December 1
Good Morning
Excitement in the Bowhay Birding World yesterday! On November 29th, Connor observed a bird on the near-by riverbank that he thought was a Purple Finch. He didn’t have a camera with him so he sketched it. When he posted it on ebird, he discovered it is designated rare for Edmonton at this time of year. They are an uncommon bird in the summer and we do see them occasionally. The sighting made the Alberta eBird Rare Bird Report on November 30th.
Yesterday, he had the day off school and we decided to bird around the house and riverbank. I had spotted some redpolls on the riverbank and we wanted to get some good photographs of them.
While we waited for their return, the bird showed up again and this time we were both able to get photographs. Connor posted his photograph on eBird to document our sighting. A couple of hours later, a very good friend of ours, Percy, called to say that our bird was not a purple finch. He wasn’t sure why but it just didn’t look right to him. Connor, Percy and I looked at the Sibley’s Bird Guide and thought it might be a Cassin’s Finch but its range is the mountains and typically southern Alberta. After consultation with another birder, we decided to stick with the Purple Finch.
Then we got a couple of emails saying it was an immature / female Cassin’s Finch. One was from a person who put’s together the Alberta eBird Rare Bird Alert and lives in southern Alberta and is very familiar with Cassin’s Finch. We sent him some more photos, consulted with the Edmonton Area eBird Rare Bird Alert person, who had also emailed, and the sighting was confirmed.
This is the first Cassin’s Finch recorded on eBird for the Edmonton area ever. So as you can imagine, Connor had a hard time getting to sleep last night with all of the excitement.
Now I must apologize to my neighbors in advance. They will be witnessing the “twitching“ behavior over the next few days. In the birding world, Twitchers are birders who are interested in adding birds to their life lists. Life lists are kept for local, regional, provincial, country and continents; areas. Twitchers will travel long distances to get a rare bird. This is not an unusual bird for Albertans, so I don’t expect many people from southern Alberta to travel to Edmonton to see it.
However, local Edmontonians will likely be interested.
Stay well !
First is a Purple Finch, then a male Cassin’s Finch we saw in Waterton, and the two images of the Cassin’s Finch in Edmonton.
