How a bird ‘no one ever sees’ drove tons to a Long Island golf course

It’s a birdie he won’t ever forget.

Bird lovers are flocking to a Long Island golf course to see the biggest star to hit the links here since the Ryder Cup — after a golfer spotted a rare cuckoo bird, which may have traveled all the way from Russia and landed for the first recorded time in New York State.

Over 100 ornithological enthusiasts have made their way to Vineyards Golf and Country Club in Riverhead, as locals are rolling out the red carpet for the out-of-towners.

A Long Island golfer spotted an extremely rare avian for these parts perched over a golf course on the East End, leading to a flock of bird enthusiasts traveling from hours away to get a glimpse. Courtesy of Jay McGowan

“The farmers are letting people come in to get a better view,” Roy William Gardner, the golfer who made the fateful discovery, told The Post.

He spotted the unfittingly named common cuckoo — only four have been seen in the continental US — “hopping post to post next to a cornfield” after pulling his cart up to the seventh hole a week ago.

“I sent a cell phone photo of it to my nephew, who graduated from Cornell as an ornithologist…he told me to drop a pin in my exact location right away,” added Gardner, a bird lover who used to sketch them as a boy.

“He goes, ‘This is something that no one ever sees. This bird doesn’t come to the lower 48 states.”

Gardner’s nephew, Christopher Sayers, quickly spread the word through online groups that the bird commonly found in Europe had graced Suffolk County with its presence.

It took only “hours” for fans to start pouring in as nearby farmers let spectators onto their land to get a better glimpse of the roughly 13-inch-long visitor, according to the lucky golfer.

“I had no idea the storm it would cause in the bird world. Everybody got excited, and they were calling me and saying, ‘This is an amazing find.”

“I’m sure people are over there right now looking for it,” added Gardner, a realtor based in East Quoge.

Jay McGowan, an ornithologist friend of Sayers working at Cornell, took a day off to drive from Ithaca at 5 a.m. last week because of the cuckoo’s rarity, “as well as being really cool looking.”

“The atmosphere was actually pretty grim when I arrived,” McGowan said.

“The bird hadn’t been seen for an hour. The last report was that it had flown off over the golf course and had not returned.”

He waited for hours with “a few dozen others” until using satellite images to speculate where the cuckoo may have made off to in the area, ultimately finding it in “an empty horse paddock.”

“I got the word out on our many rare bird alerts, and birders started pouring in,” McGowan added.

“Some had left in despair and rushed back, some were still in the area and arrived quickly…everyone got good views.”

Bird is the word

Sayers speculates that this common cuckoo — the first seen in the lower 48 since one was spotted in Providence, RI, five years ago — may have come from as far away as Russia or Scandinavia.

The rare cuckoo bird, which possibly came all the way from Russia, was spotted at Vineyards Golf and Country Club in Riverhead. Courtesy of Jay McGowan

“Judging from the patterns that we know this species uses when migrating, we expect that this is a juvenile bird, and its first year,” he said.

The destination was Sub-Saharan Africa, but as Sayers noted, “a slight variation in the heading that you take can put you someplace extremely wrong.”

This common cuckoo likely flew across the Atlantic Ocean in one fell swoop, which is typical of its kind.

“It’s definitely equipped to make a distance like that,” added the PHD candidate studying bird biology at UCLA.

“It was probably pretty exhausted, and it was trying to refuel itself with some gypsy moths and other caterpillars in Riverhead.”

It hasn’t been seen for the past few days, which likely means bye-bye, birdie for islanders, but McGowan said the little fella “put on a show” during its stint between the north and south forks.

“I think a lot of people were impressed by its foraging strategy and hopping from fence post to fence post,” said Sayers.

“For the time that it was visible, the cuckoo was quite active.”