamation area. The marshes are always loaded and you are afforded wonderful views of many great birds including some of neat Florida specialties. This morning was no different with >45 species seen including: Crested Caracara, Purple Gallinule, and Limpkin among others. If you get the chance to visit the area I highly recommend it, and for those signed up for the field trips here at next week's Spacecoast Bird & Wildlife Festival, never fear I'm not leading any of the trips here! ;)

adult Red-shouldered Hawk "Florida race" (Buteo linneatus extimus) - note the grayish head and pale orange breast/belly barring as compared to other races of Red-shouldered Hawk. Viera Wetlands, FL, January 2007

co-operative Limpkin, Viera Wetlands, Jan 2007