#ABArare - Garganey - North Dakota

On May 19th, Dan Rogers, Marlene Anderson, and Janelle Masters, discovered an ABA Code 4 Garganey at Horsehead Lake in Kidder County, North Dakota.  If accepted, this is the second record for the state following a bird in Fargo in 1993.  No photos were taken and the bird has not yet been refound. 

Horsehead Lake is between Bismarck and Fargo, 70 miles east of the former and 166 miles west of the latter, in Kidder County. The bird was seen on the south side of the lake, one mile east on 29 Street Southeast from 32 Avenue SE.

Most reports of Garganey come from spring when plumage allows for ease in identification.  Fall reports come mostly from mid-September to early November.  Birds have been reported south of the ABA Area in Sinaloa and Baja California Sur, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and Barbados (ABA Checklist, Seventh Edition, Pranty et al.).  From the ABA Checklist annotations, we learn that Garganey was recently changed from a Code-3 to a Code-4 (from casual to rare) species resulting from the steady decline of reports from Alaska and California.  This decline of sightings in the ABA Area corresponds to a decline in numbers of Garganeys reported from surveys conducted in Asia.

Garganeys breed across Eurasia from Great Britain to the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Russian Far East. They winter in central Africa and from the Arabian Peninsula to China and Thailand.