Today I was fortunate enough to go to Surrey, BC in search of a Siberian Accentor. For any non-birders reading sometimes birds that normally breed in the Eurasian arctic regions somehow get their directions wrong and migrate across the Bering Sea and end up coming down the west coast of North America. This year a beautiful small passerine member of a family of birds not seen in North America regularly, species name Siberian Accentor, was discovered a few days ago near a blueberry farm outside Surrey, BC. It was found, as rare vagrants often are, on the local Christmas Bird Count. On CBCs birders canvas a 15-mile diameter area to count as many birds as they can find. An added benefit of getting lots of skilled birders trying to look at and identify every bird they see is that rarities often are discovered. It makes me wonder how many more rarities we would find if there was a bird count every month.
Anyway, to my delight I was asked to accompany a group of extraordinarily skilled birders on this trek. I met Bruce Labar and Gene Revelas at Bruce’s place in Tacoma and we drove to the light link rail station near Seatac to meet Bill Tweit. These three are long-time friends who are spotters on the Westport Pelagic trips, and have decades of experience birding together. I had met each of them in the field or on the boat, but never really had a chance to go on a day of birding with them except for Bruce.
We hopped in Bill’s Subaru and headed north. We arrived at the location to find an estimated 60 birders intently looking into an area around a deserted house next to a blueberry field. They told us the accentor had been seen maybe 20 minutes earlier for a very brief look.
Within 20-30 minutes it showed up again on the other side of the house, and after trying to catch glimpses in a thick bush, it slowly hopped from branch to branch out to the edge of the bush for excellent spotting scope looks for about 2-3 minutes. I was able to get nice looks from several angles, seeing the facial pattern of burnt orange and black markings, the orangish breast with faint streaking, the streaking on the back, and the pointed fairly thin bill. It the flew off and reappeared later, when I got at best fleeting views.
When he all agreed we had nice looks, we decided to head off to Richland where a Western Scrub Jay had been seen earlier. This is a difficult to find bird in Canada, as it’s normal range is only now extending to the mid-WA Puget Sound area. We found it after a bit of looking, and headed to Boundary Bay to look for shorebirds, including a late Red Knot and a roosting Long-eared owl. No luck with either of these, but the coolest thing was having Bill Tweit teach us all how to recognize the call notes of Eurasian Wigeon in a flock of American Wigeon. It seemed impossible, but in short order Bill had us picking out bird after bird in the huge wigeon flocks. We also saw a very dark black male Merlin perched near-in on a tree top.
The ride home was full of birding stories and lots of fun too.
I’m hopeful to get more opportunities to get out with these super-great birders again.
Here is a link to a photo of the Siberian Accentor for anyone who wants to see it. Here is another by Ryan Merrill. Thanks to them for the photos, I just took the time to drink in the beauty of the bird with just my eyes.