Birds and Lists

B irdwatchers love to keep lists - lists of birds that is - birds seen in a particular state, country, island or backyard, or year lists. But the mother of all lists is the "life list" - birds you've seen in your lifetime. When you've been watching birds for 50 years you don't find a new bird every year.

The subject of this week's column was my "life" bird for 2008, and it was a shocker. The last time the species made it to the island was almost 100 years ago and it was rewarded with gunfire. There were two of them in 1909 and one now resides at the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge. The other probably became dinner as this species is known for its tasty flesh.

Some birds just go by a single name, the Osprey for instance. This one requires four words to identify it - the Greater White-fronted Goose. I'll drop the "greater" for ease in reading. As an early birder back in the 1950s I looked for these birds often because I read in Griscom and Folger's "Birds of Nantucket" about that pair shot in 1909. Why wouldn't we find them again? But alas, the species eluded me and I forgot about the possibility of their coming to Nantucket - certainly not in June. At that season they should be in the far north in the Arctic.

The news came that there was one in the lagoon at Great Point, fraternizing with a Canada Goose and a Mute Swan - a very rare bird in a strange menage a trois! But the credentials of the discoverer were impeccable - Sean Murphy - a wildlife scientist doing studies on our American Oystercatchers. Even though I was packed to leave the island for the summer, I dropped everything to join other birders on a trip to the northeast tip of our island with the Trustees of Reservations.

It's not a long trip up to the Point but still it was long enough for us to wonder if the bird would still be there. So often trips like this turn out to be a "wild goose chase!" But yes, as we crested the little sandy rise to where we had a good view of the lagoon, there was our bird with its two co-conspirators for comparison. Everyone got to take a gander. Sorry about that.

You might think that a Whitefronted Goose would be white in front and in this case you would be right. But only the front-most part is white, a narrow white strip surrounding the orange-pink, chunky, goose bill. The rest of the bird is varying shades of gray with horizontal black bars across the belly. They are nicknamed "laughing geese" because of the way a flock sounds when flying over.

White-fronted Geese are not rare nor endangered. As a matter of fact they are abundant in the western part of the United States in winter. It's just in the east that they are seldom found and certainly not in June. People who know have suggested that this individual was probably part of the population that nests up in Northern Greenland. Whether it was too old to breed, too young, or just confused, we can only guess. At any rate, this wonderful goose stayed out at Great Point from June 11 through the 30th last year. All of us who saw it congratulated ourselves on a once-in-a-century bit of luck - until January 10, 2009 that is.

It was a wintry day and Diane Lang and I were coming back from checking out the winter gull show at Low Beach, cruising past the little wetland that snags many golf balls at Skinner's Golf Course near the seven milestone. Diane shouted "Snow Geese" and we quickly stopped for a good look. Oh my goodness - not just Snow Geese, there was a White-fronted Goose with them. If we hadn't been able to get so familiar with the species the summer before we might have stuttered a bit, but this was a bird we now knew very well.

The Sunday birders were unable to find the bird the next day but the week after, there was (the same?) White-fronted Goose, this time with a flock of larger Canada Geese at Bartlett's Farm ten miles to the west.

A life bird is always cause for celebration. The good news is that if you are a new birder, you could get 200 of them in your first year of birding. But you may have to wait another 100 years to add a Greater White-fronted Goose to your Nantucket list. I

George C. West creates illustrations for these articles.

Find more about Birding Nantucket on the web at http://k-blackshaw.com/ BN/BN.htm

The Maria Mitchell Association has bird walks, Tuesday and Friday mornings starting at 8 a.m.