Brown Booby

The rarest sighting last week was a Little Stint found in Barnstable, Massachusetts. Little Stints are exceptional beyond the islands of western Alaska where they have become rare but regular vagrants from nesting areas in Arctic Asia.

It was a big week for sightings of rare seabirds along Atlantic and Pacific Coasts. In New York, a Brown Booby was observed offshore of Long Island, and another was sighted in Maryland in Chesapeake Bay, far from their more tropical range south of Florida.

Birders searching for wide-ranging seabirds along the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound found the second record of a Sooty Shearwater, along with a Great Shearwater and a Cory’s Shearwater – a fine shearwater triad indeed.

California birders joined the seabirding fun too by finding a few Townsend’s Storm Petrels among other more common species offshore from San Diego. And in Alaska, the state’s second Red-footed Bobby was recorded in remote waters near Agattu Island in the Aleutians – far from the species’ usual tropical range.

Wood Storks also made a big impression on states beyond their usual range: An immature Wood Stork in Fayette County, Pennsylvania; another immature Wood Stork in Wood County, West Virginia, and a real wayward Wood Stork in Chariton County, Missouri. 

Surprisingly, only one notable passerine rarity was sighted, but it was an exciting one: A Yellow-green Vireo was photographed in Santa Cruz County in Arizona.

For more information, refer to the American Birding Association’s Rare Bird Alert at http://blog.aba.org/2018/08/rare-bird-alert-august-3-2018.html

You may also glean more information about individual rare bird sightings from the state rare bird alert listserves, which you can access at http://birding.aba.org/