{"id":340021,"date":"2026-05-31T08:35:30","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T08:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/340021\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T08:35:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T08:35:30","slug":"super-rare-tropical-bird-swoops-over-california-experts-fear-a-trend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/340021\/","title":{"rendered":"Super rare tropical bird swoops over California. Experts fear a trend."},"content":{"rendered":"

A mysterious seabird swooping over the waters off San Clemente in recent weeks has wowed<\/a> local birders. This species has likely never visited Orange County before.<\/p>\n

There are only two\u00a0previous confirmed accounts<\/a>, one from 2025 and the other from 2007, of a lesser frigatebird showing up in California. These black-brown birds, which can spread their wings up to 6 feet and shine with a colorful gloss, are common<\/a> in the southwest Pacific and Indian oceans but are exceedingly rare in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cI might try to expedite this lesser\u00a0frigatebird record because it\u2019s so significant,\u201d Thomas Benson, the secretary for the California Bird Records Committee, told SFGATE. \u201cBut it can take up to six months for an average record to get a decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the committee reviews photographs, audio recordings and written descriptions of the bird to make a determination, ornithologists in California are considering the potential implications of a lesser frigatebird\u2019s arrival on local shores.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not uncommon for unexpected seabirds to show up during exceptional oceanographic conditions\u00a0\u2014 e.g. strong El Ninos or the current marine heatwave much of the Pacific is experiencing,\u201d DiGaudio wrote to SFGATE. \u201cFish, krill, and other seabird food respond quickly to changes in ocean temps\u201d and either die or \u201cmigrate to where their new \u2018comfort zone\u2019 is.\u201d Seabirds in turn will travel \u201cfar across the ocean basins in search of their preferred food.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that it\u2019s \u201csomething we see when ocean temps are out of whack.\u201d<\/p>\n

Previously, individual lesser frigatebirds caught the keen eyes of U.S. birders not only in California but also Maine, Wyoming and Michigan<\/a>. One recent report in Ohio is still under consideration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Peter\u00a0Pyle, a staff biologist at the Institute for Bird Populations<\/a>\u00a0and a former member of the California Bird Records Committee, cautioned that it\u2019s hard to draw conclusions from the behavior of just one bird. \u201cI think in a lot of cases it\u2019s just that an individual bird is a little cuckoo, you know, and it says, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m\u00a0gonna go travel.\u2019 It\u2019d be like a human who suddenly wants to walk around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet Pyle noted that the suspected lesser frigatebird was one data point in a documented trend<\/a> of tropical birds traveling northward as ocean temperatures warm. Additional rare sightings cropped up in just the last few days. A recent photograph captured what\u2019s thought to be a red-billed tropicbird<\/a> off Mendocino County, Pyle said. <\/p>\n

And as birders searched high and low for the lesser frigatebird in San Clemente last weekend, by chance they spotted yet another tropical bird. Although it\u2019s more common to see this bird \u2014 suspected to be a sooty tern<\/a> \u2014 in California, the committee is now considering that identification, too, for the record. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a pattern now,\u201d Pyle said. He added: \u201cThings are starting to pop up that suggest that maybe this tropical heat wave or developing El Ni\u00f1o is starting to show up here. It\u2019ll be interesting to see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mysterious seabird swooping over the waters off San Clemente in recent weeks has wowed local birders. This…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,2008,1692,106624],"class_list":["post-340021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-sfgla","tag-sfgnews","tag-sfgscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}