Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Rare birds blown into Charlotte area


You never know what the spring winds will blow in during bird-migration season. Charlotte birdwatchers have found some treats lately.

Don Seriff, natural resources coordinator with the county parks department, says unusually strong weather systems might be responsible for these recent arrivals since late April:

-- The purple gallinule pictured at right is usually found in Florida and in Georgia's coastal plain. The species had never been recorded in Mecklenburg County and fewer than 10 times in North Carolina.

-- Two common moorhens, one of them injured. The duck-like bird is considered a very rare transient, Seriff says, and had been seen in Mecklenburg only twice, most recently in 1989.

-- Several American bitterns, marsh birds that had been reported fewer than 10 times in the Charlotte region. A least bittern, found at Cowan's Ford Wildlife Refuge near Mountain Island Lake, had been reported only five times in the region.

-- A pair of white-winged doves, spotted in Pineville, became only the second record of the species for this area.

Two hours east of Charlotte, a Cassin’s sparrow became the first record of the southwestern native in the state. A fork-tailed flycatcher, a rare tropical species, was seen in the same area the same week.

More on this to come. Dozens of volunteers from eight counties are scouring the county to compile Mecklenburg's first breeding-bird atlas. "I will have lots of good info and some surprises to share in late June about the local discoveries," Seriff writes.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw a purple gallinule in our neighborhood stormwater drainage pond off of Gilead Rd. in North Western Mecklenburg County in the last 2 weeks.

Elena French said...

I saw a purple gallinule this weekend in the marsh off the boardwalk at the end of the mallard creek greenway in that park with the soccer fields on Mallard Creek Churck and N. tryon. Very close to the speedway... Must have been the same one. It was so beautiful and I have never seen one before... Rushed right home to look it up in my Audobon reference book.

Komodoman said...

Love the purple gallinule...tastes like chicken.

ChickenEater said...

I ate a chicken that tasted like chicken once.

Anonymous said...

This is pretty funny. Didnt Steve Martin just play hear? He has a CD called "Rare Bird Alert"