Curlew Sandpiper

COA Bird of the Year 2022

Curlew Sandpiper

(Bird of the Month, July 2022)

Curlew Sandpiper, Milford Point, CT 07.21.2022 Photo by Steve Hubbard
Curlew Sandpiper, Milford Point, CT 07/21/2022 Photo by Steve Hubbard

Top photo:Curlew Sandpiper (Calidris furruginea) Milford, CT, 7/21/2022 © Frank Mantlik

Curlew Sandpiper (Calidris ferruginea) with Semipalmated Sandpiper. Short Beach Park golf course, Stratford, CT. 18 July 2022. © Frank Mantlik

Frank Mantlik found this Curlew Sandpiper on July 18, 2022, and noted that this Curlew Sandpiper was the only one currently in the USA and Canada. In fact, it was the only one on eBird in all of the Americas for a month or more!  This continent-wide rarity (and the large number of people who saw it) made this the #1 Bird of the Year for Connecticut in 2022. Thank you, Frank Mantlik, for finding this rare beauty!  

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About the Bird of the Month and Bird of the Year Project

Connecticut is a small state, squeezed between Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Long Island and the rest of New York State. It lacks many habitat types (deserts, high mountains, etc) and has no ocean coast, but somehow, every year birders in the state find great birds! The year 2022 was no exception.  

The following summarizes our one-year project, an experiment with Bird(s) of the Month (BOTM) and Bird of the Year (BOTY) for Connecticut in 2022.

The project team consisted of members of the Connecticut Ornithological Association Board and COA’s Avian Records Committee of Connecticut::  A.Dasinger, C.Ehlinger, F.Gallo, R.Gedney, G.Hanisek, C.Imbergamo, D.Jernigan, F.Mantlik, C.Repasz, P.Rusch, and C.Wood, chaired by M.Bull and T.Robben. 

This team selected a Bird of the Month for each month in 2022, and then at the end of 2022 voted on the “top” three of all those BOTM birds to be our Bird of the Year. 

That BOTY voting yielded the following ranked list (the numbers are total points), with Curlew Sandpiper being the highest scoring bird, with 25 points, and hence the #1 BOTY, the Bird of the Year for 2022:

  • 25      Curlew Sandpiper  July  (6 of our team considered it their top bird for 2022, and 3 considered it their second bird).  https://www.ctbirding.org/bird-of-the-month-july-2022/  
  • 20      Arctic Tern  May  (3 of of the team considered this their top bird for 2022, and 5 considered it their second bird).  https://www.ctbirding.org/bird-of-the-month-may-2022/  
  • 10      Smith’s Longspur  October  (1 person considered this their top bird for 2022). https://www.ctbirding.org/bird-of-the-month-october-2022/ 
  • 6        Gray Kingbird  (honorable mention in October)
  • 4        Short-billed Gull  (March)
  • 4        Black Rail  (June)
  • 1        Townsend’s Solitaire  (November)
  • 1        Black Guillemot  (April)
  • and all the following received zero points from team voting: 
  • 0        Thick-billed Murre.  (January)
  • 0        Common Gull.  (February)
  • 0        White Ibis.  (August)
  • 0        Ruff.  (September)
  • 0        Calliope Hummingbird  (honorable mention in November).
  • 0        Black-legged Kittiwake  (December) 

Here are some details on those top three birds for Bird of the Year

#1 Curlew Sandpiper: 25 points, BOTM for July 2022

(See description above.)

#2 Arctic Tern: 20 points, BOTM for May 2022

Photo credit: Arctic Tern (Sterna paradisaea) Bantam Lake, 05.13.2022 Larry Master www.masterimages.org

Arctic Terns navigate from one end of the planet to the other, and in mid-May many Arctic Terns are usually migrating north over the ocean, on their way to breed in more northerly New England and beyond. Do these great navigators ever get lost?  Rarely, perhaps this year, when the weather caught up with them, with both strong easterly winds and fog, resulting in a downing/fallout of many individuals across inland Connecticut for the first time in such numbers since birders here have kept records. That rarity in CT and Long Island Sound is what made this a strong contender for BOTY. 

#3 Smith’s Longspur: 10 points, BOTM for October 2022

Bill Rankin initially found and reported the Smith’s Longspur at Sandy Point, New Haven, CT.  Here is his eBird report (https://ebird.org/checklist/S120893420 ) and photos:

Although not rare in the midwest, there have been very few reports of this species in Connecticut, perhaps 3 valid ones, and that made this a contender for the Bird of the Year.. 

Background & Methodology

Using eBird reports as our database, we noted that by the end of January 2022 the state of Connecticut already recorded 175 species, thanks largely to the “Big January” special efforts of birders across the state!  Our team voted that Thick-billed Murre (formerly called Brunnichs’ Murre) would be the #1 BOTM Bird Of The Month, for January. 

We used eBird and its current-year Connecticut State Year List (SYL)  (https://ebird.org/region/US-CT?yr=cur&m=&rank=lrec  where data has changed and now reflects 2023, the current year) as our database for bird sightings.  Using this eBird SYL, the following eleven months added new species for CT, giving running monthly totals of 179 (4 new species added in February), 197 (18 added in March), 251 (thanks to 54 new species in April), 295 (with 44 new species in May), 298, 307, 317, 324, 329, 331 and finally 332 for December. See the chart below, where blue is the cumulative total and red is the number of new species each month. Note that the “Big January” effort provided 175 species to initialize our 2022 count, after which the most productive months were April (54) and May (44),  The state has recorded about 450 bird species across all years, and 332 is a typical total number of species reported for any one year in CT. 

At the end of each month the team (listed above) voted for the rarest and most noteworthy bird species first noted in CT that month.  Rarity in CT was primary, rarity in the region was secondary, and other noteworthiness factors were third.   The results are published on the COA website: https://www.ctbirding.org/birds-birding/bird-of-the-month/  

including some details for the BOTM of each month, for example, the Short-billed Gull in March:

https://www.ctbirding.org/bird-of-the-month-march-2022/  

At the end of 2022 all those twelve BOTM species, plus two Honorable Mention species (Gray Kingbird and Calliope Hummingbird) were voted on by this team to become COA’s  Bird Of The Year. The underlying goal was to select the top BOTM and BOTY bird species by rarity and noteworthiness.  Each team member voted for their top three BOTM choices:  lets call them A, B and C.   Their #1 top choice, A, was awarded 3 points. B was awarded 2 points. C was awarded 1 point. 

The resulting table shows the number of points voted,  by species (one column for each species, e.g., Ruff was the September BOTM) & by team member (the rows): 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jw-MblI7ri4UE6Moy-0Qarl6f1rY452wAXthJ9nnUac/edit#gid=0

Note the totals in the bottom row, which were used to determine the Bird of the Year. 

Note also that the ARCC statistics in the six gray rows were provided by Phil Rusch.