The snow was 2 feet deep and an arctic blizzard was raging. After a day on the hill at Breckenridge, Jack and Ryan Bushong’s dad wasn’t keen on a birding expedition to the shores of Dillon Reservoir.
But the 13-year-old twins were determined. The avid birders from Louisville were hoping to maybe catch sight of a cackling goose for their list.
But they were part of something much more rare: the first-ever sighting of a purple sandpiper in Colorado. Their discovery has left the state’s tight-knit birding community aflutter, drawing more than 100 camera-toting bird watchers to the snowpacked shoreline hoping for a glimpse of their own — and an entry in their all-important life list of sightings.
The boys — in their excitement after spotting the bird and returning to their cabin for cameras and scopes — dashed from the car without snow gear.
Their dad, Steven, shouted after them.
“I was like, ‘Guys, come on, it’s a blizzard. At least wear a jacket,’” he said, noting that he remained in the car as the snow blew sideways.
The boys — in shorts, long underwear and one jacket, or, as Jack said, “enough clothes that would be appropriate for one person” — galloped through the snow to the shore of the reservoir.
That purple sandpiper was still there.
Jack and Ryan knew it was special, but they thought maybe it was a dunlin, another wading shorebird. But this bird had orange at the base of its long bill and its legs were orange. It could be a rock sandpiper, they thought, recalling the many hours over the past five years they have spent poring over birding books.
“But I thought I remembered reading something about a rock sandpiper and the base of its bill being more dull orange,” Jack said.
This bird’s orange was almost glowing, they said. And the boys remembered how purple sandpipers were occasionally seen inland in December, far from their typical winter range along the northern Atlantic coast. But the bird had never been seen before in Colorado. At least until Friday.
“This might take the cake for Colorado birding history,” said Ted Floyd, the editor of the American Birding Association’s Birding Magazine and a Colorado Field Ornithologists board member. “We have had birds that have been as celebrated as this one, but they were discovered by more established birders. It’s definitely one of the best birds in recent memory in Colorado.”
The next day, the boys persuaded their dad to forget the fresh powder at the ski area. They went back early the next morning and waited for the flood of birders who had seen the boys’ online pictures and postings about the first-ever sighting of a purple sandpiper in Colorado.
Those birders, “hard-core listers,” as they call themselves, were stuck in ski traffic on their push from the Front Range. And they were “twitching.”
“That’s what we call it. When you know there is a good bird that can be chased, until you have seen that bird and add it to you list, you are twitching. Just aching. You really don’t want to be the first person to miss it,” said Glenn Walbek, a longtime Colorado birder who impatiently navigated snowy mountain roads, ski traffic and a couple of lane closures on his early Saturday drive up to see the purple sandpiper.
The Bushong boys, who had provided precise directions to the easily accessible location, waited. As did the purple sandpiper. In fact, the rare bird has been hopping along the shoreline near the mouth of the Blue River for several days, thrilling “at least a hundred, if not more, (birders),” Walbek said.
The fact that bird has stuck around so long is another rarity. And that the bird was spotted and recorded by a pair of middle-school boys makes the story even more remarkable.
“Normally, something like this is found by people who are avid birders who are out here beating the bushes every day all year long, and maybe after 10 years, they find something special,” said Walbek, describing more than a few high-fives among the listers on the Dillon waterfront that Saturday. “Those boys, they are birders for sure.”
The purple sandpiper is common along the rocky shores of eastern Canada, Greenland, Iceland and Scotland. They move south to winter, gathering along the rocky shoreline of the East Coast, from Maine as far south as Florida. A wayward purple sandpiper is occasionally spotted around the Great Lakes in December. One was spotted in southwest Utah several years ago.
“This bird got off the beaten path, big time,” said Floyd, noting that purple sandpipers are strong fliers, but this one might have been grounded on Dillon Reservoir during the snowstorm last week.
The Bushong boys have been avid birders for about five years. At Boulder’s 75th annual Christmas Bird Count on Sunday, they were welcomed as heroes.
“Everyone knew them already,” said Steven Bushong, who calls himself “the birder driver.”
Incidentally, Steven wanted to relax last Friday after skiing all day.
“But he knew it was a big deal to us and it meant a lot of to us, so he was fine with it after a while,” Ryan said. “He’s a good dad.”
On Wednesday, the boys were visiting their grandparents outside Tucson. When a phone call came in for them, they were outside, birding. They had spotted a vermilion flycatcher and were trying to get a photo.
“He or she is floating around a lot and moving from perch to perch, so it’s hard to get him and her to just sit,” Ryan said.
The next day, they were planning to visit a cave and nearby canyon. Maybe spot a black-tailed gnatcatcher or a tropical rufous-capped warbler — for which the Tucson Audubon Society issued a rare bird alert Friday.
“At first, for birding, I was hoping for the occasional rarity and to just have fun getting out there,” Jack said. “Now, it’s really been elevated, and we both feel much more passion for birds and birding.”
