Words On Birds 07-26-24

Rare Duck Visits Bartlett Mall
July 26, 2024
By Steve Grinley

     A rare visitor was spotted at the Bartlett Mall in Newburyport this past Sunday. No, it wasn’t an obscure artist casing the joint in preparation to display their craft on this weekend’s Art on the Mall event. Last Sunday’s visitor was a rare Black-bellied Whistling Duck.

     The vagrant duck was spotted by Tom Mannix at 10am and the word quickly went out to the birding community via the Massachusetts Rare Bird Alert GroupMe App. Birders and photographers flocked to this unusual location for this misplaced duck.

     Black-bellied Whistling Ducks are residents of the southern United States and some migrate to Mexico and the Caribbean in winter. We have seen flocks of them in both Florida and Texas, usually around small ponds or lakes.

     We have seen them once before in Massachusetts when a small flock visited the pond on the property at New England Biolabs in Ipswich some years ago. A couple of Whistling Ducks were seen flying north over Plum Island in early June this year and a small flock were also seen in Epping, New Hampshire in June.

     We saw the local report Sunday morning, but we had company and we couldn’t rush right out. We finally sprung free to get there by mid-afternoon. When we arrived, there was a photographer poised against a tree pointing his long lens in one direction. Other birders were milling around, occasionally raising their binoculars in the same direction. The duck was easy to spot, posing at the edge of the water in the southwest end of the pond.

     We had feared that the duck would be gone by the time we got there, maybe scared away by an aggressive birder or photographer. But we were pleased to see everyone viewing the bird at a safe distance of 50-100 or more feet away. Luckily the bird was still there.

     The Black-bellied Whistling Duck is a comical looking bird. It has a long neck and long pink legs, a bright pink bill, large white wing patches (most noticeable when it flies), and, of course, a black belly. The large white eye-rings against its gray face adds to its comedic look.

     As we watched the bird from a distance, a woman with a dog decided to take the low path around the pond on a path toward the duck. As they got near the duck, she realized all the cameras, binoculars and scopes around the pond focused on the bird that was stationed at the edge of the pond. She halted the dog and proceeded to go the other way around the pond. In talking with her after, she said she realized all the lenses pointed toward her and the duck and thought there was a photography class going on. Nice of her not to disturb the “class”!

     A short time later, a family with a young boy with a small net, and a younger child in a carriage, also approached the bird. They seemed oblivious to the bird and all the attention to it from around the pond. The child thought it could catch the duck in his little net, but flushed the bird, causing it to fly across the pond, circle, and then land with a group of 20 Canada geese on the opposite shore.

     No harm done as the duck seemed to settle in with the geese, even going for a swim with them in the pond. The birders and photographers did get some nice flight shots when the bird took flight, circling once before settling in among the geese. It swam around the pond with them and grazed along-side them in the grass. It seemed content to just “hang out” at the Mall, or that is how it seemed when we left the bird more than an hour later. Apparently, it stayed into Sunday evening but was not found again the following day.

     I have received various bird reports from the Bartlett Mall over the years. Most often it has been an egret, a great blue heron, or a night heron. This Black-bellied Whistling Duck is one for the books!