ABA Code-4 Rarity: Oriental Turtle-Dove in Palo Alto!

On February 2nd, a very lost bird joined a flock of common, everyday Mourning Doves at a backyard feeder in Palo Alto, California.  But this was no ordinary lost bird, and it was certainly no ordinary backyard that it chose to plop down in.  As fate would have it, this very lost bird just so happened to land in the backyard of a wildlife biologist and birder who was able to identify it as an extremely rare vagrant, an Oriental Turtle-Dove from East Asia.  

When I first heard about this bird, I assumed it was another Mandarin Duck-type situation: an escaped exotic from a zoo or private aviary, pretty to look at but otherwise... kind of ho-hum, from a birder's perspective.  (Only truly wild birds "count," you remember.)  But as the rare bird alerts began pouring in and articles started popping up on the internet, it occurred to me... this was nothing like the exotic duck situation!  

This was a much, much bigger deal.

No, it doesn't look like much, especially at the approximate distance of way-too-far-away-for-my-camera.  But this pigeon-relative has been causing a massive flurry of excitement this month in the North American birding world!

The bird world is experiencing yet another incredible rarity this winter, following on the heals of the now-famous Steller's Sea Eagle of New England and South Texas' Bat Falcon.

The Oriental Turtle-Dove of Palo Alto is only the third record of the species in the state of California: The first was in Death Valley in October of 1988, the second in Bolinas in December of 2002.  It has also shown up six times in Alaska.  But nowhere else has it been viewed by so many birders!  

Literally hundreds of birders - thousands, by now - have traveled to the quiet residential neighborhood in Palo Alto in hopes of catching a glimpse of this extremely rare bird.  In some cases, birders have flown all the way across the country to see it!  Just about every morning for the past two weeks, nearly a hundred birders or more have gathered in the streets to comb the trees with high-powered optics.  And most of them have been successful in their quest!  The turtle-dove has graciously developed a predictable pattern of behavior, perching for hours in its favorite trees, and is remarkably easy to see for such an incredible rarity.

[Aside: The American Birding Associate assigns "codes" to all birds in North America, from common to rare.  Code-1 and -2 birds are regularly occurring species; Code-3 birds are rare but occur annually in small numbers; Code-4 birds are not recorded every year, but have been recorded six or more times, including at least three times within the past 30 years (the Steller's Sea Eagle falls into this category); and Code-5 birds are rarities that have been recorded five or fewer times in the ABA area, or less than three times in the past 30 years (like the Bat Falcon).]

By the time Eric and I made our way to Palo Alto last weekend, the turtle-dove was on day eleven of its stay in the neighborhood.  Arriving at 9:30 a.m. after a two-hour drive, we missed the big Saturday morning rush of nearly 80 birders, many of which showed up at first light hoping to spot the bird.  The crowd had dwindled to one kind couple from Sacramento who pointed out the bird as soon as I walked up.  There it was, perched nonchalantly on a horizontal branch in a bare tree in somebody's backyard.  Over the course of the hour we spent watching the bird, birders came and went, but the group never grew past about a dozen at one time.  

Though unfazed by its many admirers, the turtle-dove stays well out of reach of people, usually perching high in trees.  Other clues lend more and more credit to the belief that this bird is a truly wild vagrant: There are no records of Oriental Turtle-Doves kept in captivity or sold by breeders, no zoo or other entity has reported a missing dove, and this individual shows no scarring on its legs or other signs of having ever been banded, which it certainly would have been if it had been in captivity. 

Experts have identified this individual as belonging to a migratory subspecies of Oriental Turtle-Dove that is widespread and common in East Asia, breeding in Japan and migrating south annually to spend winter in India.  Clearly, this one took a wrong turn.

Peering down at a dozen birders with binoculars and cameras and spotting scopes... wondering what all the fuss is about!

It gets crazier.

This bird could have landed anywhere.  And, honestly, I more or less agree with the kid with binoculars that commented, "It looks like a creepy pigeon."  I wouldn't go so far as to say that it looks creepy (those red eyes, though...), but it is distinctly pigeon-like, an unmistakable member of the Columbidae family, and I would bet 9.9 out of 10 people would take one look at it and call it a pigeon or, at best, a dove.  The other 0.1 person would probably assume it was an escaped exotic pet.  (I would have!)  It takes a very skilled and experienced North American birder/wildlife biologist to look at this bird and recognize it for what it is!  And that is precisely whose backyard this bird chose to land in!  Ridiculously unbelievable.

Back home in its native range in Asia, Oriental Turtle-Doves have adapted to breed in a wide range of habitats, including woodlands and forests, as well as farmland edges and even tree-lined streets.  

Biologists believe this individual's sense of direction may have been faulty, causing it to migrate north instead of south for the winter.  It would have had to cross the Bering Sea - possibly spending some time as a stowaway on a freighter, which happens occasionally - and then mirrored its southerly migration pattern, from Japan to India, following the Pacific Coast south until it found itself in California.  This phenomenon occurs fairly regularly with some Asian migrant species.  An exact scientific explanation is unclear, but it seems that in the case of vagrants like this one, birds sometimes simply get lost, perhaps due to a "malfunction" of their internal navigation system.  Like us, they too make mistakes sometimes.  

We will never know the incredible journey this bird has been on, but we can be thankful that it found a safe place to land in the end!  No one can say for sure how long this bird will be with us, but it is possible that it could stick around the neighborhood for quite some time.

If you're interested, check out the most recent reports from the turtle-dove's location on eBird.

 

The rusty scalloped edges of the turtle-dove's feathers really are beautiful!

I need to take a moment and give credit where it is due, not only to those who found and identified this bird in the first place - wildlife biologist Andrew Bradshaw, who spotted it in his backyard, and expert birder Alvaro Jaramillo, who confirmed its identification - but also to Eric, who spent several days trying to convince me we should go to Palo Alto to "chase" this rarity.  I confess: I didn't really want to.  (I know, I know, what was I thinking?)  I didn't want to drive aaaaall the way to the Bay Area, through Bay Area traffic, to potentially not see a bird that, while really cool and super-rare, was in fact very much like a pigeon.  (This was no sea eagle, after all!)  But what kind of attitude is that?  On Friday evening, as I scrolled through yet more eBird posts and rare bird alerts, I made the somewhat last-minute decision: We would chase this bird!  ("Chase" sounds way too epic for what we actually did: parked the car in a well-to-do neighborhood, walked exactly one block, joined two other birders, looked through their spotting scope... and got the bird!)  So, the credit really goes to my husband, who had gifted me a day of birding as a Valentines' Day present and was willing to change our plans from a predictable morning along a nearby river to a full day's adventure!  

Yet another lifer goes down in the books only because of Eric, and his generous support of my crazy birding habit!