Rare Asian bird takes 'wrong turn,' lands in Tennessee

Ok, ground breaking first time threader here, so be gentle....

With all the talk about the Asian Bird Flu crisis going on....kind of strange that this bird shows up not in California or some other west coast state, but more that half the way across the country before any one notices it.

Link

"NASHVILLE (Reuters) - A rare Asian hooded crane, normally seen only in Southeast Asia, China and Japan, apparently "took a wrong turn" and has joined sandhill cranes wintering at the Hiwassee Refuge in southeast Tennessee, bird experts say, drawing flocks of curious birdwatchers along with it. "It's a great thrill," said Melinda Welton, conservation chair for the Tennessee Ornithological Society and a bird migration researcher. "People are coming in from all over the country to see this bird." Welton said local birdwatcher Charles Murray has been keeping a log of visitors to the town of Birchwood, near the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency refuge. "He has had more than 700 people come and visit from all over the country to see this bird," she said. "People have come from 26 states and from two countries, including Russia."

With the possibility that the bird flu is starting to cross over to humans and the sudden appearance of a rare bird showing up, drawing a large crowd, could this be the start of an pandemic in the making....

You thoughts are appreciated...

LA Mudd

Can it just be a harmless anomaly and not the beginning of the end? Sheesh.

I am a fairly avid bird watcher and get excited when I see an unusual woodpecker ...I understand why people would travel distances to see a rare bird. I say avian flu pandemic is a stretch. We are getting so paranoid with all the radiation, oil spillage and myriad other forms of pollution, we are becoming nature-phobic...and that can't be good.

Texas has noticed "asian shrimp"? Or prawns? In the gulf.
Whatever they are, they eat shrimp, and people in the shrimpin business are worried.

Not birds, but odd.

I live fairly close to where this bird is at, I will go down tomorrow and report back if i get sick.

2nd

reply to post by Pilot



Ok...lol wasn't meaning to kick off WW3 here (as if there isn't enough of that going on lately), but as middle aged, non-bird watching observer i just find it kind of a big anomaly that this bird shows up for the first time anywhere in the US half way across the country without being spotted even once by the masses of avid bird watchers between the west coast and Tennessee.
Maybe you can find some information about this birds migration patterns and see if it would be able for this bird to have migrated so far without being noticed. Not to be hypocritical but is it possible?

reply to post by Count Chocula


Have fun with that....

I'll stick with organically raised chicken.......

reply to post by LAMudd


Sure, I would be interested in finding out more about it-peace brother

reply to post by LAMudd



Given this poor long-legged bird's proximity to Redneckistan, it wouldnt surprise me if it's already "crossed" the species barrier... if you know what i mean

Maybe soficrow will see this thread and give his thoughts about it. In my opinion the bird could be sick, which could cause erratic behavior, then again it could just be retarded and feels more at home here than china.

reply to post by Count Chocula


I probably fit that bill as well being a displaced "Yankee", by choice.




But possibly the bird is a rebel without a clue.......






As for the prawns.....they sure cook up the same in a little Zatarans.......

A Pacific gray whale has been found in the Mediterranean off isreal.

news.discovery.com...
en.wikipedia.org...

Animals get lost.

Some really get lost

It is not so rare to spot an exotic bird outside its normal area of distribution. Birds are kept as pets by enthusiasts. Sometimes they escape. Also some people willfully release exotic birds:

We move on to the late 19th century, when a group called the American Acclimatization Society was reportedly working on their pre-environmental-impact-statement project to introduce to the U.S. every bird mentioned in Shakespeare’s scripts. Clearly, the Bard abided birds—his works include references to more than 600 avian species. A Bronx resident, drug manufacturer Eugene Schieffelin (a street bearing his name isn’t far from my house) seems to be particularly responsible for the starlings’ arrival here. Well, his chickens have come home to roost. Pop. (The society also brought the house sparrow to our shores, a pair of which nest in a vent on the front of my other, human, next-door neighbor’s house.)

The Acclimatization Society released some hundred starlings in New York City’s Central Park in 1890 and 1891. By 1950 starlings could be found coast to coast, north past Hudson Bay and south into Mexico. Their North American numbers today top 200 million. As bird-watcher Jeffrey Rosen put it in a 2007 New York Times article, “It isn’t their fault that they treated an open continent much as we ourselves did.”

www.scientificamerican.com...

But most importantly birds have wings and can fly. So they can cross a good distance in a short time. Some birds are more adventerous than others, some miss their normal mirgration routes, some join birds of a different species and simply follow them. Also storms often catch birds and cast them far away.

Indeed spotting straggling birds is a hobby practiced by quite a number of birders. The wild chasing of rare birds is called twitching:

Twitchers. The term is British. When a rare bird shows up, twitchers are people who will drop everything and rush to the scene.

They used to have phone trees, then for a while it was beepers. It’s cell-phones and e-mail now. Here is an interesting thing: if you look back to the early days of twitching, the 1960s and ’70s, you see them using an alert system that’s eerily similar to the formal regime for planespotting developed by British civil defense during WWII. Direct copy, inspiration, accident? I wonder. Does anyone here know?

Anyway. Your classic twitcher will leave job, family, or church service behind, seize camera, binoculars and notebook, jump in the car, and roar off to the copse where the black-bellied whistling duck has appeared for only the third time in Britain since 1937.

Twitching is found in several European countries, including Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands.

fistfulofeuros.net...

In the UK, twitching is practiced in a competitive way. The winner is the person who can spot most bird species inside the UK.

Further links:
www.uk400clubonline.co.uk...
en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by showintail


Hmmm...animals starting to make political and religious statements...???!!!

reply to post by Drunkenshrew


Lots of good information, thanks for the read.
I can only imagine how competitive some people would be, as any rarity is like a drug to some, whether it be searching for the rare bug, flower, car....and being the one to find it gives the satisfaction of the chase a whole new "Twitch"....

Or maybe we have another new flaw.....Twitching - can cause loss of interest in normal life activities and routine daily requirements sponsored by your Overlords.... if this conditions continue you may be required to visit your locally sponsored governmental pharmacist to receive your daily dose.......

As for the mention of captive animals, it was mentioned that it was checked and as far as they could tell was not someone front yard ornament......