The New York Post reported that an elusive, rare bird spotted in Central Park on Thursday morning already has a flock of followers. The “skulky” Swainson’s warbler touched down in the shrubbery near Strawberry Fields around 8 a.m. — the first time one has been spotted in the city in at least a decade, according to expert birder Rob Bate.
“This is a bird that makes you drop all of your plans,” Bate, who is president of the Brooklyn Bird Club, told The Post. Bate said he was on his way to Prospect Park on Thursday morning to do some birding since it was a nice morning, but he didn’t even have time to get his binoculars out before his phone started chirping with some breaking bird news.
A fellow Manhattan bird watcher, Alice Deutsch, tweeted on Twitter that a Swainson’s warbler was in town. “#birdcp swaisons warbler imagine mosiac,” she wrote at 7:23 a.m. “#birdcp confirming and it’s singing.” “I turned around and ran to the subway to come to Central Park,” Bate said. “Everyone was racing here.”
To read the article in its entirety, along with seeing pictures of this rare sighting, click here.