Go-Wild Pass with Frontier

You may be wondering how is it that Nick can fly wherever he wants to at a moment’s notice. The answer is Frontier Airlines’ Go-Wild Pass. On September 8, 2023, I purchased a pass for $150 that essentially allowed me to travel almost anywhere for a month for $15 per flight. I would take full advantage of this pass to chase rarities during the month of September. So on September 12, I returned to Pensacola, Florida, where I met another Colorado birder seeking the Gray Gull. Kathy Kay arrived in Pensacola Airport about the same time as I did and we rented a car for the two-hour drive to South Rosa Beach, Florida.  We arrived at the Dune Allen beach access about 3 PM at the same time as Rick Taylor who had driven six hours from Atlanta. The three of us quickly located the Gray Gull (USA and Territories Biggest Year-Bird number 751) which was much more cooperative on this day. Rick agreed to drive me to Atlanta the next morning where I had a better chance of finding a Go-Wild flight with Frontier Airlines to my next destination. En route to Atlanta, we spotted a Wood Stork in Alabama, which was convenient because I had neglected to photograph one earlier in the year.

At the Atlanta airport I hopped on the next Frontier flight to Miami and was at Long Key State Park shortly after sunrise on September 14, 2023. After parking my rented car, I quickly heard the call of my nemesis bird, the La Sagra’s Flycatcher (752). As it was my ninth attempt to find this ABA Code 3 species in South Florida, I recognized the call note immediately. I recorded the audio which you can listen to from my eBird checklist here: https://ebird.org/checklist/S149882557?view=audio . As a true nemesis would do, it never showed itself to me despite me searching all morning plus an additional hour in the early afternoon. At 3 PM, I gave up and guided the car back to Miami (2 hours). 

Where to next? I was waitlisted on captain Brian Patteson’s pelagic boat trip off Cape Hatteras on Sunday September 17, 2023. I had time to spend a day in Cape May, New Jersey where I had a good chance of finding a migrating Connecticut Warbler. So I booked a flight to Philadelphia via Atlanta. The plane was late arriving into Atlanta causing me to miss the connecting flight to Philadelphia. Instead, the following morning I flew from Atlanta to Raleigh where I borrowed my cousin’s car (thank you, Zach Anderson!) and drove four hours to an Air BNB near Nags Head on North Carolina’s outer banks where I joined a small group of Colorado birders who were eager to see Atlantic Ocean birds with Brian Patteson, Captain of the Stormy Petrel.  Brian’s expeditions to the steamy Gulf Stream waters were famous for regularly finding warm water species such as Band-rumped Storm-Petrel, Black-capped Petrel and Audubon’s Shearwater as well as typical cold water species of the North Atlantic such as Cory’s and Great Shearwaters and Leach’s Storm-Petrel (all of which would be Big Year birds for me). The boat was originally scheduled for Saturday, September 16 but Hurricane Lee was heading north from the Bahamas toward Nova Scotia and rough seas were expected off North Carolina so Brian postponed the trip to the following day when the storm surge would be receding. The lure of the nearby hurricane potentially catapulting exotic species such as Bermuda and Fea’s Petrels and White-faced Storm-Petrel from the central Atlantic Ocean towards the North Carolina coast had created high expectations. These expectations were further heightened by the presence of avian vagrants produced from Hurricane Idalia a few weeks earlier. For example, a remarkable group of 17 American Flamingo had assembled on the bay side of the outer banks at Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. And a local birder had discovered an Elegant Tern (a Pacific Ocean species) among the Royal Tern flock at Oregon Inlet, representing a first state record. I was worried that none of the 20 registrants would cancel, and my worries were corroborated when I called Brian Saturday morning to check on the status of my registration. He told me that everyone had confirmed their participation the next day. I told Brian I would come to the dock in the morning just in case space opened up. “Fine, but I don’t want any pressure to allow you to join if we are full.” No pressure, I agreed. When I received the call late Saturday night that space had opened up for me to board the boat, imagine my relief. My excitement for finding unusual species was growing as well. Would we find a Trindade Petrel? Or a South Polar Skua? A Red-billed Tropicbird or a Yellow-nosed Albatross? So many possibilities and conditions were perfect. I carpooled on Sunday morning with Kathy Kay. When we arrived at the Nags Head dock, we found nobody there. We had gone to the wrong dock!! Kathy drove like Danika Patrick to reach the Stormy Petrel before it left the Cape Hatteras dock (70 miles away) but we arrived 15 minutes too late. We tried to find another boat to take us out to the Stormy Petrel but no dice. The deep sea fishermen had either already headed out to the Gulf Stream about 40 miles offshore or were enjoying their Sunday off. We tried a Sea Watch from Cape Hatteras and another from the Nags Head pier but saw only a single distant Jaeger. We did find a fishing boat that was going out the next day for a few hours in the afternoon.  We booked passage on that boat but didn’t see much as the captain never wandered more than a mile from shore. The sea birds would have to wait for another opportunity to be part of my Biggest Year. 

On Monday evening I snagged a late Frontier flight from Raleigh to Philadelphia with one thing on my mind: Connecticut Warbler. I rented a car and was stationed at Higbee Beach (Cape May) well before daybreak on Tuesday, September 19, 2023.  I had missed this skulker during spring migration in South Florida and on its breeding grounds in northern Minnesota in late June. In the fall, southbound Connecticut Warblers  accumulate along the Atlantic Coast between Portland and Cape May before making their long migration flights across the Atlantic Ocean to the northeast coastline of South America.  Being a skulker, it is generally difficult to detect during the migration season. Mid-September is their peak period of detection during fall migration at Cape May. 

I joined the birding throng at Higbee Beach expecting to locate Connecticut Warbler by its unique chip note. But that never happened. I spent the entire day searching various Cape May hot spots with no luck. It was a scorching hot day, and I fantasized or hallucinated that a distant white-rumped swallow was a vagrant Mangrove Swallow. I couldn’t prove it though. My photos only contained Tree Swallow, an expected species with dark rump. I was getting desperate for an addition to my Year List. After searching the thickets of Cape May all day I found a cheap hotel at Wildwood, New Jersey, which has a Boardwalk along the beach and an Atlantic City vibe. From the hotel balcony that evening, I heard some flight calls I didn’t recognize. Could it be Leach’s Storm-Petrel heading inland to an obscure nest site? Now that was thinking outside the box—way outside the box. I began to fear that the stress of my Big Year may be affecting my judgement. 

The next morning I flew from Philadelphia to Boston. I rode the subway from Logan International Airport to Newton Highlands where my mother still lives in the house where I grew up birding with my twin brother Oliver. It was late in the day but I still needed to submit my daily eBird checklist. I drove my Mom’s car to Nahanton Park where habitat was appropriate for Connecticut Warbler. Nothing. I looked at the Birds Eye app and found a recent report for one near Worcester at Westborough Wildlife Management Area. I made plans to go there with my Mom the next morning. 

On Thursday, September 21, 2023, my mom Karen and I walked into the trail at Westborough WMA. We were about a mile from the Connecticut Warbler sighting but there was excellent habitat all around us. My mom is 87 years old and couldn’t go the full distance with me. She is also hard of hearing so I had her use the Merlin App and told her to call me if Connecticut Warbler popped up on her iPhone screen. I speed-walked ahead on the path until I reached the cornfields where Connecticut Warbler had been reported the previous day. I met another birder there as well. After being separated from Karen for 30 minutes or so, she called to say that her Merlin App had detected Connecticut Warbler! I hoofed it back towards her position and found …silence. I asked to listen to her recording to confirm that Merlin had correctly detected the warbler’s chip note, but her phone battery was low and the recording from Merlin failed to load. 

In the afternoon I bought passage on a whale watch expedition to Jeffrey’s Ledge from Gloucester Harbor. I met two other birders on board, visiting from England. Conditions were pristine and the marine mammals cooperated for us: Humpback Whales and Atlantic White-sided Dolphins. Birds were few and far between. Half a dozen Northern Gannet popped in and out of view. One young one was a pale brown color and my imagination got the best of me. I reported a tentative identification on eBird as Red-footed Booby which would be a mega rarity in Massachusetts, but plausible given the recent passage of Hurricane Lee close by. Once I reviewed the photos on my laptop computer, I felt it was too large and not a perfect plumage match either. Other identified species included a pair of Bonaparte’s Gull, a handful of Great Cormorant among a larger number of Double-crested Cormorant, and several flocks of Common Eider and White-winged Scoter. No shearwaters, storm-petrels or alcids. 

Friday morning, September 22, 2023, I met with Marshall Iliff. Marshall is a phenomenal birder and is the operations manager for eBird. I had suggested we meet at his local patch—Millenium Park in West Roxbury. I was eager to update him on the progress of my Biggest Year and encourage him to establish USA and Territories as a “major region” in eBird so that my followers could track my total species via eBird in real time rather than from my blog. I had birded Millenium Park when I lived across the Charles River from the park during my final years in graduate school at Harvard University 1994-1997 and adjacent properties in Newton when I was in high school between 1980-1983, before the old West Roxbury landfill was converted to Millenium Park. Marshall offered to help me find a Connecticut Warbler in a weedy section of the park. After an hour he glimpsed a bird fly low over the weeds that fit the bill. He had heard the unique call note as well. Unfortunately I never got a good look or listen, and left it off my list. Connecticut Warbler was competing with La Sagra’s Flycatcher and Yellow-green Vireo for worst nemesis bird of this Big Year. To be fair, I should add Yellow Rail and LeConte’s Sparrow as contenders. Time will tell which of these five species proves to be the hardest for me to track down this year. 

In the afternoon, I returned to  Gloucester for another whale watch expedition. I had hoped to get better views and documentation of the brownish sulid that I had called a Red-footed Booby but was disheartened when I realized that the boat captain had steered us away from Jeffrey’s Ledge. Instead we visited the northwest corner of Stellwagen Bank, a deep-water fishing ground for whales, seabirds and the Gloucester fishing fleet. This location was not currently productive for fish, hence no pelagic bird species were present. The only whales we found were leaving the unproductive feeding grounds and heading towards Jeffrey’s Ledge. 

On Saturday, September 23, 2023,  I decided to try a whale watch out of Provincetown, located at the outer tip of Cape Cod. The boat visited the southeast corner of Stellwagen Bank and I finally found seabirds. Dozens of Manx, Sooty and Great Shearwaters surrounded the boat. The latter was species number 752 for my Biggest Year list. Also a Parasitic Jaeger was new for my USA lower 48 list, which was slowly approaching the 700 species threshold. 

On Sunday, September 24, 2023, I left Massachusetts but not on Frontier Airlines. Instead I joined my Mother and her companion Peter Schuntermann on an Amtrak passenger train to New Rochelle, New York, where we attended my brother Ned’s third wedding! I didn’t stay long though. I borrowed Ned’s third wife’s car and drove an hour to Jones Beach on Long Island. I was chasing a report of Cory’s Shearwater seen from land. However it was too dark and rainy by the time I arrived. After dark, I drove an hour back to their house in Yonkers, New York. Thanks to Robin Newberger (Ned’s wife) for letting me use her car. The following day I borrowed a different car and explored some of the Hudson River valley parkland near Yonkers. This was still prime territory for migrating Connecticut Warbler.  But despite the rainy weather, the Connecticut Warbler drought continued for me. There were plenty of reports in eBird however. That Monday evening, Ned dropped me off at LaGuardia Airport for my flight to Miami for a scheduled visit to Puerto Rico the following morning. This was a full fare costly flight with Delta Airlines, as no Frontier flights were available. 

Frontier’s Go-Wild pass was a fun way to chase birds for a couple of weeks. During this period I took 9 flights for a total cost of approximately $285. I added Vaux’s Swift, Yellow-footed Gull, Gray Gull, La Sagra’s Flycatcher  and Great Shearwater. Three of these new Biggest Year species are ABA Code 3+ species. What were the McQuade’s doing during these two weeks? They were in Hawaii racking up another 50+ species for their ABA Area Big Year. Linus Blomqvist was also in Hawaii. As a result, I had fallen to fourth place in the ABA Area competition. But this race is a marathon, not a sprint, and I felt positive about my prospects of finishing the year at the top of the totem pole.