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.
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| 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.
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| The crush to see the bird on the ground. |
You can learn more about the finding of this bird from this article.
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