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| I was going to clean up the sketches and chicken scrawl in a second draft, but maybe the first pass is better, as it was fresh in my memory. |
At 1:23pm on Saturday, October 10, I was sitting on a swing/bench reading a book on the riverside trail at Blvd Lasalle near Av Orchard (In Lasalle - just west of the Couche-Tard that is now closed). In light of what happened, I was unfortunately in 'non birding mode' (no camera or binos). I happened to look up towards the water, through a gap in the riverside trees. My attention was immediately drawn to a large bird directly ahead of me and moving to my left (going southeast).
The bird was flying higher than the Mercier Bridge (from my angle) and cruising along the shoreline of the St Lawrence River. In the bright sunshine, I had clear but relatively brief looks at the bird. I saw it flap aggressively a couple of times then glide.
It took several seconds of puzzled panic for me to flip frantically through the pages of the Sibley in my mind and come to a conclusion.
Clearly not a cormorant or a loon...not a goose...not a grebe...BROWN BOOBY?!
This was a large bird whose most striking physical feature was a "long in front/long in back" body (tail and head about the same length), with head and tail (not trailing legs) both tapering to elegant angled points. The belly was white, which popped in the sun, while the head and tail appeared mostly dark, with a sharp line between dark head and white chest. There was a hint of a lighter face/bill from my angle. The wings were long and knifey, hooked at the ‘elbow’, and the underwing had a striking pattern of a white central wing fringed by dark leading and trailing edges (the wings reminded me superficially of the Streaked Shearwaters I’d seen in Korea).
By that time the bird was already headed towards the trees to my left. I fumbled to get the phone out of my pocket in hopes of some form of record shot, but the bird flew behind the trees, continuing southeast towards Parc des Rapides.
While the entire encounter lasted no more than 10-15 seconds, the bird was seen in clear sunlight and at relatively close range. I’m confident about the identification, and have ruled out more obvious confusion species.
I called George, hoping he was at Parc des Rapides, but he was out of town. I then hoped one of the many birders that were surely at Parc des Rapides would have spotted the bird, but it either flew past unobserved or perhaps changed course.
The normal range of the Brown Booby is the Caribbean, with vagrants usually spotted along the eastern seaboard of North America.
This is apparently Quebec’s 10th record of a Brown Booby, after a 9th record on September 30. That sighting involved an adult bird spotted at Rimouski, heading Southwest (same bird?!).
https://ebird.org/checklist/S397763726
The bird was flying higher than the Mercier Bridge (from my angle) and cruising along the shoreline of the St Lawrence River. In the bright sunshine, I had clear but relatively brief looks at the bird. I saw it flap aggressively a couple of times then glide.
It took several seconds of puzzled panic for me to flip frantically through the pages of the Sibley in my mind and come to a conclusion.
Clearly not a cormorant or a loon...not a goose...not a grebe...BROWN BOOBY?!
This was a large bird whose most striking physical feature was a "long in front/long in back" body (tail and head about the same length), with head and tail (not trailing legs) both tapering to elegant angled points. The belly was white, which popped in the sun, while the head and tail appeared mostly dark, with a sharp line between dark head and white chest. There was a hint of a lighter face/bill from my angle. The wings were long and knifey, hooked at the ‘elbow’, and the underwing had a striking pattern of a white central wing fringed by dark leading and trailing edges (the wings reminded me superficially of the Streaked Shearwaters I’d seen in Korea).
By that time the bird was already headed towards the trees to my left. I fumbled to get the phone out of my pocket in hopes of some form of record shot, but the bird flew behind the trees, continuing southeast towards Parc des Rapides.
While the entire encounter lasted no more than 10-15 seconds, the bird was seen in clear sunlight and at relatively close range. I’m confident about the identification, and have ruled out more obvious confusion species.
I called George, hoping he was at Parc des Rapides, but he was out of town. I then hoped one of the many birders that were surely at Parc des Rapides would have spotted the bird, but it either flew past unobserved or perhaps changed course.
The normal range of the Brown Booby is the Caribbean, with vagrants usually spotted along the eastern seaboard of North America.
This is apparently Quebec’s 10th record of a Brown Booby, after a 9th record on September 30. That sighting involved an adult bird spotted at Rimouski, heading Southwest (same bird?!).
https://ebird.org/checklist/S397763726
One wonders if recent weather patterns facilitated such a vagrancy (a nor’easter recently blew up the east coast, and a hurricane came ashore on the Gulf Coast last week.
While selfishly I’m hopeful that this bird turns up somewhere in the area to corroborate my sighting, I’d rather it makes it back down to the sunnier shores of home.
