LITTLE ROCK — High atop Mount Magazine, a single gray-crowned rosy-finch hopped among weeds and grass.
No one knew it was there.
Then Don Simons, a park interpreter for Mount Magazine State Park, saw it. This was May 6.
At first he thought it was a dark-eyed junco with some albino traits, but after rushing to his (nearby) home for binoculars, camera and field guide, he knew better.
Soon he had posted an e-mail to subscribers on the University of Arkansas bird-watching discussion list (listserv): “I can’t believe what I’m seeing with my own eyes.”
What he had seen was a sparrow-size bird normally found at high elevations in places like Colorado, Canada, Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. It had never been seen by Simons anywhere, and never reported in Arkansas by anyone.
His sighting has since been well verified by many eager birdwatchers, clear photographs, videos and Audubon Arkansas’ leading bird specialist, Dan Scheiman. It will not be officially accepted as a state record until it is reviewed by the Arkansas Bird Records Committee, but with such thorough documentation, the review is expected to be a formality.
Gray-crowned rosy-finches are considered extreme habitat specialists, preferring elevations around 10,000 feet or higher.
Mount Magazine, although Arkansas’ highest point, is only 2,753 feet above mean sea level.
This songbird is North America’s highest-nesting bird, preferring to lay its eggs on the highest mountains above the timberline near glaciers, melting snow and bare rocks. It feeds on seeds and insects in open meadows atop mountains.
FLOCK TO THE PARK
At 10 a.m., as soon as Simons convinced himself that he was seeing the rosy-finch near the park visitors center, he posted his find on the Birds of Arkansas discussion list (ARBIRD-L). His posting sparked a migration of birders toward the mountain to see the gray-headed finch.
An estimated 50 or so drove to the park from around the state, excited about the opportunity to observe a bird they had never seen, which meant they would be able to add the gray crowned rosy-finch to their life lists.
The life list is a list that some diligent bird-watchers keep of every bird they’ve ever seen in their lives.
The finch stayed near the visitors center parking lot where Simons first spotted it. Feeding on the seeds of a small plant with yellow flowers (identified by naturalists on the listserv as dwarf dandelions), it allowed cautious, slow-moving photographers to come close as it posed for pictures.
“Our last confirmed sighting was on the 9th,” Simons said. “Someone reported seeing it on the 10th, but I was not able to confirm it.”
EVIDENCE
One of those who came to see the finch was Charles Mills, who lives near Hope.
Mills posted a YouTube video (see it at tinyurl.com/7s8h2m2). It shows the little bird with threads of plant matter dangling from its beak as it moves on rocks and among weeds that are as tall as it is. It snips seeds off the dwarf dandelion and looks about.
Don Follette, 89, who is from Hot Springs, went to see the bird at Mount Magazine and was pleased to note that he spotted it as soon as he got out of his car.
He often drives around looking for the rarities that are mentioned on ARBIRD, but frequently the rare bird has already left the area where it was seen, or it’s in a place that he can’t get to. The finch was life bird number 382 for Follette.
Scheiman, director of bird conservation for Audubon Arkansas, explained the unusual appearance: “Some populations of gray-crowned rosy-finches are migratory. This bird’s internal compass is off, and it traveled in the opposite direction that it was supposed to migrate. This is called reverse migration. Mount Magazine is one of the highest points a bird will come to when flying across the Great Plains towards Arkansas.”
Another Northwestern bird that rarely visits Arkansas, a lesser goldfinch, was seen (and reported on ARBIRD) at a house in Benton County at the same time the rosy-finch was being admired atop Mount Magazine.
JOB BENEFITS
Simons couldn’t identify the gray-crowned rosy-finch from memory, which is how he knew it was out of place. His duties as park interpreter have made him very familiar with the birds of Mount Magazine.
His sighting gives Arkansas a new record bird, but it also puts a fresh feather in Simons’ rather feathery birding cap.
On one occasion (also on Mount Magazine) he saw a snow bunting, a gorgeous little bird that is on the top of every serious birder’s bucket list.
In addition, although he was not actually the first to identify a Townsend’s solitaire (another unusual bird for Arkansas), he has kept up with one that returned to Mount Magazine three winters in a row. Each year he rediscovered its whereabouts and posted the location on the discussion list so other birders could come look.
(Townsend’s solitaire is a mockingbird-like bird in the thrush family that was discovered in 1839 in Oregon by a young ornithologist who sent a preserved specimen to James Audubon.Audubon named the find after its discoverer, John Kirk Townsend.)
On May 8, two days after sighting the gray-crowned rosy-finch, Simons made a long-planned birding trip to Kansas, where he added two more birds to his life list.
One was the rarely seen but occasionally heard black rail. This nocturnal bird is so small and so reclusive that a live specimen was only well photographed in the wild within the past four years by a photographer who had spent more than 10 years trying to get a clear, sharp image.
HOURS OF FRUSTRATION
Simons’ search involved hours of frustration in which 10 rails were heard but not seen. Finally one of the little guys dashed through an opening in some reeds. “It looked like a mouse on stilts,” he told the discussion list.
The other unusual bird Simons saw for the first time while in Kansas was the lesser prairie chicken. This endangered species is known for its extravagant courtship dance. Simons was able to observe this courtship behavior on a wildlife preserve in Kansas with the assistance of a university professor who was doing research on the species.
Simons is not the only keen naturalist in his family. His wife, Lori Spencer, wrote Arkansas Butterflies and Moths, the definitive guide to the subject. She did the scientific writing, and her husband did the photography of butterflies, moths and larvae.
The couple also teamed to produce a children’s book on Arkansas’ state butterfly, the Diana fritillary, an insect more abundant in Arkansas than anywhere else in the world.
She has also been the spark plug for the Mount Magazine International Butterfly Festival, which is held annually at the state park and hosted by the city of Paris. This year’s festival will be June 22 and 23.
ActiveStyle, Pages 27 on 05/28/2012