A Sure Sign of Spring! FOS Western Kingbird at the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge

I don't usually post bird blogs back-to-back, but I was working on the last one with the Spotted Towhees yesterday and didn't quite finish because we went birding today. It took just a few minutes to post the Towhee, and I wanted to get this one posted as well, since the spring equinox occurred just four days ago. One of the sure signs of impending spring around here is the arrival of the Western Kingbird (Tyrannus verticalis). Around here, melting snow is not an issue, and the grass has been green since the rains fell in January. So the Kingbirds are it. We were driving along the auto-tour at the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge, and we saw a lone bird perched on the fencing for the elk enclosure. It never turned around to give us a better view, but the yellow breast and black narrow bill pegged it as a Kingbird. I posted the sighting at eBird, and realized just how few have been seen so far. Note in the screen capture below that there are only eight sightings in the entire region (and pretty much none north of Sacramento).

Western Kingbird sightings in 2018 so far.

Compare that sparse distribution with the total number of sightings for the whole year. There are a lot more Western Kingbird on their way north from the tropics!

PS: FOS - First-of-Season