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Lander resident Frank Stetler was driving eastbound over the Boysen Reservoir bridge in mid-May when he got a call from a fellow serious bird nerd.

“He was like, ‘Where are you right now? You should really consider making your way to Casper,’” recalled Stetler, a nongame biologist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

Excellent timing. Already on his way to Casper for fieldwork, Stetler jumped on his friend’s tip of an especially rare bird sighting. A tundra bean goose — a species that’s typically at home in Northern Europe and Siberia — was kicking it with native feathered friends in urban Natrona County.

“It was just hanging out in the park with some Can

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