The state's birders are atwitter over two rare avian visitors that may have drifted from Asia to Alaska with help from November's big Bering Sea storm.
One of the thrushes is a redwing that was spotted in Seward last month. That species has never been recorded in Alaska.
The other is a dusky thrush that was punctual enough to surface for the 53rd Christmas bird count conducted by the Anchorage Audubon Society.
The dusky thrush -- a robin-like bird with a white mark over its eye – has never been recorded in Southcentral or during an Alaska winter, aficionados said. When found in Alaska, sightings usually happen more than 1,000 miles west of Anchorage in the remote and inhospitable western Aleutian Islands.
The off-course critters have drawn Lower 48 birders north, in hope of a relatively easy sighting in the comfort of Alaska's biggest city. They've joined bands of their Alaska counterparts roaming the Turnagain neighborhood where the bird was discovered by Anchorage's Thede Tobish in early December.
Anchorage's Luke DeCicco has chased and found the dusky thrush four times, including Tuesday morning.
"It's just a wicked cool bird," said DeCicco. "It's rare, and you probably won't have another chance in Alaska to have access to this for more than one day."
Another lucky viewer is Mr. Whitekeys, the so-called commander-in-chief of Audubon's Anchorage chapter and the comical genius behind Taproot's Whale Fat Follies.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime deal. Unless you're chasing this bird around the Aleutians and Asia, you're never going to see it," he said.
The dusky thrush, with its fetching black-and-white breast pattern, has been flitting among a flock of robins, making it somewhat easy to find. The two birds are related, often growing to the same size, some 9 inches from head to tail. Both like eating berries from the mountain ash and other fruit-bearing trees common in the neighborhood.
"At times there were 40 or 50 people running around, scouring the neighborhood," Whitekeys said.
The redwing thrush, indigenous to Europe and Asia, has also drawn birders to Alaska. Carol Griswold of Seward photographed the redwing at Lowell Point south of Seward in mid-November.
"It's been a good fall for thrushes," noted Nils Warnock, director of Audubon Alaska.
The birds -- stars of a Yahoo birding group comment page -- may have ridden the winds of the Bering Sea storm systems that battered Western Alaska Nov. 8-10 with hurricane-force winds, said Warnock.
Not every birder has been fortunate. One Lower 48 resident trying to tick off as many bird-viewings as possible during his "big year" -- birders' efforts to set personal records and the name of a new movie about the pursuit -- blogged about his failed search for the dusky thrush in Anchorage and Adak in the Aleutian Islands.
Dusky thrushes have been recorded in mainland Alaska only a few other times, including in Barrow at the top of the state and in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, said DeCicco, who's worked with others compiling a spreadsheet of rare Alaska bird sightings.
As for Anchorage's Christmas bird count on Dec 17, the overall number of species was about average, with 39 spotted, said Sirena Brownlee, who organized the count. The most ever was the 52 species counted in 1984.
Numbers might have been higher this year if it weren't for a storm that battered the Hillside with 40 mph winds. Some birds may have hunkered down. Also, homeowners have removed many bird feeders from Hillside yards this winter because of a late-roaming brown bear, reducing bird numbers at those locations, said Brownlee.
Still, 145 birders contributed to the annual census, recording two all-time high counts -- 45 bald eagles and 2,080 black-capped chickadees. Birders have counted on Christmas since 1941.
Brownlee released a preliminary report on the Christmas Bird Count and plans to soon provide a final report on the Anchorage Audubon web site.
Other Christmas bird counts recently took place around the state as part of the National Audubon Society's longstanding census that provides a yearly snapshot of bird movements. Some results can be found here.
Contact Alex DeMarban at alex(at)alaskadispatch.com