Rare Bird Sightings

Western Grebe on Ohio River

News of a rare bird is the joy and downfall of any birder. Email lists will advise subscribers of something unusual, and hopefully, where it was last sighted. Then the rush begins, depending how rare the bird is. On January 21, 2021, we saw a notice that a Western Grebe had been spotted on the Ohio, and could be found from the benches at Garvin Brown Preserve. We drove out with the spotting scope to scan the river, a challenging task, since it involved looking at each piece of driftwood floating in the water! Finally, we located the bird waaay upstream from our location, and impossible to photograph. A day or two later, it was spotted downstream a bit, to we tried again, and finally found it about 2/3 across the river, but I got a somewhat fuzzy photo. The Western Grebe is commonly found from Canada through California, and sometimes in Mexico. It usually occurs in the great plains and western states, but only occasionally can be found in the eastern half of the United States. So how did it get this far east? And what birder was looking in the river to notice it?

Peregrine Falcon

On the same trip, we passed a Peregrine Falcon digesting her breakfast. Notice the big lump on her breast? That's her crop. Peregrines are not rare birds, neither are they considered as common birds.

White-faced Ibis

Last spring, the word went out for the sighting of a White-faced Ibis at Hays Kennedy Park, which you must walk through to reach Garvin Brown. This is also a bird of the far West and down into Mexico. Why would it come to the Ohio River in Kentucky, and who in town was there to find it? A friend of mine explained it quite simply.  They have wings and can fly wherever they want!

Western Tanager

I found an article at https://morebirds.com/blogs/news/why-weird-birds-show-up-in-unexpected-places 
which explains this phenomenon pretty well. A vagrant is a wild bird found well outside its expected range. These are usually solitary sightings, with just one bird wowing birders who are lucky enough to find it. Vagrants may arrive at their unusual destinations because of storms, faulty navigation during migration, or simply wandering much further afield than expected. When more spectacular vagrants appear, birders travel significant distances to see them. High-profile vagrant sightings can even make the news. Someone in Kentucky had a Western Tanager in her yard last year.

A bird irruption is a massive movement of birds outside their usual range. This is typically a winter phenomenon, when northern birds such as Evening Grosbeaks, Bohemian Waxwings, or Common Redpolls suddenly appear much further south than typical. These birds have been sighted in Kebtucky this winter, but I haven't found them. This movement is often tied to food supplies or population increases, forcing more birds south to find enough resources for survival. When an irruption happens, birders may not need to travel to see these unexpected birds because the birds come to them.

Bob White

Sometimes a bird that used to be considered as common becomes so rarely sighted, that we have the same excitement at finding it as if it had flown in from Siberia, such as the little Bob White.