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“Unfortunately, nature is very much a now-you-see-it, now-you-don't affair. A fish flashes, then dissolves in the water before my eyes like so much salt. Deer apparently ascend bodily into heaven; the brightest oriole fades into leaves.” — Annie Dillard
I usually try to keep away from these stories of rare or unusual bird sightings (there are many each year) as having any great relevance to the Ivory-bill saga, but this one involving a large, stunning bird showing up out-of-the-blue and out-of-place is just too remarkable to pass up, reverberating again with how little we know about individual bird behavior.
For those who haven’t heard, a magnificent, vagrant Steller’s Eagle (larger, and just as striking as our American Bald Eagle) has shown up in Canada thousands of miles from its Asian home territory. It’s been moving around quite a bit; perhaps it will show up on our eastern seaboard! As Nate Swick of ABA simply says, “It’s nuts. It really is. It’s one of those head-scratching things” to find this bird here in N. America at all. Others call it “mind-boggling” and “a one in a million shot.”
Once, when a very unusual hummingbird showed up in my state, completely out-of-place, I surmised it accidentally hitched a ride in the back of a transport vehicle perhaps hauling tropical plants from a source 1000+ miles away, as I refused to believe it flew here under its own power... but that sort of 'accidental' ride scenario (or any other) is far less conceivable for the appearance of this waaay-lost raptor.
Anyway, read all about it (because, yes, mind-boggling things do happen on occasion, and nature is full of surprises):
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/05/science/stellers-sea-eagle.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimesscience
ADDENDUM 11/16:
Hahh! not IBWO-related, but kinda funny after me mentioning the possibility of stowaway birds, today this story appears of a Roadrunner from Las Vegas hitching a ride to Maine (strange things happen in the world of birds):
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/16/1056191659/roadrunner-stowaway-moving-van-las-vegas-maine
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