Earl Horn

Jim Flynn

Jim Flynn

Jim Flynn

The following account was prepared by Earl Horn who first discovered the bird.  This sighting was accepted by the Georgia Ornithological Society Checklist and Records Committee in December, 1998, as the first wild occurrence of this species in the state.

Saturday, June 6, 1998, Rusty Trump and I planned to spend the morning birding and we agreed to meet at E.L.Huie at about 7:00 a.m. I arrived first and after looking through the first two ponds without seeing anything of special interest, I moved to the northwest pond. I began scanning through the Mallards on the far side with my scope when I noticed a duck that I had never seen before.

I knew that not only had I never seen this bird before, but I also knew that I had never seen it during the many trips through my field guide. Even though I knew it wasn't there, I looked through it again, including the "accidentals" in the back of the book. As it turned out it was with the "accidentals, but I somehow missed it at that time.

At this point I was both excited and nervous. Excited about the possibility of seeing something rare and nervous that it might fly away before anyone else saw it; worse yet, before I could write down enough details to identify it. I was really wishing that Rusty would hurry up and get there. I hoped he would have his Western Birds with him since he had just returned from California.

The only paper I had was a Georgia Field Checklist, so I began writing notes in the margins. The original notes exactly as written (except spelling corrections) were: gray head, brown crown, black belly, brown body, white wing, pink orange bill, white pink legs, and white eye ring. The contrast of colors stood out and they were very clean with crisp lines from one color to the next. The other thing I noticed was that it would stand very erect. I did not try to approach it on this visit since I didn't want to take a chance on scaring it away, however on a subsequent visit I found it to be very skittish and it would not allow close approach.

Rusty finally showed up and when he saw it he said that he thought it was one of the "Tree ducks." He did have his Western Birds with him and we confirmed it to be a Black-bellied Whistling-Duck. He also said that he thought it was in with the "accidentals" in the eastern version and he was right.

This was only the fourth time a Black-bellied Whistling-Duck had been seen in Georgia. The first was two birds on Jekyll Is. in April 1976, but was put on the Hypothetical List of the Annotated Checklist of Georgia Birds as "unsubstantiated by details." The next sighting was in April 1991 of a banded bird seen on Lake Sinclair. The third sighting was on a pond in Cobb County, however no one seems to remember the details or even who reported it.

The bird remained at E.L.Huie for about a month giving a lot of birders a chance to see it. The last reported sighting of it was July 5th by Jeff Sewell. In December the Checklist and Records Committee voted to accept this sighting as a wild bird and placed it on the Regular Species List.

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