Rare Bird Spotted in Twin Falls County Backyard

A friend had a surprise this week. She lives a few miles south of Twin Falls. A strange visitor was out her back door. She took a picture, then recorded the bird’s call. When she played the callback, the bird came to the back door. She later identified it as a Northern Bobwhite, which should be hanging around a backyard in the Magic Valley!

The bird's range is mostly the Mid-Atlantic, the Deep South, and the Mississippi River valley, however. A map provided by Cornell University does show a small and isolated range that would cover the Yakima Valley, the Palouse, and possibly as far southeast as Payette, Idaho. The question then becomes, how did it get here?

I posed that to Idaho Fish and Game. Spokesman Terry Thompson consulted his coworkers at the Jerome regional office. There appears to be a theory that someone locally may be raising the birds on a farm, and one took flight and did some sightseeing.

Who knows, with the wild weather patterns we’ve been seeing, maybe the bird caught a current and landed in Twin Falls County? That’s not a scientific conclusion. I’m just speculating.

Northern Bobwhites like forested areas according to an entry I read online. We don’t provide much in the way of tall and thick stands of trees in the high desert. This may explain why after a couple of days of hanging around a backyard, the bird left. I know what some of you are thinking if some of the newcomers buying homes in your neighborhood would only do the same!