ABA Blog

Birding Online: May/June 2013 issue

We at Birding are quickly wrapping up production of the May/June 2013 issue, and we hope to have it in the mail to you shortly.

There's one item, though, that we'd like to get in your hands immediately, and that's Amy Davis's "Sightings" column, with details on recent ABA Area records of a Fieldfare in Massachusetts, a Spotted Redshank in Indiana, and more. The complete article is available right now to all current ABA members.

Left: Photo by Tom Johnson. Right: Photo by Ryan J. Sanderson.

 There's more! Within a week, we'll be posting the next installment of "Sightings," with such incredible rarities as a Bahama Woodstar in Pennsylvania and a Eurasian Whimbrel in Texas. We'll let you know just as soon as that content is available online.

   

Left: Photo by Michael Burkholder. Right: Photo by Cameron Cox. 

Another great online feature in the May/June 2013 issue is a compendium of original research articles, compiled by ABA Checklist Committee Chairman Bill Pranty, to accompany a feature article on the fascinating story of the Purple Swamphen in the ABA Area. We expect to have that up soon, too, and we'll let you know as soon as the content is available.

 

Hawaii, Heard-only, Cats, and [‘]Okina[s]

Certain topics inevitably arouse the passions of ABA members. Should Hawaii be admitted to the ABA Area? Should heard-only birds count? Outdoor cats, anyone? And, as the latest issue of Birding once again attests (James Hill, “Details, Details,” p. 16), we birders sure get fired up about the proper care and handling of bird names. 

A little while ago, several of us on the staff of Birding got into a conversation about the very matter. Should we write Hawaii Elepaio, with no [‘]okina[s], as the American Ornithologists’ Union does? Or should we continue to render it Hawai‘i ‘Elepaio, as per longstanding editorial policy at Birding?
Left: Photo by © Jack Jeffrey. 

We had terrific fun with the conversation, and we veered off onto some wonderful tangents. But at the end of the day (it was a long conversation...), we hadn’t come to any consensus. Hence, a straw poll: elepaio or ‘elepaio? You tell us. Seriously. We’d love to hear from ABA members about this matter. Here’s your chance to influence editorial policy at Birding. Go for it!

 

 

Hard Taxa

 

Young birder Mia Hartley is curious about something on p. 37 of the March/April 2013 Birding:

 

The rosy-finch to which she’s calling our attention is labeled, without any justification or explanation, a Brown-capped Rosy-Finch. Let’s take a closer look at the photo, by none other than Bill Schmoker:

 

Hmm... That bird looks distinctively gray-crowned. Why isn’t this a Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch?

In a nutshell, this is a fresh Brown-capped Rosy-Finch in fall. The bird has recently completed its single annual molt, and, as I understand the it, will gradually acquire a brown-capped plumage aspect in the months to come. By summer, when birders are looking for Brown-capped Rosy-FInches on their breeding grounds in the snowfields of the southern Rockies, the birds will look the way they're “supposed to.”

The adult males are the (relatively) easy ones. Check that: The nonhybrid adult males are the (relatively) easy ones. I see apparent immature female rosy-finches in early winter that I cannot begin to put a name to. When I see big winter flocks in Colorado, I see adult males that seem to match well enough with one of the four distinctive populations (Hepburn’s, Gray-crowned, Brown-capped, Black) occurring in the southern Rockies, but, I swear, I see adults that look perfectly intermediate between, say, Black and Brown-capped.

And then there are the flight calls. I think—I kinda, sorta think—I’ve figured out some average differences: a muffled choof for Gray-crowned, a somewhat more ringing choor for Brown-capped, and a harder chop for Black. But I’m not sure of any of that. Where’s Nathan Pieplow when you need him?...

The bottom line is clear: Rosy-finches are hard.

But you wouldn’t necessarily glean that truth from your field guide. In my copy here of the 5th edition of Nat Geo, the Yellow-legged Gull—not exactly an everyday sighting in the ABA Area—receives more verbiage than all the rosy-finches combined.

 

When birders think of challengings IDs, certain taxa leap to mind: Calidris sandpipers, Empidonax flycatchers, “confusing fall warblers,” sparrows, jaegers, accipiters, scaups, dowitchers, and, of course, the notorious “LWHGs”—the large white-headed gulls of which the Yellow-legged is one.

Fine. Those are hard taxa. But what about other taxa that, for whatever reason, pose underappreciated ID challenges? I’ve already named one: the rosy-finches in the genus Leucosticte. Unquestionably, any given rosy-finch in winter in Colorado is going to be harder to ID, on average, than any given gull in winter in Colorado. But think about how much more has been written about winter gull ID than winter rosy-finch ID.

Okay, we’ve got:

1. Rosy-finches.

Let’s try to come come up with some others:

2. Catharus thrushes in western North America.

3. The “Solitary Vireo” complex.

4. The “croven” complex, the ABA Area’s five species in the genus Corvus.

5. Female orioles.

These are taxa that I regularly encounter here in Colorado. Note that each one involves at least three species, er, “species.” These give me fits. I frequently find myself incapable of making an ID, and I wonder how often I make the wrong ID. 

 

As we work together to enumerate the underappreciated hard taxa of North America, let’s abide by a trio of ground rules:

First, and to make it fun, let’s restrict this to groupings with at least three so-called species. Thus, we’re disqualifying such pairings as Winter and Pacific wrens.

Second, let’s focus on ID problems that are routinely encountered by, hmm, “normal” birders in the ABA Area. Thus, crows and orioles, not Phylloscopus warblers.

Third, and this is really the biggie, we’re interested in hard taxa that fly under the radar. Yes, we all know that Parasitic Jaegers and Dusky Flycatchers are hard. But how about the birds that are just as hard, yet nowhere near as notorious?—Blue-headed Vireo & Co., Hermit Thrush & Co., Brown-capped Rosy-Finch & Co., and so forth.

What do you think?

 

Easy Harriers?—Not So Fast

 

The Northern Harrier can seem, for want of a better word, “easy.” Across much of North America, harriers are widespread and generally easy to find. And they’re easy to ID, with their distinctive shape, flight style, and white rump.

Harrier plumages are, I think it’s safe to say, widely believed to be straightforward. The juveniles have plain cinnamon-rufous underparts, the adult females are paler and brown-streaked below, and the adult males—“gray ghosts,” with inky black wing tips—are especially distinctive.
Left: Northern Harriers are “easy.” Could that lull us into complacency when it comes to field ID? Read on... Photo by © Jerry Liguori.

In a feature article in the March/April 2013 Birding, raptor experts Jerry Liguori and Brian Sullivan invite us to reconsider the matter of the supposedly easy adult males. First, they note that, if you get into the somewhat more technical literature, you learn of a brown–gray second-cycle male plumage that differs from the well-known after-second-cycle plumage shown by the “gray ghosts.” Then Liguori and Sullivan mix things up: By carefully analyzing digital photos of birds of known age, they show that some second-cycle males are "gray ghosts,” whereas some after-second-cycle males retain the brown–gray plumage traditionally believed to pertain second-cycle males.

 

Let’s back up a step here. The point, for me, isn’t to be able to age every after-hatch-cycle male Northern Harrier. The basic point runs deeper than that. The basic point is that we birders, myself very much included, have this stubborn and fascinating inclination to want to put birds in boxes. Our field guides tell us that birds look such-and-such a way, and our eyes and brains and minds comply. We see what the field guides show—three plumages of harriers—and that, as they say, is that.
Right: This is a male Northern Harrier. But do you know how old it is? You sure about that? Photo by © Jerry Liguori. 

I’ve known about Liguori and Sullivan’s article for a couple of months now. (Yes, even in this age of texting and Twitter, it still takes a while to get from initial manuscript submission to publication.) And ever since, I’ve been looking anew at Northern Harriers. In the past couple of months, I’ve seen plenty of adult males, but eerily few textbook “gray ghosts.” Instead, I’m seeing gray–brown adult males, grayish-brown adult males, brownish-gray adult males, and so forth.

Once again, the real world is more complex, and more wonderful, than we had imagined. Thanks, Jerry! Thanks, Brian!

For a limited time, the ABA is making available for everyone a free PDF of Jerry Liguori and Brian Sullivan’s article, “Adult Male Northern Harriers: More Than Meets the Eye.” Click here to order the entire March/April 2013 issue. Or better yet, join the ABA today, and get the March/April 2013 issue, plus all the other benefits of ABA membership.

Be sure to visit Jerry Liguori’s raptor photography website.

Here We Go Again

The American Ornithologists’ Union’s Committee on Classification and Nomenclature of North and Middle American Birds—the AOU Check-list Committee, for short—sure has been busy of late. Splits (lots) and lumps (not so many), especially those affecting North America north of the U.S.–Mexico border, inevitably elicit the loudest response from birders. But maybe the most substantial changes are the big checklist shuffles, dramatically affecting the linear sequence of bird names across large swaths of the Check-list.

In recent years, the Check-list Committee has massively reorganized such speciose and familiar groups as the gulls, terns, and warblers. Remember all those Larus gulls? Many of them have new scientific names, and new positions on the Check-list. How about the Sterna terns? They were even more drastically overhauled. And, of course, the Dendroica warblers. Birders took that one especially hard, it seems to me. There’s just something really weird, I guess, about seeing the familiar ole Black-throated Green Warbler practically at the bottom of the warblers, with a new name (Setophaga), no less—way, waaay further down the checklist than the Ovenbird, the Northern Waterthrush, and the Connecticut Warbler.

What’s next?

How about a major reorganization of the large sandpiper family, so well represented here in North America.

 

The AOU has already made inroads here. The genus Tringa (the “shanks”) was recently reorganized, with such surprising results as the placement of the distinctive Willet not only within the shanks, but, in fact, between the Greater and Lesser yellowlegs.

Now, Paul Hess reports in the March/April 2013 Birding (“Sorting Out the Shorebirds,” pp. 27–28), a considerably larger overhaul may be in the works. Check out the figure at right, a distillation of a major new analysis by Rosemary Gibson and Allan Baker. In the Gibson–Baker scheme, the phalaropes would be united with the shanks. The godwits and curlews—which I’d always thought of as pretty close—would be quite far apart. Think about it: The Marbled Godwit, in this configuration, is closer to the Ruff and the Broad-billed Sandpiper than it is to the Long-billed Curlew.

Speaking of Ruffs and Broad-billed Sandpipers, the new research—reported by Gibson and Baker in Molecular Genetics and Evolution 64:66–72—proposes genus-level changes that will surprise almost all of us. Check this out: The Ruff, Broad-billed Sandpiper, and Sharp-tailed Sandpiper are closely related to each other, according to the new research. What about the Sharp-tail’s kissing cousin, the Pectoral Sandpiper? In the new arrangement, the Pec goes with Western Sandpiper, Semipalmated Sandpiper, and—wait for it—Buff-breasted Sandpiper.

 

I could go on, but you get the point. If the Gibson–Baker findings are evaluated and accepted by the AOU, our checklists will look very, very different. Which brings me to a question:

Do you like all these changes?

I confess, and I think many of you already know: I love these checklist changes! For me, it’s exhilarating to be a birder in an era of such rapidly evolving knowledge and understanding. At some point in the next few weeks, I’ll be seeing Greater and Lesser yellowlegs, Wilson’s Phalaropes, Willets, Marbled Godwits, and Semipalmated Sandpipers. And I’ll look at them with eyes wide open, wondering anew about their similarities and differences, their behavior and ecology, their vocalizations and plumages.

Offshore, I’ll see some ducks—they’re related to turkeys and chachalacas. A grebe will swim by—apparently, it’s allied with the flamingos. Then, if I’m lucky, a Peregrine Falcon will put up the shorebirds. And check this out: That Peregrine is more closely related to the pipits and swallows along the shore than it is to the Red-tailed Hawk sitting in the tree a bit farther out.

“There is grandeur in this view of life,” Charles Darwin wrote, in the finale to his Origin of Species, “...that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

There is grandeur, too, in the view that human learning and understanding are forever advancing. Wouldn’t it be boring if the state of our knowledge suddenly froze in place? Wouldn’t it be disappointing if our checklists suddenly stabilized, never to change again?

 

 

March/April 2013 Birding “Photo” Quiz

 

Here's an image of the quiz bird in the March/April 2013 issue of Birding magazine:

Hmm...

Where to start? Well, it would be helpful to note the date and location.

Ask, and ye shall receive. The photo is from the third week in April (like, right now), and the location is southeastern Arizona.

Need more? Here's a 26-second video of the bird:

 

 

Note that this isn't a birdsong quiz. You can hear some background noise, but that's not the point of the quiz. The bird is just out there, doing exactly what this species does on its spring migration.

If you have prior experience with this species, you're probably thinking this is an easy quiz. Fair enough. But give thought for a moment to what's going on here. This quiz is easy precisely because of the video. We don't have an illustration of the bird; the vocalizations are, at best, equivocal; the videograb is so poor that it would never, ever, be published in any self-respecting field guide; and there's absolutely no written description—except that I've told you the date and location.

In other words, we have a resource here that cannot be provided by a traditional field guide. It's a resource that could form the basis for a fantastic next generation of field ID apps. But not yet. Today's apps, I think it's fair to say, take material from print field guides, and then repackage it in an e-medium.

How about a field guide app that basically starts over? Instead of giving us the still photos and illustrations and written words from field guides, how about an app that gives us short instructional videos? Anybody want to get to work on that project?

Meanwhile, what do you think this bird is?

A request: If you know what the bird is, please explain to a hypothetical new, keen, smart birder from Tennessee, Ontario, or South Korea why she ought to believe you.

Please note: This video is used with permission of the videographer. Full credit will appear in the published photo quiz answer and analysis in the May/June 2013 Birding. Full credit will also appear right here in a few days—after we've had a bit of a chance to work out the ID together. 

 

More “Sightings” Than Ever Before

 

Exactly nine years ago, I was in Spain for a press tour. It was great to talk shop with other bird magazine editors—most of them Europeans—about our shared passion for giving voice to the birding communities in our home continents and beyond. We all had questions: Would this internet thing make a difference? Could anybody foresee a future for online magazines? What to do about our aging readerships?

“They” were especially impressed with Birding magazine’s relative gender balance. For my part, I was impressed by “their” ability to report, every single month, stop-press rarities from all over the continent. Birding World was especially notable in this regard, but they weren’t the only European magazine doing it. Could Birding ever pull off a similar feat in North America?

Nine years later, the answer is gloriously in the affirmative. Effective immediately, Birding is providing monthly summaries of North American rarities. It’s been a work in progress, and various folks have contributed to this outcome, but one person stands out for her role in this important new chapter in the 45-year history of Birding magazine: “Sightings” department editor and rare bird guru Amy Davis.

Amy’s most recent report, available online to ABA members right now, covers North American rarities reported through mid-March. That’s a lag of just one month, and we expect to shorten the lag ever further. Amy’s report covering rarities through the end of March will be available to ABA members within the week—fully a month before the print version of the May/June 2013 Birding is mailed out.

The current report is amazingly detailed. A Pink-footed Goose lingering at St. John’s was Newfoundland & Labrador’s 8th record of the species; a Harlequin Duck in Harlequin County, Tennessee, was that state’s 5th record; two Yellow-throated Warblers in Baja California Sur were 550 meters apart; and so forth. And, yes, Amy—only Amy!—has counted up every single Northern Lapwing reported this past winter in eastern North America.

Or do you just want to read about the rarest of the rare, the megas? They’re in there too: Gray Heron, Black-tailed Godwit, Nutting’s Flycatcher, Red-flanked Bluetail, Citrine Wagtail, Siberian Accentor, Eurasian Bullfinch, and many others.

A final thought. Amy Davis is “just” the compiler of “Sightings.” She’s able to glean a fair bit of content from Birding News and eBird, but the most significant contributions come from a network of local and regional experts—real human beings like you. If you’d like to contribute to “Sightings,” please contact Amy <argdavis AT gmail.com> and she’ll let you know about guidelines, deadlines, and the like.

     

Left to right: Gray Heron, Newfoundland and Labrador (photo by Jared Clarke); Black-tailed Godwit, Virginia (photo by Dick Rowe); McCown’s Longspur, Georgia (photo by Larry Gridley); Razorbill, Louisiana (photo by Dave Patton). Read about these rarities—and many, many more—in Amy Davis’s “Sightings” column, available right now to ABA members.

 

The new North American Birds takes flight!

 

North American Birds has begun a metamorphosis!

Starting with the next volume (67), the journal will be paperless—that is, an electronic journal, like so many familiar publications in the world of ornithology already are.

Though many of us—your editorial group included—will miss the feel of paper in the hand, and all the pleasures and memories that come with it, we recognize that paper publications like ours are critically endangered. With the digital revolution, reading practices are changing rapidly, and the rapid movement away from paper has had stark economic impacts on enterprises like the North American Birds tradition. Not just reading itself, indeed, the circulation of information has changed radically, which also affects our tradition. In decades past, many readers have looked to the journal for information of a particular kind, and some of that information (raw data) can be located in more timely fashion, indeed almost instantaneously, online in this new century. Much of the analysis the journal provides, of course, cannot be found online, at least not yet.

The reinvented North American Birds moves into a new environment, then, attempting to retain what has been most valuable to readers while shedding what is less relevant, necessary, or desirable.

We won’t be catapulting into a format that is unrecognizable to our readers. For the foreseeable future, North American Birds will have its core components—the regional reports, Changing Seasons, Pictorial Highlights, feature articles, Photo Essays, Photo Salons, Birding Journals—but all material will be presented in full color, including regional maps. The journal will be downloaded by subscribers, using a passcode, to personal computers (or other devices), and so will be searchable and portable. Subscription rates will be lower, to reflect the savings on printing, paper, and postage. We will still function as a real publication: with page numbers, peer review, and careful attention to accurate reporting (not always the case with online content!). But in the future, we will likely incorporate hyperlinks, videos, and interactive material, as we learn to work with the software chosen to publish the journal electronically.

For the current issue, we have provided both subscribers and nonsubscribers a chance to practice downloading an issue in full color (you can also browse the issue at this site, but we suggest first learning how to download a pdf, if that is a new experience). We should note that this is not how we will furnish the issue to subscribers in the future—this is just our current press providing a site for people to see and download a full-color version of Volume 66, No. 3. Also, this is not how Volume 67 will appear; subscribers will need to wait a bit longer to see all the bells and whistles. This is just an opportunity to learn how to download content from the web.

To download the current issue in color, go to: http://nab.aba.org

Click image of the cover with rosy-finch.

 On the navigation bar at the top, put cursor over the third icon from the right (it has "PDF" and a squiggle).

When you put your cursor there, two more icons appear below it. 

Click the right-hand icon of these two.

Your download should begin right away. It takes between 2 and 5 minutes to download an issue, depending on the speed of your internet connection.

If you would like to read this issue more as you would a regular journal, and you don’t already have an application to do so, consider (for free, or for the price of a fancy cup of coffee), trying out one of the wonderful PDF readers/viewers that are available now:

EZ PDF Pro

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=udk.android.reader&hl=en

 a free trial is available here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=udk.android.reader.trial&feature=more_from_developer#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEwMiwidWRrLmFuZHJvaWQucmVhZGVyLnRyaWFsIl0.

Adobe Mobile PDF Reader

http://www.adobe.com/products/reader-mobile.html

PDF Expert 4.5.1

http://readdle.com/products/pdfexpert_ipad/

We are very sympathetic to all of the trepidation our readers may experience during this transition, and we share those feelings. Change involves feelings of loss, of risk, of fear as we move into the unfamiliar. But our choice, at the end of the day, is between surely fading out and possibly thriving again. Our decision is to go Once more unto the breach, dear friends.

We will have more information on the metamorphosis in the coming issue, Volume 66, No. 4, the final paper issue of North American Birds. As a former editor of the journal was so fond of saying, “Stay tuned!”

 Ned Brinkley, Editor

Surprising Song Sparrows

 

We noted yesterday that we at Birding delight in running articles with surprising content. Case in point: Paul Hess’s “News and Notes” in the current, January/February 2013 issue. Hess starts the coverage with an item on the recent falcons-aren't-related-to-other-raptors news that has surprised so many of us. But it’s Hess’s second item, on the supposedly well-known Song Sparrow, that we’ll focus on here.

The familiar song of the Song Sparrow technically is known as the loud crystalized song. Click here to listen. Likewise familiar to many birders is the soft crystalized song—also known as the “quiet song.” Click here to listen. Both of these songs are used to advertise territory. So far, so good. No surprises—yet.
Right: Photo by Tim Zurowski. 

Now listen to this song. What’s up with that! Could this be one of those subsongs, sung by young males practicing how to sing? Nope; it’s sung by the same adult male who sang the two “normal” territorial songs we heard above. This fascinating song is referred to as the warbled soft song, and it has a surprising function.

 

If you’re an ABA member, head on over to the ABA website to learn more about the Song Sparrow’s warbled soft song. Our online content includes:

• The full text of Paul Hess’s online-only article, “A Threatening Song”
• Sound recordings of different songs sung by male Song Sparrows
• Sound spectrograms that help you “see” the sparrows' songs

If you’re not an ABA member, what are you waiting for! Join today, and we’ll rush you the January/February 2013 Birding, which includes exclusive 2013 ABA Bird of the Year content and Bird of the Year stickers. 

 

Why We Publish What We Publish

 

What are some of the factors that determine content for Birding magazine? For starters, Birding aims to give voice to the great diversity of real-life birders in North America and beyond. We’re always on the lookout for new contributors, and we’re especially keen on getting input from young birders. We seek content that applies new approaches and methods toward understanding the birds we love to study.

Our focus is on the future, and we actively seek contributions with online content.

We at Birding love dialogue and debate, and we seek the advice and input of all ABA members. The subject matter in Birding is extremely varied; see for yourself, in this enumeration, now slightly dated, of the twenty greatest articles published in the magazine. Yes, the content is varied, but there is, we hope, an overarching theme on the pages of Birding: a sense of wonder about the avian riches and blessings in the world around us.

There’s something else.

We are hopelessly addicted to content that surprises us. Which brings us to the matter of the feature articles in the current, January/February 2013 issue of Birding.

We thought we knew about the status of the Common Black-Hawk in the ABA Area. Basically: Go out in New Mexico or Arizona, and you might see one, or, if you’re really lucky, maybe two or three, right? Enter Charles Babbitt’s feature article, “Watching Common Black-Hawks Along Arizona’s Santa Cruz River,” pp. 42–47. Babbitt tells us in his article about a place where—surprise!—you can see 40 to as many 60 Common Black-Hawks in a single day. Betcha didn’t know that!
Left: Photo by Jim Burns. 

And we thought we knew all about Lesser Black-backed Gulls. Then we read Amar Ayyash’s feature article, “Rethinking the Lesser Black-backed Gull in North America,” pp. 34–41. Yes, we knew about three-digit flocks wintering along the Atlantic coast, but we didn’t know about three-digit flocks spending the summer along the coasts of Virginia and Maryland. We were likewise unaware of the spectacular population increases in Greenland.
Right: Map by Kei Sochi. 

In the off chance that you’re one of the two or three birders who already knew where to find 60 Common Black-Hawks in Arizona and 200+ Lesser Black-backed Gulls in early August, were you similarly aware of the recent rise of young birder clubs all over the United States? Surprise yourself by checking out Chad Williams’ feature article, “Birding Beyond Your Binoculars: The Story of a Young Birders Club,” pp. 48–53.
Left: Photo by Chad Williams. 

 

 

A final thought. Are you in possession of an insight or some knowledge you’d like to share with the ABA membership? Surprise us! Get in touch with us at Birding, and we’ll help you spread the word to ABA members everywhere.