By Hank Gola
Golf is fond of ornithological terminology: There’s birdie, albatross, and now cuckoo. The Vineyards Country Club on the East End of Long Island has seen its share of birdies and even albatrosses, but no one there – or almost anywhere in the continental U.S. for that matter – has seen a cuckoo bird until Roy William Gardner spotted on the course in October.
Gardner, whose hobbies do not include birding, was heading from green to tee when he noticed an interesting looking bird flying in between posts. He snapped a photo and texted it cross country to his nephew, Christopher Sayers, a bird biologist working at UCLA. Within minutes, the feathered friend was identified as a common cuckoo, spotted in the United States only four previous times. The 13-inch visitor is native to Europe and winters in Africa and was most probably blown off course, so to speak, flying across the Atlantic Ocean in one fell swoop, which is typical of its kind.
Sayers told his uncle he had seen a “lifer,” something birders might never see in a lifetime.
But the story doesn’t end there. As soon as word got out, hundreds of birders from several states flocked to the site hoping to catch their own glimpse, which they did for the next few days before it flew the coup.
"We started a crazy viral birder insanity," Gardner told CBS News, which first reported the story.
You might say they went cuckoo for the cuckoo.