Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2020 i BirdWatching

Nine adult California Condors were feared dead this fall, about a month after a wildfire ripped through the Big Sur Condor Sanctuary in central California. The birds have not been detected since the fire, and after the passage of several weeks, condor experts said their hope was diminishing. In addition, two wild-hatched nestlings died in the fire, and a third, despite surviving the fire, showed signs in late September that it wasn’t doing well. The bird, named “Iniko,” which was still in its nest in a redwood tree, did not beg for food from its mother when field biologists were watching. This is troubling because condor parents are triggered to feed their chicks by the chick’s begging. Further, “Iniko” was low in energy. The biologists considered attempting to rescue “Iniko,”…

The howling wind out of the northeast was at once haunting and comforting, a familiar reminder that late-spring weather along the Mid-Atlantic seaboard could soothe one day and threaten the next. Blanketing the overnight darkness with an envelope of sound, the volatile currents were nature’s cargo carriers for all forms of life from microbes to birds, large and small. The next day, with the winds still brisk and sunrays dancing on the blue water’s sparkling surface, an Osprey presented itself with startling surprise, hitting the lake with a wallop. I was familiar with the Nor’easter’s habit of delivering Ospreys and other birds of all kinds to the lake, but this time, distracted by my fixation on finding a pair of hawks that were displaced from a nearby haunt by the…

When I was asked to write a roundup of today’s best smartphone apps for birders, I had little idea what I was getting into. Sure, I had used eBird and iBird Pro and had heard of other apps, but that didn’t prepare me for the breadth of mobile birding tools available — or the remarkable capabilities of each. I quickly discovered that it’s an “app-eat-app” world out there. Several major apps that were popular only a few years ago have been consigned to the electronic dustbins of history. At the same time, talented programmers have created dozens of new birding tools that cater to almost every conceivable niche location and interest, from birding Central Park or Washington State to translating banding codes and quizzing yourself on species. Bottom line: Even…

My mother-in-law lived alone in the woods of northern Wisconsin until she was 93 years old. Despite knowing there were plenty of bears in the area, she couldn’t imagine giving up bird feeding, and so even in the final year before she came to live with us, from early spring through late autumn, every night she lugged her bird feeders into her garage, and every morning she dragged them back out. Her system worked against nighttime bear visits, but bears aren’t strictly nocturnal. Fortunately, they are timid. When she noticed one in daytime, she opened the door and yelled, and the bear sauntered off. If I was there, I took photos first. Most bears left the moment they saw me, but some posed for a bit, perhaps figuring birdseed was…

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In mid-September, a mass die-off of migratory birds in New Mexico and other western states occurred as wildfires were raging across the West. One expert said hundreds of thousands of birds may have died. Many suspected that smoke from the fires may have contributed to their deaths, but an article published on the American Birding Association’s website pointed to a lack of food and hypothermia as the likely cause. The writer, Jenna McCullough, a PhD ornithology student at the University of New Mexico, noted that a severe early-September windstorm dropped temperatures from the mid-90s to 40°F and brought several inches of heavy wet snow. When the die-off made news, she and a fellow grad student collected hundreds of carcasses and found that “none had fat stores on their bodies. Furthermore,…

In early August, the American Ornithological Society said it was renaming McCown’s Longspur as Thick-billed Longspur. The new name refers to a physical feature of the bird that distinguishes it from other longspurs. The change does away with a name that honored John P. McCown, a naturalist who was the only individual who had a bird named in his honor and also served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. The move by AOS was made in the midst of a larger push to have all bird species named after people renamed. The “Bird Names for Birds” movement, which has gathered a few thousand signatures on a petition calling for the changing of all honorific names, is itself part of the larger societal reckoning with long-standing racist symbols and…

Having indentured much of my life to seining distant raptors out of the ozone, or “dot watching,” as wife Linda calls it, I thought I’d treat readers to the sum of my knowledge (i.e., a crash course in the detection of high-flying raptors). Many birders, steeped in the tradition of spotting birds with the naked eye and then studying their subject with binoculars, are ill-equipped to enter the hawk-watching arena, where most birds are spotted, even identified, before they are close enough to see without optics. So, start with good optics, ones that will offer restful long-term viewing. Magnification, I find, is not a crucial determinant, although some hawk watchers swear by 10x. Me, I typically use 7x or 8x and find them easier on my eyes. Ergonomics are key.…

BY the mid-1970s, only four Mauritius Kestrels remained in the wild, and many scientists had given them up for dead. Not Carl Jones, however. The Welsh biologist arrived on Mauritius, a tropical island in the Indian Ocean, determined to save the species at all costs. Employing a suite of innovative techniques, from artificial insemination to supplemental feeding, he was able to boost the population back into the hundreds, where it persists to this day. Several other bird species have likewise rebounded after being reduced to just a few individuals, including the California Condor, Whooping Crane, Laysan Duck, Crested Ibis, Black Robin, and Seychelles Magpie-Robin. Jones himself saved four additional species endemic to the country of Mauritius: the Pink Pigeon, Echo Parakeet, Rodrigues Fody, and Rodrigues Warbler, each of which had…

THE LINE OF cliffs shown in the photo above is Precambrian Sioux Quartzite bedrock that lies within Blue Mounds State Park in southwestern Minnesota. The park is named for the roughly 100-foot-high cliffs because they are said to have appeared blueish in the distance to early settlers. The park also preserves a 1,250-foot-long line of rocks aligned by Indigenous people. It marks where the sun rises and sets on the spring and fall equinoxes. More than 220 bird species have been recorded at the park, giving it one of the highest checklist totals in the region. It is a meeting place of both Western and Eastern Meadowlarks, and Blue Grosbeak breeds here — near the northern edge of its range. Learn all about the park on the following page. HOTSPOTS…

• Profiles of birdwatchers who make a difference For the last couple of years, a movement has been building to help people with mobility challenges gain better access to the outdoors, specifically for birding. It all started thanks to Virginia Rose of Austin, Texas, a retired high school and college English teacher. When Rose was 14, she broke her back in a horse-riding accident. She has used a wheelchair ever since. One of her grandmothers was a birdwatcher, and when she died, she left Rose her Peterson guide, with her numerous and treasured pencil markings. Rose herself caught the birding bug in 2003 after attending a presentation about the House Finch given by her local Travis Audubon Society. She joined the group and “took all their birding classes and went…

Many birds have white patches in their tails, and the shapes of those white patches can be a very useful identification clue. But they look different from above and from below, and they change dramatically as the tail opens and closes. Understanding the mechanics of the tail and the arrangement of the tail feathers is the key to understanding the changing appearance of these white patches. The tail is essentially a fan, with long, straight feathers in pairs left and right. When the tail is open, the feathers fan out to form a wide triangle. When the tail is closed, the feathers stack on top of each other (roughly in left and right stacks); the outermost feathers slide under to form the bottom of each stack, and the central tail…

New leader driven by passion for birds Adrian Torres is the director of conservation and development for Asociación Ecosistemas Andinos (ECOAN) in Peru. Hired in 2019 with support from ABC, Adrian started his path to this role long ago. Constantino Aucca (known as Tino), president of ECOAN, fondly recalls meeting Adrian when he was just 11 years old, accompanying his grandparents when they sold ECOAN the first parcel of what is now the Abra Patricia Private Conservation Area. These days, 15 years later, Abra Patricia is an 8,226-acre cloud forest reserve in northern Peru protecting the Long-whiskered Owlet and many other endemic species. As a child, Adrian enjoyed exploring nature and drawing or painting what he saw. He made his way to Lima, where he obtained a bachelor’s in biology…

Ricky Olson of Fort Pierre, South Dakota, got a big surprise on Sunday, September 20, when he saw this Painted Redstart bathing in a fountain in his yard. The bird, also known as Painted Whitestart, returned a few times the next day but wasn’t seen after that. It was a first record for South Dakota. The species breeds from central Arizona and New Mexico south into Mexico and from the Big Bend area of Texas to east-central Mexico. Olson’s visitor was at least 725 miles northwest of its typical range.…

In 2004, BBC correspondent Frank Gardner was on assignment in Saudi Arabia when he was shot six times by al-Qaeda terrorists and left for dead. Gardner’s cameraman was killed in the ambush, and Gardner ended up paralyzed from the waist down. After 14 operations and almost a year in the hospital, Gardner returned to work. But not from behind a desk. He has been embedded at least four times with the military in Afghanistan and traveled widely, reporting from Colombia and Borneo to the Arctic and Malaysia. Just as significantly, his injuries didn’t stop him pursuing a “childhood dream” in 2016, when he set out to see at least one species of bird-of-paradise in the wild. “I ski and scuba dive,” says Gardner, 59, “But the one country I’ve always wanted to go to, one of the…

Often called “the extinction capital of the world,” Hawaii has experienced far more avian loss than the other 49 states combined. Using the fossil record, scientists have identified at least 71 species and subspecies of forest birds — along with several duck, goose, rail, and flightless ibis species — that disappeared following the arrival of the Polynesians 800 to 1,400 years ago. Some were likely hunted directly, scientists believe, whereas others were done in by habitat degradation or by the rats, pigs, and dogs that the Polynesians brought with them. Once Europeans arrived in 1778, a second wave of destruction commenced, leading to 24 additional bird extinctions (plus the unceremonious overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy). In addition to accelerating habitat loss, Europeans and Americans introduced new and deadly avian predators,…

I was 11 years old, a wildly avid birder, eager to find everything I could. On a cold December morning, I walked into a grove of evergreens in a Kansas park a few miles from my parents’ house. Search as I might, I could find only a single bird in that grove, alone but beautiful: a Townsend’s Solitaire. The name “solitaire” is singularly appropriate. While other species of thrush often form flocks (and the flocks of robins or bluebirds may be very large), solitaires seldom gather in groups of any kind. In fact, their aggressively solitary nature is noticeable at all seasons, and it’s one of the best-studied aspects of their behavior. On their normal winter range in the West, the overwhelming majority of Townsend’s Solitaires spend the season in…

Waterfowl are among the best-known and most fascinating birds. They vary widely from the large, elegant swans to the small, colorful teal. Spectacular flights of waterfowl in both spring and fall are awe-inspiring. And for many, skeins of Canada Geese are the true harbingers of spring. The birds are widely distributed, occurring on all continents except Antarctica, although they’re present on some subantarctic islands. While some species utilize uplands, most are associated with aquatic habitats, including marshes, ponds, potholes, lakes, and rivers. Waterfowl belong to a single family (Anatidae) and are divided into two main groups: geese, swans, and whistling-ducks (subfamily Anserinae) and true ducks (subfamily Anatinae). They are further divided into tribes. Geese, swans, and whistling-ducks are placed in three separate tribes, while true ducks are divided into four…