[Bristol-Birds] Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch !

From: "Wallace Coffey" <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Bristol-birds" <bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 9 May 2012 21:09:32 -0400

















A life-long good birding friend of mine made this photograph of a 
Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch which is the first Arkansas record for
the species (pending acceptance by the state records committee). 

My friend is Dave Oakley from Bristol Tennessee who is the older 
brother to Sid Oakley who owned Oakley-Cook Funeral Home in 
Bristol.  We grew up in the Fairmount section of Bristol and lived 
about two blocks apart.

Dave lives in Springdale, AR which is in the northwest corner of
the state.  He gets back to visit family in Bristol and we keep in
touch about birding and visit when we get a chance.

The bird was discovered by Don Simons the day before my friend 
saw and photographed it.  This find appears on the American Birding 
Association rare bird blog.

"I was a day late but not a dollar short!" Dave posted to the Arkansas
listserv Monday after arriving at the Mt. Magazine State Park Visitor
Center. "I spotted the subject after about 30 minutes.  I was able to
approach within five (5) feet and I think I got some rather good images."

Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches have a history of vagrancy, but most 
extralimital records are from the northern tier of the US and southern
parts of Canada, with some birds reaching the northeast U.S. 
(there were two in New York this winter) so the bird discovered by 
Simons was, to put it mildly, unexpected.

Simons found the bird next to the park's visitor center parking lot 
in the morning of May 6. Other birders saw it throughout the day 
up until just after 7:30 PM. 

Mount Magazine State Park is about a 60-mile drive ESE of Fort 
Smith, AR.  Some of the easternmost Rufous-crowned Sparrows 
occur in this park. 

In Oregon their preferred habitats are up in the high elevation 
alpine zones. That is what makes this extra unusual.  The summit 
habitats on Mt. Magazine in Arkansas have no resemblance to the 
alpine areas in the West and the bird seems to be making a decent 
living where he is at.  On top of that he would have had to cross 
the plains of KS and/or OK to get there.  That being the case, he
still went to the highest place he could find in AR!

This is the state's highest elevation at 2,753 feet above sea level.

(NOTE:  Very little of the above text is my original material since
I copied and pasted almost all of it from various sources on the
internet and the Arkansas listserv.  Even the opinions as to its
rarity and unexpected occurrence are not mine.  It just seemed
unnecessary to attribute each source.  I requested the photo
from Dave for use in this post.  He was happy to provide it.)

Wallace Coffey
Bristol, TN
[Bristol-Birds] Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch !

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