2024 Wrap-up and maybe best bird ever.

I'll do a quick wrap-up for second half of 2024, after telling the tale of "Ashie".  
On Christmas Day as Herc and I were coming home from a nice long walk at Brooks Nature Area, there was an eBird alert for a Great Crested Flycatcher.  This is a bird that is gone by end of September.  I thought "Oh that is cool as a December bird, but not worth chasing this late in the day.".  There was a small part of me that thought, maybe it was something odd.  Brendan Klick posted on Discord that it could be an Ash-throated Flycatcher.  I kicked into gear trying to see if I could track down the original reporter.  They didn't have any information on their eBird profile, but I had a name.  I headed to google first, but then dawned on me to check iNaturalist.  I was able to message Philip Careless and get ahold of him to get more details.  I told him there was a good chance this was an Ash-throated.  

This bird really had everything come together.  Philip is a biologist in Toronto, so he is familiar with birds and knew that a Great Crested would be an odd bird for this time of the year.  He just happened to notice it as he was packing his car to return home the next day.  Brett the homeowner is turning his yard into a wildflife refuge, so he was amenable to visitation.  

I got there first thing the next day, along with a handful of other birders.  I waited about an hour and 20 minutes, and finally a flash of a bird came in from over the house landing in a berry tree.  Sure enough a flycatcher with a bright yellow belly, and the tail feather pattern certainly seemed to rule out Great Crested (a little more on the ID later).  Ashie, as it came to be called, hopped around the tree "fly catching" berries from the tree for a bout 30 minutes.  It disappeared for a couple hours, and showed up for another 10.  Very cooperative bird, other than often it would be behind small branches in this tangle of a tree.   It was so well camouflaughed in the tree it was easy to lose if it was facing away from you.  

Needless to say this bird was something I never had on the radar.  I had dipped on one in San Diego that everyone else was able to see.  At the time I thought this was the 12th state record, but within a day or two a single sighting showed up on eBird from weeks prior.  So Ashie was a definite 1st county record, 13th state record, and the first one for SW Michigan.  The nearest state record was around 100 miles away in Lapeer, or on the west side 120 miles away in Ludington.  Chicago sightings are almost as close.  

Ashie ended up staying until unfortunately on January 1st, thankfully while Brett and some experienced birders were there, it succumbed to the elements.  My understanding is it was having trouble flying, and fell out of the tree even.  I was there earlier in the day, and I noticed it was much less active than it had been.  I managed to get there every day from the 26th to the 1st, even on a rain-soaked Sunday it popped out briefly.  

We had a warmup on the 30th, and Ashie didn't disappoint.  I spent 4 hours there as it flew all over the place, catching the few bugs it could.  This was one of my most memorable birding experiences ever.  It was so incredibly cooperative.  At one point it had flown into some trees across the street, then flew about 2 feet off the ground in between 2 other birders legs, then rising up and flying a foot from my head.  It was hard to juxtapose the experience of that day with seeing picture of it dying as it lie in a box 2 days later.  It really was a blessed experience that I won't ever forget.  Ashie put on a great show for hundreds of birders over those 7 days.  RIP Ashie.    

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