Bird watchers descend on Overland Park to spy oriole 1,000 miles from home - Shawnee Mission Post

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Bird watchers are flocking to an Overland Park neighborhood to see if they can get a rare sighting of a Scott’s Oriole, a bird that normally makes its home more than 1,000 miles away.

Native to the American Southwest, this is only the third report ever of a Scott’s Oriole in Kansas, and the furthest east it has ever been reported, according to Steven Case, the Overland Park resident  and longtime bird watcher who first reported sighting the bird last month in his backyard.

The bird is still coming to Case’s backyard bird feeder

• Case said he and his wife Debra first saw the Scott’s Oriole in early December as it was feeding on the couple’s backyard bird feeder near 83rd Street and Nall Avenue.
• “It was a bird I’ve never seen before, and I traveled all over the world and seen a lot of birds,” he said.
• After identifying and seeing the bird come to his home a second time, Case reported the sighting to the Kansas Ornithological Society to be put on its rare bird list.
• Case says the bird has continued to return every few days to his bird feeder.

A Scott’s Oriole. Photo via National Audubon Society.

The bird is more than 1,000 miles from its typical home

• A biologist by training with roughly 50 years of bird-watching experience, Case said he is unsure why the oriole made it this far east.
• “I have not thought of a reason yet,” Case said. “Sometimes male birds and mammals will disperse to expand the population, though.”
• But Case says this bird must have found shelter and been feeding on different bird feeders in the area, allowing it last over a month in Kansas’ colder climate.

Other birders are now coming to see it

• Since making his initial report, Case said people have been driving — some from more than three hours away — to spend time looking for the oriole in the neighborhood.
• “People are coming from Wichita and Hutchison and around the state. Some are wanting to get it on their bird list,” he said.
• Case says so far it hasn’t caused too much disruption but has prompted interest from some neighbors who asked why there are so many people out on the street walking with binoculars.

Go Deeper: Want to get into bird watching? You can participate in the upcoming Great Backyard Bird Count this February.

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