One of the rarest eagles in the world has birdwatchers flocking to Maine

Cornell Ornithology's "All About Birds" is handy for overviews, and the Sibley guide, published by Knopf, has been my go-to identification resource (in either the paper form or the iOS app) for many years now.

When the Texas bird showed up, birders were pretty incredulous. The bird was only seen (and photographed) by a single individual. Once the photos were validated to have actually been taken in the reported location (people have tried to pass off photos from far away locations before), the general feeling was that is was most likely an escaped bird from a zoo or private collection. However, once a Steller's Sea Eagle turned up a few months later in eastern Canada the general feeling changed and the Texas Rare Birds Committee ended up voting that the bird was of natural origin and not an escapee.

Interestingly enough, this is not the first time a rare raptor has been seen in Texas and later turned up in the northeast. A couple years ago the first Great Black Hawk ever photographed north of the Mexican border found in south Texas. A few months later a Great Black Hawk was found in Maine. The feather patterns of the Maine bird were compared to the photographs of the Texas bird and it was concluded that they were the same individual. Unfortunately the bird eventually died, apparently unable to cope with Maine's winter weather, but not before it was seen by thousands of people from far and wide.