THE TOP 10: Craziest ABA Vagrants of 2017

It is time again for the annual Top 10 Vagrants post, which has become one of our most popular, and most discussed posts, on The ABA Blog every year. I, with help from my ABA colleagues, have looked back and assembled the following list of notable and unexpected birds that got twitchers across the continent pricing plane tickets and rental cars.

As we have in the past, instead of simply rehashing the rarest birds of 2017 I tried to mix things up a bit. Sure, rarity plays a role both in absolute terms and in unexpectedness, but we also tried to incorporate factors like the magnitude of excitement among birders of the ABA Area and attempted to show a diversity of locations (though it’s hard not to deny an Alaska bias this year).

Of course, this list is subjective, and being my own personal opinion I encourage you to hash it out in the comments section if you think I’m right on or wildly off base. It’s these kind of discussions among birding friends that make our community so special.

So without further ado….

10) Tamaulipas Crows – Texas

The return of Tamaulipas Crows to south Texas was definitely one of the more exciting developments of the year. For more than a decade the slim, shiny corvid was absent from the Valley, following many years of reliability at sites like the Brownsville Dump. When a single bird was found 40 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, that was pretty strange. When multiple birds were found returning to old haunts, and even turning up as far north as Galveston, it was clear something interesting was going on. The crows are still around, maybe for good so far as anyone knows.