Andrew Rankin (arankin@herald.ca)
Published: May 23 at 11:50
p.m.
MARBLE MOUNTAIN, N.S.
— David Johnston had to see the painted bunting, widely considered the
most beautiful bird in North America, for himself.
With camera in tow, the birder of
50 years wasted no time hopping in his car and hightailing it 40 kilometres
away to Cape Breton’s Marble Mountain to see the tiny rainbow-coloured
creature.
There it was, as promised,
hanging out at a friend’s bird feeder. The trek from his Port Hawkesbury home
on Tuesday had paid off.
“Just beautiful,” said Johnston.
“First one I’ve seen. A lifer for me.”
It was a rare sighting, indeed.
The tropical bird, also named
Nonpareil for their supposedly unrivalled beauty, was first sighted in Nova
Scotia in the mid-1960s and has only been spotted about 60 times since, said
Ian McLaren, an emeritus professor of biology at Dalhousie University and a
Nova Scotia Bird Society board member.
A few of them are occasionally
flung to our shores while en route to their breeding grounds in the
southeastern United States.
“They set out from the tropics,
subtropics, sometimes across the Gulf, and keep on going beyond their summer
range,” said McLaren. “Often they get driven off the southeastern Atlantic
coast and caught up by the frequent southwesterly airflow that brings us windy
and often wet weather here in spring.”
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