Not sure why this has not yet been posted to OntBirds, but there is Pyrrhuloxia coming to a feeder near the town of Eagle in Elgin County. I saw the bird today at about 4:00 p.m.
>From the 401 exit at Interchange #137 and drive south to West Lorne. Keep going straight (south) to the town of Eagle on Hwy. 3. Keep going south towards Lake Erie where you will see a tall radio tower on the left. Just a bit further there is a small woodlot on the right with one house (911 house number 9037). At the back of this house are the feeders. I don't know the protocol for seeing this bird, except that a couple I met there said it was OK to walk done the south side of the property to view the feeders. Since it was cold and windy I simply window-scoped the feeders from the roadside a bit further south. According to the people I met, the bird has been present "for about a week." The bird is not an adult male, but I'm not sure if it is an adult female or perhaps an immature male (I haven't had time to read much literature). Some may wonder about wild status, but I see no reason why this is not a wild bird. I know the species is prone to minor irruptions that bring the species to the coast of Texas, and when I was stationed on an offshore oil platform off south Texas I saw three different birds there -- including one that flew right past the platform and continued east and further out to sea (I doubt if that particular bird made it all the way to Florida!). A brief check of the literature indicates records for both Oklahoma and Kansas. Is the current occurrence any more outlandish than the Red-cockaded Woodpecker in Chicago last year, or the Brown-headed Nuthatch two (?) years ago on the south side of Lake Erie at Cleveland? Although we think of all these species as sedentary (non-migratory), obviously this is not the case for some individual birds. Alan Wormington, Leamington
