Yellow-billed Loon

Sometimes eBird can be frustrating. You submit a rare bird and the record is labeled “Unconfirmed,” but you get no feedback about why. Take this bird that Erika and I photographed on Capitol Lake in Olympia on 30 October 2020. To us it is clearly a loon with a massive, sharply up-angled ivory-colored bill. The bill is not dark on the top all the way to the tip and and end of the bill is pale, not dark. The head is also relatively pale, a field mark of the Yellow-billed Loon. I think the pale stripe under the eye is also diagnostic.  Perhaps the problem is that other birders have not relocated this bird. This species breeds in the western Arctic and winters in the northern Pacific, very rarely to Puget sound. If eBird does not accept our sighting, it is their loss. The bird will still appear in my eBird lifelist—other birders will just not be able to easily find the record.