It has traveled thousands of miles from home but the journey isn't over yet. An extremely rare bird from eastern Russia has been sighted along the Midcoast.

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Georgetown is home to about 1,000 people, but on Friday its population boomed. Hundreds of people flocked to town all for one bird.

“I’ve seen over 600 birds before just not this one,” said birder Jeffrey Roth.

Ipswich Massachusetts resident Jeffrey Roth drove up with his dad just to look for the Steller's Sea-Eagle.

“I mean, when we first pulled up I saw an eagle perched and I got really excited and that was a bald eagle. Then I found the one I was looking for, the Steller’s, and got to see it in flight. I think it’s the largest bird I’ve ever seen in flight,” Roth said.

This brightly colored tropical bird is popping up in Maine this winter

It has a wingspan up to eight feet and is the world's heaviest known eagle. With an orange beak and white shoulders, it’s a sight to be seen.

But even the most avid birders can't make the journey to its natural habitat. Sara Busch is from the Philadelphia area and left at three a.m. to be there.

“It was pretty exciting. He was everything I was hoping he would be,” said Busch.

This bird was first spotted in Alaska in August 2020. Since then, it's popped up in Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, even Texas, before appearing in Massachusetts a couple weeks ago.

“I missed him by less than an hour. And he wasn’t seen again. I stayed overnight. Tried to see him the next day. He wasn’t there,” Busch said.

Experts are pretty sure it's the same one.

“P6 on this bird’s right wing I guess has a notch taken out of it so that’s like a distinct way to tell that it’s the same one,” said Maine Audubon Staff Naturalist Doug Hitchcox.

The question is-- why is it here? It could be prospecting.

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“They’re going around looking for new areas it’s how birds naturally expand their range,” Hitchcox said.

And as they say, birds of a feather flock together.

“It’s a great way to end the year. Birders often keep year lists of all the birds they’ve seen in a calendar year. So it was good to get that one on there. And start a new one tomorrow,” Roth said.

 

Source: https://wgme.com/news/local/extremely-rare-bird-spotted-along-the-midcoast-draws-hundreds-of-birders-to-georgetown