Crazy Coincidence

A small songbird caused a big stir atop Mt. Mansfield Tuesday.

“If this is right, it’s pretty incredible,” said Chris Rimmer, founder and director of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies. “This is crazy.”

Rimmer netted the bird, a Bicknell’s Thrush, as part of what so far has been a 23-year study of the subspecies. It bore a tiny band on its leg with an engraved identification number.

Rimmer could hardly believe his luck when he typed the number into a computer database.

Turns out Rimmer had tagged that exact bird in February 2010 during a field study in the Dominican Republic. Not only that, but a team of Vermont ecologists had captured the bird six months later during a Mt. Mansfield study in 201l.

It hadn’t been seen since — until Tuesday.

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http://www.stowetoday.com/stowe_reporter/news/article_7b9b319c-f243-11e3-b56a-001a4bcf887a.html

More detail about the very endangered Bicknell's Thrush here in today's AP story about this:

http://online.wsj.com/article/APa2af6bf2fd014eecac0d47aecab51751.html

Climate change and human activity in the Dominican Republic, have decimated the population of this thrush. There are only about 100,000 left in the world.