Vermont Rare Bird Reports 2023

A severe thunderstorm with heavy rain had passed through the area 1-2 hours prior to this observation. The sky was clear during the observation, though it was exceedingly humid and somewhat foggy.

Vortex 8x42 binoculars.

I have observed this species on 11 prior occasions, the most recently being two individuals which I photographed and audio recorded at close range at Iroquois NWR in western NY on 16 May 2023. Previously I have encountered them in locations from Arkansas and Michigan, east to New Jersey.

Wetland with interspersed alder groves alongside floodplain forest. On opposite side of the road is a mixed deciduous forest that climbs a steep slope.

Calling consistently from same area. Not visualized.

Brisk and sharp empid song, sounding like "quee-chip", repeated 2-3 times per minute. Due to heavy background noise from traffic and tree frogs, six minute long recording was edited to a 37 second clip with two songs at 00:04 and 00:30 seconds, respectively. The first song is somewhat obscured by AGOL vocalizations, though the second is quite clear with distinctive spectrogram.

This bird was first reported at this location at 07:45 on 23 July 2023 by Nathaniel Marchessault, who submitted an eBird report (https://ebird.org/checklist/S145477448). I happened to be driving back to the Burlington area from central NY, and figured it was worth the stop though I had not much hope that this bird would stay put or continue to vocalize. I arrived at 19:54, parked at the intersection of Willowbrook Road and VT Route 73, and began slowly walking south on Willowbrook Road. I started a Merlin recording to document whatever happened to vocalize. I made it about 50 yards south over three minutes when I first heart an emphatic "quee-chip", though it was somewhat obscured by AGOL chattering. It took a couple of minute for me to hear the song clearly, without traffic noise or other birdsong. Having spent time significant time with ACFL in May in western NY, I was quite confident in this unique song, and tried hard to get as clear of a recording as I could. I also tried hard to located by bird visually, but was unable to given the dense foliage and fading dusk light.

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When listening to the bird I considered a possible ALFL song variant, which seemed the most plausible alternative. While the structure of this song could be heard as similar to ALFL, the quality is very different. It lacked the burry/buzzy quality of ALFL songs, and instead had a sharp, almost ringing sound much more characteristic of ACFL. The spectrogram was confirmative of this field impression.