What is this tropical bird doing in Kansas? It’s the first time it’s been spotted here
A tropical bird — never reported to have graced the Sunflower State — is now calling Kansas home.
Mark Nolen, a Wichita resident and Hutchinson Community College biologist professor who has been bird watching since he was around 11, first spotted the tropical parula on Tuesday at the Dillon Nature Center in Hutchinson.
The bird has a blue-gray head and yellow-orange underside. It is native to South and Central America, but has been spotted around U.S. states, mostly along the border in Mexico. A tropical parula was spotted by multiple people in May, June and July 2005 around Fort Collins, Colorado. This would be only the second known time of the bird coming anywhere this far north and the first time anywhere in the Midwest, according to a bird tracking map kept by Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
“I think it’s fun part of it just to see new stuff,” Nolen said. “I’m also interested in it from the biological side, like, what is it doing here? What happened to come up here?”
Nolen, the vice-president of Wichita Audubon Society, told other bird watchers about the spotting, including president Bob Gress, who took a photo of it Thursday.
“The word got out,” Gress said, adding people from all over the state were there to see the bird. He said people could guess about why the bird is here. “You’d probably be pretty accurate if you just said they’re lost.”
Both men think it is a female since it has made a nest. They also think that means she may stay around and even possibly breed with a northern parula, which is common to the area.
“So now it’s well, will she breed, will she be mating with a northern parula, will they raise the chicks together or will the whole thing fail and she’s gone tomorrow?,” Gress said. “Only time will tell.”
Gress said the bird is in a pine tree, above two brass statues of bears, on the south side of the building at the nature center. The nest is hard to see, so watch for the bird coming in and out, he said.
He said “it’s kind of cool” to see the bird here for the first time.
“Anytime you see a new bird for the state, it’s like, wow, you know, it’s made the checklist,” he said.
Nolen is part of the Kansas Bird Records Committee that certifies when a new bird is spotted in the state. He won’t take part in the discussion or approval, he said, since he is the one who is sending in the info to have it officially marked.
He had never spotted a new bird in a state for the first time in the roughly 33 years he has bird watched until this year. He also spotted a slaty-backed gull, the first noted in Kansas, on Feb. 3 at Cheney Lake.
He said it is typical one or two new bird are spotted for the first time in Kansas each year. There have been three this year. Two were his, the other one was a Lawrence’s goldfinch spotted in March in Garden City.
This story was originally published May 9, 2025 at 4:08 PM.