Then she showed me the pictures:

Dorsal view of the avian visitor.

Wow!  This was a good bird.  One that I had only seen once on a whirlwind trip to Manitoba!  What was it doing 40 miles off of the Atlantic coast in June?  The next pic sealed the deal on the identification.

Check out that eye ring and necklace!!

If you haven’t guessed by now, the bird is a Sprague’s Pipit.  Lauren was confident of the identification before she showed me the images, but it was a life bird for her, so she wanted my unbiased opinion.  Needless to say, I was excited to give it.  I passed the pic along to my buddies Jeff Gordon and Forrest Rowland for their viewing pleasure, then decided I’d better get a post up to document this find.  We believe this bird was found in North Carolina waters (it was south of the Virginia land border), but perhaps someone more versed in pelagic birding can verify that.  The exact location is plotted on the map below.

Location of Sprague's Pipit Sighting (June 2, 2009)

Here is Lauren’s email description of the encounter:

The bird buzzed the ship a few times but I didn’t have my bins around my neck and it kept disappearing.  It was calling as it flew, a two-noted call that stumped me utterly.  Finally got the bins and got a good dike-style look when it flew low athwart the main deck at 1139, and managed to id it as a Pipit, which is when I recorded the location.  Later as it became more tired it started landing on the ship more and observation/photography became more of a possibility.  It was quite spooky at first, though, and it took some time to get a good photo; I had the crew on mission to photograph the head/breast as I became more convinced that it was a Spragues (dorsal view was a lot easier to get when it landed in the channels).  Eventually became very ‘tame,’ got good looks and decent pics.

According to the online North Carolina state list, there are more than 2 previous records of the species from the state.  I suspect though, that there are few, if any records of this species at offshore locations in the Atlantic.  Lauren will be submitting the record to the appropriate records committee when she gets ashore.  I’d like to thank her for a great find and for allowing me to share it with all of you!

In coming weeks, I’ll be adding more content to the rest of the site, and cleaning things up a bit as I get better with the software.  In the meantime, excuse the dust, and enjoy the wildlife!