For a few days, a Los Ranchos de Albuquerque street was a hotbed of excitement as birders nationwide came to get a glimpse of a tiny bird with a yellow belly.
By Melissa Birks, Tribune Reporter
The morning of Dec. 1, he made his first public appearance outside Ray Powell's front door. On Feb. 1, the show closed.
In between, one yellow grosbeak - weighing about 2 ounces and 9 inches from the tip of its beak to the tip of its tail - transformed a Los Ranchos de Albuquerque neighborhood.
License plates on vehicles that poured onto Pueblo Solano Road Northwest read "New York," "Massachusetts," "Saskatchewan, Canada," and many Western states. That doesn't count those who drove rental cars to Powell's home, hoping to catch a glimpse of the rare bird with a belly the color of 1970s-era "Have a Nice Day" smiley faces.
"I don't think I'm exaggerating," Powell said, when he estimated that as many as 400 birders descended on the 800 block of Pueblo Solano Road Northwest from Jan. 23 to Feb. 1.
Some left birdseed as a parting gift. One sent the Powells a thank-you note.
"It was a very positive experience for us. They said, `Thank you for hosting the bird.' Hosting the bird. That's how they looked at it," Powell said.
Lost, maybe. Found, definitely!
Powell, a veterinarian but not a birder, noticed the yellow fellow resting on a juniper tree Dec. 1. His concern was not with the bird's pedigree but its health; it breathed with its mouth open, not through its beak. "It was just a wreck."
To his wife, Jean Civikly-Powell, the bird's bright color signaled an alien. She ran to "The Sibley Guide to Birds." There it was: A yellow grosbeak. Address: Central and South America. Travel: Rarely Arizona, never New Mexico. Nobody knows why the grosbeak graced Albuquerque. It could have been an exotic pet that escaped. It could have been blown off course while migrating and, believed to be a young male, wouldn't ask for directions.
Civikly-Powell brought a photo of the bird to Lee Hopwood, owner of the Wild Bird Center, 3705 Ellison Drive N.W. Hopwood passed that along to the New Mexico Ornithological Society, whose members came, saw, and recorded the sighting on the Internet - its "rare bird alert" - on Jan. 22.
"I said, `OK, you're going to have all this paparazzi in your yard. I hope you're OK with that," Hopwood said of her warning to the Powells. "You might want to keep shades down while you're dressing."
My House is Your House
The blitz started immediately after the alert hit the Internet. The first morning, a neighbor called Powell and jokingly asked if he was under surveillance by the FBI. Powell walked outside to find 15 strangers, binoculars trained on his home.
"One Sunday morning, there was 75 people out there. It was like a block party," Powell said. "They were not parked in the bushes or impeding traffic. They were a remarkable group of people."
The grosbeak, its health returning, fluttered mostly between the Powell front yard, with its 17 bird feeders, and the home of Tim Jelinek next door, with six feeders and a waterer.
Jelinek recalls making coffee one morning. Outside his window stood a man in a stocking cap. "He was just standing there, like this," Jelinek said, aping the birder's blank gaze toward Jelinek's back yard. "I told my daughter maybe she ought to get doughnuts and coffee out there and start charging." Jelinek enjoyed studying the out-of-state license plates. He agreed with the Powells that birders made fine yard guests. Although he did say, "I wouldn't want it in perpetuity."
'I want to see the bird'
In Homestead, Fla., Larry Manfredi noticed the alert on Jan. 26, his 46th birthday. After negotiating with a birder buddy and figuring his work schedule - he takes people bird watching for a living - the two flew to New Mexico on Jan. 31.
The airline ticket cost less than $150 because Manfredi's friend's son works for Delta Air Lines. They stayed at the Best Western near the Albuquerque International Sunport. They left Feb. 2. In total, he spent $286.90. "It was my first time to Albuquerque. I can't tell you too much about Albuquerque because I was too busy watching birds," Manfredi said in a telephone interview.
The crowd at Pueblo Solano included at least two acquaintances, including a Kentucky man Manfredi first met while birding in the Aleutian Islands in 1994. Manfredi enjoyed reconnecting with old friends. But, he said, birder cackling has its place. "You know what I find the problem is - there's so much socializing, people aren't looking for the bird. I enjoy it, but I want to see the bird. Once you see the bird, then you can talk," he said.
Asked to explain the birder's motivation for halting life and rushing off to a strange place at sometimes great expense, Manfredi at first said, "We're all nuts."
Then he explained that, to see the yellow grosbeak in its native habitat, he'd have to go to someplace like Mexico. Cheaper and easier to go to New Mexico.
'Near yellow grosbeak area'
Jim Asperger works on Fourth Street Northwest where it intersects with Pueblo Solano Road. He worried the binocular-toting strangers might be up to no good, until he noticed they dressed out of a Recreational Equipment Inc. catalog and drove minivans. The president of the Los Ranchos Chamber of Commerce, Asperger shot off an e-mail to its 70 members once he discovered the source of the traffic. "I said, `You may want to swing by if you own a shop. I suspect some of them (the birders) left their wives and need to take back something to apologize.' " Asperger brought maps showing Los Ranchos attractions. He doesn't know how many took advantage of the information but recalled a few telling him that they'd eaten at Sadie's Dining Room, 6230 Fourth St. N.W.
Jim Sands, who lives a block away from Pueblo Solano, also left something behind - but not for the birders. He and his wife created tear-off fliers advertising a casita they're trying to rent. They tied the papers to a tree in between the Powell and Jelinek homes. Describing the casita's location, they wrote: "Near yellow grosbeak area."
"I thought somebody died; I kept seeing people standing in the street," Sands said. "It seemed unusual. I told my wife. She went over and asked them about it, and they told her about the yellow grosbeak. It just kind of pieced together."
One little bird!
One afternoon in the second week of February, a birder from Colorado drove up to Powell's home. The grosbeak hasn't been seen in a week, Powell told him. The birder didn't stick around in hopes it would return. He had another bird in his sights, in Texas.
On this day, Pueblo Solano looked like any other quiet, two-lane rural road. Even if they never see it again, except in a book, neighbors know how a bird just a tad larger than a robin changes lives.
"It's amazing that this little bird brought people together," Powell said.
February 16, 2006