‘The most exclusive guest’: rare yellow-billed loon lands in Las Vegas fountain
A rare yellow-billed loon – a bird more common to the high Arctic tundra in the summer that strays south of Canadian border in only small numbers – has caused a fountain display in Las Vegas, Nevada, to be switched off.
The yellow-billed loon, with a similarly haunting call to the smaller, more abundant common loon, was spotted in the fountains of the Bellagio hotel and casino, causing hotel management to call off the propulsive displays of water.
“We are happy to welcome the most exclusive guests,” Bellagio Las Vegas said on X (formerly Twitter). The hotel added that the fountains would be paused “as we work with state wildlife officials to rescue a Yellow-billed Loon, one of the 10 rarest birds in the US, that has found comfort on Las Vegas’ own Lake Bellagio”.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal said the visitor was “Las Vegas’ hottest new celebrity”. Initially, the hotel’s operator, MGM Resorts, said the fountain display would continue because the loon appeared unfazed by water jets but later said the display had been suspended.
A spokesperson for the Nevada department of wildlife’s southern office said the office had received calls from concerned birders requesting an intervention. At first, Doug Nielsen, the spokesperson, said that rather than cause the loon any agitation, the department would monitor the situation and hope that the bird got the message to move on when it realized there is nothing to eat in the pool.
“We’re just going give it space,” Nielsen told the Review. “Hopefully, it’ll say: ‘Gee, I’m not finding anything swimming in here, so I probably need to go.’”
Nielsen told the publication that the loon was probably seeking shelter from a storm. “It’s not something that happens every day,” he said. “It’s a rare thing that we deal with once in a while.”
But later on Wednesday, wildlife biologists captured the yellow-billed loon and relocated it unharmed. Officials with the Nevada department of wildlife say the bird was taken to an unspecified remote location on Wednesday, where they expect it soon to resume its migratory trek north.
The bird appeared to have come from the Henderson bird preserve 12 miles away, where it was seen on 26 February.
“This particular loon is a pretty rare
bird,” the preserve’s Kurt Buzard told
FOX5. “There’s only about 10,000 of them in the world, and they breed in the Arctic.”
Buzard said it was an “odd thing” that it would come to the Bellagio fountains but the bird appeared to be young and that could explain why it’s so lost. “It’s really off-course here,” he added. “Very unusual to see a bird like that here. And unfortunately, it landed in two places without proper nutrition.”