In the early morning hours of May 9, several teams of birders from across New York were participating in Buffalo Audubon’s annual Birdathon fundraiser. Each team collected pledges and set off to find as many bird species as possible on World Migratory Bird Day. My team, the Kingbirds, had started closer to Buffalo in hopes of finding secretive marsh birds at Tifft Nature Preserve. After finding a few of our target species, we started on our way to Beaver Meadow with a stop at the Statler Tower to see the nesting Peregrines.
When we arrived downtown, we got a message from one of the other teams that said they found a Swainson’s Warbler. The Field Guides Podcast team participates in Birdathon every year, but my first thought was “that has to be a typo,” and they meant Swainson’s Thrush, which would be early for May 9. They responded with a photo of a small reddish-brown and tan warbler with a distinctly long bill.
This was not a bird I was very familiar with but I knew exactly what I was looking at. Connor Higgins, Bill Michalek, Rich Kingston, and Colin Galagher found arguably the rarest bird that has ever landed at Beaver Meadow.
Immediately regretting my decision to waste time downtown, we jumped into the car and hopped on the 400 to Beaver Meadow, hoping that this bird would stick around just another hour so we’d be able to see it. Swainson’s Warblers are a southern warbler species that nest in swamps and forested ravines. The nearest place to reliably find nesting Swainson’s Warblers would be in New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia. They occasionally stray north, but another was seen in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park this spring. As far as Western New York goes, we haven’t seen one around here since 1988. We jumped out of the car in the Beaver Meadow Arboretum parking lot and followed the directions to the muddy intersection of Puddle Pond and Long Trail.
As we approached, we could hear it singing. It sounded similar to a Waterthrush, a more common bird at Beaver Meadow. This bird was so far out of its range that it was not picked up by Merlin. We tracked it down by the “Millie’s Mile” marker on Long Trail, and were able to get a poor quality (but good enough) video of it singing.
As quickly as possible, we shared it to the Rare Bird Alerts. And that’s when the fun started.
Over the next few weeks, hundreds of people visited Beaver Meadow to see our mega-rare visitor. Swain-son’s Warblers are not an easy bird to see. They mostly stay low in the understory and frequently fly from one end of their territory to the other. It would often move immediately after singing, so if you were trying to track it by sound, it wasn’t where you just heard it.
It was a frustrating wait to see it some mornings, but many were lucky enough to see it, including those on our Friday morning birding group. After a long search, it popped up a few feet off the trail at eye level and sang for us.
Even if you didn’t get a good look at him, he sang frequently until about 10 a.m. every morning.
As the weeks went on, we started to wonder how long our celebrity guest would stay. A few days before the Swainson’s was found, a Worm-Eating Warbler and a Prairie Warbler were also briefly seen at Beaver Meadow. Like the Swainson’s, both are also southern warblers, but they show up in our area just about every year. Prairie Warblers even nest in a few places in Erie County and Cattaraugus County. It’s likely these three birds all overshot their migration target under the same circumstances of a strong warm front. Our Swainson’s Warbler was last seen on the morning of May 31. We don’t know exactly what happened to him, but after 22 days of singing his heart out to attract a mate without finding one, he hopefully moved on to try his luck elsewhere.
Western New York is lucky to have such great birds, but it is nice to get a visitor from far away once in a while. As climate and habitats change, birds are being forced to adapt and expand their range. Nature preserves like Beaver Meadow and our seven other Buffalo Audubon preserves are an important refuge for birds as development takes over habitat.
Who knows what the next rarity to show up will be?
come birding with us!
“For the Birds” is a recurring column by Buffalo Audubon Senior Naturalist Tom Kerr. Join Tom for weekly birding tours and other programs at: buffaloaudubon.org/programs-events!
This story originally was published in the Fall 2026 edition of The Outlook, a birding and nature magazine by Buffalo Audubon. Read more stories from The Outlook magazine online, or upgrade to subscribe and receive printed editions mailed right to you.