Tough Luck
I have very poor luck when it comes to rarities. My usual rule of thumb is that when I go out looking for a particular bird I won’t find it. Now that I live on the Island, Home Of the Winter Rarity, and now that I have set some more ambitious birding goals I have made much more of an effort to find the rare birds than I ever have before. The results so far are mixed. I have found two rarities in a month– the Grace’s warbler at Point Lookout and the northern shrike at Floyd Bennett Field– but failed at many more. Twice I drove all the way out to Calverton for the mountain bluebird and got skunked. It took two tries for the shrike. No luck on multiple trips to Jamaica Bay for the eared grebe and the Eurasian widgeon. I’ve only seen the common gull species this winter. And don’t get me started on greater white-fronted geese. I just don’t get how some birders manage to see all the rarities. Some guys have all the luck.
One response so far
I went 4 times in a week to Point Lookout to see (and take pictures) the Grace’s Warbler. I only saw the bird one time and it was flying high in the pine canopies (Sunday). The morning the warbler had a bad encounter with a falcon (the temperature was extremely low, in the 20s) I arrived about 5 minutes after it had happened. Needless to say, that day the warbler did not come out again. The following day (Wednesday) I had an unavoidable union meeting that I could not miss and it was the day when the warbler was more visible. The following day I did show up at 8:30AM (I drove from Manhattan and I did wake up at 6AM) but the bird has disappeared. It was not seen again since that Wednesday. As you have said, finding and seeing birds is a question of luck and be on the right place at the right time.