{"id":494,"date":"2011-12-08T06:38:16","date_gmt":"2011-12-08T14:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/?p=494"},"modified":"2011-12-08T06:45:59","modified_gmt":"2011-12-08T14:45:59","slug":"rarer-than-rare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/?p=494","title":{"rendered":"Rarer than Rare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge has been blessed over this past year with rare bird-migrants that have caused quite a stir in the birding community.\u00a0 Of course any stir in the birding community initiated at the Ridgefield NWR results in many visitors coming to the refuge in search of these rarities.\u00a0 Four of these rare birds were seen on the River \u201cS\u201d Unit of the refuge and three were seen at the Carty Unit.\u00a0 These seven birds that are mentioned below are even rarer than rare at Ridgefield NWR according to the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge Wildlife Checklist<\/em>. They are either not listed at all or are listed as accidental.\u00a0 To be clear, I should mention that many of these birds are not necessarily rare to the birding community at large, but are rare to this particular area whether it be the refuge, county, or state.\u00a0 Also, it should be noted that all of these birds were seen in the refuge areas that are accessible to the general public.<\/p>\n

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Ridgefield Black Phoebe<\/p><\/div>\n

Two of these seven birds were seen last winter.\u00a0 A Barnacle Goose was sighted for several days last February on Rest Lake.\u00a0 There is still some discussion as to whether this goose was a released goose or not although there are some strong indicators that show that it was a wild goose.\u00a0 Also, last winter a Black Phoebe (or possibly two) was seen around markers 5-8.\u00a0 These phoebe(s), with one or two more who came and stayed, built two nests (one nest was used twice) and hatched eight or more young (These Black Phoebe nests are Washington records).\u00a0 There are still sightings of these Black Phoebes on the refuge, although most of these sightings come from Bachelor Island, the location of the nests.<\/p>\n

In the spring there were three more birds seen, all at the Carty Unit, none of which are listed in the refuge checklist.\u00a0 These were the Northern Saw-whet Owl, the Gray Flycatcher and the Hermit Warbler.\u00a0 Each of these birds was seen several times.<\/p>\n

Two more birds listed as accidental were seen this fall.\u00a0 One was the American Golden Plover that was seen on the Kiwa Trail a couple of times.\u00a0 The other one, which I mentioned in my last Ramblings<\/em>, was the Vermilion Flycatcher.\u00a0 The Vermilion Flycatcher was a young female that stayed around markers 10 & 11 for four weeks beginning the middle of October.\u00a0 She stayed long enough to give the many people who came to the refuge especially to see this bird plenty of time to catch a view of this real rarity to the Northwest.<\/p>\n

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Black-throated Sparrow<\/p><\/div>\n

One other bird, not recorded on the refuge checklist, was seen for a couple of days this past summer on the refuge\u2019s Bachelor Island, a non-public area.\u00a0 This bird was the Black-throated Sparrow\u2014a bird that is commonly associated with the deserts of the southwest.<\/p>\n

Even though I have gone to the refuge and travelled around the auto tour route hundreds of times, I still get a tinge of excitement before I start around again wondering what new, rare or unusual bird I will see this time.\u00a0 If you haven\u2019t felt that excitement lately, it\u2019s time that you come back to the refuge and see what you<\/em><\/strong> can see.<\/p>\n

Some of the interesting, unusual, and rare birds that have been seen at the refuge this past six weeks are: Greater White-fronted Goose, Snow Goose, Eurasian Wigeon, Canvasback, Common Goldeneye, Horned Grebe, White-tailed Kite, Red-shouldered Hawk, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Cooper\u2019s Hawk, Merlin, Peregrine Falcon, Dunlin, Mew Gull, Barn Owl, Short-eared Owl, Pileated Woodpecker, Vermilion Flycatcher, Black Phoebe, & Townsend\u2019s Warbler.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge has been blessed over this past year with rare bird-migrants that have caused quite a stir in the birding community.\u00a0 Of course any stir in the birding community initiated at the Ridgefield NWR results in many … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,24,36,37,25,26,35,18,17,19,29,20],"class_list":["post-494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings","tag-birds","tag-black-phoebe","tag-golden-plover","tag-gray-flycatcher","tag-nesting","tag-ramblings-2","tag-rare-birds","tag-refuge","tag-ridgefield-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-river-s","tag-vermilion-flycatcher","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":501,"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions\/501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}