Hi Tweets,

Dennis Paulson writes:

>Let me know if you're tired of my popping in
>unannounced from time to time!

Good heavens, Dennis, such diffidence! '-) Hope it's not presumptuous of me
to speak for the list to say that your contributions be welcome anytime, and
we greatly miss you as a regular contributor. Come back more often!

To the issue of El Nino-influenced vagrancy, without knowing that much about
the mechanisms, on a numbers basis, I do have to agree more with Dennis. If
there were such effects, I'd expect to see not just a few widely-scattered
singletons of each species but larger numbers of greater variety of species
more widely distributed.

The type of southern species --> north which we're observing in this
region's winter and wondering might be due to weather-transport would be an
absolutely routine annual process in degree of vagrancy for Canada's
Maritime Provinces, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and
Newfoundland; if anything, the numbers of vagrant species are usually
greater in an average winter there than we're seeing here this year.

It's also possible that--outside of the usual tern/pelican postbreeding
northward dispersal--we're seeing a fairly average rate of vagrancy
occurrence for the region but due to the mild winter, more vagrants are
surviving to be seen.

One might argue that the unprecedentedly large northward irruption of
Tropical Kingbird Tyrannus melancholicus and Tropical/Couch's-types is part
of an overall El Nino-related pattern. Perhaps. But why just them, then? And
why just them in numbers? Why not other flycatchers, other passerines? One
Nutting's Flycatcher Myiarchus nuttingi does not a pattern make.
California's single Dusky-capped Flycatcher M. tuberculifer is not out of
pattern. So why are the southern states not inundated in other species?
Similarly, why are *we* not up to the keister in southern vagrants -->
north? I'd suggest we don't know why the kingbird irruption was so large
this year.

There's other possible explanations for this year's large Tropical/Couch's
push N. Perhaps they had a smashingly great breeding success this year.
Maybe it's usually only their juveniles that head N (as it's mostly juv
Snowy Owls Nyctia scandiaca that come S in a non-irruptive year), except the
really cold weather in Mexico had the adults joining the northward
dispersal. Maybe we're seeing a cyclic occurrence with a long periodicity
and it's not out of pattern. But again, why, so selectively, just that (or
those) species? BTW, just from curiosity, what does these little guys feed
on when the temperature's below zero (Celsius) for long stretches? Just
*how* do they survive a costal BC winter?

In sum, other than the Xhummer--and I still think the means of its arrival
here is a ponderable issue--there just doesn't seem to be enough
sufficiently out of pattern to suggest any extraordinary departure from
business-as-usual where a few mirror-migrants are gonna furnish First
Records for someone's province or state. We know from previous experience
that if we wait long enough--to echo the epigraph in Don Roberson's Rare
Birds of the West Coast--that our local lists and national lists will become
almost indistinguishable.

Can't help wondering if there's an island or two, such as the Queen
Charlotte Islands or one of the islands in the Alaska Panhandle, which is
the West Coast equivalent to Nova Scotia, the final stopping place for these
wrong-way vagrants.

Michael Price A brave world, Sir,
Vancouver BC Canada full of religion, knavery and change;
mprice at mindlink.net we shall shortly see better days.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689)