The local birding world has been excited by numerous special sightings during this strange fall migration. There were a Sabine’s gull and a golden plover at Provincetown, a clay-colored sparrow in Quincy, a buff-breasted sandpiper at Plum Island, a Kentucky warbler in Newton. But whenever a species is recorded in America for the first time, birders go wild trying to get that bird on their all-important life list.In last week’s case, it was the gray heron first […]