by Ted Below
Several weeks ago, I was getting ready for the Girl Scout bird watching program at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. As there is no better way to teach about birds than to have live ones in hand, I had a mist net set up to catch some birds near one of the feeders. After catching a few blackbirds, I noticed a smallish brown bird that appeared to have a bright yellow belly, in the middle of the net. "Ah!" I thought, "Great-crested Flycatcher, a good species to demonstrate with."
But as I got closer, I realized that the yellow was under the wing and the bird had a lot of streaking on the belly, "What's this?" I thought, and then I saw the bill. With that heavy seed cracking bill I knew it was a grosbeak. I did have to go to a field guide, because the bird was a female and they are hard to identify. Rose-breasted Grosbeak, the feature that really clinched the identification was the yellow under-wing. A great bird to show the Girl Scouts, and the second recorded sighting in Collier County (one at Rookery Bay 4/76). This record, like the last, will be sent into American Birds for the Fall Seasonal Report. American Birds Quarterly Reports deal with unusual bird sightings, numbers and phenomena, the reports have been published for over 44 years; an invaluable resource for researchers and bird watchers.
Most field check lists of birds (small printed lists to take bird watching) give the names of birds, their status (resident, migrant, Winter, Spring, etc.) and abundance in a specific area. In the Collier County Check List, under the abundance category, the above would qualify as "Accidental" (less than 5 records in the area). Other examples of Accidentals in the area; Least and Eared Grebes, Wilson's Petrel, Snow Goose, Brant, Common Eider, Oldsquaw, Common Goldeneye, Bufflehead, Masked Duck, Swainson's Hawk, Golden Eagle, Lesser Golden Plover, White-rumped Sandpiper, Purple Sandpiper, Arctic Tern, Black-billed Cuckoo, Rufus Hummingbird, Warbling Vireo, Dickcissel and Spot-breasted Oriole.
As time goes on and we get more records, a bird's status may change. The 2 Lesser Black-backed Gulls I saw the other day, which are listed as Accidental, should now be classified as Occasional. I have recorded them over 5 times on the sandbars at Big Marco Pass.
For me and the bird watching world, the following was the most exciting Accidental for S.W. Florida. In November of 1975, I saw a strange sea gull on the pilings at Naples Beach, couldn't identify it. January 1976, my daughter (W. Burkett, also a bird nut) and I saw another strange gull, couldn't identify it, but I got some pictures. In a few days, after searching many references we discovered that what we saw was Larus belcheri in breeding plumage, also called the Band-tailed Gull, Siminion Gull or Belchers Gull (one good reason for using the Latin name). The gull I saw in November may have been the same bird in non-breeding plumage.
The sighting caused quite a stir because the species is common to the west central coast of S. America, and had never been reported in N. America. As it turned out, that there were two other sightings in the U.S. before this one, the Naples episode stirred up so much interest, that one of those records at Marco Island several years before, was published in the Auk (the leading ornithological journal in this hemisphere) as the first sighting. Bur this also was wrong; Dr. Henry Stevenson, discovered a captive Band-tailed Gull in a Florida Panhandle roadside zoo, the bird had been there for 9 years and was the real first record. Dr. Stevenson then wrote up the whole story of all the sightings, in the Florida Field Naturalist (the journal of the Florida Ornithological Society). This is a good example of why it is important to report unusual bird phenomena to someone who can get it recorded somewhere.
With many of the Accidental sightings, you will notice that most of the birds are fair sized, and that they are birds that use open habitats. Thirteen of the 23 species listed above were first recorded by me. This immediately tells us that there are some biases operating in the documenting of rare records.
First of all the birds are easily observed and usually fairly easy to identify (as the ducks). Secondly they are noted by people that are bird watching a lot AND who keep and pass on records. Often when I mention seeing an unusual bird to another bird-watcher, they tell me of seeing the species a while ago. Probably one good reason for this is that the observer feels that the so called experts will not believe them. In a way they are right; certainly we are skeptical and have to be shown. Experience has taught us that 99% of the birds we see are ones that belong here and are not unusual (no matter how unusual they appear). Therefore rare sightings ought to be reported. Those of us who are serious about bird watching, will be glad to listen and importantly, try to confirm the observation.
A quick check of my master checklist for Collier County adds the following species. Pink-backed Pelican (this one needs an article of its own), Black-shouldered Kite, Wilson's Phalarope, Franklin's Gull, Great Black-backed Gull, Black-legged Kittiwake, White-crowned Pigeon, Monk Parakeet, Common Myna.
First published in the Collier County Audubon Society's newsletter, Audugram, in March, 1993