Vermont Rare Bird Reports 2024

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Clear with light breeze

Alpen 20-60 scope and Nikon 8x binoculars

I have seen this bird on the ocean over many years as recently as May off the coast of Bar Harbor Maine

This bird was imbedded with a raft of bufflehead. Stood out the second i put the scope on the raft.

Was just floating/swimming on the water with bufflehead that it was so much larger then. Bufflehead did not seem to care as at times the raft was very dense. Bufflehead were not feeding at the time.

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Spotted raft of birds on the lake. Believed they were bufflehead without any optics. Put my binoculars on them to count them and check if any other species were in the raft. Noted male and female bufflehead then quickly realized there was a significant bird in the group. A Gannet. Studied it with scope, was very surprised. The white slash near the tail was very obvious and got my attention. Used my Sibley guide and looked through it trying to think of any other possible bird. Nothing else seems even remotely close. Bird matched Sibley juvenile perfectly. Consulted photos of juvenile Northern Gannet online also. Again perfect match and i could continue to study the bird through my scope as the raft was just slowly moving north.

Much longer neck than bufflehead. I never saw it off the water. Long body, long beak. Beak tapered from the forehead. Not straight out like a mallard. Body rose to a peak behind neck then tapered to the tail.

Everything was very brown including the beak. Eyes were light brown color with slight eye ring of grayish color.

Bill. Large wedge shape bill. Looked brown. Never did see feet.

Brown with slight color variation.

Lower back uniform brown with white slash on sides of rump. Then black tail. Very distinct and this is what brought me to it being a Northern Gannet

Bird never moved wings as it sat on water. But what i saw of folded wings was consistant brown color like back of bird.

Breast ever so slightly lighter then rest of bird with slightly darker streaks. Mostly the bird was brown.

Medium size tail for birds this size district black color in comparison to brown of the rest of the bird.The white slash on both sides of rump delineated the color change from brown body to black tail.

I was so surprised to see this bird and looked extensively in Sibley. Looked up Brown Booby thinking i was not sure what there juveniles looked like. Nothing about it fit. Looked through more obscure geese species thinking maybe some juvenile goose. Ruled out all ducks, scoters, grebes, etc as being right next to a ducks species you could see the size difference was too much to be any of them. It was very helpful having the bufflehead next to the bird. I estimate the bird to be 3 time longer than the bufflehead. This comes pretty close to what the guides say.

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