Photo by Daniel Bailey
I have thus far seen 31 types of birds in or around my yard, but they are the usuals – robins, finches, bluebirds, doves, etc. I really get excited when I see a new bird, like a grosbeak in my yard
So, I can imagine how a fellow birder from Lynchburg, Daniel Bailey, was absolutely giddy to see a true rarity, a Gray-Crown Rosy-Finch, and in Virginia no less.
How rare?
The typical range of this finch is from west of the Rocky Mountains to the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. To put it in perspective, based on eBird records, this species had never before been reported in Virginia.
The rare bird was seen and photographed in the mountains of Amherst County last February, a report that sent shockwaves through the birdwatching community. This species had only been reported a handful of times east of the Rocky Mountains and only once before in all the southeast—in Arkansas in 2012.
Lynch said it was like seeing Big Foot.
Two years ago, a legitimate birder reported a Purple Throated Hummingbird native to Mexico and southwest USA in Charlottesville. An unusually large hummer, that week I also saw a very large hummer in my yard, probably another Purple Throated hummer. I haven’t seen one since.
Watching birds is fun and to see such a rare bird as the Gray-Crown Rosy-Finch had to be very special indeed.
