Rare Bird Spotted Along Lake Michigan
(CBS) -- A rare bird sighting on Lake Michigan -- so rare that birders aren't sure what the explanation is.
North of Milwaukee, near Port Washington, Wisconsin: a sighting of a shearwater.
"As far as I know, there has been in recorded history only one previous time when a shearwater has been observed on Lake Michigan," says Joel Greenberg, a board member of the Western Great Lakes Bird and Bat Observatory.
Someone with the observatory spotted the shearwater.
"These are solely oceanic birds. They nest on islands and coastal areas and spend most of their life on the ocean," Greenberg says.
And it's not clear why this one would be 1,000 away from his normal habitat.
"Unless a bird corpse washes up with a band on it, we'll never know exactly its story. But these rarities, some of them, are mind-boggling," Greenberg says.
Greenberg says it's unlikely Hurricane Matthew blew it west because the hurricane dissipated too long ago.