14 September 2025
Northmoreland Park in Apollo, PA has a lake, walking paths, mountain bike trails and playing fields but is rarely visited by birders because there are few species of interest, just the usual suspects. All of that changed on 16 August when Mark McConaughy photographed a Baird’s sandpiper on the mudflat at the lake.
Baird’s sandpipers (Calidris bairdii) are rare in Pennsylvania because they breed in the arctic, winter in southern South America, and migrate over the Great Plains.
Something diverted this individual from it’s normal route, perhaps bad weather or the wildfires in Canada. It veered east, entered southwestern Pennsylvania, and looked for a good place to land — a mudflat — just before dawn.
If southwestern PA wasn’t in a drought there would have been no mudflat and the Baird’s would have kept going. Instead he stayed for two days and attracted 9 more eBirders.
This time of year is shorebird migration season so birders continued to stop by to check the mudflat. “A rare bird was here and conditions are right for another one, so I’ll take a look just in case.” I like to call this The Rare Bird Effect. In Arizona there’s a similar concept called the Patagonia Picnic Table Effect. (Thank you, Deb Grove, for reminding me of it.)
The Rare Bird Effect paid off at 7:11pm on 4 September when Susan Miller photographed a phalarope. Merlin said it had to be a red-necked phalarope, which is rare but not impossible, but Susan thought that didn’t look right. Her photos helped identify it as a red phalarope (Phalaropus fulicarius) a super-rare bird in the continental interior because it winters on and migrates over the open ocean. Here’s what she saw.
The red phalarope stayed two days, 5 and 6 September, and generated 40 more eBird visits including the photo at top by Steve Gosser and photos below by Phillip Rodgers. The bird came close to shore for great photos!
Some of us showed up on 7 September, the morning after it left. Alas!
Right now Northmoreland’s mudflat is quite a birding hotspot so it’s worth checking just in case. “You see a lot by looking.”