A rare-bird sighting in Riverhead sparks an ornithological frenzy

When a bird rarely seen on this continent showed up in Riverhead last month, the reaction was, as might be expected, a little cuckoo.

 The common cuckoo — the iconic inspiration of cuckoo clock fame — appeared at a golf course and in a nearby field and stayed around for four days.

Native to Eurasia, the bird is anything but common here: It typically spends winters in Africa and Asia and had only ever been spotted in the continental United States three times prior in more than 40 years, and never in New York. It was initially seen in Riverhead late on the afternoon of Oct. 23 and last spotted on the morning of Oct. 26 — just long enough to incite a frenzy of hundreds of bird lovers to flock to the site, some flying in from other states just to get a glimpse. A different common cuckoo has since been spotted on Nov. 21 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

“It’s the kind of bird that gets people excited for ornithological and bird-watching reasons, but it’s also just an interesting and culturally significant species,” said Lukas Musher, an ornithologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

The visit has put a spotlight on the activity of birding and an increase in rare bird sightings in this area, and how advances in technology can bring hundreds of enthusiasts from far afield to converge at a site in a matter of hours.

The stampede to Riverhead started with a golf outing.

Roy William Gardner, 69, of East Quogue, has been interested in birds since his days as a Boy Scout. Gardner was playing a round at the Vineyards golf course Oct. 23 when he spotted a bird on a fence post.

“For some reason, I was drawn to it,” he said. Gardner snapped a few photos with his phone and sent them to his nephew, an ornithologist in Los Angeles.

The nephew asked his uncle to drop a pin indicating his longitude and latitude, and an alert was put out on the Discord app alerting birders of the rare sighting.

Francesca Randazzo, 69, drove from Massapequa to see the bird after seeing the alert. Once there, she saw that dozens of cars had already lined the side of the road.

Randazzo, a school bus driver, said seeing the cuckoo made her day. “I can check that off my list,” she said. “I got to be one of the lucky ones.”

Being a lucky one is a constant quest for birders, who range from backyard amateurs to those who plan vacations to spot species they otherwise would never encounter.

Brad Miles, who lives in Manhattan and Sag Harbor, said he’s been birding for about seven years and is “working on my world list” of sightings. While watching the Riverhead cuckoo, he spoke with a Texas man who had flown directly from a business trip in Illinois to see the bird. “The exciting thing is finding it, and then you spend a minute just sort of enjoying it,” Miles said.

Jay Rand, 50, of Southold, is a teacher and part of the North Fork Audubon Society. He recalled scouring the ground looking for the cuckoo and after finally spotting him, trying to let others around him know through Discord.

“I’m trying to give them descriptive language, saying ‘It’s about 70 feet out, do you see this cornstalk?’” he said laughing.

More than 200 people are estimated to have seen the bird in those few days, Rand said, including someone he knew from Florida. "When you’re out birding and you see something rare and crazy, there’s not much better than that,” he said.

A migration mystery

No one knows with certainty how the cuckoo got to Long Island or where it went.

Birds that typically migrate elsewhere but end up in unfamiliar lands are termed “vagrants.” Different theories abound as to how they stray, but one factor considered are storms blowing them off course.

During migratory periods in spring and fall, birders will keep a watchful eye on weather forecasts and wind changes that might bring rare sightings to their area, experts said.

“We don’t exactly know why these birds show up,” Musher said. “It’s very common for these vagrant birds to be young birds with very little experience...”

Birds use a variety of sources to navigate, including the earth’s magnetic field. Researchers theorize that when these birds end up in the wrong place, it’s either because of a disruption to that field — such as solar storms — or something goes wrong with a bird’s ability to sense the field, Musher said.

“Vagrancy in and of itself is not a rare phenomenon,” he said. “Some show up every year on Long Island who aren’t supposed to be there.” But, Musher noted, it has been “a pretty good year for Eurasian vagrants in New York,” with sightings of the arctic warbler, bar-tailed godwit and bean goose.

It's unclear where the cuckoo seen in Riverhead originated. Some have speculated that it flew over the Atlantic Ocean from Europe, but it also could have crossed through Siberia and across North America, Musher said.

Cornell University ornithologist Marshall Iliff said long-migration birds such as the common cuckoo have seen their populations decline drastically due to climate change. While wintering elsewhere, birds like the cuckoo won’t realize that their homeland has warmed and insects, a primary food source, have hatched earlier, he said.

“The whole migration for birds like that has been timed for them to get back, set up their nests, not freeze to death and then have their babies hatch so that it times with the peak of insect abundance,” he said. “So when that abundance peaks earlier, then the babies are too late and it ends up probably driving a lot of these long-term declines.”

Iliff said habitat change, pesticides and light pollution also contribute to declining bird populations. According to a 2019 report in the journal Science, North America has lost 2.9 billion breeding birds since 1970. 

“We really just have massively fewer birds than we used to,” he said, with more rare sightings than ever before, which he called "alarming."

"It almost feels like the planet is not in balance that so many birds are making so many mistakes, but it also might just be that we are just so good at detecting them now that we’re measuring it better than ever before.”

Tech bolsters the hobby

Iliff is project leader for Cornell’s eBird project, which started in 2002 as a citizen scientist tool that allows bird watchers to report sightings. That data can be used by scientists to study population trends, the distribution of species and the specifics of their habitat requirements, Iliff said.

EBird now has more than 2 billion observations, he said. For the Riverhead cuckoo, 242 people reported seeing the bird on the site, posting 719 photos, Iliff said.

The site and apps like Discord are a remarkable advancement for a hobby that just a few decades ago relied on landline phones and "hotlines" that would relay recorded messages with directions to bird sightings at people's homes.

Back then, there also weren’t the vivid photos now posted on sites like eBird.

“You might see something that’s rare and if you didn’t have a picture, nobody would believe you,” Musher said. “Now if you have a phone in your pocket, you can prove that you saw this thing and then hundreds of people might show up to see it.”

From hotlines to listservs to sites and apps that instantly connect people, bird-watching, which began soaring during the pandemic, has evolved into a hobby that can be communally shared in real time.

“Within a few hours of the ornithologist in L.A. getting the text message, [bird watchers were] on that cuckoo, and just a couple of decades ago that was impossible,” Musher said.

For bird lovers, the Riverhead common cuckoo was a “lifer” — a bird they will likely see only once in their life.

Michael and Mary Sparks, of Rocky Point, heard from a friend about the cuckoo sighting and quickly headed out to find it. The couple, who spoke to Newsday from a bird festival in Texas, have traveled from Maine to Panama on birding adventures.

“We’re chasing all the birds,” said Michael, 75. “It’s fun and it keeps us moving, keeps us young.”

The couple is up to 848 species after starting the hobby during the pandemic.

“Now we’re hooked,” said Mary, 71.

The couple said the common cuckoo may not have been their first “lifer,” but it was a top one.

Miles agrees.

“I think that bird touched a lot of people,” he said. “I’m sure a lot of people learned some things from him, and maybe he made a birder or two out of some people.”