Another Chase With a Good Result

Since first being seen on a Christmas bird count in mid-December, a Brambling has been putting on a show for California birders in the small Northern California mountain town of Quincy. There have been less than 10 records for this species ever in California so this was a chance I did not want to let go by. My buddy Jeff was unable to join me on this chase so when a 3 day weekend rolled around I took my chance. Leaving Napa at 3:45 in the morning I headed towards Sacramento and then north in the Valley to Oroville. The road follows the Feather River from here and takes you along the edge of the gigantic burn from last year's Dixie Fire.  This fire has altered the landscape of a large area where I have both fished and birded since I was a kid. It will recover with time but I will not see it again in the state that I remember with such fondness.

Arriving at the stakeout location a little after 7 am I met another birder, Chris from Pittsburg, who already had several good looks at the Brambling.

Over the course of the next 45 minutes the bird made continuous appearances to collect seed from the ground, staying in the open at least once for 2 minutes. I collected a few low quality images because of the lighting conditions which I share here.

Seeing a migrant species like this so far from where it should be always makes me wonder about the circumstances of its journey. I mean, it is no mystery how it got here, it flew. The mystery lies in why it did not follow its species' traditional migration from northern to southern Eurasia but instead traveled east towards and across the Pacific to North America. We will not ever know the answer to this question but that mystery is one of the attractions to the birding life. The chase to see a bird you have never seen before is the excitement in the story, to wonder about how it got there gives us the mystery.

On my way home I tried unsuccessfully for a Northern Shrike that has been seen near Oroville for much of the winter. I will have to save this one for another chase in the future.

Mega-Rarity in Palo Alto

Every once-in-a-while a bird shows up a long way away from where it is supposed to be and the birding community goes a little bit crazy. That happened this past week in Palo Alto, CA. when an Oriental Turtle Dove showed up at a neighborhood feeder attracting birders from all over the country.

The Scene

This is only the third California record for this bird and only a handful of other records exist for all of North America. It has been seen most reliably all week long between 7am and 9 am so on Friday when we didn't have school I took my chance, braved the commute traffic and arrived on the scene at about 8:20. What a show! I was told by one of the 100 or so birders that it had not yet been seen that morning so I took up station to wait with everybody else and within 5 minutes, there it was. First perched in a stunted Redwood tree, then flying directly over my head to a telephone wire where it showed off for the crowd for a couple of minutes, finally dropping onto some seed scattered in a yard. A little later it flew off and, to my knowledge, was not seen for the rest of the morning. This was unfortunate as I brought my sister (who lives nearby) back to see it and it did not reappear.

The crush to see the bird on the ground.

You can learn more about the finding of this bird from this article.