Innholdsfortegnelse for September - October 2016 i BirdWatching

Don’t let anyone tell you the Endangered Species Act doesn’t work. The legislation is protecting birds just as intended, and three articles in this issue offer proof. The first describes the Peregrine Falcon. As recently as 1970, populations in the Midwest and East were gone, and numbers in the West were as much as 90 percent below historical levels. Yet today, four decades after the species was federally listed, the bird is not only still around but thriving — and not just on remote cliffs but high above our biggest cities. One of them is Chicago, where birder Josh Engel works as a research assistant at the Field Museum. He writes on page 22 that he and colleagues from the Chicago Peregrine Project have color-banded more than 500 chicks since…

Events in November celebrate birding South Texas, Yellow Rails in Cajun Country, and Alaska’s Bald Eagles. Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival Featured keynote speakers at this annual event in Harlingen, Texas, include woodpecker expert Steve Shunk and Big Year birder Neil Hayward. Attendees can take part in ID workshops on flycatchers and hawks, watch a live raptor show, and learn about eBird and the Red-crowned Parrot Project. November 2-6. Yellow Rails and Rice Festival Participants will look for Yellow Rails during the fall rice harvest in Louisiana’s Cajun Country, in the state’s southwestern prairie region. The festival also includes field trips to pineywoods hotspots and the Cameron Parish coast. November 2-6. Alaska Bald Eagle Festival Photography workshops and live raptor presentations will take place at the American Bald Eagle Foundation…

EVERY SERIOUS BIRDER with several years’ experience has had one or two extraordinary encounters that he or she is reluctant to share with anyone, and particularly with fellow birders, because the accounts are likely not to be believed. Bird stories, it is assumed, have a way of mutating with the telling and the years, somewhat like fish stories. The species involved become rarer, the weather becomes worse, and, of course, more often than not, there are no witnesses. I have had one of those experiences, a close encounter with “Elvis.” Let me explain. Elegant Trogon is the quintessential Arizona bird, yet in the canyons of southeastern Arizona it is at the northern limit of its breeding range. The center is in Central America. I have found the species in Guanacaste…

The recovery of the American Peregrine Falcon is one of the Endangered Species Act’s most dramatic success stories. The falcon’s decline began in the 1940s, was most pronounced during the 1950s, and continued through the 1960s into the early 1970s. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, by the time biologists realized the magnitude of the collapse, the American population was only about 12 percent of what it had been prior to the introduction of modern pesticides. By 1970, the year the Peregrine Fund was founded at Cornell University and the falcon was first placed on the Endangered Species List, the midwestern and eastern populations were gone, and populations in the west had declined by as much as 90 percent below historical levels. Since then, DDT was banned (in…

In 1976, eagle lovers could count only one active Bald Eagle nest in all of New York State, so scientists tried bringing the species back with the same time-consuming process that was already working with Peregrine Falcons. (See page 22.) They imported wild eaglets from Alaska, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin and captive-bred birds from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife breeding center in Patuxent, Maryland, hand-reared them to independence, and then released them. The first hack site was at Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, near Seneca Falls. According to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the scientists got proof they were on the right track four years later, when a pair of Montezuma’s eagles was discovered nesting about 90 miles to the northeast, near Watertown, at the eastern end of Lake Ontario.…

The Genius of Birds, by Jennifer Ackerman, Penguin Press, 2016, hardcover, 352 pages, $28. Jennifer Ackerman is the author of Ah-Choo: The Uncommon Life of Your Common Cold (2010), Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body (2008), and Chance in the House of Fate: A Natural History of Heredity (2002). Clearly, she's fascinated by the riddle of humanity’s place in the natural world, but she’s also an avid lifelong birdwatcher. In The Genius of Birds, she turns her talent for explaining science to lay readers to the subject of bird intelligence, bringing the latest research to life with anecdotes about the technical, social, musical, artistic, and navigational genius of species around the world. Given the minute nature of bird brains, it’s fair to say that many of us have fallen for…

Bird Watching Look for our next issue On sale November 8 Many birders are understandably frustrated by changes in birds’ names, and in the sequence of species on checklists. It can be hard to keep up, but each revision generally highlights a significant advance in our understanding of birds and is worth some reflection. It is important to point out that the changes are the judgments of expert ornithologists who base their decisions on published research. There is no “last word,” and modifications will continue. Any apparent inconsistencies or occasional reversals reflect the difficult and subjective nature of the decisions. The changes that make the most news in birding circles involve either splitting or lumping species. Changes in the higher-level classifications, the genera and families to which species are assigned,…

Since 1967, 120 bird species have been listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966. How have they fared while protected? To find out, the Center for Biological Diversity analyzed nearly 2,000 scientific reports for 93 currently listed species for which population data were available for at least 10 years. For the continental United States, 72 percent increased in numbers, while another 13 percent remained stable. The success rate was lower for listed birds in the Pacific Islands (Hawaii, Guam, Palau, and the Northern Mariana Islands), where 34 percent increased and 27 percent remained stable. The report noted the difference was likely due to multiple factors, including more serious threats from mosquito-borne diseases and invasive predators, and funding…

Contrary to popular belief, September 1, 1976, did not mark the beginning of hawkwatching at Cape May Point, New Jersey. And it wasn’t until 1977 that P. William Smith, regional editor of the journal American Birds, dubbed Cape May the “Raptor Capital of North America.” Forty years later, the title is still apt. While the volume of migrating hawks in Cape May does not approach the numbers tallied in Corpus Christi, Texas, or at Veracruz, Mexico, the species diversity and day-to-day dependability of the flight make Cape May a favorite autumn destination. Hawk counting at Cape May goes back at least to 1931, when wardens hired by the Association of Audubon Societies set out to conduct daily tallies and police the shooting along Sunset Boulevard. The wardens did not stop…

It was the final day of safari, and our Land Cruisers were slowly making their way to the bottom of Ngorongoro Crater, in northern Tanzania. The road was like a dark ribbon between patches of colorful flowers. Dominant in the patches was the mint Leonotis nepetifolia (lion’s ear), a magnet for sunbirds. I was with a group of students and Greg Murray and Virginia McDonough, colleagues from the Biology Department of Hope College, in Holland, Michigan. The guides turned off the engines, and we coasted silently. Suddenly, a student whispered, “Golden-winged Sunbird, left side.” The male Goldenwinged is a large sunbird, jet black with gold wings and tail feathers. Variable and Malachite Sunbirds also appeared. Variable is small, with a short tail. The male has a purple chest and yellow…

Q I read that you shouldn’t feed peanut butter to birds. Is it true? — Ruth Solon, Loudonville, Ohio A It’s perfectly fine to feed peanut butter. It is high in fat, protein, and calories, all of which make it a worthwhile addition to the menu. I recommend mixing it with plain cornmeal to make it less sticky and easier to work with. Try one part peanut butter with four or five parts cornmeal to make a stiff dough. You can also add oats, raisins, or dried mealworms. The dough can then be shaped into portions that will fit in suet feeders or logs, or just placed in feeding trays. Q How many tail feathers do most birds have, 10 or 12? Why are there different numbers? — James Hooey,…

The twice-annual long-distance migration of birds is one of nature’s most incredible phenomena. In addition to making impressive feats of navigation, birds must acquire adequate fat to fuel their flights, typically replenishing their reserves en route. Arriving on northerly breeding grounds with extra fat — more than necessary to complete the migratory journey — could bring potential benefits. For example, it might provide a buffer in case of poor weather conditions or uncertain food resources, a theory dubbed the “insurance hypothesis.” Or that extra fat could furnish additional energy needed for nesting activities, called the “breedingperformance hypothesis.” Researchers from New York’s Braddock Bay Bird Observatory set out to see if birds did indeed have extra fat at the end of their spring migration, and whether they could find evidence for…

Until the 1990s, birders in North America could count only one scrub-jay. Then, in 1995, the species was split into three: Florida Scrub-Jay, Western Scrub-Jay, and Island Scrub-Jay. Now, thanks to the latest supplement to the American Ornithologists’ Union checklist of North American birds, we have four. Because of differences in ecology, morphology, genetics, and vocalizations, Western Scrub-Jay is being split into a coastal species named California Scrub-Jay and an interior species, Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay. The split was anticipated. “ ‘California Scrub-Jay’ is much more colorful and contrasting than its inland relative,” Kenn Kaufman stated in these pages in April 2009, shortly after the change had first been proposed. “ ‘Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay’ has a more muted pattern, and its behavior seems muted, too: Often uncommon and sparsely distributed, it seems shier…

In April, I was invited to say a few words to birders gathered to celebrate Victor Emanuel Nature Tours’ 40 years of operation. Of course, I wanted to come up with something poignant to match the significance of the occasion. Luckily, it occurred to me that no words of mine could possibly be more profound than the mere presence of those hundred or so tour participants and 20 VENT staff members assembled in Beaumont, Texas, near the Louisiana border. I know what you’re thinking: Why would birders gather on the Texas coast in the month of April? Consider that 41 years ago, a foreign birding tour meant a trip down to the Everglades. Now it means traveling everywhere. The global bird-tour infrastructure is thriving, and VENT is a key component…

The Chicago Peregrine Program monitors Illinois’s Peregrine population, including more than a dozen nest sites in Chicago and about 20 more outside the city limits. The five sites below were used both last year and this year. 1. South Wacker Dr. and West Adams St., Chicago In use for 30 years, this is the oldest nest site in Illinois. In 2016, four eggs were laid, all of which hatched and fledged. In 2015, four eggs were laid, and all hatched. The four fledglings needed assistance. 2. North Broadway and West Victoria St., Chicago 2016 was the 23rd year for this site. Four eggs were laid, three of which hatched. All three chicks fledged. In 2015, five eggs were laid, only two of which hatched. Both young fledged without issue. 3.…

Vito is still new to the neighborhood on this cloudy October afternoon, staring through the cold front howling in off Raritan Bay, but he’s already the most popular and powerful resident of this beach community. Menhaden, or mossbunker, are running off Staten Island’s southern coast, maybe for the last time this season. Hungry bluefish push them to the surface like hidden truths; nobody feels right about letting them go untold. For Vito, New York’s newly famous Bald Eagle, the modern, salt-and-pepper Pale Male, it’s buffet time. Time to make some room at the table. Gannets and Red-breasted Mergansers strike the school from above and below. The summer’s last Osprey lingers to join the party, fighting for air space among a swirling mass of squawking gulls. Vito surveys the frenzy from…

For anyone interested in nature, having a species named after you is a high honor. It guarantees that future biologists will be reminded of your name. Thomas Say was a leading naturalist in the early 1800s, traveling widely in North America. In 1819-1820, he took part in a western expedition that discovered a number of species, including a phoebe. Charles Lucien Bonaparte described the bird to science in 1825, naming it Muscicapa saya in Say’s honor. Muscicapa is actually a genus of Old World flycatchers, but at that time, scientists were just beginning to realize that flycatchers in the Americas might be unrelated. William Swainson promoted that view. He placed some flycatchers in a genus he called Tyrannula. When he described Black Phoebe in 1827, he called it Tyrannula nigricans.…

When we moved into our house in northern Minnesota in 1981, a wonderfully healthy young box elder stood next to our driveway. Now, 35 years later, a big rotten section of the trunk has become my favorite part of the whole tree. A pair of Red-bellied Woodpeckers started digging out a nest hole this May. In 1981, Red-bellied Woodpecker was a hotline species in my neck of the woods — any sighting was thrilling. In 2004, a female turned up in my yard in mid-winter, and lots of birders came to see her. I bribed her to stick around for a few months by offering mealworms as well as suet, peanuts, and peanut butter, but she disappeared as the nesting season approached. Sightings in my yard were few and far…