BBC Record of Bachman’s Warbler Sighting

Club Statistician David Scott recently added a new record to the club’s life list stemming from a 1961 week long club trip to Bulls Island, SC.

We learned about this sighting when long-time member Daniel Vara reached out to ask if we have a written record of a 1961 week long trip to South Carolina. One of the target species for the trip was Red-cockaded Woodpecker, which was found in the Francis Marion State Forest. However, participants had surprise when they arrived at Bull’s Island.

In Daniel’s words:

In April of 1961, the BBC had a field trip to Bull’s Island, Cape Romain, South Carolina.  We went by car caravan for a week.  Mr. Lee Jameson, math teacher, led the field trip.

I was only 15 at the time & Dr. Charles Schweinfurth, world’s expert on orchids & Harvard botanist, was my chaperone.  We were both from Wellesley, MA and my parents allowed me to go.

On one of my days birding on Bull’s Island, our naturalist guide found our BBC group a number of life birds.  On one morning near the landing of the Ferry Boat on Bull’s Island were some thickets in a swampy area with several species of warblers, all birds of course in spring plumage. We did not venture too far from the swampy area due to alligators and rattle snakes. 

One bird with a bzz-bzz call particularly enticed us ~~ we did not dare call it thinking it may have been a hybridized bird. One guide, an excellent birder, said “is it the Bachman’s Warbler”? He did not want to confirm this sighting, fearing an on slot of birders from around the world coming to Bull’s Island, if confirmed.  

We never saw the bird again, it was a male.  So, it was kept a deep dark “secret” and never discussed again. 

Dan tells us that four of the 12 trip participants did see the Bachman’s Warbler, making them among the last to ever see this now sadly extinct species. eBird only includes two US sightings of this bird after 1960, with the last in 1962 at the site Dan’s group visited the year before. There is also one 1980 observation from Cuba.

Long time BBC board member and past president Glenn d’Entremount had this reminiscence to add about trip leader Lee Jameson:

Lee Jameson would go to Mt. Greylock after his Friday school was over and set up a huge tent at the campground. The BBC had a weekend out there during mid-June; the predecessor to my annual trips. They spent the whole weekend at Greylock. Bicknell’s Thrush was nesting at the top (and Saddleball?) through 1972.

After those trips ended, before I was going out there with Herman [d’Entremount], no one picked up the trip. Herman liked the trip and we would go ourselves. One trip I had come from a business training from CT and with two vehicles we placed one at Jones’s Nose and drove to Saddleball parking lot and walked the whole thing. We had double digit Yellow-bellied Flycatchers which were never proven to nest there.

With the addition of Bachman’s Warbler, the club’s life list now stands at 452 overall with 434 in Massachusetts.