Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2021 i BirdWatching

The federal budget that was signed into law in late December included millions of dollars for conservation efforts for the Great Lakes, the Everglades, and other programs, including $66 million to help Greater Sage-Grouse. The law, however, disappointed conservationists because for the sixth consecutive year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will be restricted from pursuing endangered species listing and protections for the Greater Sage-Grouse. “It is deeply disappointing that Congress continues to include short-sighted directive that prohibits the Greater Sage-Grouse from being listed under the Endangered Species Act,” says Sarah Greenberger, interim chief conservation officer and a senior vice president at the National Audubon Society. “We hope the Biden-Harris administration will make it a priority to restore the historic multi-state agreement that remains the species’ best shot at recovery.”…

For me, there is nothing quite as exciting in bird photography as sitting in a photo blind and listening to the sweet sound of flowing water. When spring has sprung, I know that this beautiful sound will bring with it the birds I love to photograph the most. The arrival of spring in the United States also means the arrival of our Neotropical migrants as they return from south of the border. The color, beauty, and diversity of North America’s migrant passerines are hard to match. Our warblers, tanagers, orioles, thrushes, vireos, buntings, flycatchers, grosbeaks, and many others travel hundreds or thousands of miles from their southern wintering areas to their northern breeding grounds and then back again. During migration, they need important stopover areas to feed and rest so…

According to the online resource Birds of the World, Brown Wood-Rail is a “very poorly known species which has a restricted range and appears to have become extremely rare, at least in Ecuador, owing to extensive destruction of its mangrove habitats.” A 2011 paper in The Wilson Journal of Ornithology on the rail’s breeding behaviors notes that the species “is reclusive, hard to observe, and vocalizes infrequently; its basic biology remains poorly known.” The researchers, led by Tulane University ecologist Jordan Karubian, reported that the rails nested from February through April and laid about four eggs per nest. Two-thirds of 16 studied nests successfully produced young. A radio-tracked bird used a home range of 13.5 hectares (about 33 acres). On eBird, records of the bird at Poza Honda posted by…

Denizens of dense marshes, rails slip through low vegetation on foot, seldom flying. All have loud and distinctive voices but tend to call mainly at night. Few other birds are so elusive. Two small species, Virginia Rail and Sora, are widespread in marshes across North America. Both are fairly common, but they’re so adept at staying out of sight that most birders encounter them first by voice. Fortunately, recordings of the birds are readily available today online or in apps, making it easy to learn their calls. Also fortunately, these two common rails usually sound quite different. Sora typically gives a sharp keek, a plaintive, whistled surrr-eeee, or a descending whinny. Virginia Rail’s common calls include a metallic kik kidik kidik kidik and a descending, grunting series, wenk-wenk-wenk-wenk-wenk. It has…

kihei, hawaii20°47'41.07"N 156°27'58.46"W For birders, Hawaii is often a destination to see critically endangered endemic forest birds such as honeycreepers, but the 50th state is also home to several endangered waterbirds. On Maui, one of the best places to see these birds is Kealia Pond National Wildlife Refuge, one of the state’s top birding hotspots. Established in 1992 to protect Hawaiian waterbirds, Kealia Pond consists of approximately 700 acres, including one of the finest remaining natural wetlands in Hawaii. The refuge features two birding locations: the 2,200-foot Kealia Coastal Boardwalk and paths along levees around the Kanuimanu Aquaculture Ponds near the visitor center. The locations (both are eBird hotspots) are on opposite sides of Kealia Pond, and there is no easy way to walk between them. Kealia Pond is an…

Two studies published last September in the journal Science address the century-long riddle of why some birds, despite having a radically different forebrain organization than mammals, demonstrate comparable cognitive abilities. The studies report that a neuron-dense part of the avian brain, the pallium, may help birds achieve these cognitive feats, including conscious awareness. Instead of the hallmark layering found in the cerebral cortex of mammals, the pallium in birds is characterized by high neuron density. Using 3D-polarized light imaging and neural circuit tracing techniques, Martin Stacho of German’s Ruhr-University Bochum and colleagues characterized the anatomy of the pallium in pigeons and owls, which allowed them to visualize the region’s neuronal structure in great detail. Stacho discovered that the pallial fibers’ structure and circuitry in each of the distantly related bird…

If you enjoy birding podcasts, here’s one to look for on your podcast app of choice. Grouse is an eight-part series hosted by Ashley Ahearn, a public radio journalist who covers science, the environment, natural resources, and climate change. She dives into the story of the Greater Sage-Grouse and uses her personal journey — as an outsider trying to understand rural life — to serve as the proxy for listeners. She interviews stakeholders, including a state wildlife biologist, environmentalists, an oil industry executive, and an elder of the Northern Paiute Nation, about the bird to understand the current situation with this icon of the West.…

Paso Robles, California, the heart of Central Coast wine country, receives about 14 inches of rain per year, mostly in the winter. My in-laws’ 5-acre ranch lies on the east side of town, so, the dry side. Ten inches of rain per year constitutes desert conditions, and the region west of Paso approaches this. As of December 2020, Paso had not received a drop of rain since April, when 1.59 inches fell. It is dry, tinder-dry, and water in any form is hard to come by. The deer have taken to drinking from the drip lines supplying water drop by drop to the surrounding vineyards, whose soil seems to suck up every drop before it touches down. This is why the leaking outside spigot on my in-laws’ front lawn makes…

We were near a woodland clearing just before sundown when we heard the first buzzy peent. The distinct nasal tone assured us that a male American Woodcock was advertising his presence on his “singing ground,” and all females were welcome. Our hearts beat a little faster as we anticipated spectacular woodcock courtship. We weren’t disappointed. After more peents, the male sprang to the air, beginning his famous “sky-dance,” which has similarities to flight by an untrained pilot. The high, twisting flight can reach several hundred feet and is accompanied by a twittering sound produced by air passing through the very narrow outer three wing feathers (primaries). He then hovers, drifting in a circular motion still twittering, and finally descends with a cascading pattern like a falling leaf while picking up…

Last summer, we conducted our Color of Birds 2020 photo contest, inviting submissions to celebrate the amazing colors of the world’s birds. We received more than 725 entries — images of hummingbirds, macaws, warblers, flamingos, and other beautiful birds. On our website in December, we announced the finalists and honorable mention photos, and a week later, we presented the three winning images, which are shown on the following pages. Thanks to everyone who submitted photos! To see all of the finalists and honorable mention images, visit www.birdwatchingdaily.com/photography/featured-galleries. FIRST PLACE Bob Graham of Kingsville, Ontario, won first place with this photo of a male Orange-breasted Bunting. The species is endemic to western Mexico. Graham and his wife are retired and spend much of the year in Mexico. They were renting a house…

With help, nuthatch returns to Missouri Over the past few centuries, fire suppression and overharvesting greatly reduced Missouri’s open pine and mixed-pine woodlands. As the habitats dwindled, Brown-headed Nuthatch, Red-cockaded Woodpecker, and other pine-specialist species vanished from the state. In August and September of 2020, however, 46 Brown-headed Nuthatches found their way back — flown in on a Missouri Department of Conservation plane from neighboring Arkansas and released into Missouri’s Mark Twain National Forest. The translocation was necessary because pine woodlands are not continuous from Arkansas to Missouri and because the nuthatches are nonmigratory. Within the national forest, years of habitat restoration laid the groundwork for what conservationists hope will become a new breeding population there. Under the U.S. Forest Service’s Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, 10 years of funding…

In 1998, the Yellow-eared Parrot, an endemic species of the cloud forests of the central Andes, was on the brink of extinction, declining to about 80 birds in Colombia. Gonzalo Cardona Molina answered the call to help the bird and dedicated his life to the cause, despite the threat of violence between the military and guerrillas. “Gonza,” as he was known to friends and colleagues, worked for more than 20 years with Fundación ProAves as the coordinator of its Reserva Loros Andinos, conducting regular surveys of the parrots. In December 2020, he recorded 2,895 parrots in the municipality of Roncesvalles — approximately two-thirds of the bird’s global population. Sometime between January 8 and 10, 2021, Cardona Molina was shot and killed on the road to his home. His murder reinforced…

I’m waist-deep in water the color of over-steeped tea, feet sinking into the soft, sucking mud of the coastal Everglades. My wet, salty pants chafe miserably at the back of my legs. All around me stand red mangroves, aerial roots spreading out like the legs of some enormous spider. Stretched across a low branch just above the water is a mangrove salt marsh snake, warming itself in the morning’s first rays of sun. No car horns, no rumble of outboard motors, no sign or sounds of people at all, in fact; just the steady drone of insects and the rattling whinny of a Red-bellied Woodpecker. The contrail of a jet across the thin blue strip of sky above me is the only reminder that I’m here in present-day Florida, deep…

One bird’s distinctive voice punctuated the morning’s natural soundtrack. It sounded like a rubber ball dropped onto a hardwood floor: bop bop bop bop bop bop bop-bop-bopbopbopbopbop and a sometimes barely audible final ahhhhh, as if the bird expelled (or inhaled) one last segment of air. For weeks, I had wondered what bird made the unique sound — often quite close yet undetected by my novice eye. Orange-fronted Barbets often appeared at the same time, but they seemed mysteriously silent when foraging nearby. “What. IS. That. Bird?” I wondered. With childlike curiosity and a quest to learn about this protected tropical humid forest, I tuned into the surroundings that cocooned my home and began the task of identifying the new-to-me species. How did I start? Where did I start? One…

HOTSPOTS 309-310 IN THIS ISSUE, we’re featuring 700-acre Kealia Pond National Wildlife Refuge on the island of Maui and 138-acre Lake Park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The pond was first set aside as a wildlife refuge in 1953, before Hawaii was a state, and it joined the National Wildlife Refuge System in 1992. Lake Park, which is more than 130 years old, is one of the most frequently birded sites in Milwaukee, thanks to its diversity of habitats and the long list of bird species that pass through. I hope that these and all of our hotspot articles are useful as you look for places to bird and to travel to when the pandemic has eased (fingers crossed!). You can find the full list of 310 hotspots that we have profiled…

One spring morning a couple of decades ago, I heard horrible screeching and ran out to see a Cooper’s Hawk ripping into a still-alive robin on my neighbor’s back lawn. The robin was screaming, and his mate, facing the hawk head-on less than 3 feet away, screamed even louder until the hawk finally took off with its meal. So many years later, I still feel a visceral sorrow remembering that robin, who was no generic bird — he was my robin. For a few years running, from the day he arrived in March through mid-July, he’d sing from the spire of my big spruce tree. The dry spring that year delayed nest building. (Robins need wet mud to construct their nests.) Thanks to rain the day before, the nest, right…

A bright and contrasting flash of color on the rump is a prominent feature of many bird species and also a useful field mark. Yellow-rumped Warblers are distinguished from almost all other small songbirds by their contrasting yellow rump patch, and the White-rumped Sandpiper is among a small number of sandpiper species with white rumps, and so on. But the telltale flash of color from the rump feathers of these species can be completely hidden when the birds are perched. Understanding how and when these feathers are visible is critical to using these field marks with confidence. The rump feathers are body feathers — relatively short and normally shaped feathers growing from the lower back and (with other body feathers) forming a streamlined shell around the entire body. The wings…