Northern Wheatear! A vagrant at Plymouth Beach! 9/28/2023

A day after seeing the beautiful Hudsonian Godwit, another lifer turned up, the Northern Wheatear! This little bird, however, was completely off of its migration path and, by definition, would be considered a vagrant. From the flycatcher family, our Wheatear

was also at Plymouth Long Beach and had been hanging out at a cottage midway down the peninsula for the last few days. Northern Wheatears have an amazing migration pattern with two distinct populations and this little bird was likely from the Arctic and should have been stopping over in Greenland before heading down to its wintering grounds in Africa. Took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in our state of Massachusetts. While I was photographing this beautiful little bird on some rocks, it kept staring off at the ocean as if thinking, "How am I going to cross all of this ocean to get to Africa?" A daunting task compared to its normal migration route where the ocean crossing is much shorter. The little Wheatear was gone a few days later, and I hope it made it to Africa.