Innholdsfortegnelse for March - April 2016 i BirdWatching

Every time I see a Scarlet Tanager high up on some leafy green branch, I wish it would come closer. I’m sure you know the feeling. Who wouldn’t want a better view of the male’s dazzling red breast, jet-black wings, and mischievous dark eyes? In this issue, avian ecologist David Flaspohler tells what happened one memorable spring day years ago, when he came across a tanager that apparently wanted a closer look at him. Flaspohler focused his binoculars and waited. Then, as you can read in “The Chosen One,” page 26, he felt a puff of wind and the clasp of little feet on his fingers. Similarly, every time I hear the pumping call of an American Bittern hidden, somewhere, in a large cattail marsh, I wonder about the display…

Mount Auburn Cemetery, the first landscaped rural cemetery in the United States, has always resisted easy description. Both a National Historic Landmark and an Important Bird Area, it serves not only as final resting place for 90,000 souls, including many of Boston’s elite, but also as a renowned horticultural collection and an equally famous migrant trap where eBirders have reported 224 species. This book celebrates all aspects of the cemetery, not just birds, but features some of our favorite birders, including author and tour leader Peter Alden, Talkin’ Birds host Ray Brown, “Words on Birds” columnist Douglas Chickering, Ludlow Griscom Award recipient Wayne Peterson, and photographer Kim Nagy. Her beautiful work has appeared in these pages and on our website.…

Spring is in the air, and so, too, are northbound raptors. The Great Lakes region is a superb place to observe them. Here are 12 hawk watches, along with their 2015 monthly totals. 1. West Skyline Observatory. In Duluth, Minnesota, March 1 to June 1. March: 1,307 (1,153 Bald Eagles, 33 Golden Eagles). May: 991. Spring total: 2,298 2. Brockway Mountain. In Copper Harbor, on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, March 15 to June 15. March: 127. April: 1,718. May: 5,730 (3,351 Broad-winged Hawks). June: 1,612. Spring total: 9,187 3. Whitefish Point. In Paradise, on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, March 15 to May 31. March: 151. April: 2,776. May: 7,996 (4,318 Sharp-shinned Hawks). Spring total: 10,923 4. Straits of Mackinac. In Mackinaw City, Michigan, March 15 to May 31. March: 1,348 (287 Golden…

BIRDERS AND NATURALISTS are used to observing their subjects from afar. Watching natural behavior usually demands that we keep a distance, even as we long to see wild creatures more closely. Yet the patient birder can find her- or himself in close proximity to even furtive creatures. Usually, this happens when we surprise a bird while rounding a bend or cresting a hill. Rarer still are occasions when normally shy birds choose to approach us. It was after such an experience over 10 years ago that I asked myself, “Am I becoming a Disney princess?” The eastern shore of Lake Michigan runs almost perfectly north-south, creating a natural axis for spring migrants. In mid-May 2003, I was at Epworth Heights, a Methodist retreat established in the early 1900s just north…

American Bittern spends the winter primarily in wetlands along the southern Atlantic coast and Gulf Coast, and in southern California, Mexico, and northern Central America. It also migrates to the Greater Antilles, Cuba, and Bermuda. The heron breeds in freshwater wetlands in the northern half of the United States and the southern half of Canada, from the California coast to Newfoundland. To find it, visit large marshes and protected areas with more than 40 acres of marsh from March to May. Seek out beds of cattails, reeds, or grass in shallow water up to a foot deep — Americans prefer to wade; they aren’t likely to cling to vegetation, as Least Bittern does — and listen at dusk or night for its pounding, three-syllable song.…

This site, formally the Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands, is a wonderful and accessible place to bird. Some of my favorite sights are nestbuilding Great Blue Herons. The female constructs the nest while the male gathers the materials. The system works well until the male brings back a stick that the female doesn’t like. She’ll drop it or won’t even accept it, and then the male will take off to find the perfect stick. Often during this time, the two birds will engage in bill tapping as part of their courtship. Recently hatched birds are always a thrill to behold, and at the wetlands in springtime, fledglings are everywhere. Spring arrives as soon as mid-February, when we begin to see young herons, egrets, and other waterbirds. Get here early in the…

Ryan Brady is a research scientist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, a member of the state’s eBird team, and a friend of mine. He lives on a tract of restored natural habitat and has a water fountain styled to look like a rocky cascade. It has several pools shallow enough for warblers, chickadees, and other tiny birds. Thanks to a recirculating pump, a quiet gurgling attracts them from a distance. Ryan has seen 64 species in that birdbath. He sent me information about a smaller model, the Cascading Stone Fountain made by Pure Garden, and in late summer I set it up in the backyard. Chickadees discovered it within 15 minutes, and soon I had a steady stream of birds, most regularly first thing in the morning and…

When we put feeders in our yards, are we inadvertently putting birds at risk of striking the windows of our homes? The answer, say researchers from the University of Alberta, is complicated. Graduate student Justine Kummer and associate professor Erin Bayne, of the university’s Birds and Windows citizen-science project, enlisted 43 homeowners in Edmonton to take part in the first year-long study of bird-window collisions at private residences. From April 2014 to May 2015, participants placed gazebo-style feeders filled with black-oil sunflower seeds either one meter or five meters from a window. The feeders were present for a month, then removed for another month, and the order of each month-long trial was randomized. Whether the feeder was present or not, residents searched every day for dead or injured birds, smudges…

YEAR IN REVIEW The 50 most important stories about birds and birdwatchers of 2015. PROGRESS IN CONGRESS Omnibus restores conservation fund, drops road in Alaska refuge. MARATHON FLIGHTS Far-flying Blackpoll Warbler crosses continent before crossing ocean. BARRED VS. SPOTTED Northern Spotted Owl populations continue to decline. BIRD-SMART ABC lists products that really do keep birds from striking windows. No tablet? Find links to all Tablet Extras at www.BirdWatchingDaily.com/the-magazine/current-issue…

You can meet three of our contributing editors, and see lots of birds, at these fun events. Festival of the Birds at Presque Isle Attendees will bird Pennsylvania’s 3,100-acre Presque Isle State Park, which juts into Lake Erie, and David Sibley will deliver the keynote speech, on the psychology of bird identification. May 6-8. Biggest Week in American Birding The birding can’t be beat at Magee Marsh, Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge, and other hotspots east of Toledo, Ohio. Even better, Kenn Kaufman will present one of the festival’s keynote talks. May 6-15. Chequamegon Bay Birding and Nature Festival This event, on Lake Superior in northwestern Wisconsin, will feature field trips, a photography workshop, cruises to the Apostle Islands, and a keynote by Laura Erickson, our “Attracting Birds” columnist. May 19-21.…

Audio spectrograms, or sonograms, are pictures of sound. They show a song’s frequency range, its length, and the relative loudness of its different elements. They make it easy to see a song’s structure. Without them, we would have no easy way to examine and point out a song’s characteristics. Studying songs without sonograms would be like learning identification without pictures. You can record songs and then make sonograms yourself using either Cornell’s Raven Lite software (www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/raven/RavenOverview.html) or the program Audacity (audacityteam.org). Both are free. Each will produce useable sonograms even if you made your recordings with the voice recorder on your phone. Our program BirdGenie, scheduled to be out in the second quarter of this year, will identify about 100 vocalizations of common eastern and western species (BirdGenie.com). In addition,…

Somewhat overlooked as a birding hotspot in the Los Angeles area, the South Coast Botanic Garden nevertheless has a reputation for attracting vagrants. In the winter of 2009, a Thick-billed Kingbird stayed for a few months. In May 2007 and again in July 2015, I discovered a firstsummer Mississippi Kite at the garden — the sixth and seventh recorded sightings in Los Angeles County. A Scott’s Oriole and a Summer Tanager perched next to one another in a coral tree in 2010, and a Baltimore Oriole was seen in the same tree as Hooded and Bullock’s Orioles a few years later. Red-shouldered Hawk, Spotted Towhee, Western Scrub-Jay, Hutton’s Vireo, Bushtit, and Anna’s and Allen’s Hummingbirds are among the residents. My favorite times of year at the garden are spring and…

My parents moved to this property in central Missouri in 1971 and soon began adding vegetation and ponds to the landscape. In 1986, they embarked on the long process of replanting old fescue fields with a diverse mix of grasses and flowers, restoring a bit of the native prairies that once covered a third of Missouri. In 2010, a nonprofit foundation, the Prairie Garden Trust, was established to protect the land. Today anyone can enjoy it. We call the property a nature garden because it has the beauty of native plants without the messiness of nature untended. The “displays” vary by season: flowering dogwood, redbud, Virginia bluebells, and phlox in the early spring, then purple coneflowers and butterfly weed as the prairie blooms in June, and blazing star and lotus…

Q If I find a dead bird, should I report it to an agency for disease tracking? Can I keep some of the feathers? — Kathleen Woodson, Seattle, Washington A Unless you have a special permit, it is against federal law to possess the feathers of any native bird, even feathers found on the ground. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act also prohibits the possession of any other bird parts, eggs, live or dead birds, and nests. An exception is made for legally hunted game birds. The law was enacted in 1918 to protect species that were being killed for their feathers — at the time popular on women’s hats. The act was written broadly because it would be too hard to prove whether feathers, eggs, or nests had been obtained…

I don’t know her name. She was about 11 or 12 and sitting with her father at an outdoor cowboy breakfast hosted by a guest ranch snugged up against the mountains of central California, west of Newport Beach. My wife, Linda, and I were seated at the next table over, enjoying the Yellowrumped Warblers (Audubon’s) that enlivened the oaks. By November, the winter’s larder of Yellow-rumps pretty much rules the canopy. But the planet’s newest birder had eyes only for the troop of Acorn Woodpeckers cavorting overhead. Flamboyant onto histrionic, the nimble, noisy woodpeckers are favorites of mine and so boldly patterned that even 30 feet away, and without binoculars, the young observer fell under their spell. Basic-plumaged Yellow-rumps are an acquired taste. “Here,” I said, offering her my 8x42…

EXAMPLE 1 Eastern Phoebe vs. Eastern Wood-Pewee SONG QUALITY: Buzzy vs. clear PITCH PROFILE: Falling vs. variable SECTIONS: One (or more) ELEMENT STRUCTURE: Long elements The songs of Eastern Phoebe and Eastern Wood-Pewee contain long up/down elements. They can be separated by their quality. That is, the woodpewee’s song has a continuously clear quality, while the phoebe elements are at least partly buzzy. EXAMPLE 2 Veery vs. Swainson’s Thrush SONG QUALITY: Buzzy vs. complex PITCH PROFILE: Rising vs. falling SECTIONS: Many ELEMENT STRUCTURE: Many contain short trills These songs are magical in quality and somewhat similar. The key to distinguishing them is their pitch profile: Swainson’s Thrush has an overall rising profile, while Veery’s profile falls. EXAMPLE 3 Magnolia Warbler vs. Yellow Warbler SONG QUALITY: Clear PITCH PROFILE: Variable SECTIONS:…

Landscaping for birds and other wildlife may mean that your yard won’t look like a typical yard. If neighbors complain, the best thing to do is to act neighborly. So says Bret Rappaport, a past president and current board member of the nonprofit group Wild Ones. He’s also an attorney in suburban Chicago who represents homeowners who grow plants that others consider “weeds.” “Being strident and self-righteous is a recipe to not get what you want,” Rappaport says. Instead, listen to your neighbors, and, if possible, accommodate their concerns. That may mean cutting back plants that grow into their yard or that block their view as they pull out of the driveway. “If you cut back 10 percent of your natural landscape to accommodate your neighbors, I bet you’re going…

American Bitterns have always held a touch of the mysterious for me. They seem able to become invisible as soon as they enter a marshy wetland, and their strange pump-like calls sound more suited to a horror movie than a marsh. I first observed bitterns as a teenager, while photographing ducks and other water birds in North Dakota marshes. However, I was never able to photograph them. Instead, one would materialize from the rushes directly in front of me and take flight before I could gain the presence of mind to raise and focus my camera. My first very close encounter with an American Bittern came in the summer of 1976, while I was studying Sandhill Cranes, Trumpeter Swans, and other wildlife in Grand Teton National Park, in northwestern Wyoming.…

One of Palm Warbler’s best field marks is also its most mysterious: When standing or perched, it pumps its tail up and down almost constantly. Similar behavior is seen in many birds that spend time on open ground (such as American Pipit), or low in open habitats (phoebes, Prairie Warbler), or along the water’s edge (waterthrushes, Spotted Sandpiper). Why do they do it? For individuals, of course, it’s just an instinct — they’re not consciously deciding to pump their tails. But if there were no advantage to the behavior, it would be weeded out of the population. One of the first papers to propose a good explanation was published in 2009. Studying Eastern Phoebe, Michelle Carder and Gary Ritchison, of Eastern Kentucky University, found that tail-pumping increased sharply when a…

During the 1930s, the Skokie Swamp, north of Chicago, was converted into a series of wooded pools called the Skokie Lagoons. Extending from Dundee Rd. on the north to Winnetka Ave. on the south, the property encompasses 894 acres and is owned and managed by the Cook County Forest Preserve District. The region has numerous parking areas, but the spot I visit most frequently is the Erickson Woods Picnic Grove, on the north side of Willow Rd., west of the southernmost lagoon and just east of the Edens Expressway (I-94). I usually walk through a mowed area, cross a bridge and a bike path, and then enter another mowed picnic area that opens onto the lagoon. Woods surround the opening, and a tree-covered island sits just to the north. Birds…

Ratites are a small group of mostly huge, flightless birds. Think ostrich, rhea, emu, and cassowary. Where did they come from? We used to think that they had a common ancestor on the ancient supercontinent Gondwana, and that they dispersed when it began to break up about 180 million years ago. New evidence suggests ratites are much younger, originating about 65 million years ago. Does that time ring a bell? It’s when the massive Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinction event occurred. Coincidence? Not really. Because this is the extinction event that took out the dinosaurs, and that was crucial. Prior to the K-T event, birds and mammals were small, and the primary predators were bipedal theropod dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex and its smaller kin. Following the K-T extinction, a narrow window of…