The birding in western Alaska is starting to get more interesting following a spate of Willow Warblers on St. Paul Island last week. Gambell checks in now with an ABA Code 4 Little Bunting found yesterday morning (8/31). This bird follows another exciting report of a Code 4 Dark-sided Flycatcher from inaccessible (to birders, at least) Shemya Island in the western Aleutians from earlier in the week.
Little Bunting from St. Lawrence Island yesterday, photo by Gary Rosenberg
Little Bunting is rare on the Bering Sea Islands, though almost annual in the fall on St. Lawrence in recent years. There have been 26 records in the last 20 years of this striking little Old World Emberizid.
Dark-sided Flycatcher, formerly known as Siberian Flycatcher, is a member of the family Muscicapidae, the Old World flycatchers. They are not closely related to “our” flycatchers, the Tyrannidae. There are at least 12 records from western Alaska, mostly from the western Aleutians but also from the Pribilofs as well. There is also one mainland record, from Barrow, AK, in 2013 and a bizarre specimen record from Bermuda from Sep 1980.