Bird lovers were chirping with excitement following an extremely rare sighting in Southern California of a species that has only been spotted once before in North America.
A red-flanked bluetail was seen by biologists on San Clemente Island northwest of San Diego, the Los Angeles Times ( http://lat.ms/sYwyMu ) said Saturday.
The last sighting of the small, thrush-like bird was 22 years ago on Southeast Farallon Island near San Francisco.
The red-flanked bluetail normally breeds in Northern Europe and Northern Asia, and winters mainly in Southeast Asia.
"Birders get very excited about this kind of thing," Kimball Garrett, ornithology collections manager at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, told the Times. "It just illustrates that almost anything can happen out there in the wild with birds."
Researchers from the Institute for Wildlife Studies made the discovery this week while checking on the San Clemente loggerhead shrike, an endangered species on the island.
The team originally thought the bird was a Siberian rubythroat. When they determined it was a red-flanked bluetail, they followed it for about 30 minutes and took several photos. The shots caused a flutter of enthusiasm in the birding community when they were posted the website eBird.org.
Experts were scratching their heads about how the bird wound up so far from its flock, but say such migrations aren't unheard of.
"Not all individuals unerringly migrate from point A to point B," Garrett told the newspaper.
Information from: Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com