10-03: Wildest Vagrants of 2025 with Tim Healy & Alex Lamoreaux

With diverse landscapes and abundant wetlands, Louisiana is a haven for birds and a bucket list destination for bird watchers of all levels. From the majestic bald eagle soaring over the cypress swamps to the tricolored heron exploring the coastal estuaries of Grand Isle State Park, Louisiana boasts an incredible array of feathered friends. Whether you're a seasoned birder or a curious nature enthusiast just starting out, Louisiana's birding scene promises an unforgettable adventure, so fine-tune your wish list and let your daydreams take flight. Learn more and start planning your visit at birdinglouisiana.com. Well, welcome to the American Birding Podcast from the American Birding Association. I'm Nate Swick. We're going pretty long this week with our annual Best Vagrants of the Past Year episode. I won't apologize for it, though. Talking in amazement about mind-melting rarities is essential to the birding community as an annual bout with warbler neck or puzzling over fall shorebirds. There was no possible way we were going to keep it short. So be ready for that. I'll just take this brief moment, though, to reiterate an announcement from last week that was kind of shunted off to the credits. We have Bird of the Year merch available now at aviated.org slash store. It includes the triumphant return of the Bird of the Year t-shirt featuring the Horned Lark Borb this year. I know some folks who collect them, so I want to make sure that you're all notified. Check it out. horn lark as it turns out makes for a fantastic t-shirt that business out of the way let's get to the fun stuff the rare bird panel i get to welcome regular tim healy along with new guy alex lamoreau who debuts on the podcast but as field ornithology editor for the ava's north american birds journal has a lot to add to that conversation that's why i asked him no rare bird focus this week not only because that's the focus of the program itself, but also because the well is a little dry after such a hot start to 2026. We'll check back in on all that next week. In the meantime, you know where to go to keep up on that information, ava.org slash RBA, and of course, at the Rare Bird Group on Facebook or in ABA community. On to the rest of the program. Enjoy. There is very little birders enjoy more than reminiscing about rare birds that have come, gone and in some cases stuck around for a ridiculously long period of time it is time for our annual rare bird conversation certainly one of my most anticipated podcast panels of the year wherein i welcome a couple birding friends to look back on the last year and wonder at some incredible bird and birding stories this year our panel consists of our american birding podcast hot take merchant extraordinaire a writer educator and new dad from new york hello tim Healy. I hope that you're doing reasonably well on sleep these days. I know those first few months kind of feel like years. Yeah, no, good to be here. Good to take a little break from it, getting our feet under us, but always good to be here, Nate. Absolutely. I'm glad to welcome you back. And new to this discussion, but hardly new to the rare bird world. He's a nature guide for our friends at Wildside Tours, the field ornithology editor for the ABA's North American Birds Journal, which puts him on the front lines of exciting bird phenomena. You might also know him from the recent Reiser Brothers documentary, Listers. He's practically a third star there. Welcome, Alex Lamoureux, Real Deal Birding movie star. How are you doing? Pretty good. Thanks for inviting me, Nate. We've approached this task in several ways over the years. First, as kind of a straight up list. Next is a draft. This year, we do something a little bit different, and I hope it works. We've already kind of discussed some of the issues with my categorizing here, but we're going to do some rare bird superlatives. I will give you a prompt and we'll all choose a bird that sort of meets that prompt. It's basically an excuse to hit a lot of the rarity high points of the year. I'm not overly worried about duplicating choices or even categories in some sense. I think it will give us plenty of opportunities to revel in the rare birds of the last year. Does that sound good to everybody? Sounds good. Yeah, bring it on. So just before we get started on all that, what was your sense of the rare bird world in 2025? 2024 was, I think, a particularly good year for rare birds. So it would be very, very difficult for the next year to kind of meet that high point. But a lot of really good stuff in the ABA area in the last year in 2025. A lot of unexpected things. A couple first ABA records, which is always nice. I mean, I always feel like I'm kind of looking for the through line on each year of like, what's the overall take? And 2025 felt like a really good year for unusual birds showing up away from the places you would expect them to. Like there were a lot of rarities that instead of just, oh, yeah, you know, something from Russia showing up on the West Coast or something from the South showing up along the Gulf Coast, it was birds popping up in regions of the ABA area that were kind of surprising. And I thought that was a fun little theme that we saw again and again over the course of 2025. Yeah, I'm never really sure how to take that. I know that changing climate has a role here, but also just there were a few phenomena that were happening this year that birders were sort of prepared for in ways that perhaps we haven't been. Heed into a little bit. Yeah. And I'm thinking of like kind of, and we'll talk in more depth about some of these, but like some austral migrant stuff. Like I think birders are kind of looking out for birds a little bit more. And certainly the phenomenon of like East Asian stuff on the West Coast in the fall. seems like there was more of that this year than perhaps there had been in years past but you know I don't know this is just kind of you know back of the notebook kind of scribbling I suppose yeah let's uh let's let's get right into those superlatives uh we'll we'll start with uh perhaps you know we'll we'll leave the uh the most mind-blowing stuff to the to the end um though it'll be hard to not add that to some of these categories I'm sure um I kind of want to start with most unexpected vagrant of 2025. And by that, I sort of mean on a continental scale, something that surprised you, not necessarily like a first record for a state, although in my choices are all first records for the states that they were in, but something that was most surprising on the ABA area level. Alex, do you want to lead off since you're the you're the rookie here sure uh what i was most surprised by was the september double stripe thickney in texas uh kind of i felt like that just came out of nowhere and uh all of a sudden reported uh possibly on what's this bird yeah and a bunch of texas birders were able to respond to that i guess it was in more south central texas and maybe just uh within a few hours drive of a of a lot of the birding community. So even though it was only there for a day and a morning or something like that. Yeah. I think it was just that one day even one day. Yeah. People got to see it and, and hopefully it's, you know, there'll be more to more to come on the double striped thick knee front there. Yeah. I feel like that's definitely a bird that has been on people's radar a little bit. Just like kind of a wishful thinking kind of bird. Yeah, it's one of those birds that as a kid, you know, kind of like looking through the National Geographic complete birds of North America. You know, that was one that I was like, wow, that's shown up here. That's cool. But it always kind of felt like one of those historical records, just like this is a thing that has happened. So to see that happen again. And if I remember correctly, the discovery story from that was just it showed up on a ranch. and the family who ran the ranch, I think their kids or grandkids just noticed the weird looking bird and pointed it out to mom and dad. And then they put word out to the community from there. And as you said, Alex, just awesome that so many local people were able to actually get out there and get it because I mean, Thickneys are just, all of the Thickneys and Stone Curlews are just such cool birds. And that's a family that's really not familiar to birders who may have not have left the aba area so i think it's it's a really cool opportunity to see that bird anywhere near the united states it's pretty great yeah for sure uh it also sort of gave us an opportunity to look back at some of the historical records of double stride thickney in the aba area including the very bizarre record of the one in um in arizona that turned out to be a bird from guatemala that someone brought up here i i'm not entirely sure what the whole story was on that i really tried to dig back on that one it's just the information is surprisingly sparse for such a detailed um description of what happened yeah it's really an odd case the story of people in central america using that bird is like a uh as a watchdog so crazy and that you know adds a little bit of color to that whole siding that's that's a great shout um tim how about you so that was one of my top picks for this category just because same reasons that alex enumerated it's just it was a really kind of fun at a left field sort of bird um i think if i'm looking at others on a similar vein i think one of the other big came out of nowhere drop everything for the local community kind of birds this year i'm going to shout out the dark-sided flycatcher that showed up in california right around the same time actually um i think those birds might have been same week or close to it but you know this is another one of our east asian birds that has some precedent showing up in alaska and the like um but if i recall correctly first record for the lower 48 and a bird that doesn't typically you know show up that far afield but there is some precedence um i believe bermuda has a record showing that maybe these things can get around a little further than we thought. But I believe all previous records in the ABA area come from Alaska, so that was a pretty exciting bird to show up farther south, closer to the more populated centers of the ABA. Yeah, it's certainly one of the great names in potential birds, too. Dark-sided flycatcher, make sure you immediately think of Star Wars, which is, you know, cue the jokes for that bird showing up anywhere in the ABA area, but especially in California. That's a, that's a great one as well. First record for California, which is always noteworthy. Um, you know, it, this is a bird that would fit in a lot of categories, but, uh, for me, the one that I'm choosing is the, uh, just because of the story was the, uh, the streaked sheer water in, uh, New Jersey that was seen on the, uh, Lewis, Delaware to Cape May, uh, ferry, which is not the sort of place that you would expect to see a, uh, a deep water pelagic species. Um, you know, kudos to the birder who was there traveling to Cape May, um, perhaps for some birding, uh, and was able to get photos of this weird, uh, weird ship follower there. Uh, Streak Shearwater, a great bird anywhere in the ABA area, not a bird that typically shows up, even in California pelagics. It's a red letter one. And one of my favorite pelagic birds in the ABA area, it's a bird that I've not seen, but you look at the sea of kind of black and white and gray birds in the pelagic section of your field guide and streaked shearwater with its crazy like mottled head. It's such a cool looking bird. And it never quite looks in real life like it does in the field guide. It's one of those birds. But really cool sighting, especially for New Jersey. A little disappointing they couldn't get it on Delaware too, but you take what you can get. Yeah, I mean, this bird was practically inshore. It was practically in Delaware Bay. I think it was just after the ferry had left Cape May. So it was going the other direction. I mean, for my money, this was one of my contenders for the most surprising rarities of the year. One of the mind blowers, which we'll get to later. um you know we've seen kind of this pattern um may touch on it more later of seabirds showing up in quote unquote the wrong ocean um and that's that's a big one that's a bird that's a you know that's a day maker on the west coast that's an exciting bird just about anywhere in our area and for it to show up on the east coast just casually following a ferry with a ferry following a ferry with the gulls um when i saw those photos pop up on social media it knocked my socks off that's for sure um yeah really cool record again kind of going back to the historical context um you know there is one inland record from wyoming so you know kind of speaks to the wild vagrancy potential of these tube noses um but i think the only other record for the entire atlantic ocean basin is like off south africa um a little while back like this was this was about as far from its typical range as this bird could have showed up which is pretty incredible any thoughts on how it could have gotten here any speculation i really don't know where to make of it i'm sure there's a lot more birds um you know with you know with the arctic increasingly open in the summer more open water there's probably a lot of birds kind of skirting over the top of the continent that way but you know there's certainly you know birds might cut across the more narrow portions of the isthmus you know in central america or come the long way around by argentina um you know i'm sure there's as many different methods of transport as there are vagrant birds showing up in the wrong ocean but it's a it's a fascinating phenomenon that we're seeing more and more as you said as people are kind of keyed into this this is one of those phenomena that i think people are more aware of you know they're seeing a strange seabird it doesn't match the expectation open the pages in the book that cover the pacific and starting to kind of like dig a little deeper on that that was also one that i was for as unexpected as it is i'm almost uh surprised it wasn't seen again either from uh the daily uh migration counts that came a point or or it really was just that one Cape Adlopin. Yeah. And it was acting strangely being inshore. So, yeah, it's an interesting one. It reminds me of the wedge-tailed shearwaters scene in the Gulf. Pretty cool. Yeah, that was it. Yeah, certainly. I mean, it's not the only weird seabird that turned up in the wrong ocean. This year we may get to the other one later. But, yeah, that wedge-tailed shearwater thing was particularly interesting because that North Carolina bird turned into a Gulf of Mexico bird and a Florida, if I'm not mistaken, too. There was one scene on the Gulf Coast of Florida, and there was one elsewhere, perhaps, or maybe I'm thinking of historical records. Texas Coast. Yeah, I thought there was a Texas one. Yeah, I remember that one. Yeah, and you start wondering how many of these birds are coming across at any one time, because it almost would boggle the imagination for this to be the same bird. I don't usually prescribe to the one bird theory, But with these birds, who knows? Who knows? Yeah. All right. Great, great choices. We will probably get some more mind benders as we move on. There's certainly no shortage of categories for those. But I want to move to the next. In the past, we've kind of ranked our own personal favorite list. One of the things that has sort of been a tiebreaker, as it were, for those sort of situations are these community moments that people have around birds and birding. We have all seen a bunch of rare birds. We've seen them with a lot of people. I love the vibes at a rare bird stakeout, especially when everyone gets to see the bird. It's always a lot of fun. So I wanted to make a nod to that here in our rare bird episode to talk about the best community rarity moment. Unfortunately, I did not get to chase any big rarities this year, but I know a couple of you probably did. did you have some great community moments to draw attention to Tim do you want to lead off this one sure I could certainly speak to some of the great moments in my community but I think I might be saving some of those you've had a couple certainly hey it's been a good year in New York there's no doubt about that but I think the standout community moment for the ABA area this year the one that I kept coming back to was from our friends down in Texas again with the Siberian stone chat the armor stone chat that showed up at anawak national wildlife refuge because we talk a lot about the improbabilities that go into rare bird discoveries and people getting to enjoy them and this one a lot had to go right yeah for people to get to enjoy this bird because the backstory on this stone chat was it was discovered in an area of the refuge that was closed because of hunting it was discovered on a cbc from like the two people who got permission to be in there and apparently they spent several months negotiating for birders to get access to this and finally got that sorted out in the early i think it was this bird technically may have been discovered at the very end of 2024 that's correct yeah um but the word didn't get out till 2025 so i think it counts for well into 2025 that's right the crazy thing was that you know word got out months later and the bird was still around and hung out i think for another month or so and just taking a cursory a glance at Ebert it looks like truly hundreds of people got to make the journey for these little guided trips into the refuge to the right spot with the stone shot was overwintering and that's that's pretty cool it's really great when people get to come together and pull something like that off you know this would have been an exciting record if it had just been a one-off but the fact that they've managed to pull strings and make it happen for so many people is is pretty cool you know i thought it was a nice nice happy ending for a story that birders might have been grumbling about under different circumstances that's true yeah great point did any of you get to see that one i i got to see that yeah luckily my girlfriend and i were hitting refresh on the uh on the tickets sign up lottery ticket thing uh i'm trying to get into a concert yeah yeah and we both got tickets so invited uh you know anyone that won the little lottery system could bring along four of their friends. So we got to bring along eight people, all met up, a little Texas reunion of some birders I've been with across the country and go into the refuge for that one. So that was really neat. That's pretty great. It seemed like a pretty complicated but elegant solution to a very difficult problem. From what I heard, everyone who I know who talked about going to see it, it sounded pretty streamlined. You obviously can't open the floodgates for everyone to come all at once um but within the restrictions they really made it work yeah how fortunate are we that that bird stuck around for as long as it did i think it stuck around well like well into march um you know you could see a lot of um maybe even longer i need to check but i'm pulling up yeah checking yeah like you could there could there could have been a lot of hurt feelings uh for that bird if it didn't work out this bird made it to late april late april there you go yeah April 24th is the last one I'm seeing. That's impressive. It's always nice when lots of people get to see a bird like that. And then the one person sighting of one in November or in Williamsville County. Yeah, right. So another one that makes you wonder about the wonder bird. There's just something special about Texas. Who knows? Yeah. It's the most Siberian-esque, or I guess they go to Southeast Asia in that time of year. The most Southeast Asian-esque point in Texas. How about you, Alex? Best community rarity moment? My thoughts on this were broader than the birding community and just the general community. And is circling back to the dark-sided flight catcher we already talked about. Because it was on the Google campus. And Google pretty much, someone there at Google just rolled out the red carpet for birders. and they had bathrooms and breakfast, snacks and coffee and just totally catered to the dozens and dozens of birders that came for like a week and a half to see that bird. And I think that was right on the heels of listers coming out. And I think that a lot of people in the United States are just starting to catch on to how popular birding is and how excited it makes birders when these rarities turn up in there. And it's just good to see them being accepting and encouraging of that. Always better than the alternative. Right. Right. And the Google campus has also had a Siberian Ruby throw a few years ago. I remember that. I remember that one. Yeah. That one was just captured, I think, on a game camera. Yeah, that's correct. No person even saw that knowingly. Right. But then a big, big difference with the dark side and lots of people got to see it. That's pretty wild. It makes you wonder. We've been saying forever that birding is having a moment. I almost feel like it's a trend now. I think when we've gone like two or three years of a moment. Right, how long does a moment last? Yeah, it's a pretty long moment at this point. It makes you wonder, you know, if that wasn't happening, if Google would have rolled out the red carpet the way that they did, would they have been as accommodating? I don't know. But I think there's been so much media attention about birding and so many people have found birding and kind of, you know, come into the community and found the benefits of it, both, uh, you know, personally, mental health, physical health, all, all that stuff, um, social health. Um, and, and, and, you know, there's a lot of people that are, that are interested in it now and, uh, Google to their credit, they, uh, they recognize that and made it, uh, made it a thing, um, which is really cool. Yeah. Yeah. For me, it's another sort of, uh, broader community moment. Um, and it is the, um, another bird that could fit on multiple of these, uh, categories, but, I'm going to go because my dad actually had an experience with this one and that is the yellow grosbeak in Arkansas. Another bird that stuck around for a very very long time. It could be could have been most unexpected vagrant could have fit the most surprising state first or whatever. This bird fits a lot of categories and maybe even the how is this bird still here category because it stuck around for a very long time and a lot of people got to go down and see it and they also kind of arranged a strategy to allow as many people as possible to do it. They charged for it, which I'll be frank, like I don't really have an issue with, especially if these birds are on private property and people are coming like they're there. They should be able to take advantage of this. And it's a big issue to have so many people coming onto your property and standing around when you're trying to do work. Yeah. And to charge something as I think it was something like twenty five to thirty dollars. It may have been it may have been like thirty bucks. might have been more. I don't remember. In my memory, it was more reasonable than that. Yeah. But in any case, that feels completely reasonable to me to be able to practically have a guaranteed opportunity to see this really incredible bird. These opportunities where people, private landowners, they are not obligated by any means to welcome birders onto their property. Any opportunity that they have to do so, I think should be celebrated by the birding community. We should be encouraging people to do this. It means more birds for us to see. Yellow Grosbeak was one of my great community moments. I'll tack on to this because I had flagged Yellow Grosbeak as one of my contenders for a later superlative because this was not the only Yellow Grosbeak in the ABA area this year. There were also several reports from Colorado seemingly pertaining to the same bird. but you know it's pretty cool that this is a species that used to be one of those border birding holy grails something that like you would you would dream of this showing up when you had a trip planned um you know button up against the mexican border but this is a bird that in recent years has been showing up further and further afield we've seen more of these birds that are sticky hanging out at theaters where people get a chance to see them um and i'm interested to see how this how and if this pattern continues to develop pretty cool bird to see showing up in unusual places yeah the the colorado situation this summer was uh bordering on absurd um as the as those birds kept popping up like three or four different counties i think yeah i think so and um no that's a great segue to uh which is a bird that kind of highlights uh our next uh superlative which is uh thinking broader not just one bird thinking about a lot of things going on. Maybe a lot of similar suites of birds, maybe a lot of one bird, but the most fascinating phenomenon in past years, this is the sort of thing that might've been picked up by, I don't know, like American flamingo or a limpkin. Honey creepers. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. So what was sort of the looking big picture? What is a suite of birds, a suite of a single species or a of lots of different species from a similar place that you found particularly interesting in 2025. Alex, do you want to lead us off? I have two thoughts on this. The first one is that yellow-headed caracaras just continue to march right up into the ABA area. And just from sightings in California, Texas, Florida, and now recently a Delaware sighting, Well aware. Wild. Just kind of shows that anywhere on the coast and maybe in the future inland has potential for caracara. And it just fits into a broader picture. Like very much overshadowed is the continual northward push of crusted caracaras. If you look at the Ebert map for 2024, they were seen across Canada, even up in central Alberta. and many northern U.S. states. Yeah, I think Nebraska had one in the last month. And we actually, North Carolina, just like two or three days ago, got another report of Crested Caracara. We had a springtime Crested Caracara in Maine also, and that's not even the first state record. There's been maybe three records. So something just an incredible phenomenon is happening with the Caracaras, especially yellowheaded. and very excited to see how that plays out in the next couple of years. Yeah, I know I can speak to my state, North Carolina. We had one of those weirdo yellow-headed car car records from the mountains. This was like 2016 or so. It was at least 10 years ago now. And at the time, it was not accepted by the Bird Records Committee, but we are now kind of looking at maybe having another crack at that one and seeing what it means. At the time, there was only the California one. Looking at it now, my goodness. And then my other notable phenomenon, Florida had a nice rush of Caribbean vagrants in the spring. They often do. They had a particularly good spring this year, but then the run of tropical fly catchers seen this fall with three sulfur bellies, two small bildelanias, and a variegated flycatcher. And wasn't that the first and second for the state also? Yeah, exactly. Just back to back to back. And a nice late surge of gray kingbirds that actually kind of expanded up the entire east coast to create one of the most unprecedented fall surges of gray kingbirds on the eastern seaboard. So that entire phenomenon, starting in Florida with their three tropical fly catchers, is just pretty mind-blowing to me. Yeah. Super cool. But yeah, this year was, as you say, Alex, completely without precedent. Like there was some wild birds down there. To think of the, you could do a trip to Florida and pick up a dozen different species of fly catchers in the winter. It would have been pretty crazy. Tim. Sure. Yeah. Bunch of cool phenomenon going on. I had flagged the same ones Alex mentioned, but I would also like to shout out that this was a pretty good year for bean geese collectively. Both Tundra and Tiger bean geese both made really strong showings away from Alaska, which is their usual stronghold in the ABA area. So Tundra bean geese showed up in Rhode Island. Wyoming got its first state record. shout out to Wyoming for I think Wyoming had a lot state first records than any other state five yeah that's wild for Wyoming way to go but yeah tundra bean geese in Rhode Island Wyoming and Oregon plus Alaska and then there was also a tundra bean goose in New York and a tiger bean goose in New York these are birds that historically have been very very scarce in the ABA area away from Alaska and you know A couple of records started to show up in the Maritimes, but they've really, alongside a lot of the other Eurasian geese, have been increasing. We've seen more and more records showing up on both coasts, kind of pushing down further and more regularly. We've had overwintering birds, so it's kind of interesting to see that phenomenon play out. and uh it was also a pretty good year i think just generally for in a similar vein eurasian um waders wading birds a lot of shorebirds showing up on again both sides of the continent i think like the standout for this that really you know surprised me was canada was bookended by spotted red shanks this fall there was a record in ontario and a record in british columbia and You know, that's one of those classic, really hard to come by European shorebirds and to have them show up on both sides of the continent was pretty exceptional. They had that great springtime run, too, with multiple European golden plovers. That's right. Yes. Eurasian oyster catcher. And again, again, yeah. And a greater sand plover was. Yes, that's right. That was the big one. Yes, that was. I forgot about that one. Thank you for bringing that up. Yeah, I had that as a potential for a later superlative as well, just because that's a, you know, we're quite familiar with the phenomenon of Eurasian, European, I should say, Western Europe shorebirds turning up with the right winds in Eastern Canada, in particular Newfoundland. but the greater sand plover which would have had to come from the other direction almost certainly was definitely one that definitely one worth with pointing out exciting exciting stuff for newfoundland birders absolutely yeah so my phenomenon is perhaps one that has not entirely revealed itself yet but one that i think is really interesting that a lot of birders are going to be kind of paying attention to going forward. Earlier this year, back in April, in Clark County, Kentucky, a roadkill Nighthawk was identified not as a common Nighthawk, which we would expect, but as a lesser Nighthawk. And this is a bird that has been showing up more and more along the Gulf Coast, especially in Florida in recent years. I think it's probably one of those cryptic vagrants further north. A lot of us in the southeast are sort of keyed in to any of these very late season nighthawks as being good candidates for lesser nighthawk. But the fact that this bird was found in April suggests that maybe we should be more aware of these birds during the spring as well. Obviously a super, super difficult identification, especially if it's not making any noise. Um, but, um, you know, I, I see a lot of Nighthawks. Um, I think the potential for lesser Nighthawk is out there. Um, there are a handful of records over the years from, um, you know, there was actually, there were two records for Kentucky. I'm just looking at Ebert. I'm not sure if that, um, I got that, I clocked that, that second one. Um, there was one in, in far Western Kentucky and one in central Kentucky, but there are records of the species in New Jersey, a couple records from New Jersey, a few along the lakeshore in Ontario. But I think lesser Nighthawk is a phenomenon that we're going to start wanting to pay attention to as birders. I know the thought of picking through some of the Nighthawks in the spring is not a pleasant one, but definitely keep your eyes and ears open for weirdos because that's a bird to look out for. You don't have to twist my arm to get me to watch Nighthawks. It's always entertaining. yeah they've been wintering in southern florida for years now and i'm i'm just seeing here on the ebird map there was a high count of 37 back on wow that's november 22nd or so seen on the entrance into the everglades there so just crazy yeah yeah i think um i think we're gonna have to start paying attention to it so we'll move on to the next one i think um a lot of times when we do this talk with this discussion we um we sort of forget about the birds that were mind-blowing a few years ago that might have stuck around um the last three or four years maybe going back even further now have been just chock-a-block with really red-letter rarities that have uh stayed put for a ridiculously long amount of time um bordering on i don't know like absurdity absurdity It's absurd that some of these birds are sticking around. So I wanted to throw those birds a bone, throw those birders a bone, who are still documenting these birds many years after they can't keep tabs on them. So this is the how is this bird still here category. Most bizarre continuing rarity. Tim, you're up. Well, I think the obvious crown ruler of this category is the one and only Stellar Sea Eagle, which is still still raining proudly over newfoundland seems to be its newfound home after all that wandering that it did you know across the continent and up and down the coast uh that bird has settled in quite comfortably in newfoundland i don't there haven't been any sightings out of newfoundland in the past two years i guess yeah um but it seems to be moving around pretty extensively around the island um and it's just crazy that even after all this time That bird was first seen in Alaska in 2020, and it's still doing cool new stuff and surprising us. And as you said the birders who are fortunate enough to have this incredible animal in their backyard are still documenting it I know there were reports this year that the sea eagle had been observed kind of fiddling around with an old nest site an old bald eagle nest you know just kind of moving sticks around and, you know, not making a full nesting effort, but maybe thinking about that option. And I know there was also this whole drama documented later in the summer where it actually attacked a set of bald eagles that were about to fledge it was i think it pulled one of them out of the nest um you know there'd been some drama at first of like oh is it does it want to be a parent is it watching oh oh nope it's hungry okay um maybe maybe a predictable outcome for an apex predator like that but uh so maybe but yeah no i mean we're into 20 we're getting into 2026 now and I saw just the other day a report of the sea eagle still up in Newfoundland. Still there as of this week. Which is wild. Yeah, it seems to be mostly seen in kind of the southern Trinity Bay, not far from St. John's. So if the birders are still out there that want to make the trip, heck of a – I mean, why do it in January when the bird's going to be there in June and July? That's true. Most likely anyway. That's true. Yeah, yeah. Great, great shout. I can't believe that bird is still there. It's an incredible bird. I mean, that's just so great. Never thought that was going to happen. I think it was the rarity of the year, the very first year we did this episode. Yes. That's a testament to how much it's sticking power. Yeah. How about you, Alex? For me, it's got to be Texas's cattle tyrant that has lasted since 2023, I think, November 2023. and it's it's down a few toes but it's still seen almost every day and even reported uh today so it's just incredible and living out of a dumpster behind the uh what is it like an oyster oyster bar i think i remember that yeah not far from its mural it's mural that it got which is yeah that's right yeah i wonder if it ever glances at the mural from a distance like a glimmer of recognition. That's why it came back actually the second time. Yeah. Maybe. That's another really cool bird. Yeah. A lot of, a lot of, a lot of good options here. Uh, you know, the yellow headed car car is another one, the Florida one. Um, but I'm going to, I'm going to stay in Texas as well. Um, the, the mottled owl at a Santa Margarita branch. These were the three that I flagged. These are exactly the three. Yeah. When this bird was first found it was huge news because modeled owl there was only one record and i want to say it was the the road no i can't get it mixed up with stingy and it was the roadkill bird yes yes that was the model and so when this was like the first chaseable model it might have well been the first aba area record the way people were treating it um and no one expected it to stick around as long as it did but every year around rio grande valley birding festival time when people travel down to the to the festival and start going on the field trips that go out to santa margarita ranch i asked myself is that bird still around and lo and behold that week people start putting into e-bird and we know that it's it's still there again another bird that was seen uh as of the recording of this podcast yesterday so last night yeah last last night yeah that's so cool uh it's such a such a cool bird and uh owls are amazing oh yeah and the fact that all owls is stuck modeled as one of those emblematic neotropical birds like you know that for me will always be standing on top of canopy tower just hearing it in the distance like yeah like so that's that's really the fact that that's just hanging out there i mean loses a few points maybe for being on a private property but still a pretty great bird take what you can get yeah exactly people can see it people can get there People can get there and enjoy it. That's the beauty of it. It was part of a trio of rare birds. You know, a flock of brown jays that had come back. That's, you know, a bird that is definitely more regular in the ABA area than model d'owl, but one that had not been seen in some years. And a bear through a tiger heron, which stuck around for longer than you would have expected, but did eventually bail or the bird was gone. Who knows? But the model d'owl, well, I think we're in year three of the model d'owl. maybe year four now with 2026 um amazing bird still around yeah who knows how long it's gonna stick good stuff these are birds that live forever or i'm so actually the cattle tyro might be the most surprising because the you know perching birds tend not to have you know long lifespans and it's living a living a hard and fast life uh in the in the city but uh who knows how long that modeled owl and stellar seagull are gonna gonna be in the aba area yeah could be a lot also the gray the gray goal just roaming oh yeah the gray goal is another one that's worth noting florida from you know alabama down to now seen as far south as a sarasota area yeah going on multiple years now and and and and compared to the modeled owl where you just need to go to santa margarita ranch the gray goal is is could be anywhere covering yeah It made it up to Louisiana, wasn't it? Oh, really? Wow. It was the first record for Louisiana. It had already been in Texas. It's been in every all of the Gulf Coast states representing a first record in all of them. Yeah, good stuff. Here's one that I think is always on every birder's list every state, every birder in every state or province has a list of birds that they think are likely vagrants or likely records in their state. It sometimes takes forever for those birds to show up. This year we had a handful of them. I want to do a superlative for most overdue vagrants. So this is a little bit different from the ones we've been talking about, most unexpected. This is the one that I think was probably on a lot of birders' radars, and they expected to get it at some point, and this was the year where it showed up. Alex, do you want to lead off? um i i kind of had a different train of thought with this one and and uh my my feeling was coming into 2025 vega goal had just been split they had just done a big uh shake up with the herring goals across the world and uh so i was just surprised uh visiting california last january uh at how many vegagols were seen between San Diego, Orange County, and LA. And I just have to think that it's because it got split. Birders dove into how to identify them. Non-larifiles started paying a little more attention. And all of a sudden, there were vegagols in California. And also in California, the Chihuahua Meadowlark. Some intrepid birders just were like, well, they must spill over into California near Yuma, so let's just go pick through the meadowlarks until they find one. Yep. Yep. And they did it. So really impressive and fairly overdue for California, I would say. It must happen every winter. For sure. Yeah. Probably will from his point on. Other people are going to be looking for it. Tim. Yeah. a couple I could point out for this one I'm going to start with Groove Build Ani in Georgia yeah surprising that that one wasn't seen I was looking at a map and it is comical how close this bird has come to being in Georgia without being in Georgia prior to 2025 there are records right around the Georgia border from Florida of course from Alabama and from South Carolina so this bird has been dancing around georgia and of course group build ani has a well-established pattern of vagrancy much further afield this is a bird that's made it up to canada before yeah um you know but it finally happened in georgia um ironically again very close to the border south carolina but this time on the appropriate side so congratulations to the georgia birders for uh finally pulling that one out of the hat very cool bird and i'm sure that was a a glaring gap in the state list for quite some time. And I'd also like to throw a little bone to my friends up in New England for finally getting on the board with a Limpkin, with Massachusetts' first state record of Limpkin. You know, hot Limpkin summer may have cooled down a little bit, but it never truly ends. This year, there was another good flush of Limpkin records later. You know, we didn't get that early summer, late spring push that we saw kind of in the peak. Yeah, that Massachusetts Limpkin was in November. Yeah, it was the end of November. But there were a couple of records from Ohio and Wisconsin and Kansas. So they were feeling the pull of the open road again this year. And one finally made it to New England. So there was a bird hung out in Plymouth County for a little while there. Always a cool bird to see. Glad for my friends in Massachusetts. I was lucky to be driving down to visit my parents ahead of Christmas and got to see the Limpkin. But my favorite moment from that was that some very young birder kids were there with their brand new cameras that they had gotten as like an early Christmas present. And the first thing they did was went out to chase this limkin around a neighborhood. That's awesome. And they were just having a great time. And it was just great watching this brother and sister work out the camera settings with each other and getting some good photos. For a bird as accommodating as a limpkin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to go back to Newfoundland for this one because this was the year that Newfoundland finally got its first record of Cooper's Hawk. Yep. A bird that had not made it onto the island, had not even been on the mainland part of the island on Labrador. but is actually quite common across the way in Nova Scotia. So a bird finally braved the ocean and traveled across that relatively short stretch of water and landed in Newfoundland to represent their first record. Along the same way, in the same part of the state that there was the island's first record of house finch. House finch, yeah. So they're finally picking up those common birds of Eastern North America out on the run. I don't know. I can't speak for everyone else, but it is kind of always interesting when you see a record like that, and you're like, huh, they don't make it up that far. And you look at the map, and you realize just how southerly the distribution of some of these birds is. I guess Cooper's hawks probably get edged out by gauze hawks in that sort of habitat. They are probably right. There have been a bunch of recent records in Nova Scotia, in New Brunswick. So you knew that it was probably coming at some point, even as far as, you know, Eastern, Eastern Quebec, like kind of in that Gasparic, uh, peninsula area. So like they're getting close, but they just, they just don't want to go over the water. It seems like. And that one, fine one brave bird finally did maybe helped by the ferry there. Who knows? But, um, yeah, it got over, it got over there. That's what counts. One more, one more shout out. I'll give you Washington's, Washington's first yellow green virion. Oregon too. Oregon too. Okay. Yep. Because that's a very established phenomenon in fall, along with tropical kingbird going up the west coast of California and Oregon. So, yeah, good to hear that Washington's on the board with that. And birders definitely have had it on their radar there for a while. Yeah. You know, the yellow green very own Washington and the one in Oregon were seen within like a day of each other. So they both popped up at the same time. Yeah. Along the same lines, a short bill goal in New Jersey. all of the all of the quote-unquote mugle records were of a european the common goal so getting one from the western u.s was a new one and um common shell duck in nova scotia that has established itself in a lot of places in eastern canada and new england uh in the last few years but nova scotia had not had one yet until this year so short build gull was on my short list for this too for new jersey appropriately you know yeah we had yeah that's well where else would it go So we've had multiple records here in New York right across, you know, returning birds for a long time. So that was that was overdue. Pretty cool. Yeah. So now we're going to move on to, you know, these a lot of these birds were maybe less surprising. I want to go your most surprising first state or provincial records, territorial to for that matter. A couple of those in the ABA area this year. I forget whose turn it is for this one. I've lost track. Take it, Tim. I'm going to kick this one off completely without any bias here. I think the most surprising state first of the year was Arctic Warbler in New York State. Shout out to my buddy. A couple of candidates for that record in New York State this year. We had a few. There's more superlatives to come. But this bird is just so far removed from any previous records of Arctic Warbler. um this is another one going back to you know my memories of being a kid pouring through the field guide you know arctic warbler was one of those that i'd pause on and be like oh that's different from the other warblers i wonder oh that's where they oh okay like that's a bird from far far away from here totally different family yeah and yeah different family that's a it's not just a new genus but a new family for the east for the new york state for the new york state for east coast um shout out my buddy ryan zucker for the initial spot and uh legendary call out on that bird while we were all together at Randall's Island. But just this is a bird that's really hard to come by anywhere away from Alaska in North America. You know, there's there's a smattering. There's a handful of records from California, Baja, California that are backed up by sound recordings to rule out Kamchatka leaf, a Japanese leaf warbler. And then even when you kind of expand to that species complex without the audio, there's really not that many, you know, Yukon Territory is one from Nevada. but they're really very scarce. And for one, to make it all the way to the East Coast and show up in the heart of New York City is pretty wild. The only indication that that might be on the table was there was a historical record from Bermuda, and they got another one this year, which is crazy. So that was a big surprise and was also on my short list for the community moment because obviously that was a big one for us. There were a lot of people coming out to get in on the excitement with that bird. I think that was another one where potentially hundreds of people saw that or. Oh, for sure. Yeah. That bird was around. How many days was it around? Just two days. It was the day we found it and the next day. But and it was a little tricky to pin down. You know, it would be super cooperative for stretches and then just go missing. But fortunately, you know, we got great audio, you know, good photos. Obviously, you know, those those who know Philoscopus ID is not for the faint of heart. It makes and pin next fly catchers look like a walk in the park. was it part of a loose foraging flock or was it sort of doing its own thing it was keep into itself but loosely associating with some other birds you know we first picked it out in kind of an agitated flock of warblers um it seemed like it was kind of investigating what was going on um but most of the time it was just bouncing around you know up in the canopy it was really and just adding to this how weird it was the bird was singing it was just doing this little whispered sub song you know so So it's as if the call notes weren't enough. We get some audio of the bird singing. Just really weird set of circumstances all around. But a lot of fun. You know, that's a real birders bird, you know, drab, but cute. Yeah, it's super cool to have that show up around here. Well, for me, the most surprising sighting of the of 2025 was the pair of military macaws and in Big Ben. And just, first of all, sheer shock value of two massive green macaws. Imagine driving up into Big Bend and parking and you get out of your car and there's two military macaws. You hear macaws squawking. Spectacular bird. Kind of the opposite end of the pole in terms of looks and flash factor. Everyone understands the appeal of the military macaw. Right. Yeah, this was one. I have this pegged for one of the biggest surprises of the entire year. I think the only thing that might kneecap it a little bit is the question of acceptance and provenance. I know my records committee counterparts in Texas, they have a lot to consider in terms of provenance concerns and things like that, especially with a parrot. but I don't know if you ask me that sure seems like a pretty reasonable place for a pair of fully flighted mobile birds to show up like that and just super like you said super spectacular bird showing up in a really fantastic place I guess we'll still have to wait and see whether that passes muster with official acceptance for record keeping purposes but that doesn't diminish the excitement of the experience for the people who are there to be a part of it. Super cool. Yeah. Tom Ford Hutchinson wrote a really great piece on the ABA website about the potential, trying to answer some of the questions around these birds And he comes to the kind of the same conclusion I do And i think you too tim and maybe you too alex because you chose this bird um it sure sure seems plausible um that this could be a wild pair of birds and uh you know i i always like to give the benefit of the doubt in these situations um also just they're so cool it's one of my it's one of my short it's on my short list for most mind-blowing i know there was some concern you know with the photo quality was you you know, in some places it was a little tough to discern. Like some people were like, are there bands? Is that a band I'm seeing? You know, I think the takeaway was it was just, you know, photo artifacts and the way the leg looked. But I can understand people being, you know, it's right to come at a record like this with a grain of salt and, you know, a measure of scrutiny. But I don't know. I think it's pretty cool. I'm not voting on it. I think there should be a bias towards coolness. Cool record. Rule of cool. Rule of cool. That's right. Yep. Yep. Let's do it. Yeah. A lot of great options for this record. This was a great year for first state provincial records. You already mentioned the Cooper's Hawk in Newfoundland. The Limpkin in Massachusetts we already mentioned. That's on there too. But I'm going to go back. this is not strictly speaking a 2025 bird but the 2025 was the year that the story started taking shape on this bird and it is the uh the kelp gull in wisconsin um glad this bird's getting some air time yeah kelp gull species that um is known in the aba area it's primarily a south american gull species but you know gulls they they definitely get around they bred with herring gulls on the chandelier islands in louisiana it's 30 30 maybe 30 plus years ago and you know I'm probably dating myself. I don't know exactly the time, but it was a long time ago, making the famous chandelier goal hybrids. When I think of where a kelp goal is likely to show up, the first thing I'm thinking of is Gulf Coast. Gulf Coast, yeah. The fact that one was found in Wisconsin is really sort of mind-bending and that it was trying to make more baby chandelier goals with a colony of herring goals. Milwaukee goals. Milwaukee, yeah, Milwaukee goals. up to change them old milwaukee goals um and we will um yeah who knows whether that will pan out or not but uh great story with this bird apparently uh originally identified as a lesser black bat goal justifiably like i would probably do the same thing um way more likely than a kelp goal in wisconsin um photos made it to i want to say amari yash who's the author of the goal guide very much a gold guru um he stops like this this is a cult goal um and people started going in and looking for it in the fact that it wasn't one that got away like oh man we missed this it's it came back around again uh and as far as i know maybe so it's two summers that it's been there reasonable chance that it's going to be back uh this summer um maybe trying out for a while i think that i think the nest failed this year if i remember correctly twice uh so who knows you know if i if i were in the area i'd certainly have my eyes peeled uh when the gulls begin accumulating at their roost at their nesting sites next year for sure uh really really strange bird um you know a couple other kind of honorable mentions um since i have the the floor here uh surfbird in ontario first provincial record uh across the lake from a pennsylvania record of surfbird from like 35 years ago uh that's that's fun uh and uh broadwing hawk in alaska uh in november of all times i'm particularly surprised that was an adult broadwing hawk too yeah exactly yeah often it is those youngsters that kind of go astray and the wrong way turn i'm gonna take a smuggle on this one too just do it it's an adorable story uh state first record of paraloxia in north dakota yes um just a Backyard birder who very astutely recognized something amiss and took a photo of what I believe she thought was her first cardinal in her yard, which would have been exciting enough for that area in North Dakota. And instead was delighted to learn that it was a good bit rarer than that. I believe a couple local birders also got to make it out there and see that. So super cool. That's what birding is all about. For sure. For sure. We've talked about so many wonderful birds. I want to give you the opportunity to come up with your own superlative and give a bird for it. If there's something that we have not yet discussed, please consider coming up with a superlative for it and throw it at us. I'm curious to see what you all come up with. Alex, do you want to take the lead on this one? Off the top of my head, I wanted to say the most cuckoo because there are three common cuckoo. Yeah, nice. I like it. That's a good superlative for it. Common cuckoo. yeah Tim maybe you saw it near Montauk there in New York and then yeah so we had Rickard showed up in Riverhead out on Long Island and then hot on the heels of that in New Hampshire so after only one other previous east coast at least of the United States lower 48 then two in one fall pretty cool pretty exciting yeah this was actually the same bird that I had set aside for the most superlative um but my make your own superlative for this was breakout mainstream media story because this new york bird i love it got a lot of play um and i think that the reason for that were kind of the circumstances of its discovery number one and number two everybody has at least a concept of a cuckoo you know most people couldn't pick one out of a lineup but they know that a cuckoo is yeah a bird that is strange yeah it's a bird that's weird and i think people know that it's a bird that doesn't belong around here you know within within at least the cuckoo the common cuckoo which is this awesome culturally significant bird um but this bird out on long island was originally spotted uh by a golfer who um bills himself as a non-birder i might beg to differ because he took identifiable cell phone photos that at least showed that this was a cuckooless cuckoo um and then through this game of telephone passed it on to his nephew who had connections at Cornell and word got out to the birding community. I was personally in parent teacher conferences when I saw my phone light up, comment cuckoo on Long Island, which knocked my socks clean off. And, you know, the bird itself, awesome bird. You know, they're really very striking. They're cool to see in action. You know, I don't think there were any caterpillars left in the farm fields when this bird was done with them. And it was cool that like local farmers and the local golf course workers were they were pretty chill about people being there you know as long as they stayed out of the way yeah um you know a bunch of people came out i know that this was a this was a bird that people were chasing from out of state because as you said alex there really haven't been that many records i know some people from north carolina who went out yeah you know again a bird that's basically annual in alaska um but on each coast away from that there's only a handful a handful of records so that was cool Bunch of people got to enjoy this bird. Fun stakeout, great community moment, awesome subject bird. But then the really funny part about it for me was how much I heard about this bird from non-birding acquaintances for the following month. I had coworkers, extended family members, friends of friends reaching out to me and just being like, yeah, I heard about this on the evening news, or I read about it in my paper, or they were talking about it on a sports podcast. like you hear about this cuckoo this cuckoo bird that showed up in new york like so it was just it was really interesting to see you know in the past i feel these breakout mainstream media stories have been around more obviously spectacular birds you know the stellar sea eagle got a lot of airtime the flamingo invasion um and i think that really just speaks to um the charisma that cuckoos have as just these lovable weirdos and these like i said culturally significant birds that everyone's like a cuckoo really okay that's that's unusual um so it was really cool both to see that bird and get to be a part of that story and also to see how much it resonated with people after the fact and how much they enjoyed it yeah yeah i like the idea of the sports podcast uh finding uh finding this bird and going going taking it to the logical stage we need to talk about this first time caller long time lister you know who's really cuckoo the mets yeah Yeah. So the great, great shouts, both of them, both the same bird. Mine is best run of rarities. There were a lot of really kind of good candidates for this one, but I'm going to say the best one this year was our friends up in British Columbia, which over the course of a few months had first provincial records of all of backed Pippet, Little Bunting, and Tyga Flycatcher, kind of boom, boom, boom maybe not exactly boom boom boom but all kind of relatively close together i think there was i think there was a rustic bunting thrown in there as well um really great uh stuff uh run of kind of east asian vagrants in uh in southeastern british columbia or southwestern i should say british columbia this year um all all fun records there all ones that they kind of expected you know british columbia has a surprisingly short uh coastline so they kind of lose out on some of those records to um to alaska's panhandle and certainly to uh to washington as well but um they certainly got them this year um some really good records and i think the taiga flycatcher was sort of the uh the piece de resistance very very few records of that bird if any um there might be a california record i'm not i think there's one california record outside of alaska um so great great bird and another kind of one of those wonderful community moments a lot of people got to see this bird because by just from the wonderful photos that came out from British Columbia reporting this thing. So it seems like a lot of birders got on it. So that's a cool one. So we're finally at the last one and we may have already talked about some of these birds, but I want to at least give a little bit of time to do the most mind-blowing vagrant of 2025. What bird was the best rarity in the ABA area this year? What takes your cake? This is a tough category. It was a big field this year. But in terms of birds, we haven't discussed already. I think the standout remaining record that I want to give the rose to is Waved Albatross off California. Yeah. Yeah. What a cool bird. I can't imagine. Oh man. Albatross to begin with. Any albatross is spectacular. And waved albatross is one of those really striking, unique looking birds, you know, pretty big, like decent size, even for an albatross, not one of, not one of the great granddaddies of the wingspan. Yeah. Big, big and weird looking, like just, you know, big banana bill, you know, kind of like golden eyebrows on a white head, you know this cool smoky body and not just oh we were out on a pelagic of california and we saw one but we were out on a pelagic of california and we got crushing photos and incredible prolonged views like if you pull up waved albatross on ebird now like a bunch of the top media is from this and justifiably because they got some incredible shots but you know this is a bird that is critically endangered. Only breeds in the Galapagos and is typically only seen in a narrow band of latitude on either end of that. And for this bird to make it all the way up to California and to show off so beautifully for a boat full of birders that I'm sure were losing their minds, man, that's about as good as it gets. This is the kind of stuff we dream of when we go birding from a boat. For sure. Waved albatross was my number one. Also, with with runners up being the streak sheer water. That was also, yeah. And also good, great year for seabirds. Yeah. So good. Yeah. My third choice was also the Juan Fernandez. We haven't talked about that one yet. I knew we had, we had to throw that one out there. I was going to mention that if you hadn't. Maybe it's time that we're not surprised by seabirds abilities to just end up anywhere, but it's, it, it's just too much. And especially like you said, the grandeur of the waved albatross is phenomenal yeah it's it's a flashy a flashy bird and i know it had the community factor behind it too because the the streak shearwater and the one fernandez petrol you know both both i would argue further afield from where they should be you know they're in the wrong ocean basin um but both of them were kind of like a chance flyby that a lucky birder or a lucky handful of birders got to enjoy which is fun but you know waved albatross definitely gets the uh um people were talking about and one of the birding groups i'm part of waved albatross has some pretty privilege because it's a spectacular looking bird to boot and the fact that it showed off on a designated birding outing and so many people got to be a part of it is is pretty great yeah in some ways pelagic birding feels like buying a lottery ticket you're never exactly sure what you're gonna get and occasionally you can win really really big and uh certainly the birders on those boats that saw the waved albatross for sure but also that juan fernandez petrel which for sure what a strange bird like it's it's two aba area continental records are in places that you like you would think maybe california pelagic uh washington whatever but no it's uh arizona backyard in arizona yeah and now yeah off nantucket or so in massachusetts it's amazing yeah those are the two i wanted to highlight also for me it was the military macaws just for pretty pretty privilege you mentioned uh hard to beat a giant parrot um and boy we i think we're overdue for it's the only macaw that's even a possibility on the aba checklist as a natural vagrant military macaw one fernandez petrol waved albatross i think that's a pretty pretty good street share water those those are the four that definitely um take the cake for me and yeah it's been it was it was a good year it was a good year for vagrants in the aba area Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Two ABA area first. Yeah. In the albatross vein, just the number of short-tailed albatross seen off the West Coast this fall is a real uptick. And hopefully, you know, more to come as their population is rebounding and people know to be on the lookout for them at the right time of year. So, yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. No first records of short-tailed albatross. All those Western states and provinces have that already. But, yeah, there were a lot of them. There were a lot of them. Maybe we should be watching out on our East Coast Pelagics if current trends are going to go by. That's sort of one that over the top is a kind of possible chance for that one. Yeah, who knows? Who knows? We'll keep an eye out. That would definitely be the first. It would be up there in a list that we make in the future. But great shouts, everybody. I really appreciate this conversation. I want to thank Alex Lamoureux and Tim Healy for joining me to talk Rare Birds. Always a fun conversation. Looking forward to those 2026. already off to a pretty impressive start. Hey, can't wait to talk about it next year. It's awesome. European Robin and Red Flank Blue Tail. Yeah, strong showing. But those will be fun, and we'll look forward to next year. Thanks to you both. See you next time. See you. The American Birding Podcast is brought to you by the American Birding Association. The ABA is, of course, a membership organization, and the best way to support it is to become a member. Members get access to all of our fantastic magazines, Birding and North American Birds, access to all of our online resources like the North American Red Bird Alert, of course, ABA community, of course, discounts to partners like Zeiss, OM System, and Beauty of Books. You can learn more about all the benefits of membership in addition to helping support all of our free resources like this podcast at aba.org. I'm going to make some special shout outs this week to Emma Nicolason of Madison, Wisconsin, Peter Goldberg of Little Compton, Rhode Island, Mary Marty of Mansfield, Texas, Paul Murray of Santa Ana, California, Alyssa Epilipsia, and Courtney Battaglia of Kirkland, Washington, David Parrish of Garland, Texas, Annabelle Welch of Loudoun, New Hampshire, Thomas Ward of Firestone, Colorado, Wendy Murrell of Cochini Lake, New Mexico, Pauline Marchand of Palo Alto, California, and Joshua Zydell and family of Chevy Chase, Maryland, all of whom recently joined the ABA and noted this podcast as a reason for doing so. Thank you so much. Welcome to the ABA. Executive director of the ABA and executive producer of this podcast is Wayne Klockner, who's very much enjoying all the talk on sports radio about how the Seahawks are heavy favorites because, you know, he loves Ospreys, too. Technical production is by John Lowry, who, hey, first time, long time. The guy who only offered the New Hampshire cuckoo a league minimum contact that caused it to bolt should be fired. That bird should just stuck around for weeks. Additional help comes from Maggie Fitzgibbon, Frank Izagiri, and Greg Neese, who finds it funny that both playback and instant replay are both equally useful for out-of-bounds calls and identifying fouls. You can find us online at aba.org, on social media most everywhere. It's American Birding Association. On Blue Sky, we are at ABA Birds. Questions, comments can come to podcasts at aba.org. I'm Nate Swick. Thanks for listening. Bird like Tom, and we'll be back next week. you