A Black Vulture in the Yukon, and the Five-Hour Drive to See It

Cameron Eckert, president of the Yukon Bird Club, drove five hours from Whitehorse to Mayo to look at one bird. The bird was a black vulture, a species rarely seen in Canada, and by his account the last black vulture reported in the territory was back in the 1980s.

That is the whole transaction: a long drive, a single sighting, a rarity logged. Birding rewards patience in exactly this lopsided way — decades of nothing, then an afternoon in Mayo.