Harris
Harris's Sparrow taken by Peter Schoenberger“Harris is still there,” Peter tells me.
This has been his report every few days, since the 26th of November. Harris is the Harris’s sparrow he found on November 26 in Berks County Pennsylvania while we were visiting his sister in Kempton. Almost a full month later, and Harris is still there.
“And people are still going out to look for it?” I ask, a bit surprised at the determination of birders.
“It’s an important bird,” Peter says, as if stating the obvious.
Whimbrel, photographer unknownThe Harris’s sparrow is named for Edward Harris, who also gives his name to the Harris’s hawk, the dark western species of the Hairy Woodpecker (Dryobates villosus harrisi), and to the Yuma Antelope Squirrel. Born in Moorestown, New Jersey in 1799, he was the heir to his father’s fortune, made in hosiery. Early in life he befriended Audubon by buying his drawings--Audubon “would have kissed him, but that is not the custom in this icy city [Philadelphia].” Later, he slipped Audubon a hundred dollar bill, explaining, “men like you ought not to want for money.” He accompanied Audubon on his 1843 Missouri River expedition. There, he shot a small bird, or a large sparrow (depending on how you see it) with a black crown and throat, ash colored cheeks and a pink bill. Audubon named it Fringilla Harrisii, though the bird had already been named by Thomas Nuttall in 1834. Where the bird was found was on the eastern edge of their wintering range; it’s a bird that breeds in Canada’s boreal forest. So the bird we saw was far east of where it belongs. Far east.
When Peter found the Harris’s sparrow we were walking a nondescript small back road, scanning wide farm fields hoping to see snow buntings. Peter noticed sparrows in the dense brush and after pishing, a few birds sat up. In an instant he cried out: “Harris’s!”
It’s not a bird that I had even heard of. Peter had seen one other Harris’s sparrow in his life. That he knew right away what it was stunned me.
“A what?” I asked. He was too focused on making sure he was right in his identification that he didn’t answer. I stood and looked around at the vast fields, at the simple patchwork of small farms. I knew I should be excited. This wasn’t just an unusual bird, it was a rare bird.
“The rarest bird I’ve found,” Peter explained later.
Red Phalarope, photo by Peter SchoenbergerI cataloged the rare birds Peter had found just this past year: a LeConte’s sparrow (in Dutchess County, NY), a Henslow’s Sparrow (near Ames, NY), (notice the emphasis on sparrows), a Whimbrel (on the Hudson River south of Saugerties) and a Red Phalarope (in Dutchess County, NY). In each instant, I got right away that they were special birds. I understood their specialness, but also, I could feel it in my bones. But the Harris’s sparrow was not making my adrenalin flow.
Perhaps it was because the day before we had seen a snowy owl, a special bird that is also big and white and adorable to watch? I can’t say. Some birds move me, others do not.
But what excited and intrigued us both was what were the chances that we would drive this back road? Stop at this spot and notice the sparrows? How many other rare birds lurk in the nondescript brushy rows in Pennsylvania? The mind starts to bend with the possibilities.
When Peter found the Red Phalarope on a vast vegetable farm in Red Hook, NY, he posted it to the bird lists. People swarmed from near and far to see it and in that mass of people were some good birders. Who found other good birds while they were there, like a Nelson’s Sparrow and a Lapland Longspur. That’s when Peter found the LeConte’s Sparrow. This phenomenon is known as the Patagonia picnic table effect. In Patagonia Arizona one rare bird was found at a picnic rest stop. Birders congregated, finding even more good birds. This birding phenomenon happens frequently, or frequently enough to have been given a name (posted on Wikipedia, no less).
But no other special birds have been found near the Harris’s (one person reported pishing out a big orange cat). It’s just Harris, one special sparrow on an unassuming back road in eastern Pennsylvania.
Quotes take from From Audubon to Xanthus: The Lives of Those Commemorated in North American Bird Names by Barbara and Richard Mearns.