In May of this year I was in southeastern Arizona with a birding guide, Jake Thompson. We were walking up Miller Canyon and Jake was scouting out a flame-colored tanager, whistling to it, when a very distinctive call came quite loudly from the ravine we were above. Jake perked up, put his phone on recording, and said, I think that is a black-vented oriole, and he got very excited. It called again and he mentioned he was shaking, he was so excited. He went to Merlin and confirmed the call and looked up the only previous sighting of a black-vented oriole in Arizona which took place in 1991. He got on the phone and called a few people and then sent out a rare-bird alert. He'd worked in Sonora, Mexico previously and was very familiar with this bird. I didn't realize until later that he saw the bird fly by at a distance and confirmed it was an oriole. Eventually he said lots of birders would be descending upon us, from as far away as Tucson. Later, after we went as far up the canyon we would go, after seeing buff-breasted flycatcher and red-faced warbler, and turned back, we ran into another very prominent birder, I don't recall his name, who had been in the ravine below us and heard the call. He wasn't sure what the bird was. He had set some sort of record for birding on a bicycle. Jake told him what had gone on, played the recording, and this other birder stayed with us the rest of the way down the canyon. Jake obviously would like to have stayed in the canyon, focusing on trying to see and photograph the black-vented oriole, but he hung with me. As we were leaving the canyon, he stopped the vehicle and talked to several carfuls of people, from as far away as Tucson, coming to try and find the black-vented oriole. He mentioned, that guy has written guide books on birds and that woman has written guides on hummingbirds and that guy is on some ABA (American Birding Association) committee. It was fun to have a first-hand experience experiencing a rare bird sighting. At the end of the trip Jake provided me with his eBird checklists he submitted for each one of our destinations. This is the following that was inserted in the checklist for Miller Canyon:
"Originally heard a single nasally "yurp" call and immediately recognized it as possibly [black-vented oriole] from extensive experience with this species in Sonora, MX. Immediately started recording while standing on trail near here: (31.4101002, -110.2834771) and was able to pick up 2 more "yurp" notes (heard at 4 sec mark in recording) as it emerged from the riparian canopy and flew past us heading up canyon. Immediately noticed orangey oriole color and dark face/head. 1 previous state record from Patagonia Lake on 4/18/1991."
It was fun to be with Jake, who has seen over 500 species of birds in Arizona, add two new lifers for his list in Arizona (we previously saw the red-eyed vireo up Madera Canyon which I posted on yesterday). I note that the first sighting in Arizona in 1991 was on my birthday when I was 34 years old. I'm more than double that now.
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| This is an illustration of a black-vented oriole from Birds of the World. |
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| This is the range from Birds of the World. Note that it falls far short of Arizona. |
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