December 12 - Long rarity Chase

Today my friends and I finally decided to go see the Prospect Park Painted Buning, affectionately known in Star Wars' jargon as '3PB'.  This bird was first report around December 1st, and was faithful to the area above the skating rink known as the LeFrak Center.  Many newspaper articles and television news shows have has reports about this bird during the month of December.
Here's just one of them Why a Painted Bunting landed in Brooklyn

We arrived just after 7:30 am, and within 15 minutes I located the bird for our group of 4.  Soon there were more than 20 birders, and novices, enjoying the spectacular colors of this bird.

Here's just one of the many lovely images of this beauty:

Click to enlarge
credit: Chun Zhou


A youtube video of the bird & some of it's watchers is found here:

A Painted Bunting in Prospect Park, Brooklyn - YouTube


After looking at a few more regular birds within Prospect Park we decided to head north up toward Greenwich, Connecticut for another recently found rarity.  I ahd last tried for this bird in Connecticut back in 2006, but I had missed it then. This target was located in the area of Cos Cob, and we arrived just after 1 pm and were told the bird had just been seen, however it had flown off.  Thankfully the wait was short as the bird returned a few minutes later.  We all got to enjoy nice looks at this western vagrant known as the Townsend's Solitaire.

credit: Frank Mantlik                                                                      click to enlarge

This bird would sing at times, and moved around quite a bit, but all in the same area so it was in view for quite some time.
I had last seen this species back in June 2008 while in Colorado.