More Than Meets The Eye: A Birder’s Journey

[Photo: Eleanor Ray]

By: Richard Littauer (NBNC Board Member)
Published in The Bridge, March 8 2022

On the last day of 2021, I drove to Maine to see a bird I’d never seen before. You may have heard about this one — a Steller’s sea eagle, normally a native of northern Japan and Russia’s far eastern shore, but now far off course in New England. This is the first time this species has been spotted on the Atlantic coast.

To imagine this eagle, imagine a giant black raptor with a white tail, white leggings and epaulets, and a massive yellow bill, the kind you’d imagine on a kindergartner’s drawing labeled “Gyant EEGAL.”

Driving to Maine is the kind of thing I do: I’m a bird-watcher (I look at birds with intention), a birder (I keep a list of birds I’ve looked at with intention), and a twitcher (I go out of my way to look at birds not on my list of birds I’ve looked at, uh, with intention)…

Read the rest of the story here at The Bridge