An older gentleman we knew in years past who has since passed away had a, let’s just say “unique” way to remember the name of the ibis. He was a former French teacher; we can still hear his strong French-Canadian accent, passed down from his parents who had immigrated to Maine to work in the mills. He loved to joke, and he knew how to put his permanently decurved index finger (from an old injury) to effective use. With us being birders, he used it to describe the difference between the godwit, whose bill curves up and the ibis, whose bill curves down. “Godwit,” he would say emphatically while pointing the curved index figure toward the sky. Then, with a glint in his eye and his finger tracing a curve toward the ground (the way a certain liquid would travel), he would say, “ipiss.” A little crude, maybe, but we never forgot it! His wife, who as an avid birder (he was not) would roll her eyes as she had heard the joke a million times before.

Glossy ibis in North America, like ourselves and our French-Canadian friends, originated from glossy ibis of Europe and Africa that began showing up in the eastern Caribbean in the 1800s. More and more of them apparently came across the ocean expanse, or at least enough came over to eventually establish a breeding population. That population expanded northward into Florida and then farther north along the Atlantic coast through the latter half of the 1900s, reaching Maine as a breeding bird in the 1970s.

Cattle egrets followed a similar path from Old World to New World, arriving in the Caribbean and expanding northward to begin nesting in New England in the 1970s. More recently, little egrets—yet another Eurasian and African species—began showing up in Barbados and other parts of the Lesser Antilles before starting to show up across the Atlantic coast. Maine had its first in 2011 and now there seems to be one or more around in southern Maine each summer.  Maine’s even had a western reef-heron, an African-Indian species in 2006.

See a pattern anyone?

That pattern (that wading birds from the other side of the Atlantic keep finding their way to the Americas), has repeated itself again recently. Last week, a gray heron, the Eurasian equivalent to the familiar great blue heron, was identified in Cape Elizabeth. Birders came from far and wide to look for the bird whose major distinctions from the nearby great blue herons are its shorter legs, white “wrists” on the wings, and whitish thighs (not cinnamon, as in great blue heron). Gray herons have been showing up for thirty years or so in Barbados and other islands in the Lesser Antilles but have begun popping up more regularly in Newfoundland and other parts of Atlantic Canada, with a few sightings south to Virginia.

There has been some conjecture that gray herons may already be nesting in the eastern Caribbean or soon will. Over the decades to come, will they become a more regular visitor here in Maine? It would be pretty easy to miss a gray heron among the many great blue herons we have here in Maine so keep your eyes open for something that looks a little different and maybe you’ll be the next one to spot a bit of gray among the sea of blue.

Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Vice President of Boreal Conservation for National Audubon. Dr. Wells is one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists. He is a coauthor of the seminal “Birds of Maine” book and author of the “Birder’s Conservation Handbook.” His grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, a nonprofit membership organization working statewide to protect the nature of Maine. Both are widely published natural history writers and are the authors of the popular books, “Maine’s Favorite Birds” (Down East Books) and “Birds of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao: A Site and Field Guide,” (Cornell University Press).