Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2017 i BirdWatching

I love stories about people who roll up their sleeves and make a difference for birds. We’ve included three such stories in this issue. The first comes from Chet Meyers, the chair of a special committee of the Audubon Chapter of Minneapolis. For the last eight years or so, he’s been making a real difference for the bird pictured on our cover, Red-headed Woodpecker. Populations of the species have plummeted across most of its range in recent years — and by as much as 80 percent in Minnesota. Yet as you can read on page 28, work by Chet’s all-volunteer team shows promise of not only halting the decline but also increasing the woodpecker’s numbers. It’s all about habitat, he writes, optimistically. Build it, and they will come. Our second…

Wanderers may be more common than assumed The winter ranges of Northern Goshawk, Ferruginous Hawk, Rough-legged Hawk, Golden Eagle, and Bald Eagle are thought to end far to the north of the two famous hawk watches in central Veracruz, Mexico, but don’t tell that to researchers from the Veracruz River of Raptors Project. In a recent issue of The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, they describe no fewer than 78 records of the raptors migrating over Cardel and nearby Chichicaxtle during the autumn seasons of 1991-2014. The observations represent the southernmost reports for Northern Goshawk, Ferruginous Hawk, Rough-legged Hawk, and Golden Eagle. (Bald Eagle had been reported in Veracruz once before, in 1947.) While multiple records over multiple years could suggest the birds may be more than occasional vagrants, the authors…

Festival of Birds David Sibley, author of our regular column “ID Toolkit,” will deliver the keynote at this event in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. Attendees will look for Chestnut- collared Longspur, Roughlegged Hawk, Black-backed Woodpecker, Northern Parula, and other birds. More than 170 species were recorded last year. May 18-21 Acadia Birding Festival This four-day event in Maine provides opportunities to see Atlantic Puffins, Razorbills, Black Guillemots, Common Eiders, and many other birds. Even better, contributing editors Pete Dunne and Laura Erickson will be featured speakers. Birders spotted 143 species in 2016. June 1-4 Great Adirondack Birding Celebration Last year, birders at this weekend event in Paul Smiths, in northern New York, spotted 115 species, including Boreal Chickadee, Gray Jay, and Spruce Grouse. This year, two all-day trips and five morning…

James Maina, my tall and lanky guide, is on high alert. His eyes haven’t ceased scanning the canopy. He stops in his tracks, cocks his head, listens, waits. We’ve been trekking for hours in what seems like circles. There are no trails or markers here, in the Taita Hills of extreme southeastern Kenya, about 90 miles inland from the coast. The forest, still soaked from a downpour last night, hums and buzzes. It’s afternoon already, but a stubborn morning fog remains, giving the scene a surreal, eerie feeling. We keep moving. So it goes for most of the day. Finally, with the light fading, it happens. “There,” Maina whispers, pointing into the bush. Where? I see nothing. Then there’s a flash of brown and a shaking branch, and the creature…

Listening to a Continent Sing: Birdsong by Bicycle from the Atlantic to the Pacific, by Donald Kroodsma, Princeton University Press, 2016, hardcover, 336 pages, $29.95, £22.95. It is always a pleasure to listen to masters talk about their passion. And so it is here, as Don Kroodsma, the world’s leading expert on birdsong, takes us on a bicycle journey from Virginia to Oregon, listening to birds and explaining the magic and mystery in what he hears along the way. For almost 5,000 miles, one group of species replaces another as changing habitats roll by, and we hear a constant stream of singing. We’re invited to join in on his continent-long listening adventure, since 381 recordings accompany the book, all accessible by scanning QR codes published in the margins of the…

The benefits of feeding stations are obvious — to the birds that visit them and the people who maintain them — but many gardens are small and separated from other yards by roads, rivers, and other barriers. In order to maximize the benefits, we need to understand how birds move between feeders. Between June 2013 and August 2014, researchers in southern England employed radio-frequency-identification technology to find out. They equipped 452 Blue Tits and Great Tits, relatives of chickadees, with tiny transponders and placed receivers on 51 feeders. Each time a tagged bird visited a feeder, the receiver recorded the date and time as well as the identity of the bird. The results promise to help planners looking to improve their communities. The researchers write in the journal Scientific Reports…

When I reach my last day upon this planet, I hope I will greet a morning like this morning. Set in the familiar confines of our backyard. Washed clean by overnight rains. As still as a suspended breath. Nurtured by the sounds of the birds that have brought elevated meaning to my life since the age of seven. White-throated Sparrows, massing for their daily assault upon our feeders, fill the autumn air with their eardrum- piercing call notes. On whistling wings, Mourning Doves settle upon the leafless branches of the corner hackberry, resembling, in their upright posture, so many teardrops on a stick. In the distance, Canada Geese begin their morning gabble. The stillness and my heightened awareness confer elevated meaning upon this everyday sound. I’ve always loved the sound…

An older gentleman approached me at a recent Audubon chapter meeting. “Yep, I used to see plenty of them when I was a kid,” he said. “They hung around an old corn crib on our farm.” Sadly, I have heard similar comments throughout my home state of Minnesota over the past few years. The old gentleman was correct; there used to be a lot more Red-headed Woodpeckers. Since the 1960s, the species’ numbers have plummeted across most of its range. According to Minnesota Audubon, Red-headed Woodpeckers have declined almost 80 percent since the 1960s in Minnesota alone. They are also pretty much gone from our New England states, where, in the 1800s, a bounty was placed on the birds as they descended on, and cleaned out, farmers’ cherry orchards. Numerous…

TAITA THRUSH (Turdus helleri) A medium-size thrush with black head, white underparts, rufous flanks, and a bright red-orange bill and eye-ring, Taita Thrush is sometimes considered a subspecies of Olive Thrush (Turdus olivaceus), which has been a subject of frequent taxonomic revision over the last 40 years. The most recent came in August 2015, when analysis of mitochondrial DNA suggested that Taita Thrush should be accorded species rank. Both the eBird/Clements Checklist of Birds of the World and the IOC World Bird List include it as a full species. The IUCN Red List categorizes the bird as Critically Endangered because of its tiny range, only about 1.35 square miles. The world population is estimated to include only 930 adult birds. TAITA APALIS (Apalis fuscigularis) Many authors refer to blackish brownthroated…

Sometimes we are so busy looking at the differences between birds that we forget the similarities. Birds resemble each other in many ways. Perhaps none is as obvious as shape. This shouldn’t be surprising, since shape is critical to aerodynamics, and birds, from their first appearance in the fossil record, have shown adaptations for flight. The bodies of all flying birds are shaped like teardrops. The streamlining is achieved by specially arranged feathers that reduce the friction that would otherwise act as a drag against the forward-moving body. Look at a plucked bird the next time you get a chance. Its huge breast muscles would offer large blunt surfaces to onrushing air. When the feathers of the lower neck are in place, however, the same structure appears smooth and streamlined.…

Q I know it is important for birds to keep their feathers clean and to bathe regularly. How do birds in northern climates keep their feathers fresh if the water is frozen? — Mary Martin, Lafayette, Louisiana A If liquid water is unavailable, a number of species will bathe using snow. When the snow penetrates ruffled feathers, it melts, dampening the feathers. Birds then preen as they would after a water bath, cleaning their feathers and using oils from the preen gland for waterproofing. Birds use the same types of maneuvers in snow that they use when bathing in water — lowering the head and flicking the wings. I’ve read fascinating reports of Common Redpolls performing movements that seem to be derived from snow-bathing. The birds put their heads into…

Two of birding’s most celebrated records were broken in 2016: Neil Hayward’s 2013 mark for the most bird species identified in one year in the ABA Area, and Noah Strycker’s 2015 record for the most birds recorded around the world. According to the ABA, not one but four birders topped Hayward’s record of 749 species: Christian Hagenlocher, a high-school biology teacher from Seattle, Washington, recorded 750 species. Photographer Laura Keene, from Ohio, spotted 759. Author Olaf Danielson, of South Dakota, recorded 776. And John Weigel, an American living in Australia, finished with 780. The totals will likely change, since each birder listed two or three of a trio of species that the ABA hasn’t added to its checklist yet: Pine Flycatcher, Common Shelduck, and Common Vireo. The association will decide…

Spectacular colors, strange names, dramatic shapes! North American birders looking to expand their horizons to other continents invariably find a guide to Costa Rica’s birds in their hands. Field guides to the country’s birds are impossible to put down, the stuff of birders’ travel dreams, and the eye candy comes in three flavors. The first consists of familiar families with unfamiliar forms and names — raptors called Tiny Hawk and Ornate Hawk-Eagle. The second includes familiar families with smashingly unimagined color combinations — tanagers with names like Golden-hooded and Spangle-cheeked. And then there are the totally unfamiliar and exotic families with extraordinary and unexpected profiles. Nothing prepares the uninitiated for this third category. No family in the category captures the imagination like the Ramphastidae, the toucans. They have been called…

According to Breeding Bird Survey data, the Red-headed Woodpecker declined 2.6 percent per year between 1966 and 2005, or about 66 percent overall. Since the birds are not that difficult to find in some southern states, it’s safe to say declines have been greater across the Upper Midwest. Still, you have a good chance of seeing numbers of woodpeckers in season at these locations. NECEDAH NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE A 43,696-acre refuge that is home to the experimental eastern flock of Whooping Cranes as well as Red-headed Woodpeckers. In northern Juneau County, near Necedah, Wisconsin. CEDAR CREEK ECOSYSTEM SCIENCE RESERVE A 5,400-acre experimental ecological reserve about 30 miles north of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Cedar Creek is on private University of Minnesota land, but an oak-savanna nature trail is open…

Luring birds close is one reason to improve backyard habitat, add birdbaths, and set out feeders. Away from home, we may pish or, outside of the breeding season and without unduly disrupting birds, play recordings. This can maximize the number that we see but doesn’t give us a feeling for how birds behave when we’re not watching. At home or farther afield, I prefer to position myself where I expect, or hope, the birds will be naturally. Warblers and other Neotropical migrants gravitate to chickadee flocks as they pass through unfamiliar areas. When chickadees show up at my feeders in spring and fall, I park myself not by my feeders but by the back fence, where shrubs, trees, and vines provide food for insect- and fruit-eating birds. I’ve amassed a…