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Steve - it should go directly to Andrew Hebda at the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History on Summer Street. It certainly sounds interesting. Eric On 10 Jan 2007 at 2:24, Stephen Shaw wrote: > Question for birders in these slow times: we are not seeing much of anything > except squirrels, at our feeders at Halifax. > Over Xmas, we visited the family of a friend of my daughter's near Hubbards. > The friend's mum told me that earlier she had accidentally killed an unusual > bird back in May while driving along highway 3 near a tidal salt marsh area, > close to Boutiliers Point, approx 7200 section. The bird seemed to be > behaving > oddly, fluttering around, as she drove by and that it suddenly shot in > front of > her car and she had no chance to avoid it. She stopped and took the dead bird > home and reckoned that it best fit the description of a least bittern, > according their Audubon bird guide. When I got home I looked this up on the > Sibley maps and it seems that a least bittern would be only a vagrant this far > north, but it's not clear (to me) if that makes it exceedingly rare and a > really interesting find, or merely rather irregular and of no major > interest to > birders. The point is that that the corpse still exists -- she > preserved it in > her freezer. Her question to me was what to do with it, usefully. > I commented that it might be useful first to ask people on this network (1) > whether a possible least bittern is sufficiently interesting to get someone > competent to check the ID, somehow; (2) is a frozen, dead (possible) least > bittern useful for anyone to have a present of -- e.g. I recall that > Randy Lauf > once collected specimens for an intro biology class at StFX. (May 2006 > probably > means past the due date for a bittern stew). > The description I have is that "it is soft black on the back and rich golden > brown on the front and has yellow legs". Didn't see it myself. > She's just got back to me and suggested that she could photo the > corpse, and I > guess I could put up the resulting photo on the Flickr site for > inspection. Before going to this bother, I'd like to know if it is a > sufficiently > interesting bird to make this worthwhile. Anyone have suggestions or > comments? > Steve (Halifax) >
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