Tuesday 29 September 2020
CORN CRAKE at Cape Race, Newfoundland - 26 September
CORN CRAKE - 26 Sept 2020 at Cape Race, Newfoundland. It 11:45 am on a bright
breezy day on the Cape Race barrens. Jared Clarke and I were completing our full
coverage walk around the grass at Cape Race lighthouse area. It is habit to walk
the grass looking for vagrant warblers and sparrows. Today there was zero. We
were walking toward each other when a bird flew up in front of Jared. I couldn't
hear what he yelled out in the wind. But I saw the bird flushing out of the
grass. It was a heavy bodied broad winged bird. Initial thought was European
Woodcock because of its bulky body and broad wings. This idea gave away in a
microsecond as the brain added up the parts = CORN CRAKE. It flew forward of
Jared but perhaps seeing and hearing me scream it circled back behind Jared in a
broad far carrying circle and disappeared over the cliff edge. I had my
binoculars on it for the whole time. Realizing it was a Corn Crake I had time to
purposely look for the rufous upper wing coverts which were obviously present on
a generally buff coloured bird. The bill was short. The wind appeared broadest
in the area of the secondaries and tapered somewhat out through the primaries.
It picked up speed and bit of altitude on the flight over the rise and
presumably cliff edge. Jared and I congratulated each other on what had just
happened and went to look for it again. I was guessing it flew over the cliff
edge and took refuge on the steep grassy slopes. I scanned the cliff face hoping
to see its head sticking out of the grass or maybe see the bird exposed on a
bare rock. Meanwhile Jared was tramping the level grassy land on the other side
of the little inlet. And he flushed it again. My look was rather distant but the
beige body of the rail stood out in the bright sun light as it went over the
next rise.
It was time to make the calls. Being out of cell service range we had
to drive 5 km down the road to get One Bar of service. A feeble but successful
WhatsApp alert went out. We knew there were a number of birders birding in the
southeast Avalon Peninsula at the time. We waited an hour for 10 people arrived.
We began the search walking in a line where we thought the bird might have went.
After one sweep the organization broke up and people walked about randomly
throughout the general area. No luck. It was not found the next morning either.
Not surprising for a super secretive species. There was no picture of the bird.
The 2020 Corn Crake was somewhat less of a cosmic mind F---k than the one Ken
Knowles and I saw at Cape Race on 2 November 2002. Since 2002 there have been
two other birds flushed by birders in the southeast Avalon in late fall that
could very well have been Corn Crakes. Also an amazing photo of a Corn Crake
walking across a trail at a lighthouse at Twillingate, Newfoundland taken by the
lighthouse keeper in fall 2009 came to light some years later. And a Corn Crake
was present at St Pierre et Miquelon 10-22 Jan 2012 but was misidentified as a
immature Sora until photos reached the outside world. The bird died and specimen
preserved.
It is possible Corn Crake is semi regular in Newfoundland but very
rarely found because of its extremely secretive nature. Recently through radio
telemetry it was discovered that some European Whimbrel fly non stop from
African wintering grounds to breeding grounds in Iceland totally over water the
whole way. They don't stop anywhere along the route unless they have to due to
weather. This could explain the seemingly random occurrences European Whimbrel
in May and July/early August in Newfoundland. These occurrence are unrelated to
the storms that bring other Icelandic shorebirds to Newfoundland in spring. A
slight deviation caused by a prolonged head wind over the open Atlantic could
bring these Whimbrel to within sight of NF. It might be the same kind of
migration some of the Corn Crakes undertake . Maybe some of them are flying
non-stop from northern Europe to wintering grounds in Africa. I was noticing for
a period in mid September 2020 there was a pretty good air flow from
France/Spain area toward NF in a hockey stick shaped route. This continued for
days. Don't have the details in front of me now but a Yellow-legged Gull
appeared in St. John's during this time.
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Sorry for the format and lack of habitat photos in this blog. A new method has arrived at BlogSpot and I didn't figure it out very well on the first go.....
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