Tri-Cities has a 1st for WA state. Birder spots species never seen here before

An unusual visitor to the Tri-Cities has been drawing crowds to Leslie Groves Park along the Columbia River in Richland.

Jane Abel of Richland was first to spot him.

Late Wednesday she was taking photos of birds along the river and thought she had snapped a picture of a western bluebird.

“No big deal,” she said.

But when she looked more closely at her photos on Thursday, she realized that it wasn’t a western bluebird, but an eastern bluebird. The species had thrilled her when she spotted the vibrant blue birds in her yard as a child in Michigan.

She posted a photo of the bird on a whim to iNaturalist.org and also sent a photo to long-time birder Nancy Laframboise of Richland.

It wasn’t until she got up the next morning and checked her email did she learn that she had made the first recorded sighting of an eastern bluebird in Washington state.

Only once have they been seen in Oregon and never in California, said Jason Fidorra, a Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist based in Pasco.

By Saturday, 30 people were in the park with scopes and telephoto lenses to look for the eastern bluebird. Many came from Seattle, Spokane, Walla Walla and Yakima.

“It was quite the who’s who of the Washington birder community,” Fidorra said.

Bluebirds have been spotted in the Tri-Cities before. Richland is just 66 miles from Bickleton, Wash., which calls itself the Bluebird Capital of the World because of the thousands of bluebirds that spend much of the year in the area.

But those are mostly mountain bluebirds and a few western bluebirds, not an eastern bluebird that has gone far off course.

Male bluebirds are the showy gender. Females are mostly gray with hints of blue.

The male eastern bluebird that Abel spotted has a bright blue back, a robin red chest and throat, and a pure white belly.

The key to its identification was its red throat. Western bluebirds have dark blue throats.

The male eastern bluebird has been hanging out at Leslie Groves park with a female mountain bluebird, Abel said.

She speculates that the eastern bluebird may have gone off course as part of a mixed flock of bluebirds that included the mountain bluebird.

Usually eastern bluebirds don’t travel far, which may be why they have not been spotted before in the Tri-Cities, Fidorra said.

The species are native to east of the Continental Divide and migrate from the same latitude as the Tri-Cities to the southeast or Arizona.

It could be that the eastern bluebird got to the Tri-Cities, as Abel speculates, hanging out with similar species, Fidorra said.

Or sometimes a bird’s internal compass is off and it migrates in the wrong direction, he said.

Birds also, particularly if they have long migrations, can be blown off course.

How long the eastern bluebird may hang out in Richland is anyone’s guess.

Since so few eastern bluebirds have been spotted in the west, there is not data to make an educated prediction.

There is food available. Virgina creeper grows along the river, providing berries for the bluebirds to eat.

“I hope people get to see it,” Fidorra said.

They can just look for the crowd with binoculars to find it.

This story was originally published December 6, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Tri-Cities has a 1st for WA state. Birder spots species never seen here before."