Innholdsfortegnelse for July - August 2016 i BirdWatching

We’ve all had the experience: You come across a feather lying on the ground. You pick it up. You admire its beauty and strength. You wonder how it was lost, and how the bird is faring without it. And you wish you could keep it, but you don’t dare take it home, because that would be against the law, forbidden by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, whose centennial is this year. The feathers, nests, and eggs of no fewer than 1,026 species are protected by the MBTA. It’s the law of the land, the basis for the Endangered Species Act and other wildlife legislation, and it has real teeth, due to strict liability and criminal penalty provisions. Yet today, after 100 years of federal protection, more than a third of…

Broken Journey: Photography by Art Fox Artist Art Fox uses photography to document songbirds whose journeys have been cut short after colliding with Chicago’s skyscrapers. Between 365 and 988 million birds are killed annually by building collisions in the United States, say researchers. Part of the goal of this moving and oddly beautiful exhibit is to raise awareness of the phenomenon. You can view Fox’s work, including the Indigo Bunting at right, at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, through February 2017. Don’t miss it. For more information, visit www.naturemuseum.org.…

The curtain of silence that falls on June woodlands drives birders to find other diversions. You can cut the lawn, play golf, or head for your region’s shorebird destinations. Where I live, this means the Brigantine Division of the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, north of Atlantic City, or the largely unbirded Delaware Bayshore. By mid-July, Delaware Bay’s coastal marshes are vibrating with southbound sandpipers whose multitudes fan out amid the herons, egrets, and other resident breeders poking in the prey-rich mud that is exposed on every falling tide. Clapper Rails simply infest the region, but so, too, does a healthy host of biting insects. If you head out to Delaware Bay’s beaches, as you did in May, you’ll find horseshoe crabs still emerging but shorebirds mostly absent. Southbound…

States’ objections to the Weeks-McLean Act of 1913 may have crippled the United States’ first law to regulate the shooting of migratory birds, but they didn’t deter Senator George P. McLean of Connecticut, one of the bill’s sponsors. He quickly introduced legislation authorizing the president to negotiate bird treaties, the first of which was the Migratory Bird Treaty of 1916. A ban on the importation of feathers associated with the Weeks–McLean Act had an even more immediate impact. According to notes published in The Auk, the journal of the American Ornithologists’ Union, as soon as President Wilson signed the act in October 1913, Treasury Department agents started stopping anyone wearing feathers or with feathers in their luggage from entering the country. “The direct effect of the American tariff prohibition is…

Baby Birds: An Artist Looks into the Nest, by Julie Zickefoose, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, hardcover, 338 pages, $28. Imagine documenting the development of tiny Prothonotary Warblers — from miniscule speckled eggs to leaving the nest box — in only 11 days. Picture yourself being awakened morning after summer morning by a shimmering Indigo Bunting singing outside your bedroom window, then discovering the bunting family’s nest tucked under a hibiscus near your garage. Explain (if you have time between twice-an-hour feedings) how, as a wildlife rehabilitator, you raised three tiny hummingbird orphans to successful fledging and witnessed their return to your doorstep the following spring after a 3,500-mile migration. The adoptive mother and narrator of these amazing baby-bird stories is wildlife artist Julie Zickefoose. They are among 17 in-depth species…

For a widespread and common bird like Red-tailed Hawk, you might think we know all we possibly can about its migratory behaviors. But just a year ago, researchers confirmed that juveniles in certain southern populations fly far to the north before returning south again (“Birding Briefs,” June 2015, page 9), and now a team of biologists from Wyoming has added more details. From 1999 to 2002, Derek Craighead and his colleagues tracked 16 adult Red-tails from nesting areas in Wyoming to their wintering regions and back again to the Cowboy State. All of the birds wintered in Mexico. Most traveled to western Mexico, two went to eastern regions, and one flew to the southernmost state of Chiapas — a round-trip of about 5,100 miles. On average, the birds left their…

A first-ever assessment of the 1,154 native bird species that occur across all major habitats in Canada, the continental United States, and Mexico has concluded that 432 species, more than a third, are at high risk of extinction unless significant conservation actions are taken. Experts from all three countries collaborated on the report, State of North America’s Birds 2016, released during the centennial year of the Migratory Bird Treaty. Fifty-seven percent of ocean species, 56 percent of tropical-forest birds, 37 percent of species in coastal habitats, and around a quarter of birds that occur in aridland, grassland, and temperate-forest habitats made it onto the Watch List. Only generalist species — birds that are adaptable and can live in multiple habitats — were judged to be of low conservation concern. You…

Below is the original wording, including misspellings, punctuation errors, and formatting issues, of the Migratory Bird Treaty signed a century ago (CFR 8 Part 10 §10 1 1961). (a) Game birds (1) Waterfowl (Anatidae) including brant wild ducks geese and swans (2) Cranes (Gruidae), including little brown sandhill, and whooping cranes (3) Rails (Rallidae), including coots gallinules, and sora and other rails (4) Shorebirds (Haematopodidae, Charadriidae, Scolopacidae and Phalaropodidae) including avocets curlews dowitchers godwits knots oyster-catchers phalaropes plovers sandpipers snipe stilts, surf birds turnstones willet woodcock and yellowlegs (5) Doves and wild pigeons (Columbidae) (b) Insectivorous birds Cuckoos (including road runner and anis) flickers and other woodpeckers, nighthawks or bullbats chuckwill’s widow poorwills and whippoorwills, swifts hummingbirds, kingbirds phoebes and other flycatchers, horned larks bobolinks cowbirds blackbirds grackles meadowlarks and…

The primary goals for birds are to survive, successfully breed, and dominate the gene pool. There are almost as many strategies to meet those goals as there are birds. Some lay small clutches of eggs, others large. Some begin incubation with the first egg, others after the clutch is complete. Some are monogamous, others are polygamous, and still more are promiscuous. The choices are endless and fascinating. No strategy elicits emotions stronger than strategies involving siblicide, the death of a chick resulting from aggression by one or more of its siblings. The behavior requires asynchronous hatching, resulting from egg-laying intervals of preferably two or more days, and incubation beginning with the laying of the first egg. Siblicide usually occurs in clutches of two or three. Birds practicing the behavior include…

This year we’re celebrating the centennial of the signing of the Migratory Bird Treaty in 1916. Following ratification by Congress in 1918, it became federal law, forbidding anyone without a waiver to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill, or sell the birds listed in the act. Today, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act protects a total of 1,026 species. We've listed each one on the pages that follow. Hoping to provide early warning of declining U.S. species that would require protection under the Endangered Species Act without conservation action, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2008 published a national list of birds of conservation concern. The list included 147 species, including 136 MBTA-protected species. We’ve identified them in bold, blue type. 1. Black-bellied Whistling-Duck (Dendrocygna autumnalis) 2. West Indian Whistling-Duck (Dendrocygna…

Q Is it possible that I saw a kestrel eating a worm? The bird had something long and squirmy, but it looked too small and pale to be a snake. — Chris Gilmore, Scranton, Pennsylvania A Yes, kestrels are known to eat earthworms. They feed on a wide variety of small prey, including many large insects, rodents, snakes, lizards, birds, frogs, even bats. Q I visited an Atlantic coastal beach and saw gulls that looked like they were dancing or running in place in shallow water. What were they doing? — Ron Roman, Worcester, Massachusetts A The gulls were foraging for food using a method known as “foot paddling.” Gulls will perform the behavior in tidal areas, mudflats, even wet lawns. The shuffling or stamping exposes small prey such as…

A serendipitous observation by a history professor may have serious implications for many North American bird species. D. Niler Pyeatt first noticed American Robins nesting in a cottonwood tree outside his office window at Wayland Baptist University, in Plainview, Texas, north of Lubbock, in April 2014. Days later, he saw a Eurasian Collared-Dove taking interest in, approaching, and eventually sitting in the nest when the robins were absent. Within two days, the collared-dove began chasing the attending robin off the nest. “The collared-dove would land on a branch next to the nest with the robin and puff its chest and flap its wings rapidly until the robin left the nest,” Pyeatt and biologist Andrew Kasner report in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology. Just a day later, the collared-dove drove the…

This autumn, celebrate big anniversaries in Florida and New Jersey and meet Contributing Editor Kenn Kaufman in North Carolina. “Ding” Darling Days Attendees can choose from beach walks, sea-life cruises, guided paddles, and sunset rookery tours, as well as a Duck Stamp art exhibit and other activities marking the 140th birthday of “Ding” Darling and the centennial of the Migratory Bird Treaty. Events take place at J. N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge, on Sanibel Island, in Florida. October 16-22. Wings Over Water Wildlife Festival This annual festival takes place over six counties in northeastern North Carolina and features birding and other tours of Alligator River, Pea Island, Pocosin Lakes, Mattamuskeet, Mackay Island, and Currituck National Wildlife Refuges. This year, Contributing Editor Kenn Kaufman, author of “ID Tips,” will deliver…

This year, we celebrate the centennial of a treaty of importance to everyone interested in conserving birds: the Convention between the United States and Great Britain for the Protection of Migratory Birds, better known as the Migratory Bird Treaty. Britain signed on behalf of Canada. Later amendments implemented treaties between the U.S. and Mexico, the U.S. and Japan, and the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The treaties form the foundation of the collaboration necessary to conserve birds that migrate across international borders. The convention was signed on August 16, 1916. The centennial is a good date for the purposes of observances and events, but it also presents an opportunity to ask why, a hundred years on, the treaty hasn’t done a better job preventing birds from being killed and populations…

Ray P. Holland, the man who lent his name to the landmark case that upheld the constitutionality of the MBTA, was a noted writer and photographer who served as editor of Field & Stream during the magazine’s heyday in the 1920s and 1930s. He was both an avid hunter and an early conservationist, an advocate of the Weeks-McLean Bill, which passed Congress as the Migratory Bird Protection Act in March 1913 but was later declared unconstitutional. Between 1914 and 1919, he was District Inspector and United States Game Warden in the Biological Survey of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, charged with enforcing the new MBTA in seven midwestern states. In the spring of 1919, he arrested five hunters (one of whom was the attorney general of the state of Missouri)…

Harris’s Hawks have become popular in falconry during the last few decades. Perhaps because of the birds’ cooperative hunting instinct, they seem to adapt well to working with people. At one time, this could have been a problem. In the 1970s and 1980s, the species was declining in central Arizona, and conservationists feared the birds were being captured for falconry. I don’t know if this was confirmed as a cause of decline. But without a doubt, Harris’s Hawk populations in Arizona have greatly increased since the early 1990s. The hawks have adapted to city life. Many pairs now nest in suburbs of Tucson and Phoenix. Falconry is certainly no threat to the species today. The sport is legal in most parts of the U.S., Canada, and Europe, but strict regulations…

This winter, a wolf killed a golden retriever in a popular park on the edge of Duluth. The dog was off leash, so wolf conservationists blamed the owner. Others called for trapping and killing every wolf anywhere near the city. One tragedy begets more. As a dog owner whose dogs have run off leash in that very park, I can only imagine the owner’s anguish. I live about a mile away, and my yard is fenced in, but it would be easy for a wolf to jump the fence — the white-tailed deer in my neighborhood certainly do. Pip, my dog, weighs less than seven pounds. She could be picked off by a wolf, coyote, fox, bobcat, raccoon, or fisher, and a single kick by a deer could kill her.…