Thursday, April 1, 2010

Picnic Table Effect Tiger Heron!

In a classic example of the "Patagonia Picnic Table Effect," wherein skilled observers go to an area seeking one rare bird and then find others, birders trying to track down Mike's Great-spotted Woodpecker and Tony's Sabine's Gull detected this Bare-throated Tiger-Heron, photographed here by Brian O'Michael as it took off of the vineyard pond on Stevens Street. I believe this is a second North American record after the one in Texas this past winter, and the consensus is that it is in fact the same bird as the one in Texas, swept up in the flow from the south.

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