January
14, 2019 by Louis Sahagun
Hundreds
of hard-core birders from across the nation have been flocking to South Los
Angeles this week, hoping to catch a glimpse of a rare avian that wandered in
from Siberia and inexplicably chose to hunker down within a hedge just south of
the 10 Freeway.
The
foreign visitor—or "vagrant," as bird-watchers say—became an instant
celebrity five days ago, when a sharp-eyed librarian in Jefferson Park
identified it as a red-flanked bluetail.
Ever
since then, fans toting binoculars have crowded onto the grounds of UCLA's
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library to marvel at the so-called megatick—a
species so rare that most birders may never get the opportunity to
"tick" it off their life's list of hoped-for sightings in the U.S.
Friday
morning, scores of bird-lovers streamed through the library's gates and began a
frenzied search for the avian superstar.
It didn't
take long for Jeff Bray, 40, of Irvine to spot the treasure he was hunting for:
a brownish ball of feathers roughly the size of a computer mouse who sported a
white eye ring, orange sides and a bright blue tail.
"I
saw it for a few seconds," Bray said with a smile. "It looked like a
bird hopping around in the bushes. Very cool."
This is
the first recorded instance of a red-flanked bluetail on California's mainland,
said Kimball Garrett, manager of the ornithology collection at the Natural
History Museum of Los Angeles County. It is believed to be the bird's eighth
documented visit to the North American continent.
The
bluetail's native habitat ranges from coniferous forests in northern Asia, west
through Russia to Finland. It typically winters in southeast Asia.
No other
extremely rare bird, some say, has made this much commotion since an odd duck
known as a Baikal teal blew into the Rocky Mountain village of Kittredge,
Colo., in 1993 and planted itself outside the picture window of Bear Creek
Tavern.
