Daily Postcard: A Bobolink made a rare appearance on Saturday, May 13, 2023 at the North Mesa Horse Stables in  Los Alamos. Photo by Jonathon Dowell

By JONATHAN DOWELL
Los Alamos

Amazing and wonderful, a Bobolink appeared at the stables on North Mesa all day Saturday. Usually found only in the Mississippi and Atlantic flyways during spring migration, it is rare to see a Bobolink farther west than east Texas this time of year.

Auspiciously, the Bobolink appeared in Los Alamos on Global Big Day, an annual event organized by Cornell University to document bird populations and distributions in a single day. Birders enter their sightings in the eBird.org citizen-science database, building a snapshot of birds’ locations worldwide. The event creates a friendly competition, to be the person to see the most bird species in a given area.

Carol Neal was the first on eBird to report the Bobolink at the stables at 8:50 a.m. Saturday, May 13, 2023. Using the eBird database, other birders soon learned of this rarity and converged to add the Bobolink to their own checklists. By the end of the day, at least 10 birders had seen the Bobolink. LA birders took pride in sharing the sighting, helping one another find the bird through texts, emails and in person. The above photo I took shows the Bobolink at the stables.

As of 10 p.m. MDT Saturday, the eBird Global Big Day reported 99 different species in Los Alamos County from reports filed by 29 birders. Worldwide, Global Big Day documented 7,265 species seen by 49,902 birders, with additional reports expected to be filed. Columbia was the country with the greatest diversity, with 1,382 species.

The Bobolink likely won’t be here long, as most spring-migration flights occur overnight.

Editor’s note: Learn more about Global Big Day at eBird.org. Get daily updates on spring migration at BirdCast.info. And follow Jonathan Dowell’s select photography on Instagram at SnowyEgretPhotography.