A Plain-capped Starthroat appeared Sunday at the Casa de San Pedro B&B in Hereford, AZ. Jon Dunn’s tour Arizona: Second Spring spends three nights here next month.

Will the starthroat still be there? No way to say, but historically, individuals of this species have lingered long and shown considerable “feeder fidelity” in southeast Arizona.

A Solitary Snipe, North America’s second, was collected on Attu May 24. The continent’s first was found by Gavin Bieber on a WINGS tour in September 2008–who knows what this year’s trip will turn up?

Rick Wright e-mails from Rome:

It’s always tantalizing for a leader to show up the day before a tour begins. It’s essential, of course: there are always last-minute arrangements to attend to, always last-minute emergencies to fix. But once all that’s out of the way (and thanks to the yeoman work done by the Tour Managers back in Tucson, it never takes all that much time), then it’s time to go birding. A few hours to re-familiarize yourself with routes and sites, to gauge the progress of the season, or even, as I’ve done today, just to get your ear back in.

I’m staying at a very pleasant Holiday Inn between Rome and Fiumicino Airport, where Marco and I will meet up with the group tomorrow for the drive north into Tuscany. It was raining when I arrived, but it let up soon enough that I threw on my jacket and took a stroll around the neighborhood. It’s not exactly wilderness here in the middle of our industrial park, but I was amazed by what I saw. Among the thirty species I tallied in a two-hour stroll, never getting more than a quarter mile from the hotel’s parking lot, were Hobby, European Turtle-Dove, European Bee-eater, Rose-ringed Parakeet, Sardinian Warbler, Zitting Cisticola, Cetti’s Warbler, Firecrest, and (naturally) Italian Sparrow.

A good start, and all I could do to keep from asking the front desk to get all the other early arrivals downstairs so we could start birding!

The NYT has a good-looking and very timely slide show from “The Valley” on line. If you’ve never been, this should whet your appetite–along with the most recent reports from Gavin Bieber’s spring and winter tours to one of the great meccas of American birding.

Among the brilliant beauties lurking in the Rio Grande’s narrow band of thornscrub are Altamira Orioles. And who knows, perhaps your visit will be graced by something as surprising as the Black-vented Oriole photographed on South Padre Island two days ago.

PHoto: New York Times.

The rediscovery of the Santa Marta Sabrewing holds out hope for the many other “Santa Marta endemics” of Colombia.

You can read all about it in today’s NYT.

Serendib Scops Owl. Photo: Uditha Hettidge.

Deepal Warakagoda, the leader of our tours to Sri Lanka, has done it again. Already well known for his discovery of the Serendib Scops Owl, Deepal recently found a population of Marshall’s Ioras breeding on the “tear of India,” as the magical Island of Sri Lanka is sometimes known.

Marshall's Iora. Wikimedia Commons: Arpit Deomurari.

The colorful Marshall’s Iora had been thought to be restricted to the Indian mainland, making Deepal’s discover a significant one. And we have a good chance of seeing this newest addition to the Sri Lankan avifauna on our next tour, in the area of Tissa.

From Paul Lehman, writing from Omaha at the conclusion of another very successful Nebraska tour:

Greetings. Currently at the Omaha airport, heading home. My Platte River
tour recorded three species of cranes. After we missed the Common Crane
in western Nebraska all day Sunday, it was re-found yesterday, so
we dashed back westward and had fine looks (new for me in North
America). On Monday we had a Whooping Crane near our hotel outside Grand
Island (my second in Nebraska). And of course we saw some 500,000+ Sandhill
Cranes.  Sharp-tailed Grouse displaying to Greater Prairie-Chickens at a
prairie-chicken lek. The weather changed hourly from very nice to truly awful.

Will Russell and David Sibley have returned from Thailand, where they were studying Spoon-billed Sandpipers at the traditional site at Pak Thale in the northern Gulf of Thailand.  They saw multiple birds every day, with a maximum of six.

Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Thailand. Photo: Jon Dunn.

Will writes: “From the point where six Spoon-bills were visible at once, by spinning slowly around one could also see about 300 Eurasian Curlews, one Far Eastern curlew, 50 Black-tailed Godwits, 10 Bar-tailed Godwits, six Ruffs, 250 Great Knots, 15 Red Knots, six Nordmann’s Greenshanks, 20 Common Greenshanks, 30 Spotted Redshanks, 400 Marsh Sandpipers, 300 Curlew Sandpipers, six Dunlin, 400 Little Stints, 20 Long-toed Stints, 15 Broad-billed Sandpipers, five Common Sandpipers, 30 Pacific Golden-Plovers, 10 Black-bellied Plovers, 100 Kentish Plovers, 150 Greater Sand-Plovers, 80 Lesser Sand-Plovers, and one Malaysian Plover–all from that single point.”

David and Will also encountered Jon Dunn and the WINGS Coast to Highlands group.  “Lucky Jon,” they’d taken to calling him: the first bird Jon  looked at on getting out of the the van was a Spoon-billed Sandpiper!

Many thanks to Pete Davidson for allowing us to post his photos of the British Columbia Oriental Turtle-Dove.

Oriental Turtle-Dove, Delta, BC. Photo: Pete Davidson.

The bird was discovered Monday at Alaksen NWA, next door to the Reifel Bird Sanctuary.

Photo: Pete Davidson.

The past couple of days have produced no further sightings, but as Vancouver birders have noted, there are lots of dove flocks to look through up there.

An Oriental Turtle-Dove was photographed ninety minutes ago at Alaksen  NWA, British Columbia.

If the usual questions of provenance can be settled, this will be a third record for Canada and one of less than a dozen accepted reports for all of North America.