Bird’s fame spreads to U.S.
Nature enthusiasts have come from as far as 944 kilometres away to look at a rare bird perched in a Salmon Arm tree.
And expectations are the number of people eager to see the fieldfare will increase as the advent of the Christmas holidays makes travel easier.
“There have been people come here this week from Redmond, Oregon, just to see the fieldfare,” Don Cecile, an avid Salmon Arm birder, said Thursday.
“And I think we’ll see a big increase in the numbers beginning this weekend,” Cecile said, suggesting the rarity of the fieldfare is such that people will come in from Alberta and the western U.S. to see the bird.
The fieldfare, native to Russia and Europe, is a genetic cousin to the American robin. Only one fieldfare has been seen before in B.C., in Port Coquitlam in 2003, and only two of the birds were sighted in the U.S. between 1991 and 2015.
Vancouverite Melissa Hafting was among those who made the drive to Salmon Arm to see the bird.
“I was struck by the beauty of the elegant thrush. It was larger than the American robin and prettier,” Hafting wrote on her website, Dare to Bird.
“There is something about thrushes in a bright red berry tree that reminds me of Christmas, which is fitting now,” Hafting wrote.
The fieldfare got to Salmon Arm either by crossing the Atlantic Ocean and making its way across North America, or by flying from Russia to Alaska and then down the Pacific Coast.
“Of course, we’ll never know,” says Cecile, an editor with a birding publication. “But right now, it could well be the rarest bird in North America.”