On 9 April 2012, while I was monitoring Red-tailed Tropicbird (Phaethon rubricauda) nests on the cliffs near Halona Point along the southeastern coast of Oahu, Hawaii, a shorebird landed on a rocky ledge on the shoreline below me. The bird had a very distinctive tail pattern; the rectrices were bright white with broad black tips, which combined with other characters made it immediately obvious that it was a Surfbird (Aphriza virgata), a species not previously recorded in the Hawaiian Islands (Pyle and Pyle 2009). The bird was stocky, with short yellow legs and a short, thick (for a shorebird) bill that was orangish on the tomia and at the base of the mandible (Figure 1). The head, back, wings, and upper breast were mottled grayish brown, and the belly and lower breast were white with dark spots. It had a very prominent white wing stripe (Figure 2).