Newport-area birders help Massachusetts scientists track fast-moving whimbrel

On July 17, a biologist with Massachusetts-based Manomet Conservation Sciences contacted retired U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service manager Roy Lowe of Waldport regarding a satellite tagged Hudsonian whimbrel that according to tracking data was using the beaches from Otter Rock to Newport and Yaquina Bay. The biologist asked if someone might be able to make an observation, perhaps take a photo and report on the bird.

Unable to do that himself, Lowe posted a “be on the lookout” request on Oregon and Lincoln County birders websites. Approximately 26 hours later, Amy Summerfelt of Newport located the bird — easily identified by the light green colored leg band with the code FM3 on it — on the beach just north of Yaquina Head.

FM3 was captured and tagged in a rice field outside Winnie, Texas on April 4, according to Manomet biologist Daniel Ruthrauff, as part of a study to better understand the way whimbrels use rice fields and crawfish ponds along the Gulf Coast each spring. On May 6 she headed north up the central flyway to the breeding grounds around the Mackenzie Delta in northwest Canada. She launched her southward migration from near Nome, Alaska on July 3, and headed straight to California, making landfall in just two days on the coast just south of Orick, Calif.

FM3 headed north to the Newport area July 13. Then, the last week of July, FM3 pulled off an unprecedented move — an apparent transcontinental flight, west to east across the middle of the country, landing southeast of New Orleans in the Mississippi Delta.