I was asked what was the rarest bird that I have ever seen. That's a difficult question. First, I had to qualify the term "rare." Is it rare in the world? Or is it a more local question?

I would have to say that the rarest bird that I have seen is the California condor. I saw this bird, in the wild, back in 1966 at Mount Pinos, Calif. This was back when this bird was near extinction, and there were very few pairs left in the wild. It was before the restoration project began that captured the remaining wild birds and bred them in captivity. Condors have since been released back into the wild in California, Arizona (Grand Canyon) and Florida. A few birds have bred successfully again in the wild, but they are not to the point where they are "countable," according to the American Birding Association.

My Mount Pinos sighting was during my five-week cross-country birding trip back when I was a teenager. This was the trip my daughter talked about in her column. Most teens traveling in Volkswagen buses in the '60s were part of the hippie, flower-power movement. Her dad was a bird nerd. I and my friend Bob went with a woman, her 6-year-old daughter and two miniature poodles in a Volkswagen bus cross-country to watch birds. It was quite an experience, but a story for another day. The condor was certainly the highlight of that trip, though we did stop in Michigan to see the Kirtland's warbler, another of the world's rare birds.

I guess the whooping crane would follow the same line of reasoning. There are fewer than 300 whooping cranes in the world, and I did see some of them a few years ago in Port Aransas, Texas. A boat trip through the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in the summer provided excellent views of these rare birds, including some of that year's offspring.

If one considers birds that are just rare for North America, I think that my trip to Alaska produced at least one rarity, a gray-tailed tattler from Asia. I would also classify the bristle-thighed curlew, which only nests in Alaska in small numbers, as rare, and I was lucky enough to see that bird as well.

There are also Mexican birds that are rare in the United States, sometimes wandering north over the border. My trips to southeast Arizona and southern Texas have enabled me to find the gray-crowned yellowthroat, Aztec thrush and rufous-capped warbler. These are all considered rare for the United States.

The western reef heron that showed up in Kittery, Maine, in August 2006 was only the third or fourth North American record for that species. It was a striking bird of deep blue with white on the head. It is normally found in Europe and migrates south to Africa. This bird was definitely way off course, and I was lucky enough to see it.

Another European stray that was not only a first record for Massachusetts, but for North America as well, was the red-footed falcon. This bird was found on Martha's Vineyard in August 2004. It took me two tries, but I finally was able to get great looks at this bird as it hunted dragonflies and other insects at the Katama Airport. Of course, I was just one of hundreds of birders who went to see that bird. Many traveled much farther than I, from every corner of the United States, to see that rare bird.

The falcon event reminded me of the fervor caused by the appearance of the Ross' gull in Newburyport harbor in the winter of 1975. This rare visitor from the Arctic drew birders from all over the country and put Newburyport on the "birding map" of great places to find birds. That certainly was one of the rarest birds that I've seen in Massachusetts, and I haven't seen another Ross' gull, anywhere, since.

Of course, if you want to see rare birds, you can find a few in Newburyport Harbor yesterday. Right by the clam shack on Water Street are four penguins sitting on ice floats. Yes, ice floats in July. Yes, penguins. Margo took pictures of these rare birds, and if you think I've been tipping the vino too much, just go by and check them out for yourself!

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Steve Grinley is the owner of Bird Watcher's Supply and Gift at the Route 1 traffic circle in Newburyport and the Nature Shop at Joppa Flats.