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Enthralling bird watchers, gray heron is spotted off Nantucket, its first sighting in continental US - The Boston Globe

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A gray heron, pictured in Belarus in 2019.Sergei Grits/Associated Press

A gray heron spotted off Nantucket about three weeks ago has bird-watchers buzzing. as it is the first confirmed sighting of the bird in the lower 48 states, according to wildlife experts.

“Well, it was from an ornithologist’s, from a birder’s point of view, very exciting,” said Wayne R. Petersen, director of the Massachusetts Important Bird Area (IBA) program at Mass Audubon, in a phone interview on Wednesday. “It’s one of those things, when something of that magnitude shows up, it obviously creates a lot of interest.”

He said the gray heron was spotted Sept. 5 and again the following day. It was initially spotted on Tuckernuck Island and later moved over to Muskeget Island, two small private islands off Nantucket largely inaccessible to the public.

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“It’s tricky for the masses, who would love to go out and see it,” he said.

In the birding community, people would travel far for a glimpse of the bird, said Marion E. Larson, chief of information and education at the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. Some birders, she said, would even “get on a plane” to see it.

Larson advised state residents to “enjoy the show” if the mysterious gray heron shows up in their yard. Take photos, too. She said her agency views such sightings as an opportunity to generate interest in the natural world.

One thing to watch out for when trying to identify the gray heron, experts said: It’s similar in appearance to the great blue heron, which is commonly seen in Massachusetts.

“You’ve likely seen great blue herons in Massachusetts before — but would you know a foreign doppelgänger if you saw one?” Larson’s agency said in a recent Facebook posting. “A young Nantucket birder recently found the first gray heron ever spotted in the lower 48 states!”

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Some people responded to the Facebook post, claiming sightings.

“I really do think I have seen these while fishing the Parker River marshes in Newbury MA,” one person wrote.

Said another, “Spotted in North Andover MA, along with a night heron, which I’ve never seen around here as well.”

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, a charity based in the United Kingdom, describes the gray heron on its website as “unmistakable.”

The site says the gray herons are “tall, with long legs, a long beak and gray, black, and white feathering. They can stand with their neck stretched out, looking for food, or hunched down with their neck bent over their chest.”

The site adds that gray herons eat lots “of fish, but also small birds such as ducklings, small mammals like voles and amphibians. After harvest, gray herons can sometimes be seen in fields, looking for rodents.”

The society lists the bird’s natural habitats as woodland, farmland, grassland, marine and intertidal, urban and suburban, and wetland.

The Wildlife Trusts, a grass-roots environmental organization also based in the UK, says on its site that the bird’s scientific name is Ardea cinerea, and “these tall, prehistoric-looking birds” can be spotted “standing like a statue on the edge of ponds and lakes, contemplating their next meal.”

The site says the birds “spend most of their time alone feeding mainly on fish but can be tempted by the occasional tasty mole! When feeling particularly lazy, the heron will visit gardens with ponds for a quick and easy snack.”

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Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @TAGlobe.

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Enthralling bird watchers, gray heron is spotted off Nantucket, its first sighting in continental US - The Boston Globe
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