A bird that belongs thousands of miles south in the tropics of Central and South America turned up this week near Stalker Lake on Colorado's Eastern Plains, and birders from across the Front Range dropped what they were doing to go see it. The Piratic Flycatcher had never been recorded in Colorado before, and its sudden appearance in Yuma County also handed a longtime Littleton birder a milestone thirty years in the making.
Ecologist Daniel Maynard first spotted the bird at Stalker Lake on September 19, initially circulating photos to the CO Birds group as a possible Variegated Flycatcher, according to COBirds. The Denver Post identifies the bird as a Piratic Flycatcher and reports that the sighting marked the species' first-ever recording in Colorado. Word spread quickly among Front Range birders, many of whom drove straight to the wildlife area once they heard.
Among them was 62-year-old Littleton resident Joey Kellner, whose sighting of the flycatcher became his 500th distinct bird species recorded in Colorado. The Denver Post reports he is believed to be the first person to reach that threshold in the state and is currently the only publicly documented member of Colorado's 500-birds club. Kellner started birding with his wife, Brenda, back in 1984, and he has spent the decades since leading Denver Field Ornithologists trips and running monthly bird walks at Chatfield State Park for 30 years, per the same account.
A Milestone Three Decades in the Making
Kellner's reach extends well beyond his own life list. Chris Wood, now director of the eBird project at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, was mentored by Kellner early in his birding career, the Post notes. Peter Gent, president of Colorado Field Ornithologists, called Kellner's achievement significant, and separately offered a lighter theory about the wayward bird itself, guessing it was a teenage male behaving badly.
Kellner described the pursuit of rare birds in terms familiar to any longtime birdwatcher. “It's a search for feathered treasure,” he said, according to the Post. Separately, he said he never knows what he will see when he gets up in the morning. He also recounted how quickly the network mobilized once word got out, saying birders immediately drove to see the flycatcher after receiving the phone call.
A Species Built for the Tropics, Not the Plains
A Species Built for the Tropics, Not the Plains
That makes its appearance at Stalker Lake State Wildlife Area, a 27-acre warmwater lake in Yuma County near Colorado Parks and Wildlife's Wray Hatchery, especially striking. The Denver Post adds that the bird was a young individual, and young birds are more likely to wander off course, with male Piratic Flycatchers more prone to straying than females; juveniles can also simply mistake directions and fly north when they mean to head south.
An Exceedingly Rare Find for the Region
The Denver Post reports the species has been seen just 15 times in the United States total, with prior reports scattered across the Southwest, Florida, and Kansas — making the Yuma County bird the farthest north the species has ever been recorded in North America.
As of the sighting, the official Colorado State List maintained by the Colorado Bird Records Committee stood at 522 species, having grown by one earlier in 2026 when the American Ornithological Society split the Warbling Vireo into Eastern and Western species. If accepted, the Piratic Flycatcher would push that total to 523, according to the Post. Colorado has more recorded bird species than any other interior state and has 285 breeding species, according to the Colorado Field Ornithologists.
What Happens Next
Any such sighting still has to clear a formal hurdle before it becomes part of the scientific record. The Colorado Bird Records Committee peer-reviews all rare bird submissions to convert field observations into scientific-quality data, with accepted records permanently archived at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, according to the Colorado Bird Records Committee. Rapid eBird alerts let birders react in real time, but that formal vetting process is what ultimately determines whether the sighting officially updates the state list.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the Piratic Flycatcher was still being seen at Stalker Lake, but the Post said there was no telling how long it would stay. For now, it remains a rare and fleeting visitor to a stretch of the Eastern Plains far from anywhere it was ever supposed to be.
