Chasing Rare Birds: Red-Eyed Vireo

Birding is such a great hobby. I once read that, statistically, you can’t stand anywhere in the world for more than ten minutes and not see a bird. True to that statement, I’ve seen some amazing birds in grocery-store and gas-station parking lots; you just never know.

Most of the time seeing a truly great or rare bird takes some effort. The worldwide community of birders is very good at letting one another know when a rare bird is in the area. There are multiple local text and email groups, but the best tool is a site called ebird.org. If you’re a budding birder, it is a must to join and use this invaluable tool. To oversimply its many features and uses, it’s a site where one can report a sighting and have it distributed via email to anyone signed up to receive the alert.

It’s something I check every morning, just to see if I need to replan my day a bit. With my busy schedule of full-time work at the shop and raising a young family, I don’t often get to chase rare birds. Every so often, though, I make the effort to get out and see something that shouldn’t be here.

This past week I spotted a rarity in the reports that I knew I had to go see: a red-eyed vireo! While I’ve seen this species in New Jersey, it’s very rare in Arizona, and we had one show up at Granite Basin Lake, of all places.

It was initially reported by a birder whose skill level far surpasses my own, so I knew the sighting was legitimate. Over the next day or two I continued to see reports from other birders, including the owner of the business I work for, Eric Moore. Given my narrow windows to make even a small birding trip, I have to choose my battles carefully. This bird had everything going for it, though: it was reported multiple times to be “constantly singing,” which is typical of this species, it was tending to stick to the same few areas, and frequenting the same trees. This situation makes a successful search much more likely.

On Friday evening I dragged my wife and two youngest children to the lake in hopes of an easy sighting. Alas, best-laid plans …. A post-monsoon wind was blowing, which made the ambient noise of rustling leaves distracting, and there was also a significant presence of non-birding recreational folks, which tends to subdue activity.

Given this dynamic, the 45 minutes we spent listening and looking for the bird came up fruitless, but that’s birding. Believe it or not, the birds would rather you not be looking for them, so they don’t always make it easy.

This experience, as it typically does, only made me want to try again. After some negotiation with my wife, who was going to be stuck at home with an infant and a toddler, I got up early the next morning and made my way out to Granite Basin once more.

I was limited on time, as I was scheduled to work that day, so I wasn’t super-confident it would work out. I had familiarized myself with its song, which is similar to our local plumbeous vireo. It was higher-pitched and slightly faster, making it very distinctive. As soon as I opened the door, the sweet sound flooded the inside of my truck. I jumped out and quickly determined that it was in a stand of cottonwood and willow trees below the dam. This is on point for a species that spends most of its time in the canopy of vast deciduous forest back east.

I hurriedly, but quietly, made my way down the trail along the face of the dam, homing in on the bird’s location through its constant vocalizations. At one point I think I flushed it slightly and it moved toward the far end of the dam. I quietly made my way up the path and pinpointed the tree it was in, scouring the canopy with my binoculars, and there it was!

Its garnet red eye flashed against its striking black and white eyebrow. It’s slightly larger than a plumbeous vireo and more streamlined, a very distinct shape. As I watched it, I realized it had a small dragonfly pinned against the branch and was pecking off chunks of it, even as it continued to sing. Just like that, I had a new sighting for Arizona, raising my relatively modest state total to 357 species.

A brief tangent from my morning routine reminded me that great birds are all around us. In addition to the vireo, I saw summer tanager, red-winged blackbird, blue grosbeak, yellow warbler, bushtit, spotted towhee and Woodhouse’s scrub-jay, all within ten minutes or so!