Rare Birds Rare Birds by Jim D. Wilson photography by Jim Rathert Migrating birds occasionally wind up where they never intended to travel. Because they fly, some birds can show up in odd places.
Migrant birds appear sometimes to simply head in the wrong direction.
For example, a few years back a golden-crowned sparrow traveled 2,000 miles east from its western Canada breeding range to Missouri, rather than to the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Sometimes birds seem to forget to migrate altogether, such as the Cape May warbler that stuck it out at a north Kansas City feeder during the winter of 1995. Although the warbler should have been in the West Indies or Central America, instead it entertained countless birders who traveled to Kansas City from several states to see it. Not all the species of birds that interest birders are as spectacular or as beautifully colored as a Cape May warbler. A bird's appeal sometimes lies in subtle cues, such as plumage shade, body conformation or behavioral traits, that separate one species from another.