article thumbnail

Best Bird of the Year 2012

10,000 Birds

This bird spent the 2011-2012 winter at Colusa National Wildlife Refuge in northern California, migrated someplace exotic and distant in February, and returned to the same pond at the beginning of this month. This bird has two of the qualities that birders most want in a bird: it is a total crippler, and is staggeringly rare.

2012 149