Anticipation levels were running high when dawn broke over Randall’s Island on the morning of Saturday, September 27th. With much of the preceding week beset by prolonged southerlies that had stifled migratory movement, a sudden shift to winds from the north on Friday held promise for jumpstarting avian activity in a big way as we headed into the weekend. My friends and I had been eyeing this change in the forecast expectantly for several days, and it was clear from the moment we woke up that the influx had exceeded our expectations. Birdcast data revealed that more than half a million birds were detected passing through Manhattan airspace overnight, and I could hear countless nocturnal flight calls ringing out in the dark skies over my apartment as I prepared to set out for the day. I convened with Ryan, Dmitriy, and Adam at our usual meeting place along the northeastern shoreline of the Island. By the time the Sun peered out from behind the horizon, we were already busily scouting our patch in search of newly arrived migrants.
Following our well-worn route around the Island, we quickly began to accumulate a respectable list of noteworthy species. The onomatopoeic calls of an American Pipit drew our attention to an individual circling above the ballfields, and we also picked out a northbound Blue Grosbeak in active morning flight. An early Great Cormorant was spotted atop the Lawrence Point Ledge channel marker, reclaiming its favored perch for the season, and we noted several large flocks of Blue Jays winging through the skies overhead. We passed through Freshwater Wetland with relative haste, hurried along by aggressive mosquitos and unusually low numbers of birds, and we continued making our way south towards the productive sunlit edges and planted plots of the Urban Farm area. Upon reaching the Cottage Garden, we were delighted to find a lively mixed flock of passerines flitting to and fro in the ornamental trees. The four of us posted up in the middle of the action and set about the business of documenting the diverse array of species present.Â
While I was scanning the foliage with my binoculars, dutifully sifting through Tennessee, Black-throated Green, and Chestnut-sided Warblers, a new bird suddenly entered my field of view. For the briefest of moments, it was completely unobscured in perfect light just a short distance away from me. Its plumage was a modest ensemble of olive-brown, gray, and off-white, but the facial features immediately caught my attention. The bird sported a conspicuous, yellow-tinged supercilium, with a bold, dark transocular stripe underlining and emphasizing its pale brows. To the untrained eye, this creature might appear to be wholly unremarkable, a cute but overall rather drab little songbird. To my own moderately more trained eyes, it was instantly recognizable as something truly extraordinary: a Phylloscopus warbler. The 80 some odd species in this Old World genus are notorious for their confounding similarity, with multiple cohorts of barely discernible variants that put our American Empidonax flycatchers to shame. None of them, however, are supposed to be anywhere near Randall’s Island, NYC. I was not sure exactly which bird I was looking at, but I was dead certain that it belonged no closer to its current location than a few thousand miles away.
As I stared slack-jawed at the stupefying sight that lay before me, struggling to produce mouth noises that would convey the magnitude of what I was seeing to my friends, I heard similar sounds of wordless disbelief coming from Ryan, who stood immediately to my left. Evidently, he had been intently scrutinizing the bird’s rear end and persistently flicking wings for several critical seconds before its boldly patterned face had popped into view, and thus astutely suspected that something was amiss prior to the penny drop moment of the full reveal. As a result, my buddy was already a few paces ahead of me on processing this monumental discovery and preparing to put his amazement into carefully crafted words.Â
“THAT’S A FUCKING PHYLLOSCOPUS!!” A truly legendary callout. The excited exclamation pierced through the surrounding chorus of diverse chip notes from the little magic mixed flock, a sonic experience that I will never forget. With my incredulous initial impressions validated in spectacular fashion by my friend’s decisive declaration, I finally managed to choke out a response to reassure Ryan that he wasn’t alone in his madness. “THAT’S WHAT I’M LOOKING AT!!” A short distance to our right, I heard Adam’s rightfully concerned clarifying question: “What does that mean?!” As quickly as it had appeared, the bird hopped again and instantly vanished amidst the leaves. Chaos ensued.Â
Overwhelming emotions surged through my addled brain, chief among them a desperate need to pin the bird down and secure concrete proof of its existence. Photographic documentation of an unexpected rarity can make the difference between The Big One and The One That Got Away, and my friends and I were all too aware that nailing this one down to species would require more evidence than a written description or even some grainy doc shots. It was time to call in the cavalry. We began the process of getting the word out to the wider birding community, starting with panicked phone calls to trusted experts and close friends and then sharing a general announcement on the New York State Discord. The four of us fanned out to survey the area, watching and listening carefully for any sign of the missing warbler. After about half an hour of stressed-out searching, Adam and I picked up on a quiet, unfamiliar trill emanating from the upper branches of a nearby London Plane tree. Refocusing our attention on the canopy, we spotted a small, drab form fluttering about in pursuit of insects. We had found the bird!
Our original, tentative supposition regarding the bird’s identity was Yellow-browed Warbler, one of the very few Phylloscopus with any kind of precedent for records from the eastern half of North America, and we had provisionally reported it as a candidate for this species. This preliminary hypothesis was based on our fleeting first impressions of the warbler in addition to the perceived probability of occurrence for each of the other potential vagrants. Given that the sum total of my personal experience with this genus was limited to a few observations of Common Chiffchaff from Spain in February 2018 and countless imprecise memories of field guide illustrations and online media depicting the various other species, I was poorly equipped to opine meaningfully on the specific designation of the bird in spite of how readily I recognized its genus-level identity. The initial set of photos we obtained were rather ambiguous in terms of structure and plumage, though, and we began to wonder whether this individual could actually represent a different, even rarer vagrant. The first round of knowledgeable responses when we shared these images with the community seemed to be leaning in a different direction as well. It was clear that we needed to collect as much media as possible.
Reinforcements started to arrive, with the first responders appearing on the scene just under an hour after the initial discovery of the bird. Brent briefly refound the warbler in the same general area, but it soon made a longer flight down and away from the grove it had been favoring. The next hour and a half of search time was a particularly suspenseful affair, with a burgeoning crowd of twitchers alternately expanding and contracting as birders spread out to cover more ground, hurriedly converged to investigate possible sightings, and gradually dispersed again after each false alarm. At long last, Jeanne spotted the bird back by the Cottage Garden, in the same exact spot where we first clapped eyes on it. The horde descended, with over 100 eager observers jockeying for position to catch a glimpse of the little celebrity.
The warbler darted across the street towards the Urban Farm, delivering a strong, buzzy call as it swooped low over my head. We had heard this vocalization several times over the course of the morning, but I was nevertheless somewhat surprised to learn that it was indeed produced by our mystery Phylloscopus. In an instant, the field of potential candidates for the identification was narrowed considerably. The guest of honor continued showing beautifully for several minutes as it bounced its way through the low trees fringing the fence line, finally allowing us to critically study its field marks from a variety of different angles. The long, downward-curving supercilium, the lack of obvious white edges on the tertials, the thin but well-defined wingbars, and the relatively sturdy build of the bird all pointed strongly towards a certain set of species, and the rich, rough quality of its vocalizations sounded most consistent with a particular bird within that complex: the Arctic Warbler. This species is the sole representative of its family known to regularly breed in North America, albeit on the far-flung frontiers of the Alaskan tundra. Despite its established foothold in this hemisphere, Arctic Warbler is virtually unheard of south of the Yukon, with just two accepted records from California in the mid-90s and a 2021 occurrence in Baja California. A long-staying individual in Bermuda in 2014 foreshadowed the potential for longer-range vagrancy, but there had never been any confirmed sightings for the eastern portion of the continent. It was looking increasingly likely that our bird could be the first!
Following this fruitful midday observation, the warbler made itself scarce once again and vanished for the rest of the afternoon. My friends and I elected to continue our loop around the Island in search of additional surprises, prying ourselves away from the stakeout site and bidding a fond farewell to our assembled colleagues. We stopped for a celebratory meal at the nearby Fiesta food truck along the way, procuring essential supplies that would provide much-needed fuel for the back half of our outing. While our close encounter of the Phylloscopus kind was destined to be the high-water mark of the day, we still managed to pick up a few more notable birds before completing our survey. A surprise Dickcissel at the grassy knoll by the tennis center was a welcome addition to our tally, and we also enjoyed sightings of the resident Common Raven pair and some roosting Yellow-crowned and Black-crowned Night Herons. After nearly 11 hours of nonstop birding, we finally closed our checklist at a cumulative total of 87 species, our highest-ever single day count for our patch! It was a deeply satisfying thrill to beat our personal best record, all thanks to the remarkable little vagrant that kept us out in the field much longer than we originally anticipated!
Sunday morning saw a redoubled effort to track down the lost warbler, with many birders who struck out the previous evening eager to take another crack at it. While I myself was busy with unavoidable prior obligations, I kept close tabs on the regular updates from my friends in the field. For the first several hours of daylight, the situation seemed bleak, but eventually Jay rediscovered the bird downslope from the Urban Farm area along the fringes of the White Garden. As if actively endeavoring to assuage any lingering concerns about the nature of its identity, the little Phylloscopus was vocalizing more or less constantly as it foraged in the treetops. Armed with his trusty parabolic microphone, Jay was able to record crisp, definitive audio of both the buzzy call notes and the whispered, trilling subsong that we had briefly heard the previous day. Voice is the key determining factor for separating Arctic Warbler from Kamchatka Leaf and Japanese Leaf Warblers, two former conspecifics that were elevated to full species status via a three-way split in 2014. While both of these confusion candidates likely have even lower odds of finding their way to New York than their more widespread cousin does, it is nevertheless imperative to consider all possibilities when assessing such a megararity. Fortunately, the excellent recordings obtained over the course of the weekend clearly illustrated that the bird’s song and calls were both wholly consistent with those of Arctic Warbler. It was a great relief to the local birding community that this exciting visitor proved to be so cooperatively chatty!
Having entertained countless birders from all across New York City and beyond, our friendly neighborhood Phylloscopus went missing yet again early in the afternoon on Sunday. Subsequent search efforts throughout the beginning of the work week failed to produce any definitive observations, suggesting that the warbler may well have continued on with the favorable northerly winds that blew through the region overnight. In the wake of this fantastic experience, I busied myself with the task of compiling all of the available evidence to finalize the case file for this incredible first state record. My written submission for the New York State Avian Records Committee, on which I am proud to serve, is one of the most thorough and comprehensive reports I have ever produced. The lengthy comments on our shared eBird checklist recount the circumstances of the shocking discovery, including my own contemporaneous notes from the immediate aftermath of the bird’s appearance and Ryan’s detailed description of the field marks that led him so swiftly to that frantic first callout. Then, of course, there was the matter of this very blog post to tend to, to immortalize the narrative of that fateful day while it was still fresh in my mind. In truth, I have basically been writing nonstop since I left the stakeout site, and I still have yet to fully process all of my feelings about this magical encounter with an unassuming little bird from the Far North. Suffice to say, this unforgettable escapade undoubtedly joins the ranks of my best birding memories of all time!
Perhaps my favorite aspect of this entire saga is that so many people were able to get in on the excitement. While I certainly enjoy my private moments in nature and the exciting personal achievements that sometimes come with them, I consider birding to be a social, community-driven affair at its core. High-profile rarities that are shared with a plurality of people invariably rank among the most memorable sightings each year, and I was especially honored to be a part of the initial discovery of this singularly significant vagrant alongside my close friends. We Randall’s Regulars, as we have come to be known, have devotedly covered our beloved joint patch at all seasons for several years now. Our efforts have helped to put this perennially productive hotspot back on the collective radar of the community, bringing an end to a frightfully long period when it languished without much attention from local birders. It had become a bit of a running gag in certain circles, however, that all of the best birds found on the Island, including such highlights as Short-billed Gull, Smith’s Longspur, Black-chinned Hummingbird, and Fork-tailed Flycatcher, had been initially detected by other visiting birders rather than any of our core crew. While we take a great deal of pride in the steady stream of low-grade regional rarities that our regular survey efforts have produced, there is an undeniable satisfaction to be had in finally landing such a mind-blowing megararity by ourselves! After spending all of Saturday out in the field together, Ryan, Dmitriy, Adam, and I reunited in Manhattan to raise our glasses for a toast to the little lost bird that had turned our regularly scheduled birding circuit on its head. I certainly never expected to be drinking in celebration of a Phylloscopus warbler in my home state, but that level of unpredictability is precisely what makes birding so compelling!
Dmitriy is particularly fond of invoking the optimistic maxim that “the best Randall’s bird is yet to happen.” Throughout our tenure as patch birders on the Island, this bold claim has been repeatedly proven to be true even as the room for improvement steadily shrinks above the peak of each new record. For the time being, at least, we are more than content to bask in the glow of this phenomenal Phylloscopus sighting. It would take a pretty impressive vagrant to unseat this small but mighty king, but we will be sure to keep a weather eye out for whatever surprises may come our way next. The Randall’s Regulars are always watching, and the fall rarity season is only just getting started!