Biological Ramblings

Gulls, Part 1

2011-01-28T11:00:00.006-05:00

The word “gull” probably has the ability to elicit the widest range of emotion among birders and non-birders alike of any bird name. To some birders, “gull” means woe and misery, but to others, it means joy and excitement. To the average non-birder, gulls, or “seagulls,” are a nuisance, “flying rats” that steal food at picnics and eat garbage at the dump. It's also probably one of the few groups that has some of the most sought-after rarities, along with some of the most common “trash” birds.

But, what is a gull? Gulls are part of the order Charadriiformes. Within this large, diverse order, the gulls (part of the family Laridae) are part of the suborder Lari. The Laridae is sister to the skuas/jaegers (Stercorariidae) and the auks (Alcidae). These families are in turn sister to the Crab Plover (Dromadidae) and coursers/pratincoles (Glareolidae). In the Lari, the button quail (Turnicidae) are sister to the rest of the group (Baker et al. 2007, Pereira and Baker 2010).

Hueglin's (Three-banded) Courser (Rhinoptilus cinctus) (Source: Wikipedia)

Within the family Laridae, the gulls are related to the terns and skimmers. While the exact relationships of the gulls relative to the terns and skimmers has not been completely resolved, a recent in depth phylogeny shows the gulls as sister to skimmers, which are in turn sister to most of the terns (Baker et al. 2007). In this study, the noddies (Anous) and white terns (Gygis) fall outside of the “tern” clade, and are sister to the entire group of gulls, terns and skimmers. Other recent studies have found conflicting results to Baker et al. (2007), instead finding the terns as sister to the skimmers, which are then in turn sister to the gulls (Fain et al. 2007), or with the gulls and terns as sister, which are then in turn sister to the skimmers (Ericson et al. 2003). In a phylogenetic study of the terns, Bridge et al. (2005) found the terns to compose a monophyletic group. However, this may not reflect the true phylogeny, as the outgroup (Ring-billed Gull) may have been forced, forcing a monophyletic Sterninae (more on tern phylogeny in another post).

Brown Noddy (Anous stolidus) (Source: Wikipedia)

Long-tailed Jaeger (Stercorarius longicauda), June 2009, Churchill, MB (photo by Jay McGowan)

Parasitic Jaeger (Stercorarius parasiticus), July 2010, Churchill, MB (photo by Andy Johnson)

Within the Laridae, the species level relationships have not been well-resolved. However, the phylogeny been found to consist of several well-supported clades, which renders the traditional Larus (sensu lato) paraphyletic with respect to several of the long-held “unique” genera. This has left two main options, 1) place all gulls in the genus Larus, losing the long recognized unique genera of Rissa, Pagophila, Xema, and Rhodostethia, or 2) break up the traditional Larus. Based largely on the phylogeny of Pons et al. (2005), the AOU and other organizations chose the later, and split up the large and bulky genus Larus into several smaller, distinct genera.

While sampling is not extensive, Baker et al. (2007) recovered different results from Pons et al. (2005) with respect to basal relationships. Baker et al. (2007) found that the Swallow-tailed Gull was sister to Ross’s Gull, which were in turn sister to a clade that includes Sabine’s Gull, Ivory Gull, the kittiwakes, and Larus.

I’ll briefly go through the main highlights (using the “new” genera) of Pons et al. (2005), moving from most basal to most derived.

Figure 1 from Pons et al (2005) showing the phylogeny of the gulls based on mitochondrial DNA sequence data. Note the old names are used in the figure. Click on the figure to make it larger.

Swallow-tailed Gull (Creagrus furcatus) (Source: Wikipedia)

Mixed flock containing Bonaparte's Gulls (Chroicocephalus philadelphia), Sabine's Gulls (Xema sabini), and Little Gulls (Hydrocoloeus minuta), June 2009, Churchill, MB (photo by Jay McGowan)

Mixed flock, including Brown-hooded Gulls (Chroicocephalus maculipennis), Franklin's Gulls (Leucophaeus pipixcan), and Kelp Gulls, January 2010, Chiloe, Chile (Larus dominicanus)

Ross's Gull (Rhodostethia rosea), with a Bonaparte's Gull, June 2008, Churchill, MB (photo by Jay McGowan)

Creagrus – 1 species, Swallow-tailed Gull (C. furcatus), endemic to the Galapagos. A truly unique gull, and partly nocturnal, it spends much of its time far from land. The Swallow-tailed Gull has been found to be sister to the rest of the gulls.
Rissa – 2 species, Red-legged (R. brevirostris) and Black-legged Kittiwakes (R. tridactyla). Both species are colonial nesters, nesting along cliff and rock ledges. The Black-legged Kittiwake is widespread, while the Red-legged Kittiwake is restricted to the Bering Sea. Both are largely pelagic during the non-breeding period. The two kittiwakes are sister-species and are in turn sister to two other species, the Sabine's Gull (Xema sabini) and Ivory Gull (Pagophila eburnea)
Xema – 1 species, Sabine’s Gull (X. sabini), a gull breeding in the arctic and sub-arctic, and spending the non-breeding period far from shore. A striking gull, it’s forked tail and bold wing pattern make it stunning bird in all plumages. The Sabine's Gull is sister to the Ivory Gull.
Pagophila – 1 species, Ivory Gull (P. eburnea), a gull that spends nearly its entire life in the arctic and along the edges of the pack ice of the far north, this beautiful species is a much sought after species of southern latitudes, and may be suffering due to changes to its Arctic habitat due to global climate change. The Ivory Gull is sister to the Sabine's Gull, which are in turn sister to the kittiwakes.
Chroicocephalus – 11 species. This is a well-supported clade of relatively small, mostly hooded gulls. The North American boreal breeder, Bonaparte’s Gull (C. philadelphia) is sister to Slender-billed Gull (C. genei). These two species are sister to the rest of the genus. The remaining Chroicocephalus form a weakly-supported clade, to which Andean Gull (C. serranus) is basal. The Brown-hooded Gull (C. maculipennis) is sister to the remaining members of the clade. Within this clade, Hartlaub’s Gull (C. hartlaubii) is sister to Grey-hooded Gull (C. cirrocephalus). These two species are sister to Black-headed Gull (C. ridibundus) and (C. brunnicephalus). These four species are in turn sister to a group of three Australasian gulls, with Black-billed Gull (C. bulleri) being most closely related to the Red-billed Gull (C. scopulinus) and Silver Gull (C. novaehollandiae).
Saundersilarus – 1 species, the Saunder’s Gull (S. saundersi), is found only in East Asia, where it is threatened with habitat destruction. This species is not closely related to any other gull, and its relative position in the phylogeny is not well-resolved, possibly due to its long branch on the tree.
Rhodostethia – 1 species, the Ross’s Gull (R. rosea), is a breeder in Arctic Russia, Canada, and Greenland, is a sought after bird when it ventures to southern latitudes. This species put Churchill, Manitoba on the map in terms of birding, as the most accessible location in the world to see this bird on its breeding grounds. While no longer reliable (seen in June 2008 once, and not at all in 2009 or 2010 while I was in Churchill), many people still travel there every June hoping to see this beautiful gull. Pons et al. (2005) proposed to lump Rhodostethia into Hydrocoloeus based on strong genetic and morphological support. While it has been accepted that Ross’s and Little Gulls are sister species, the AOU chose to retain Ross’s Gull in its own monophyletic genus. The Ross's Gull is sister to the Little Gull. However, the relative position of these two species with respect to the rest of the phylogeny of gulls is not well-supported.
Hydrocoloeus – 1 species, the Little Gull (H. minutus), is fairly widespread in Eurasia, and breeds in small pockets in North America. This bird is sister to Ross’s Gull (Rhodostethia rosea), and shares a suite of morphological and behavioral characters.
Leucophaeus – 5 species; an entirely New World group of gulls. This clade appears to be sister to the remaining two genera of gulls, the Ichthyaetus and Larus. Within the genus, the Grey Gull (L. modestus) is sister to the bizarre and intriguing Dolphin Gull (L. scoresbii). These two South American species are sister to the remaining three species, with Franklin’s Gull (L. pipixcan) being most closely related to the Lava Gull (L. fuliginosus) of the Galapagos, which are in turn sister to the Laughing Gull (L. atricilla).
Ichthyaetus – 6 species; an entirely Old World radiation of gulls. This clade is sister to the large and confusingly specious Larus. None of the relationships within this group are well resolved. The topography within Pons et al. (2005) places the Mediterranean Gull (I. melanocephalus) as sister to the rest of the genus, which includes Audouin’s Gull (I. audouinii), Relict Gull (I. relictus), White-eyed Gull (I. leucophthalmus), Great Black-headed Gull (I. ichthyaetus), and Sooty Gull (I. hemprichii).
Larus - the rest... the dreaded “large, white-headed” gulls (LWHG) of the genus Larus. Within the genus Larus, the “black-tailed” gulls, which includes Belcher’s Gull (L. belcheri) and Black-tailed Gull (L. crassirostris), form a distinct clade that is sister to the remaining LWHG. The rest of the juicy details about this messy genus will be coming in later posts.

Black-legged Kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla), June 2008, Churchill, MB (photo by Jay McGowan)

Ivory Gull, February 2010, Rouses Point, NY (Pagophila eburnea)

Mixed flock containing Bonaparte's Gulls (Chroicocephalus philadelphia) and Sabine's Gulls (Xema sabini), June 2009, Churchill, MB (photo by Jay McGowan)

Mediterranean Gull (Ichthyaetus melanocephalus) (Source: Wikipedia)

And, finally, here is a taste of what is to come...

Heermann's Gull (Larus heermanni), September 2009, Pacifica, CA

Thayer's Gulls (Larus thayeri), June 2009, Churchill, MB (see this post for more on these Thayer's Gulls and other gulls of Churchill)

Glaucous Gull (Larus hyperboreus), with Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus), June 2009, Churchill, MB

References:

Baker, A.J., S.L. Pereira, T.A. Paton. 2007. Phylogenetic relationships and divergence times of Charadriiformes genera: multigene evidence for the Cretaceous origin of at least 14 clades of shorebirds. Biology Letters 3: 205-207

Bridge, E.S., A.W. Jones, A.J. Baker. 2005. A phylogenetic framework for the terns (Sternini) inferred from mtDNA sequences: implications for taxonomy and plumage evolution. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 35: 459-469

Ericson, P.G.P., I. Envall, M. Irestedt, J.A. Norman. 2003. Inter-familial relationships of the shorebirds (Aves: Charadriiformes) based on nuclear DNA sequence data. BMC Evolutionary Biology 3(16)

Fain, M.G. and P. Houde. 2007. Multilocus perspectives on the monophyly and phylogeny of the order Charadriiformes (Aves). BMC Evolutionary Biology 7(35)

Pereira, S.L and A.J. Baker. 2010. The enigmatic monotypic crab plover Dromas ardeola is closely related to pratincoles and coursers (Aves, Charadriiformes, Glareolidae). Genetics and Molecular Biology 33(3) 583-586

Pons, J.M., A. Hassani, P.A. Crochet. 2005. Phylogenetic relationships within the Laridae (Charadriiformes: Aves) inferred from mitochondria markers. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 37: 686-699

What is that annoying buzzing sound?

2010-12-23T18:30:00.000-05:00

After a period of dormancy on the blog, I finally have a little bit of time to write a few more posts. This is one of the last of the Churchill posts, and hopefully soon I'll be able to write about some new topics.

No recount of fieldwork in Churchill, Manitoba can be complete without some horror story of the bugs. While I was lucky during the 2009 season with abnormally cool temperatures, no such luck was had during the 2010 season. The mosquito density was just unreal. No amount of bug spray can protect you... I've been told that insect repellent does make a dent in the mosquitoes trying to bite you... instead of 5,000 mosquitoes trying to bite you, bug spray makes it so that a mere 3,000 are attacking you. In the end, the people who work in Churchill just don't find poisoning themselves with bug spray worth it. On the bright side, there are no diseases that mosquitoes carry in the far north!

During field work, we would have to be completely covered from head to toe. This involved wearing head nets, long sleeves, and, most importantly, gloves. Thin gloves were essential, especially when we had to take field notes. In addition, when dealing with blackflies, it was extremely important to tuck pants into socks, gloves into sleeves, and shirts into pants, since blackflies crawl into tight spaces and will find their way into the tiniest hole to bite you. When all covered and prepared, I usually avoided mosquito bites in the field completely. I usually ended up getting more bites in the Study Centre or in the car.

Now, words can only do so much to describe the bug density. For the rest, I will let my pictures show the horror.

A large flock of mosquitoes.

Gloves are important.

Mosquito carnage. In the top image, I got 72 in one swat of my hand. I can't remember how many we got in our field notebook, but it was well over 100.

Yours truly, doing veg surveys, with a small cloud of mosquitoes around my head.

A truly scary cloud of mosquitoes. Click on the image to zoom in to see all the mosquitoes that are a bit farther away.

The next few photos are from Jay McGowan, who I spent 2009 field season with. His pictures truly capture the insect abundance.

Mosquitoes like dark colors. Zoom in on this picture to see how many are really there. It's unreal. (photo by Jay McGowan)

I think this may be one of the signs of the Apocalypse... "and the Lord sent forth a cloud, and the sky was darkened with mosquito" (photo by Jay McGowan)

The following video is from the 2010 field season on one of the more buggy nights. Listen with sound...

Bird species discovery odds and ends

2010-12-14T06:00:00.011-05:00

Here are a couple more neat graphs about the rate of discovery of new bird species that I couldn't fit well into my previous two posts about the subject (10,000 birds? Part 1 and Part 2).

In Part 1 I briefly introduced the species accumulation curve as a means of comparison of rates of discovery between different groups. Here, I wanted to parse apart any broad-scale patterns in the bird data. I started by splitting the birds into their two broadest groupings - passerines (5927 species) and non-passerines (4100 species) - and then I split passerines again into two more broad classes - oscines (4668 species) and suboscines (1259 species). These new species accumulation curves are plotted against the overall bird curve (in black):

(click to enlarge)

The non-passerine curve falls generally to the left of the passerines and birds overall, indicating that non-passerines were generally described earlier than passerines and fewer non-passerines have remained undescribed until recently. The passerine, oscine, and suboscine curves are generally similar in slope and position, although suboscines lag in the last 100 years or so. The suboscine curve is also the only one with a noticeable uptick - a bunch of new species described - in the last few decades.

Those who know me when I get into projects like this know I like to take things to ridiculous excess. In this case, I decided to investigate family-level patterns of description. To get fairly smooth accumulation curves requires a fairly large number of taxa, so I picked the bird families recognized by Birdlife that contain more than 150 species. These twenty families are:

Family name	Species
Tyrannidae	414
Psittacidae	374
Trochilidae	337
Timaliidae	326
Columbidae	318
Emberizidae	313
Sylviidae	293
Muscicapidae	286
Thraupidae	256
Furnariidae	241
Accipitridae	238
Picidae	218
Thamnophilidae	218
Strigidae	186
Phasianidae	181
Meliphagidae	177
Fringillidae	177
Turdidae	173
Anatidae	164
Rallidae	156

And their species accumulation curves, plotted against the all-bird curve in black:

(click to enlarge)

I don't expect anyone to actually tease apart that rainbow coalition of squiggles in detail, especially because they form such a tight column of similarly-sloped curves. That in itself is a pretty neat result - the family-level differences aren't as noticeable as I thought they would be, and teasing them apart in detail is fairly pointless. There are, however, two curves that stand apart from the rest.

On the far left in pale blue is Anatidae. 50% of the currently known ducks were described by 1800, decades before any other family, and 90% were described by 1870. Ducks are big, obvious birds with common interaction with humans (in the form of hunting) and often bold, distinct male plumages in each species. It is thus not surprising that ducks were described comparatively early in history and very few new species have been described in the last 100 years.

In contrast, on the right side of the curves, the pale reddish curve for Strigidae falls below the others in the last 100 years or so. The slope is pretty similar to the other curves for this time period, so I don't think the overall rate of discovery in owls is much lower. Instead, the curve is displaced lower by the flush of new species described in the last few decades - remember in my last post that owls had the highest number of new species described of any family since 1942.

That's all I have for now - have fun staring at those colorful squiggles.

10000 birds? Part 2

2010-12-13T04:00:00.002-05:00

In Part 1, I looked at the history of bird species discovery, and found that new bird species have been described at a fairly steady rate of an average 4.9 species per year since the 1940s. Here, I'll review what species have been discovered since the 1940s, where they are found, and why it took so long to find them.

From 1942 until 2008, 330 species encompassing 76 families and 213 genera were described:

(note: I accidently included 1 2009 datapoint, but 2009 is incomplete and more than 1 were described that year)

Among the top families, five (Tyrannidae - tyrant flycatchers, Thamnophilidae -antbirds, Furnariidae - ovenbirds, Rhinocryptidae - tapaculos, Formicariidae - anthrushs) represent the diverse suboscine lineages of South America. Two other top families (Sylviidae - old world warbles and Timaliidae - babblers) are similarly diverse lineages from the old world (I don't think Birdlife carves up these families into smaller groups as other checklists do in the last few years). My gut impression before seeing this data was that these two broad groups of birds would be the leaders for multiple reasons - they compose many of the species I could remember seeing described in the last few years, they contain many cryptic groups and are receiving active taxonomic treatment with new input from DNA and song, and they are found in the tropical areas of the world still receiving new exploration and documentation of fauna. However, the winner in the family category by a large margin was a surprise for me: Strigidae (owls). It makes sense that cryptic nocturnal birds would contain a lot of previously undocumented diversity, but I was surprised at the scale. The top genera track the top families as expected (Glaucidium - Pygmy-Owls, Otus - Scops-Owls, Scytalopus - Tapaculos, Grallaria - Antpittas, Phylloscartes - Tyrannulets, etc).

There are a myriad of historical and unquantifiable reasons that bird species persist until the present day undiscovered or unrecognized by science. However, I made several simple, straightforward predictions about recently discovered species that can be quantified and tested:

1) New species are likely to be found in underexplored tropical countries
2) New species are likely to be single-country endemics
3) New species are likely to have small ranges
4) New species are likely to have small populations and thus more likely to be endangered

Using Birdlife International's online database, I was able to extract relevant bits of information regarding these new species - where they are found, whether they are country endemics, their estimated range size, and their Birdlife conservation status. I tested my predictions by comparing the species described from 1942-2008 with random samples of species described earlier in history: 100 species described by Linnaeus in 1758 and 200 described in the 1840's-1860's.

1) New species are likely to be found in underexplored tropical countries

Here is a summary of where the new species (1942-2008) are found. The first column is overall country listings, which sums to well over 330 because of species ranging across many countries. The second column of results is for single-country endemic species.

As expected, the South American and Southeast Asian tropics top both lists, with Peru and Brazil leading both categories by a good margin.

2) New species are likely to be single-country endemics

I didn't tally the country-by-country data for my 1758 and 1800's sample groups, because so many of them span a huge range of countries. This difference is apparent when you compare the proportion of single-country endemics for each category:

6% of species described in 1758 are found in a single country
24% of species described in the 1840s-1860s are found in a single country
72% of species describe 1942-2008 are found within a single country

This confirms that recently described species are more likely to be restricted to within a single country, and are thus easier to overlook, than those species described earlier in history.

3) New species are likely to have small ranges

I binned the Birdlife range size data by order of magnitude for each of the three time periods and calculated the proportion of the sample in each:

(click to enlarge)

The species described by Linnaeus in 1758 (blue bars) are overwhelmingly species with huge ranges in the millions of square kilometers. Species described in the mid-1800's still have ranges mostly in the hundreds of thousands to millions of square kilometers, but there is a wider distribution of species among the size classes.

For new species described 1942-2008, the distribution among size classes is much wider than in the other time periods. Less than 4% of these species have ranges in the millions of square kilometers - these include species like Cryptic Forest Falcon (Micrastur mintoni) and Amazonian Pygmy-Owl (Glaucidium hardyi) which have large Amazonian ranges. The largest proportion of new species have ranges sizes that are fairly small - 1000s to tens of thousands of square kilometers.

The most stunning category is for range sizes of less than 100 square kilometers - an area only 5 times bigger than my hometown of North Tonawanda, NY. 12.5% of new species (32 total) fall into this category, with some absurdly small known ranges. Four species have a known range of less than ten square kilometers - Munchique Wood-Wren (Henicorhina negreti, 8 sq. km), Poo-uli (Melamprosops phaeosoma, 3 sq. km), Calayan Rail (Gallirallus calayanensis, 2 sq. km), and Bugun Liocichla (Liocichla bugunorum, 2 sq. km). Words fail me in trying to describe how mind-boggling, fascinating yet even heart-breaking it is to see species with ranges like this. The only species with ranges this small in the other categories are a fruit-dove and a honeyeater described in the mid 1800s from tiny South Pacific islands with range sizes around 25-50 sq. km.

4) New species are likely to have small populations and thus are more likely to be endangered

I wasn't able to easily pull data on population sizes for a large range of species from the Birdlife database, so instead I used a proxy - Birdlife conservation status. I calculated the proportion of species from each time period that fall into the six Birdlife categories:

DD = Data Deficient
LC = Least Concern
NT = Near Threatened
VU = Vulnerable
EN = Endangered
CR = Critically Endangered

(click to enlarge)

Just as the 1758 and mid-1800s samples were overwhelming skewed towards species with large range sizes, these categories are both over 80% composed of species ranked Least Concern. Only one of the 1758 species (Bald Ibis, Geronticus eremita) and one of the 1800s species (Cuban Kite, Chondrohierax wilsonii) are recognized as Critically Endangered. A plurality of the new species are Least Concern, but there is a very wide distribution of rankings, with 8.5% (28 species) being Critically Endangered.

Well, that about covers it. If you weren't keeping a running tally, all of my predictions were validated by the data! While I love playing with this data and learning more about the patterns of discovery of new species, I realized in the end that these findings are rather disturbing. A depressingly large proportion of bird species that have remained unknown to science until recently have very tiny ranges and are endangered. In this era of exceptional environmental destruction, how many more species like these have slipped away into extinction unnoticed? That is a number we can never know.

10,000 Birds?

2010-12-12T08:00:00.002-05:00

"You think you know every bird in the world, and then someone shows you a Curl-crested Aracari"

David Quammen, The Song of the Dodo

An oft-cited figure for the diversity of birds in the world is around 10,000 living species, a reasonable rule of thumb although estimates vary - Birdlife International currently recognizes 10,027 while the IOC list is currently at 10,396. Duncan Wright says the number should be closer to 12,000 if recently extinct birds are included (and he also coincidentally begins with a David Quammen quote). Pinning down an exact number is an impossibility because differing opinions on species limits in species and subspecies complexes create a near-infinite number of list permutations. Pinning down a number is also impossible because the bar keeps getting raised by the new bird species discovered every year.

New species of bird often receive a small splash of press when discovered or described, because birds are regarded as an exceptionally well described group of vertebrates and we've long reached the point where new birds are few in number. Additionally, the hunt for new species has been romanticized in such good reads as A Parrot Without A Name or this more recent Birding article (pdf) by Joseph Tobias. Tobias quotes Mayr (1946) as proclaiming the general end of new bird discovery - “I doubt that in the entire world even as many as 100 new species remain to be discovered” - but states that a yearly trickle of new species have been described since then. Just how many new birds are discovered every year? How much has the trickle of new birds declined? How many new birds are left to discover?

I can't answer the last question, but I can find data for the first two. It is a logistical nightmare to track down this data by finding every new species description in the primary literature. Instead, I picked a world checklist to find what I needed. The formal way to list species in literature includes a citation for the description of the species, such as Puffinus griseus (Gmelin 1789). By using these dates, you can quickly extract the year by year data for species descriptions. This method also only counts newly described species, not splits through the elevation of previously recognized subspecies.

The only quickly downloadable checklist I found with data like this is Birdlife International's checklist, so I used their most recent version (v3, June 2010) and plotted out the data. Here is the number of new bird species described each year, beginning in 1758 with Linnaeus and ending in 2008 (the Birdlife checklist is incomplete for new species in 2009 and 2010):

(click to enlarge)

The early decades show relative inactivity in bird taxonomy punctuated by massive monographs (like the 400+ that Linnaeus described in one work). The golden age of bird taxonomy peaks in the mid-1800's, with several decades of 50+ species described every year. The number of new birds described then generally declines to the present day.

Another way to present this data - the most useful for comparison - is to create a species accumulation curve. This represents, for each year, what percentage of the total number of known species was described at that point. This allows you to examine what those small numbers of new species each year mean in the context of the total number of known bird species. The slope of the curve is a proxy for the rate of discovery of new species, and you can easily eyeball the differences in slope representing different rates of species description over time.

Here is the species accumulation curve for birds:

(click to enlarge)

This represents a typical curve for a well-described fauna - the middle range is steepest, and the curve plateaus as new species become increasing hard to find. Compare the curve for birds with that of a very different fauna, another favorite of mine, geckos:

(click to enlarge)

In stark contrast to birds, the rate of discovery of geckos has only accelerated through time, and the last few years have seen the highest yearly rates of gecko discovery ever - but that's another post. The point is that geckos are a representative of an under-described group with lots of new species to be found and taxonomic description left to be done. Birds are comparatively well-described and have relatively little left to be found.

We can estimate how little is left to be found by studying the decline in new species found. So how about that decline? Zooming in to the last 120 years, we get this:

(click to enlarge)

At about the time Mayr proclaimed the end of bird discovery in the 1940s, the overall rate of description of new birds had been trending steeply downward for decades. After the rate reached rock bottom - 1941 is the last year with more than ten bird species described - there is indeed a steady trickle of new species every year, averaging 4.9 species per year and varying from zero (in 1954 and 1978) to ten (1960, 1974, 1997) new birds yearly.

However, this trickle does not seem to show any sign of stopping, even decades after Mayr's prediction. In fact, if you take just the data from 1942-2008, look at the general trend line:

(click to enlarge)

That's right, that is a (very weakly supported) POSITIVE trend line for the discovery of new species in the last seven decades. Given the overall wide variance in discovery from year to year in these decades, I double-checked this trend my making a moving ten-year average of new birds per year:

(click to enlarge)

This is a really fascinating result! Despite the fact that the overall description rate of birds has plummeted and won't ever get back up to the rate it was 100 years ago, discovery of new birds has stabilized and shows no signs of slowing since the 1940's. That means that, while the species accumulation curve has plateaued, it is not exactly drifting towards zero and the total number of remaining bird species can't be extrapolated. Who knows what is left to find?

In part 2 of this post, I'll outline what new species have been discovered in the last few decades, where they are being found, and some reasons for their late discovery. Stay tuned.

Review: Parrots of the World

2010-10-26T20:23:00.063-05:00

I recently received a review copy from Princeton University Press of Parrots of the World by Joseph Forshaw (amazon), which as the name implies covers all 350+ species of parrots in the world. This is a condensation of his early guide, Parrots of the World: An Identification Guide, designed as a typical field guide with an illustration plate on the right and brief text descriptions and range maps on the left. This redesign ends up being about the dimensions of the big Sibley guide but 2/3 of the length, so it is fairly suitable as a field guide, as it is marketed. However, I see little niche for world-spanning family guides as an actual in-the-field tool in my future birding - it would only be relevant for at most a couple dozen species out of hundreds on a trip to the neotropics, for example. However, I think this makes its niche as a light, cheap reference guide to the parrots, relative to its bigger and costlier parent book (although I have not seen this book in person to compare or to know how much information has been lost), so that is the angle I approach this review from.

Overall, I think the book is gorgeous, and succeeds thoroughly as a reference to the Psittaciformes. The illustrations are generally excellent and lifelike, although a few are depicted not in life poses but instead front/back views of museum specimens, presumably for subspecies for which little material is available to study. Illustrations average around 3 species per plate, so with the dimensions of the book each bird is fairly large. Some plates feel a little empty with too few spaced out illustrations, and I think a few more similar species on plates together is generally better for comparison, but in most places the book succeeds in balancing the number of illustrations per plate with illustration size. Similarly, the range maps are well sized, with my only major complaint is the complete lack of country boundaries on continents. This is balanced by brief notations in the text about range and localities to see the species, but boundaries would have been a simple, beneficial addition.

One major highlight of this book for me is the treatment of subspecies. Ranges of all subspecies are depicted on the maps and all are briefly described in the text, and many subspecies receive their own illustrations. In a few extreme cases this leads to a species like Rainbow Lorikeet taking up three plates itself, but I don't see this as bad at all. The comprehensive inclusion of subspecies is so critical for capturing the true range of variation in a bird family, and is also extremely helpful for understanding potential future splits.

Overall accuracy is a major benchmark for a reference work, but unfortunately I am in little position to evaluate this for most of the species in the guide. I have however spent some time birding in the neotropics, and I've even spent multiple field seasons doing research on a wild population of Green-rumped Parrotlets (Forpus passerinus). So, to check accuracy of course the first thing I did was flip to this genus. The illustrations for F. passerinus were a little disappointing for me - the overall structure of these birds is very accurate but there are subtle details in the plumage they got wrong. The male F. p. passerinus is accurate except they tend to have a slightly grayer wash on the nape. The female though definitely does not show such a distinct green face mask like the male as illustrated and instead has a variable yellow wash in the front of the face.

A pair of Green-rumped Parrotlets - male on the upper post. You know they had to make it into this post somehow!

Another major plus for this guide is the inclusion of flight illustrations, both upper and lower surfaces, for the majority of species. This is such an excellent feature I do not really know why its inclusion was not 100% comprehensive. A large number of my neotropical parrot sightings consist of birds flying past - such as slow, raucous pairs of Amazona or noisy rapid flocks of parakeets - so when country field guides fail to depict flight shots well they put birders at a disadvantage to identifying parrots. Also to this end the guide includes a neat figure in the introduction identifying many parrot genera by silhouette via their distinctive shapes.

The flipside to this is that Parrots of the World gets these distinctive flight profiles wrong for major Neotropical genera. It depicts the stocky, broad-winged and short-tailed genera, chiefly Amazona, as having narrow, pointed wings approaching falcon-shaped in both the genera chart and in every individuals flight shots. This is just a major glaring error. Take a look at the wing shape depicted for these Pionites in this sample plate from Princeton Press - the same swept-back pointed wing is depicted for Amazona.

Now check out this or this flight shot of Amazona parrots from Flickr. I don't think this ultimately detracts greatly from the guide's usefulness as an overall parrot reference, but it could impair field identifications and is ultimately just really annoying for those familiar with these species in the field.

One final pet peeve - the frequent use of "unmistakable" as a descriptive term for many species. First, nothing is truly unmistakable. Second, some species listed as such really don't deserve it. For example, both Hyacinth and Lear's Macaws are listed as unmistakable, and they are unmistakable as a group apart from most other parrots but they are most definitely very similar to each other and easily mistakable. Use of this term is bland and meaningless in descriptions of bird identification.

Overall, this is an excellent reference for anyone interested in general parrot diversity. It has a few minor flaws in design and some flaws in accuracy for some species, but I am still extremely glad to have it as an addition to my library.

Least Sandpiper from Egg to Adult

2010-09-05T12:00:00.000-05:00

Inspired by a post by Corey on 10,000 Birds, I decided to put together a post of Least Sandpiper (Calidris minutilla) showing all stages in development, from egg, to chick, to fledgling, to juvenile, to adult. All of these pictures were taken while I was helping with research on Hudsonian Godwits in Churchill, MB.

Adult Least Sandpiper on territory in Churchill Manitoba.

As with many other breeding shorebirds in Churchill, Least Sandpipers on the breeding grounds behave very differently than how most of us think of them. This adult Least Sandpiper is sitting atop a small larch as it yells at me, trying to get me away from its nest.

Adult Least Sandpiper sitting on its nest. Their cryptic plumage and their nest placement provides good concealment from predators.

Least Sandpiper nest. A full clutch typically consists of four eggs. Note my foot in the corner of the lower picture for a sense of scale... they are very tiny nests. Nests tend to be quite well concealed under a small clump of sedge or a small shrub (usually birch).

Recently hatched Least Sandpiper chicks.

Least Sandpiper at fledging. This individual was able to fly about 10 feet at at time. Note the juvenile-type plumage of the back and coverts, but the retained fuzzy head and short primaries. In addition, this bird was still making "peeping" noises and an adult was still nearby.

This recently fledged Least Sandpiper was really neat, because in all aspects it looked like an average juvenile Least Sandpiper, except it still retained some down on the head. This bird was fully capable of flying, and had the normal call of Least Sandpipers.

After fledging completely, and losing all of their fluffiness, juvenile Least Sandpipers begin to move. This juvenile Least Sandpiper was photographed at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge (photo by Corey Finger)

Traversing Chile for Godwits

2010-09-03T12:00:00.000-05:00

While our main study areas for catching and resighting godwits were the bays and estuaries around Castro, another part of the project involved traveling to sights all over the island of Chiloe and around Puerto Montt where godwits spend the winter. This was part of an effort to figure out where the godwits were, how many there were at these locations, as well as to try and find some more banded individuals, especially ones that Nate had banded in Alaska the summer before. This was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip since it involved seeing more of the countryside, and some other cool birds. Our mission was to survey locations north of Castro on the island of Chiloe, as well as sights on the mainland around Puerto Montt.

Before we began doing our godwit surveys, we had to have a little fun. Before leaving Chiloe, we went to the Puñihuil Penguinera, a famous penguin colony known for harboring both Magellanic (Spheniscus magellanicus) and Humboldt Penguins (S. humboldti).

Views of and around the Puñihuil Penguinera.

Magellanic (above) and Humboldt Penguins (below) in the penguin breeding colony off of Chiloe

One of the coolest "geese" in the world... the Kelp Goose (Chloephaga hybrida). Above, three young birds. Below, an adult female with a Humboldt Penguin staring on.

Some other cool sightings around the Puñihuil Penguinera included, but were not limited to: Red-legged Cormorants (Phalacrocorax gaimardi) (above); Marine Otter (Lontra felina) (second); Flightless Steamer Duck female and chicks (third); and Blackish Oystercatcher (Haematopodus ater) (below)

Before leaving the island of Chiloe, we saw some beautiful scenery on the island...

...and some awesome birds to boot...

Out of focus picture of a Thorn-tailed Rayadito, an awesome Furnariid that is a cross between a Brown Creeper and a chickadee in behavior

Black-necked Swans (Cygnus melancoryphus)

A pair of Ausral Pygmy Owls (Glaucidium nanum)

The ever present Chimango Caracara (Milvago chimango), the crow of Chile (above), and the Southern Caracara (Caracara plancus) (below)

A flock of several thousand Hudsonian Godwits

Black-faced Ibis (Theristicus melanopis), an ever present, and noisy addition to the Chilean avifauna

Slender-billed Parakeets (Enicognathus leptorhynchus), one of the most awesome birds around Chiloe

A cute family group of Flightless Steamer Ducks

Black-chinned Siskin (Spinus barbata)

Chilean Flamingos (Phoenicoptera chilensis)

Coscoroba Swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) - these birds, while superficially very similar to swans, but may not be closely related to swans

By far, the most stunning place for godwits was a place called Chamisa, which was a huge mudflat on the outskirts of Puerto Montt. This is a location that on a normal year holds roughly 6,000 godwits, and ~1,000 Whimbrels. This year, however was special, and Nate and I counted roughly 9,000 godwits! We are not entirely sure why this was, but it was incredible to see so many godwits in one place.

The extensive mudlfats at Chamisa, with many algae collectors.

A large flock of hundreds of Hudsonian Godwits

A large feeding flock of Hudsonian Godwits, Surfbirds, and gulls.

When we were done with our godwit surveys, we had one full day to ourselves. Never having been to South America, I wanted to see as many different habitats as possible, as well as a chance to see a Magellanic Woodpecker (Campephilus magellanicus). That meant getting up in elevation and into some good forest. We decided to go to Parque Nacional Puyehue, in the foothills of the Andes. We chose this particular site because it had easy access to high elevation habitats. Needless to say , it was an amazing place, with many cool birds, but no big woodpeckers.

A fast flowing mountain stream... that can only mean one thing...

...Torrent Ducks (Merganetta armata)!!!!

The inside of an old, volcano crater

Dark-faced Ground Tyrant (Muscisaxicola maclovianus), a bird more like a thrush or pipit than a flycatcher

Bar-winged Cinclodes (Cinclodes fuscus)

A view of the Andes from the top of a volcano

All in all, my trip to Chile was amazing, and I certainly learned a lot. I hope you've enjoyed my posts about my trip. It was an incredible opportunity, and awesome to see and study Hudsonian Godwits on their wintering grounds.

Shorebird Banding

2010-08-30T12:00:00.001-05:00

To avoid picture overload in the cannon netting post, I’ve decided to put a bunch of pictures of banding godwits and Whimbrels in a separate post. Enjoy!

A series of godwit flags prior to putting them out on birds. We used up all of these flags in a single catch, and then some. Prior to each catch, we always made sure we had at least 200 flags ready, just in case it was a big catch.

The first thing that we do after we've caught a bird is put the standard aluminum band on their right leg.

The next step is to attach the color band and the alpha flag. The flag goes on the left leg of the bird. In these photos, a godwit (top) and a Whimbrel (bottom) get their respective flags. The flags are glued shut to make sure they don't fall off the birds.

The next thing we check for on birds is we measure their wing length, and also age birds based on their plumage and molt. In these pictures, we are checking the wing molt of an adult godwit (top) and a juvenile Whimbrel (bottom).

Bill length and total head length are also measured with calipers, in addition to the length of their tarsus (leg). These measurements can help to sex birds (females have longer bills than males). The final measurement that we take from birds is their mass. Mass can also help us to sex the birds, as females are again heavier than males.

While we mostly caught our target species while netting, we caught a few gulls with one capture. In one particular netting, we caught a Franklin's Gull (above) and a Brown-hooded Gull (bottom). The Brown-hooded Gull is a first year bird, and does not have a complete brown hood.

New Wood-Warbler Taxonomy

2010-08-23T06:00:00.037-05:00

The July issue of The Auk contained the AOU North American Checklist Committee's 51st supplement to the AOU checklist (pdf), a variety of splits and changes to taxonomy at the genus level and higher. Sibley handily summarizes the name changes to North American species, and Michael Retter reviews the whole supplement, and I'm sure it has been plastered elsewhere on the blogosphere by now so I am not going into a full review here (plus, I blogged about one of the splits two years ago - everyone else is late to the party). Instead, I'm breaking my long self-imposed blog exile to talk about warblers. Actually, mostly about warbler names.

The 51st supplement makes two changes to genera in New World wood-warblers (Parulidae): the waterthrushes are split from the Ovenbird (Seiurus) and placed in a new genus, Parkesia, and most of the genus Vermivora is split and removed into a new genus, Oreothlypis . These changes are based on results that have been in the phylogenetic literature for some years now, but have not resulted in comprehensive taxonomic updates. While Klein et al. (2004) presented a phylogeny for the family and documented many problems with generic limits, they did not present many taxonomic solutions and their sampling of the diversity of Central and South American Parulids was very slim. In general, while there have been several papers addressing phylogeny in the overall family (Klein et al 2004, Lovette and Hochachka 2006) and in certain groups (Dendroica: Lovette and Bermingham 1999; Myioborus - Perez-Eman 2005; Geothylpis and Oporornis - Escalante et al. 2009), a comprehesive phylogeny of the group with solid sampling of species (there are over 110 in the whole family) and a complete update of Parulid taxonomy has been lacking ... (drumroll)... until now.

Lovette et al. (2010) present a comprehensive picture of the evolution of the wood-warblers, sampling all but three species and addressing the phylogenetic analyses with a good array of loci and methods. Their main result is a phylogenetic hypothesis for comparative studies and a proposal for complete revision to generic boundaries. I just want to step through the warbler tree and possible taxonomic disagreements as a guide for when taxonomic authorities eventually get to addressing them.

Phylogeny of the Parulidae (Fig. 5 from Lovette et al. 2010) with proposed taxonomic changes. You'll definitely want to click to enlarge and read

Parulidae is a large family with ~110 species concentrated in several large genera, but the early branches of the tree are composed of 7 different species-poor lineages. The first branch in the tree is in all analyses the Ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapillus) - the dull, chunky warbler of forest floors in the Eastern US. Other lineages represent monotypic genera, the odds and sods of the Parulidae that have been recognized as distinct - the Worm-eating Warbler (Helmitheros vermivorus), Black-and-White Warbler (Mniotilta varia), Prothonotary Warbler (Protonotaria citrea), and Swainson's Warbler (Limnothlypis swainsonii). The final two lineages in this group represent some of the generic reassignments already made by the AOU. The Northern (noveboracensis) and Louisiana (motacilla) are moved from the genus Seiurus, which they shared with the Ovenbird (a relationship that never made sense to me, given how different they are in plumage and habits), to their own genus, Parkesia (created for them by Sangster 2008). Three species of Vermivora - Bachman's (bachmanii), Blue-winged (pinus, now cyanoptera), and Golden-winged (chrysoptera), are found to not be closely related to the remaining members of the genus. These lineages are all found in Eastern North America, but represent a variety of plumage and ecological specializations. The exact relationships among them change depending on analyses (except the placement of Ovenbird at the base of the tree), but it is clear that they are all old and distinct, and I don't foresee anyone attempting to lump some of these monotypic genera.

Worm-eating Warbler (Helmitheros vermivorous) from Wikipedia

The remaining members of what was Vermivora - Tennessee (peregrina), Orange-crowned (celata), Colima (crissalis), Lucy's (luciae), Virginia's (virginiae), and Nashville (ruficapilla) - get their own branch of the warbler tree. These ex-Vermivora are a pretty cohesive and closely related group - they are all North American, either greenish (northern and eastern species) or grayish (southwestern species), most with an orange or rufous crown patch and yellowish vent. However, they share their branch with two oddballs - Crescent-chested Warbler (superciliosa) and Flame-throated Warbler (gutturalis), formerly in the genus Parula. Both of those are Central American species with plumage very similar to that of Northern and Tropical Parulas, Crescent-chested especially - check this photo out - but Flame-throated is a bit more distinctive and I'm not surprised it is not related to other Parulas.

The ex-Parula group is pretty closely related, the ex-Vermivora group is pretty closely related and the two groups are each others closest relatives on the big warbler tree, but already opinions differ on how to assign new genus names. Sangster (2008b) saw this result in earlier phylogenetic literature and took the step of naming each group separately - Crestent-chested and Flame-throated Warblers get the resurrected genus name Oreothlypis, and the ex-Vermivora get a newly created genus name Leiothlypis. Lovette et al. (2010) decided to give a genus name to the whole group, meaning Leiothlypis gets subsumed by Oreothlypis as the name for the group. The AOU voted the same way in the 51st supplement, merging all eight taxa into Oreothlypis, with many of the voters citing one genus as marginally better than two, even though it is totally arbitrary. I personally think keeping Leiothlypis and Oreothlypis as separate makes more sense, given their distinctiveness from each other, but both options are valid.

Lucy's Warbler (Oreothlypis luciae) from Wikipedia

The next branch in the warbler tree contains the yellowthroats (Geothlypis), species found throughout the New World united by black masks and another feature you might never guess from their name, the gray or black hooded North American warblers in the genus Oporornis, and an unusual, little-known, likely extinct species endemic to St. Lucia in the Lesser Antilles - Semper's Warbler (Leucopeza semperi). However, generic limits are all mixed up in this group, necessitating change. There is a tight-knit little group of closely-related yellowthroats, including the widespread Common (trichas) and the similar Belding's, Bahama, Altamira, and Hooded, and the slightly more distantly related Olive-crowned and Black-polled. Their closest relative is not, however, other yellowthroats but instead Kentucky Warbler (Oporornis formosus), which with its black mask and yellow underparts looks more like a yellowthroat than the other Oporornis anyway. The two gray-hooded species, Mourning and MacGillivray's, are closest relatives (and a hybrid zone has recently been described in Canada), but instead of being closest to the other gray-hooded species, Connecticut, they are related to two more unusual yellowthroats - Masked (aequinoctialis, which may actually be a species complex) and Gray-crowned (poliocephala). The two final species in this group are old, distinct genetic lineages - Connecticut (agilis) and Semper's Warbler. Escalante et al. (2009) and Lovette et al. (2010) both choose, because of how mixed up the traditional genus limits are, that it makes most sense to contain this whole group within one genus - Geothlypis has priority. An alternative treatment has already been made by John Boyd's TiF Checklist - he retains Leucopeza, allows Connecticut to retain the genus Oporornis, and leaves the rest as Geothlypis. I also tend to prefer retaining Leucopeza for the very distinctive Semper's Warbler, but Connecticut isn't all that different from others and I'm not sure it should get its own genus. I guess I'm undecided on this point.

Gray-crowned Yellowthroat (Geothlypis poliocephala) from Wikipedia

Masked Yellowthroat (Geothlypis aequinoctialis) from Wikipedia

The remaining warblers - fully two-thirds of the diversity of the family - form two broad groups. One contains almost all the remaining North American species, mainly the bright colorful migratory species in Dendroica that are what most come to mind when wood-warblers are mentioned. The other contains almost all warbler diversity in Central and South America in several distinct genera.

The North American Dendroica radiation of warblers is pretty amazing - they are the eye candy of the family. They underwent an early burst of speciation that declined through time, likely as ecological niches were filled. They have diversified to the extreme in plumage (and to a degree in song as well), so much so that virtually no plumage characters unite them, but they have not diversified much morphologically. This may constrain them ecologically, but they also adapt by behaviorally partitioning their ecological niches - the subject of some classic ecological studies. Check out this poster on the North American members of the group. Lovette et al. (2010) confirm earlier phylogenetic studies that Dendroica represents one big cohesive group. However, taxonomic changes come from other species found nested within the genus. The American Redstart (in the monotypic genus Setophaga), the two remaining Parula - American (americana) and Tropical (pitiayumi) - and the Hooded Warbler (Wilsonia citrina) are all firmly embedded within Dendroica. The strange Whistling Warbler (Catharopeza bishopi) - seen here - from St. Vincent in the Lesser Antilles is also closely related to this radiation, but represents the earliest branch. Lovette et al. (2010) choose to rename the whole group into one genus - Setophaga has priority, unfortunately removing the name Dendroica associated with much of the literature on the group. I agree with this move, except perhaps on lumping Catharopeza in with the rest. I like minimizing taxonomic changes necessary, and the position of Catharopeza as the oldest branch does not mandate that it be lumped in with the rest of the group. It is pretty unique in plumage, but on the other hand, few species in Dendroica look alike - it is their heterogeneity that unites them. John Boyd has taken an alternative approach to the taxonomy, choosing to preserve all of the other genera that were found lumped within Dendroica. This necessitates making some odd changes - three West Indian Dendroica (Arrow-headed (pharetra), Plumbeous (plumbea), and Elfin Woods (angelae)) would require their own new genus to be described, and Kirtland's (kirtlandii), Cape May (tigrina) and Cerulean (cerulea) would need to be lumped into Parula to preserve that genus. I completely disagree with this approach - it creates much more taxonomic change than the alternative, it relies on the exact branching pattern of species within the overall group which is likely to change depending upon the analysis, and I see no real distinctiveness to these genera - especially the bizarre new Parula.

Cerulean Warbler (Setophaga cerulea) from Wikipedia

Blackburnian Warbler (Setophaga fusca) from Wikipedia

Most warbler diversity in the Neotropics falls within a large genus, Basileuterus. While containing almost as many species as the newly expanded Setophaga, plumage in this genus is much more conservative, consisting most often of yellow underparts, green or grayish upperparts, and striping on the face. Lovette et al. (2010) find that Basileuterus is actually two distinct groups occupying different portions of the tree, and it needs to be split into two genera. One group is primarily South American species, and also includes embedded within it two species often given their own genus Phaeothlypis - River Warbler (rivularis) and Buff-rumped Warbler (fulvicauda). Phaeothlypis is merged into this genus and the South American group is given the resurrected genus name Myiothlypis. The other clade of Basileuterus retains that genus name and consists mostly of Central American species with a few closely related South American forms. In with the new reduced Basileuterus clade is the Fan-tailed Warbler, often split as its own genus Euthlypis lachrymosa. It represents the earliest branch in Basileuterus, and like Catharopeza could continue to be recognized because taxonomic change is not abolutely necessary, but Lovette et al. (2010) include it in Basileuterus.

Black-crested Warbler (Myiothlypis nigrocristatus) from Wikipedia

Pirre Warbler (Basileuterus ignotus) from Wikipedia

Buff-rumped Warbler (Myiothlypis fulvicauda) from Wikipedia

The final two Neotropical lineages are related to Myiothlypis. One lineage is the redstarts/whitestarts in the genus Myioborus. This is actually the only large genus in the Parulidae not affected by taxonomic changes. The other lineage contains a motley assortment - Canada Warbler (Wilsonia canadensis), Wilson's Warbler (Wilsonia pusilla), Red-faced Warbler (Cardellina rubrifrons), and the two reddish warblers in Ergaticus: Red (ruber) and Pink-faced (versicolor). A close relationship between Cardellina and Ergaticus is hardly surprising: these species are some of the only warblers to utilize bright reds in their plumage, and they are all restricted to Mexico and adjacent areas. The inclusion of two Wilsonia species here is bizarre - the genus never made any sense to me, but I expected them all to be thrown in with Dendroica. Instead, it looks like two species from the broad Neotropical radiation of warblers have reinvaded North America, become migrants, and are perhaps as similar to some Dendroica in plumage as they are to Neotropical species. As weird as this group appears, Lovette et al. (2010) lump Ergaticus, Cardellina, and the two Wilsonia into one genus - Cardellina has priority. The alternative, retaining Ergaticus, would necessitate the creation of two new monotypic genera for Wilson's and Canada Warblers - not really a very desirable solution.

Wilson's Warbler (Cardellina pusilla) from Wikipedia

Red Warbler (Cardellina ruber) from Wikipedia

Collared Whitestart (Myioborus torquatus) from Wikipedia

Well, that about covers Parulidae - or at least, a guide to the potentially confusing and contentious upcoming taxonomic changes in the group. I haven't even covered many problems with species limits in the group, or any of the interesting aspects of warbler biology that the phylogeny can be used to study. Maybe someday. To close, here is a summary of genera in the taxonomy of Parulidae proposed by Lovette et al. 2010:

Seiurus
Helmitheros
Parkesia (incl. some Seiurus)
Vermivora
Mniotilta
Protonotaria
Limnothlypis
Oreothlypis (incl. some Vermivora, some Parula)
Geothlypis (incl. Oporornis, Leucopeza)
Setophaga (incl. some Wilsonia, Dendroica, Catharopeza, some Parula)
Myiothlypis (incl. Phaeothlypis, some Basileuterus)
Basileuterus (incl. Euthlypis)
Cardellina (incl. some Wilsonia, Ergaticus)
Myioborus

References

Escalante P, Marquez-Valdelamar L, de la Torre P, Laclette JP, and J Klicka (2009) Evolutionary history of a prominent North American warbler clade: the Oporornis-Geothlypis complex. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 53:668-678

Klein NK, KJ Burns, SJ Hackett, and CS Griffiths (2004) Molecular phylogenetic relationships among the wood warblers (Parulidae) and historical biogeography in the Caribbean basin. Journal of Caribbean Ornithology 17, 3-17

Lovette IJ and E Bermingham (1999) Explosive speciation in the New World Dendroica warblers. Proc R Soc Lond B 266:1629-1636

Lovette IJ and WM Hochachka (2006) Simultaneous effects of phylogenetic niche conservatism and competition on avian community structure. Ecology 87(7):S14-S28

Lovette, I., Pérez-Emán, J., Sullivan, J., Banks, R., Fiorentino, I., Córdoba-Córdoba, S., Echeverry-Galvis, M., Barker, F., Burns, K., & Klicka, J. (2010). A comprehensive multilocus phylogeny for the wood-warblers and a revised classification of the Parulidae (Aves) Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution DOI: 10.1016/j.ympev.2010.07.018

Perez-Eman JL (2005) Molecular phylogenetics and biogeography of the Neotropical redstarts (Myioborus; Aves, Parulinae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 37:511-528

Sangster G (2008a) A new genus for the waterthrushes (Parulidae). Bulletin of the British Ornithological Club 128:212-215.

Sangster G (2008b) A revision of Vermivora (Parulidae) with the description of a new genus. Bulletin of the British Ornithological Club 128:207-211.

Diabolical Shorebird Chick Quiz

2010-08-21T22:41:00.008-05:00

*Spoiler Alert!!! Answers are now posted below in comments section*

Inspired by the Diabolical Quiz series on 10,000 Birds, I have created a Diabolical Shorebird Chick Quiz, using photos I took of all the various shorebird chicks I found this season in Churchill, MB. Also included in this quiz are a few non-shorebird chicks. A final hint... some chicks are repeats, so some species will be used more than once... Answers will follow shortly... good luck!

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The Hudsonian Godwits of Churchill

2010-08-04T19:00:00.000-05:00

After all of the posts about Churchill that I've written, I realized that I've written very little about the bird that has taken me here for the past two summers: the Hudsonian Godwit, Limosa haemastica. The Hudsonian Godwit is a mid to large sized shorebird, and is a well known long-distance migrant. The godwits' breeding distribution is still not entirely understood, but is known to be found in isolated pockets across the sub-arctic and arctic of Canada and Alaska. They typically breed in fens, bogs, and marshes with abundant sedge cover as well as a few trees (such as Larch, Larix laricina and spruces, Picea sp.) and shrubs (in Churchill, mostly Dwarf Birch, Betula glandulosa). Hudsonian Godwits are particularly famous for their long-distance migration, which takes the birds from Churchill first to staging grounds around James Bay. From there, many godwits make a direct flight from James Bay south to South America, perhaps stopping off for a day or two somewhere in the Amazon before finally making it to the southern coast of Argentina and Tierra del Fuego. Godwits that breed in Alaska winter mostly on the island of Chiloe. On the northward journey, godwits again make very long flights, some flying all the way from Argentina to Texas and Nebraska before stopping.

In Churchill, godwits typically return to the area sometime between May 20 and May 25, however there can be variation in this depending on local conditions. For example, the first godwits in 2009 did not show up until June 3, and even then were restricted to a limited number of locations due to snow conditions. In a typical year, after the birds arrive, males usually spend almost a week establishing territories and displaying. Its during this period when we start walking through the breeding grounds, looking for returning birds from previous years, and getting an idea of where territories are so we know where to look for nests.

Upon arrival, godwits will hang around, perhaps going to areas where they will later breed. In these pictures, a female Hudsonian Godwit is loafing around the Fen with a Short-billed Dowitcher

In addition to inspecting the breeding grounds, godwits also spend a lot of time feeding when they first arrive. Often they will feed in areas close to their future territories. This male, feeding in a roadside pool, later nested about 300 meters away in the marsh.

During the first week or so after arrival, male godwits spend a lot of time displaying and setting up territories. This male, banded 2 years ago is seen here displaying in the top of a tree. The display flight of godwits consist of a slow, "butterfly-like" flight over their territories, calling consistently "god-wit, god-wit, god-wit."

Beginning sometime during the first week of June, godwits will begin nesting. During the summer of 2008, the first nest was found June 5, while this year, the first nest was found June 8. In any particular year, most nesting is fairly synchronous, and within about a week, most birds that are nesting will be on eggs. Incubation of eggs does not begin full time until a full clutch (usually of 4) is laid, although males will incubate sporadically even when two eggs are laid. Males incubate for the entire day after the last egg is laid, while females feed. After that first day, males and females share incubation tasks, with females typically incubating during the day, and males incubating at night (although there is considerable variation in this schedule).

A Hudsonian Godwit nest with a full clutch of 4 eggs. While 4 eggs is the maximum clutch size, and also the most typical, complete clutches of 3, and occasionally 2 eggs are also laid. If a godwit renests after losing the eggs to a predator, the replacement clutch is more frequently smaller.

Female Hudsonian Godwit incubating eggs. Godwits are very reluctant to flush from their nest, which can make nests particularly difficult to find. Their cryptic coloration allows them to hide incredibly well among the sedges.

Female godwit sitting very tight on her nest.

After about 17 or so days of incubation, the eggs begin to get star cracks, which are the first signs of hatching. The appearance of star cracks usually indicate that the eggs are within 3 or 4 days of hatch. The day before hatch, the chicks begin to pip the eggs, making small holes in the wider end of the egg. Hatching of all the eggs occurs on the same day, although there can be several hours delay between the first and last chick hatching. Oftentimes, the first chicks to hatch will disperse from the nest site by the time the last chick hatches. During this entire period, both adults stay very close to the nest, and incubating birds sit very tight on the nest, and are very reluctant to flush from the nest. Since chicks leave the nest only a couple of hours after hatch, it is very important for us to get to the nest at hatch if we want to band all the chicks. Otherwise, it can be very, very difficult to find all of the chicks of a brood once they have dispersed.

A godwit nest that is getting very close to hatching. If you look closely, all the eggs have fine "star-cracks" around the wide end of the egg.

A detail of "star-cracks" on an egg.

A godwit chick in the final stages of hatching. This particular chick hatched right in front of us while we were banding his siblings, which had already hatched. It was quite incredible.

Recently hatched godwit chick, this bird is still not completely dry.

Hudsonian Godwit chick that is less than one day old. It's difficult to see, but this chick has a tiny radio transmitter on his back, which we use to track them as they grow. This allows us to determine what habitats they use to feed in, how far they wander, and also check survival.

When chicks are very young, the parent godwits are very aggressive. This pair was constantly attacking us and yelling at us while we were banding their newly hatched chicks. Notice the white flags on the legs of each of these birds, as well as a plastic color band beneath the flag. The orange color band on the male indicates that he was first banded in 2009, while the blue color band indicates this female was banded this year. Also note the brightness of this female, compared with the female pictured in the first 2 pictures of the post.

Male Hudsonian Godwit brooding his recently hatched chicks while we finish banding the last of the brood.

After hatch, chicks and adults wander very far from the original territory. Just three days after hatching, we tracked one family over 2 kilometers from the original nest site. Parents stay with the chicks until they can fly, which is about 24 days after hatching. Females may leave before the chicks are fledged, but males stay with the chicks. Parents will defend their chicks vigorously against predators, and will brood them for the first several days after hatching, but do not feed them.

A godwit chick that is about 2 weeks old. Notice the wing feathers which are in pin, and the back feathers which have come in on this bird.

A 3-week old godwit chick. Notice the wing feathers are growing in nicely, and have already started breaking out of their sheaths. This is likely the latest age that we can capture godwit chicks, since after this they run too fast.

A 3-week old godwit chick running away from us after we banded it. In another 5 days, this godwit chick will be able to fly. At 26 days after hatching, godwit chicks are able to fledge. It is at this point when the adults leave the chicks.

After fledging at about 26 days after hatch, godwit chicks are completely on their own. Adult birds leave the chicks once they have fledged. Adults will continue to the staging grounds around James Bay, and the chicks will remain around Churchill for a little while longer before continuing to James Bay. If all goes well, 2 years from now, we will see "EC" return to Churchill. Young birds will spend their first "summer" on the non-breeding grounds in South America.

To see pictures of Hudsonian Godwits on their winter grounds in South America, see my posts from Chile, where I was able to see and catch some godwits.

Cannon Netting*

2010-07-21T14:50:00.000-05:00

One of the only ways to catch large numbers of shorebirds away from the breeding grounds is to use cannon nets. Cannon nets are exactly what they sound like. They are nets that are propelled by small cannons. While I was in Chile, I learned the basics of cannon netting, and in the process, realized that it is difficult, and whether or not a firing is successful depends a lot on luck. Cannon netting requires a bit of reconnaissance work, namely to figure out where the high tide roost sites for the target birds are. Once that key piece of information is acquired, the team can then proceed to set the net up the next day. Now, because birds are caught on their roost site, it is necessary to set the net up well before high tide, which often means setting it up at low tide, when the birds are dispersed, so that we have enough time to hide before birds are considering roosting.

Step 1: So, the first step of cannon netting is to set the net and the cannons up. This step is fairly straight forward, although the exact placement of the cannons does certainly require an experienced eye. The placement of the net is also important, because if the net isn’t in the right place, then it may turn out that no birds end up in the catch area. Now, the catch area is an area that is about 30 ft. by 30 ft., so the margin of error is quite small. Anyway, to set the net up, first, we need to dig a shallow trench to place the net in. It was important to make sure the leading edge of the net was on top, otherwise it wouldn’t fire properly. Next, we needed to dig the holes for the cannons, and attach the ropes of the nets to the projectiles of the cannons. Okay, now the net and the cannons are set up.

The net trench is dug, and now the net can be laid out in the shallow trench.

One of the two cannons that are placed at either end of the net. Here, the bottom is wrapped in several plastic bags to prevent them from getting wet

Step 2: The next important step of cannon netting is to disguise the net. I enjoyed this part, because, if done right, the net and cannons should be almost invisible. Some sites were far easier to camouflage than others, and for some sites, we got quite creative. Now, this wasn’t as easy as just piling seaweed and algae on top of the net… the layer of cover had to be thin and light, so as to not weigh the net down and hinder firing (we actually made this mistake once). If all goes well, there should be very little evidence of the net area.

Adding sedge clumps to further hide the net.

Step 3: The next step is to wait. And wait some more. Usual wait times ranged from 3-6 hours… it all depended on how fast the birds began piling into the roost area. This part was both boring, fun, depressing, and stressful.

Step 4: The second to last step of cannon netting is probably one of the most important. It involves twinkling and jiggling. Now I don’t know where these names came from, but they are fun to say. Twinkling is to gently push birds toward the catch area. Sometimes this involved flushing birds from an alternate roost site farther down the beach in hopes that they would move to the roost site where the net was set. Other times, it would involve trying to gently push birds a few meters to try and position them better in the net area. Regardless, twinkling was important, as its success often dictated how many birds ended up in the catch area. When twinkling failed, it usually means birds flushed and flew away and didn’t come back. Jiggling is usually the last step before actually firing. Jiggling is done by jiggling the jiggler. The jiggler is a small rope about 2 meters in front of where the net is set up. The point of jiggling the jiggler is to get birds out of the zone 2 meters in front of the net. Those two meters are called the “danger zone.” The “danger zone” is the area in front of the net where birds could be injured by the net. So, by jiggling the jiggler, one was able to safely and effectively move birds out of the “danger zone” without making all the birds in the capture zone fly.

The flock is in place...

Step 5: 3….2…1… FIRE!

Step 6: Run like hell to the net to get birds out (if it is a “wet catch,” where birds are caught in the net in the water, you run like hell faster). After removing birds from under the net, they are placed in keeping cages, which are simple cages that are set up to keep birds in and keep them calm.

While removing birds from under the net, we would cover the net with a dark tarp to keep them calm. Birds would then be placed in the keeping cages, where they would wait to be banded.

Step 7: Process birds as fast as possible. Now, when there is the potential of catching up to 200 birds in a catch, this sounds easier than it actually is. Birds that we caught would get a metal band, a color band (indicating the year it was caught), and a unique color flag with a code on it (the color of the flag indicates the location it was banded: red is for Chile, orange for Argentina, green for Alaska, and white for Churchill). Birds would be checked for their molt condition, have their bills, head length, and tarsus length measured, and some would have blood taken for later genetic work.

The assembly line of godwit banding. This would ensure that we could process at peak efficiency.

Step 8: Release birds!

*No birds were harmed during our stay in Chile while cannon netting

Churchill Teaser 2010

2010-07-18T20:34:00.000-05:00

As some of you know, I have been back in Churchill, MB for the past couple of months, working once again with Hudsonian Godwits. Unlike last year, the godwits are having a good year, with lots of chicks around to follow. As I am quite behind on posts, I will give you just a teaser of what I've been seeing. In addition to future posts on the 2010 Churchill field season, also look for the conclusion of posts from my adventures with godwits in Chile.

Hudsonian Godwit male, perched atop a tree. This bird is a bird that was banded two years ago in Churchill. It's flag and data logger have since fallen off.

Parasitic Jaeger chicks... cute, no?

Whimbrel chick

Cover Your Ass!

2010-07-15T20:40:00.003-05:00

Tapaculo has got to be one of the best bird names ever. In Spanish, “tapaculo” literally translates to “cover your ass.” Tapaculos are so named for their habit of having their tails cocked, thus exposing, their, well, ass.

Tapaculos are in the family Rhinocryptidae (so named for the fleshy covering on their nostrils, leading to the “hidden nose”). They are sub-oscines, and are found from souther Central America south to southern South America, found in a wide variety of habitats.

Chile has some of the greatest tapaculos in t he world, with some incredibly charismatic, large, showy species, including the Moustached Turca (Pteroptochos megapodius), Black-throated Huet-huet (Pteroptochos tarnii), White-throated Tapaculo (Scelorchilus albicollis), and Chucao Tapaculo (Scelorchilus rubecula). In total, Chile is home to 8 species of tapaculo, including two Scytalopus, a second species of Huet-huet, and the Ochre-flanked Tapaculo (Eugralla paradoxa). Where I would be in Chile, only 4 species occurred, and I had hopes of only seeing two, at most. Sadly, the Turca, a Chilean endemic, is found farther north near Santiago, so that’s a bird that will have to wait for my next trip.

On my first full day in Chile, I had already heard 3 of the 4 species that were possible in the area, so I already thought I was off to a good start. This also included a relatively close encounter with an Ochre-flanked that just refused to show himself. After a few more days, I finally at least heard a huet-huet. However, it wasn’t until nearly 2 weeks into the trip that I finally saw my first tapaculo, a Chucao. I was ecstatic, since this bird came out of the bamboo, watched us, foraged on the trail, watched us some more, climbed up onto a branch, and yelled at us, all without any provocation from playback.

The next tapaculo that would show itself was a Magellanic Tapaculo, the only Scytalopus in the area. This first Magellanic I had to coax out of the bushes with some playback, which he did not appreciate. As payment, he pooped on my computer. Later that evening, I had another thrilling encounter with several Chucao Tapaculos, including a pair that was dueting trailside, which Nate and I were able to get a recording of. It isn’t something I was expecting, but Chucaos are incredibly loud birds, and when they decide to call next to you, it is startling. I found that they were also very curious birds, and if they were close enough, they would come out of the bushes to investigate you, often providing superb views.

On our first day off, Nate and I and a couple of other friends went on a trip to the north of the island and checked out La Senda Darwin Biological Station. At the station, there are some trails going through some remnant patches of second growth forest, some swallow boxes, and, apparently, enough habitat for a pair of Black-throated Huet-huets, which found my pathetic attempt at whistling offensive, and they decided to yell at me and give me some views.

On the last couple of days of our trip, Nate and I went to Parque Nacional Puyehue, a beautiful national park about 2 hours outside of Puerto Montt, which covers some great old growth Nothofagus forest on the west slope of the Andes. While I will recount our fun in Puyehue in more detail later, I will share the relevant details about tapaculos here. First off, we got to see several of our last species, Ochre-flanked Tapaculo at close range, without playback. Now, while Ochre-flanked doesn’t have spectacular plumage, it is still quite an interesting bird, and has a very oddly shaped head and bill. In addition to seeing 3 Ochre-flanked, we also had a total count of ~60 Chucao, ~40 Magellanic, and 20 Ochre-flanked Tapaculos, with perhaps 8 Black-throated Huet-huets. Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but I was shocked at the tapaculo density here, and just had a blast.

Now, enjoy these few pictures of my first fun experiences with the Rhinocryptidae!

Chucao Tapaculo (Scelorchilus rubecula)

Black-throated Huet-huet (Pteroptochos tarnii)

Magellanic Tapaculo (Scytalopus magellanicus)

Ochre-flanked Tapaculo (Eugralla paradoxa)... can't you tell? Somewhere in this picture is an Ochre-flanked Tapaculo, honest! Actually, I can't even find it for certain in the photo. For a good picture of an Ochre-flanked Tapaculo, click here.

Resighting

2010-06-27T15:15:00.000-05:00

Now, one of the main goals of the project in Chile is to get baseline values for the suvivorship of both Hudsonian Godwits and Whimbrels. This is a task that is far easier on their wintering grounds, because it is where large numbers gather in regular locations where they can be (relatively) easily studied.

When we got to Chile this year, one of the first things that we needed to do was to find where the birds were. Once we did that, we started looking for birds that had already been caught and banded in previous winters in Chile. Typically, Whimbrels are easier to resight, partly because wintering Whimbrels are very sight faithful, and will return to the same sight winter after winter, so all one has to do is return to the sight where the birds were caught. Whimbrels are also bigger, and sport larger leg flags, and are thus easier to read. Godwits, on the other hand, are not as site faithful, and there are more likely to be many thousands more godwits in any one place. In addition, godwit leg flags are smaller and harder to read. However, there are also more tagged godwits out there, which makes finding more of them easier. Resighting is important because it helps to establish suvivorship rates over the years (this is the fifth year that this project has been going in Chile).

Recently flagged Hudsonian Godwit. Can you read the alpha code on the red flag?

A mixed flock of Hudsonian Godwits, Surfbirds, Brown-hooded Gulls, and Franklin's Gulls.

Nathan searching for flagged godwits at Putemun.

Hudsonian Godwit footprints. Here, they flew away before I could get close enough to read any flags.

Pullao, one of my favorite places that we searched for godwits and Whimbrel

During our time on Chiloe, we had several key sites that we visited several times, all around the area of Castro (the capital of Chiloe). These sites included Putemun (which was a large estuary behind the cabañas where we were staying, and also my least favorite place, due to its muck), Pullao (where we spent a lot of time resighting and catching birds), Rílan, and Curaco (both of these two sites were on a smaller island, Quinchao, which is accessible by ferry from the town of Dalcahue).

Resighting was both fun and frustrating. While frustrating due to the difficulty in reading flags, it was also fun, because it brought me to new sites and I got to watch birds for hours on end. While there wasn’t a great diversity of birds at these sites, it was always awesome to see large numbers of godwits and whimbrel, as well as the assorted other birds that were found here.

A flock of assorted gulls. In this flock, the three common gull species are present, which include Brown-hooded Gulls, Franklin's Gulls, and Kelp Gulls

Black-faced Ibis

A flock of Black Skimmers loafing on a mud flat

Some Summer in Winter

2010-06-05T22:52:00.000-05:00

In mid January, I left the cold, snowy Ithaca winter for somewhat warmer climes. For the rest of the month, I would be working with Nathan Senner, among other researchers, studying Whimbrels and Hudsonian Godwits. Our main goals over the course of the next three weeks would be to resight birds that were caught and banded in previous years in Chile, catch new birds to band, and try to find birds that Nathan caught in Alaska the summer before. Now, this may not sound to hard, but consider, the wintering population of Hudsonian Godwits on Chiloe, the place in Chile where we would be working, is roughly 8,000, with many thousands of Whimbrels as well. Finding where the large flocks gather, and then finding birds that have been flagged in years past is not always an easy task.

Most of our work would be done out of Chiloe, a large island that you can reach by a short ferry ride from the mainland. Keep in mind, this island is large… larger than Long Island in New York, for example. Chiloe is a unique island. Unlike most of the rest of Chile (the area around Puerto Montt is a huge exception), Chiloe has bays with large mudflats. These mudflats attract large numbers of godwits.

Chiloe is a beautiful place, and is full of small scale farms, pastures, hills, patches of woodland, bays, and beaches. The people are friendly, the food is great, and the weather was perfect. Many of the churches around Chiloe are also UNESCO World Heritage Sites. While they may not look like much from the outside, these churches were stunning inside, and had beautiful woodwork. Chiloe is also well known for its aquaculture. All of the bays and estuaries where we would look for birds also had a lot of aquaculture, where shellfish like muscles, oysters, and clams were farmed, and where salmon were farmed. Another activity around these mudflats was algae collecting. Many people living along the coast would harvest algae from these mudflats to later be sold. Aside from being unsustainable in many bays, the human, truck, and dog activity associated with algae collectors often had serious impacts on shorebird numbers in these locations. Finding a middle ground between poor algae collectors, the lucrative profits of aquaculture, and conservation is turning out to be very difficult, and is another discussion entirely.

For now, enjoy these pictures of the beauty and scenery of Chiloe!

A ferry ride from the mainland to Chiloe

Tracks across the mud in search of godwits

View of a beach where godwits like to roost

View of the bay from our cabin

Lots of aquaculture in the bay

The countryside of Chiloe

One of the many churches that are scattered around Chiloe

Not on Chiloe, but a view of some montane habitat on the western edge of the Andes

Return to the Great White North

2010-05-23T11:31:00.005-05:00

Well, tomorrow I leave again for Churchill, to continue with work on Hudsonian Godwits. I will try and make somewhat regular postings, instead of waiting for an entire year to compose my posts. Also up and coming on the blogging schedule are my posts from my trip to Chile in January, where we went to study Hudsonian Godwits on their wintering grounds. As a sneak peek of that trip, enjoy these few pictures!

View of Pullao, on Chiloe Island, where many Hudsonian Godwits like to feed and roost

Hudsonian Godwit just after being released. Notice the small red flag on its leg. This tells us it was banded in Chile

Chucao Tapaculo, a very common bird in the temperate rainforest and forested areas of Chile

Magellanic Penguins, at the Puñihuil Penguinera, Chiloe

Churchill: Polar Bear Capital of the World

2010-03-31T12:01:00.000-05:00

For a long time, I have wanted to go to Churchill for birds. Between the prospect of seeing Ross' Gulls, and all the nesting shorebirds, Churchill always seemed to me a place where the tundra was accessible place than say, Alaska (probably due to my east coast bias). But while this place has been on my radar for its birds, Churchill is perhaps far more famous for it other wildlife. Enter the big mammals (particularly the big white mammals).

Caribou. While not abundant around Churchill, if you spend enough time, you will see some.

Starting in June, when the mouth of the Churchill River opens up, hundreds of Beluga Whales arrive. The whales move into the river not only to feed, but to breed. It is a spectacular sight, seeing that many whales in one place. The whales stay around the mouth of the river until late August or so, when they disperse and head farther north. During this time, a lot of people come to Churchill to see the whales. Tour companies take boats out to see the whales, and you can even kayak with them.

That white blotch out there in the water is a Beluga. That's about as good a photo as I got of a living one. I did get better looks at them though.

Dead Beluga on the beach.

Of course, the respective stars of the show are the Polar Bears. Churchill is known the world over as being one of the most accessible and reliable places to see Polar Bears. Part of the reason Churchill is such a good place to see bears is because of the geography of the region, and Hudson Bay itself. All of the bears that live on Hudson Bay come ashore in the summer because the Bay completely melts (in other parts of the world, bears will stay on the ice all year long). Bears that come ashore typically don't eat, and so they depend on their fat reserves to get them through the summer. As it gets colder and colder in October and November, bears congregate around Churchill because it is the first place on Hudson Bay that ice forms. As soon as the ice forms, the bears leave the land and go out so they can hunt seals.

During October and November, Churchill is truly bustling with tourists. People come from all over the world to see the many Polar Bears that gather around Churchill, which are waiting for the ice to form on Hudson Bay. Many people who travel to Churchill to see bears ride around in Tundra Buggies, which are enormous bus-like structures that ride around on the tundra to get up close and personal with the bears.

The Tundra Buggies

My first Polar Bear!

We watched this large male Polar Bear on the ice as it was eating a seal it had just caught. After it finished its meal, it meandered across the ice toward shore. Since the ice was so chunky, he often fell into the water, and would have to climb out.

A young male bear just wandering around and resting.

Two large male bears during a brief disagreement. They shortly went on their way and went to sleep in the rocks

While the Polar Bears that we saw were awesome, their presence around Churchill meant that we had to be particularly careful when doing field work. We always had to be vigilant, and carry a shotgun around with us for protection. At the study center, we kept track of all the Polar Bear sightings around the area, so that people doing field work would know whether a bear was spotted in their study area, and can be extra vigilant.

The white board: where we sign out when we leave the Study Centre each day, and where Polar Bear sightings are posted

Babies, Everywhere!*

2010-03-20T21:57:00.002-05:00

*Be warned… this blog post contains pictures of extraordinary cuteness.

The title of this post says it all, but, by far, the best part about the field work in Churchill this past summer were all of the chicks (shorebird chicks) we found. In addition to the godwit chicks that we would band and place radio transmitters on for Nate’s study, we also found the chicks of most of the other shorebirds, and many other birds. For this post, I will let the pictures do the talking.

Short-billed Dowitcher - the very first chick we found of the summer, it gave us some hope that our godwits would hatch their eggs too.

Hudsonian Godwit chicks! They are quite cute, and fluffy, and they have ridiculously big feet. When godwit nests hatched, we would band chicks and take data on them, and place a radio transmitter on one chick per brood to track them through their growth. The transmitters would fall off once contour feathers began to grow in.

Dunlin chick

Least Sandpiper - one of the cuter chicks that we found, and so tiny (as would be expected)

Stilt Sandpiper chick - sorry this shot is so oddly exposed, my camera was misbehaving this day, but you get the idea... it was cute

One day, we happened upon a hatched nest of American Golden Plovers - mom was nearby, and after taking some pictures, she gathered her babies and brooded them

Willow Ptarmigan chick - I particularly like the ptarmigan chick, because, as with the adults, the babies also have feathered feet!

Northern Shoveler - even at a few days old, the babies have already developed the big spatulate bill

Churchill in Bloom

2010-03-12T18:20:00.000-05:00

The tundra is a truly beautiful place when it is in flower. Adding to the spectacular show are orchids, tiny shrubs, and an assortment of other wildflowers. While it took a while for everything to start blooming this particular summer because of prolonged cold, once things popped, it was truly breathtaking.

One of my favorite plants around Churchill was the Lapland Rosebay (Rhododendron lapponicum), a relative of the large Rhododendron bushes that are planted in gardens across the U.S. This plant is everywhere, and, when it blooms, it covers the ground with its purple blossoms, and fills the air with a wonderful fragrance.

Detail of Rhododendron lapponicum.

Tundra full of blooming Rhododendron. All the purple is flower.

Botanically, Churchill is probably best known for its beautiful orchids. There are many species that can be found there, some only in the boggy boreal forest, some on the tundra, and others in edge habitat. I think I only missed one major orchid while I was there.

Small Northern Bog Orchid (Platanthera obtusata) - there are at least two species of Platanthera that look very similar, with differences including general height, and the presence of leaves on the stem. The two Platanthera species were the two most common orchids around Churchill.

Northern Coralroot (Corallorhiza trifida) - two different individuals. This orchid is neat because it is saprophytic, which means that it does not produce its own food, and instead sucks its nutrients from the roots of other nearby plants

Northern Twayblade (Listera borealis) - a very rare plant in Churchill, and only known from one location

Round-leafed Orchid (Amerorchis rotundifolia) - one of the more common orchid species around Churchill

Franklin's (or Sparrow-Egg) Lady Slipper (Cypripedium passerinum) - one of the larger and showier orchids of Churchill, this species is particularly interesting because it commonly self-fertalizes, which is rare among orchids, many of which have developed elaborate methods to attract pollinators and prevent self-pollinzation.

In addition to the orchids, there were many other neat plants around Churchill, some of which became very familiar after habitat surveys and vegetation plots that we completed.

Purple Saxifrage (Saxifraga oppositifolia) - usually the first flower to open on the tundra in the spring

Alpine Azalea (Loiseleuria procumbens) - not an actual azalea, this very tiny but beautiful flower was uncommon on the tundra, and had a sweet fragrance

Andromeda (Andromeda poliofolia) - very common, and was in almost every veg. plot we did

Dwarf Labrador Tea (Ledum decumbens)

Common Butterwort (Pinguicula vulgaris) - one of two carnivorous plants in Churchill (the other also a butterwort). Bugs get stuck to the leaves, and in some cases, the leaves will curl around the insect, and digest them

Bog Laurel (Kalmia polifolia) - a tiny relative of the much larger shrub, Mountain Laurel, which grows in deciduous forests of the eastern U.S.

Snow Willow (Salix nivalis) - a full grown willow at an inch high

Mountain Avens (Dryas integrifolia) - a very common plant, often formed thick mats, which, when blooming, were beautiful, with many of these small, white, daisy-like flowers

Northern Bilberry (Vaccinium uliginosum)

Flame-colored Lousewort (Pedicularis flammea)

Nest Searching

2010-03-07T12:25:00.003-05:00

By June 15th or so, the snow finally melted enough to allow godwits to begin nesting. Now, I don’t know what anyone knows of nest searching, but let me tell you, it is not easy. Nest searching for any species requires a lot of time and patience, but searching for godwit nests take this to a whole new level. While most shorebird species flush from their nest while you are still quite a distance away, godwits will not flush from their nest until you are on top of them. And, it is almost impossible to find a godwit on a nest without flushing it. They are extremely cryptic, and their nests are well hidden in the sedge. Sure, you would know that a godwit is nesting nearby, due to a territorial male, and sure, that male will watch you and yell at you, and sure, you can walk transects back and forth for hours, and still not find the nest, unless you walk within less than 5 meters of the nest (some won’t flush until you are ~1 meter away). That being said, finding godwit nests is an exhilarating experience, because you trudge through the sedge marsh for hours, and suddenly this bird explodes into flight at your feet, and begins yelling at you, and lo, there is a nest! The first nest I found, it scared the crap out of me, because I was not expecting that there would actually be a nest near me. I wish I could say that subsequent nests I found did not surprise me as much, but, no, every nest I found, every time that female exploded from the ground at my feet, it scared the crap out of me.

Two different Hudsonian Godwit nests. The top nest is the first nest we found during the summer of 2009

Okay, now for a test. Where, in this picture, is the godwit sitting on her nest? (see bottom of the post for the answer)

A male Hudsonian Godwit sitting on his nest. He was a bit easier to see from a distance than most.

While godwit nests may be hard to find, thankfully, the same can't be said for some other species. Although we weren't specifically looking for other nests, the miles of walking we did in prime nesting real estate certainly turned up some pretty neat nests of many other species. Collectively, we found nests of all of the shorebirds that nest in Churchill (except Stilt Sandpiper and Wilson’s Snipe), which include Whimbrels (by far the most common nest we found), Short-billed Dowitcher, Lesser Yellowlegs, Dunlin, Least Sandpiper, Red-necked Phalarope, and American Golden Plover (Semipalmated Plovers also nest in Churchill, but they nest on the rocky beach areas, not near the sedge, so we didn't find those while looking for godwits).

Whimbrel nest. These were easy to find, partly because they were typically in very exposed locations, on the tops of the more barren hummocks.

Short-billed Dowitcher nest. These nests were typically in very similar places to godwit nests, hidden very well in at the base of a sedge tussock

Least Sandpiper nest. These were tiny (see my foot for reference)! These were a lot of fun to find, and were not usually as hidden as a godwit or a dowitcher, and on drier land. There was usually some overhanging cover.

Lesser Yellowlegs nest. We didn't find one of these until we went into the Boreal. This was in open boggy habitat. We found a second one later this day that was fairly exposed in a burn area

American Golden Plover nest. These were probably my favorite eggs, because of the pattern and contrast in the eggs. There was also quite a bit of variation between nests

This male American Golden Plover gave up trying to distract us from his nest and just plopped down right on his eggs. Same nest as above.

Red-necked Phalarope nest. This nest was fairly exposed, but what was neat here, is that the sedge the nest was built on was clearly woven into a shallow cup, unlike the other species, which just made a cup by clearing away material and stamping a nest site

Dunlin nest. We only ever found one of these, and it was hard to find. It was nestled very tightly into the top of a thick sedge tussock.

Now, don't get the impression that the only birds that nest in Churchill are shorebirds. While they may be some of the stars of the place, there are a lot of other cool birds that nest in the area. In addition to all the shorebird nests we found, we also found Savannah Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, Common Redpoll, Canada Goose (lots), Northern Pintail, Long-tailed Duck, Common Eider, Pacific Loon, Willow Ptarmigan, and Arctic Tern nests.

Willow Ptarmigan nest. This nest was just started, and nests typically contain many more eggs than this. I never did see a nest with more eggs in it.

Arctic Tern nest. If anyone has been near a tern nest, you can imagine that this pair of terns was not happy with our presence.

Northern Pintail nest.

Long-tailed Duck nest. This nest was nested under a small spruce tree, and, compared to all the other waterfowl nests we saw, very well concealed.

Common Eider nest. These eggs were quite a bit bigger than I was expecting.

Parasitic Jaeger nest. I have a hard time calling this a "nest" since there is absolutely no attempt at even a depression in the ground. This egg was just plopped right atop a hummock. Jaegers have some incredible distraction displays, and frankly can be a bit frightening when you don't know they're there.

Common Redpoll nest. I liked this nest in particular because it was lined with Willow Ptarmigan feathers.

And now, for the answer to the quiz, here is a close view of the female godwit on her nest.

She was hiding behind the small twiggy bush in the lower right hand corner of the picture

Phalaroping Around Town

2010-03-05T11:01:00.004-05:00

June 3, 2009: This date marked the first arrival of many shorebird species, including our first Hudsonian Godwits. However, even with the arrival of these birds, almost all of the available nesting habitat remained under snow, and it was clear that it would remain that way for a while yet. It didn’t matter too much to me (yet) however, because I was ecstatic to see my first godwits in breeding plumage (what beautiful birds!). After the first push of shorebirds into the area, things slowed down again for a couple of days.

However, some of the strange weather patterns that delayed the return of summer also brought some very special birds into Churchill. For about a week, we were distracted by many Red Phalaropes that were hanging around some of the small patches of water that were open around Churchill. Red Phalaropes are uncommon around the area, and are not seen every year. So, when we saw 20+ over the course of the week, we were thrilled. Not only did we see them, but these phalaropes had no fear of us, and were foraging within feet of us. Here are some of the many pictures I took of the birds:

Red Phalaropes (all female), from various places around Churchill. I particularly like the above image, which shows a bird dunking underwater, in pursuit of some tasty morsel

Tom and Jay photograph the Red Phalaropes that swam and foraged feet in front of us.

I was looking almost straight down on this bird, only 6-7 feet away. I particularly like it because you can see their awesome lobed feet

Female Red-necked Phalarope. In the top image, you can make out a food particle in its beak, which it has just captured using capillary action (you can see the water still being drawn into its bill)

All of our phalarope photographing bored Brad, so he took to wandering down the road. On his walk, he found two additional Red Phalaropes.

Red Phalarope feeding, spinning in the water to churn up small aquatic invertebrates. You can see the spirals in the water that the phalarope creates by spinning!

The Ivory Colored Frost Lover

2010-03-02T12:10:00.008-05:00

Saturday, 20-Feb-2010: Pat Jones, birder from Long Island, discovers an adult Ivory Gull on Lake Champlain, on the Vermont side, while searching the area for a previously reported Northern Hawk Owl. During his trip to the northern reaches of New York, Pat Jones also found an adult male Tufted Duck, in addition to the continuing Northern Hawk Owl, making for an incredible northern New York rarities trifecta.

As the reports of the Ivory Gull continued through the following week, schemes began to form for a trip to the northeast corner of New York State. A major winter storm that hit Ithaca Thursday night almost thwarted our attempt. Not wanting a repeat of our first Ivory Gull chase in January of 2009 where we drove through the middle of a blizzard, we watched the weather intently. However, the storm passed, and the roads were cleared by midday on Friday.

By Friday afternoon, plans were made to leave Ithaca at 3:30 the following morning. A second group of Ithaca birders left earlier that day, and were able to track down the gull on Friday afternoon.

Now, I was going out to dinner with friends the night before, and didn’t get back until late, so I had the bright idea of not sleeping before leaving. That, in the long run, hurt, but, all went well enough. After an early start, Tom, Carolyn and I were on our way, first to pick up Brad, and then to Ausable Point, first to track down the Tufted Duck. Arriving at Ausable Point around 9 AM, we quickly saw the Tufted Duck, pointed out to us by our fellow Ithacans who had found it earlier in the day. Now, I can understand that part of the appeal of Tufted Ducks is that they are a rare bird for us U.S. birders, but I really do enjoy watching them. Their tuft is actually quite loose, and flops around a lot as they swim, turn their head, and dive. When resurfacing, their tuft, initially plastered to their head with water, suddenly springs back out.

My poor attempt at digiscoping the Tufted Duck. In this picture, it is pretty close to center and sleeping. You can pick it out by its black back and clean white sides

After we finished watching the Tufted Duck, we moved on to the Ivory Gull. As soon as we arrived, the dozen or so birders that were already gathered on the jetty pointed out the bird to us. At first, the bird remained quite distant on the ice for quite a long period of time, seemingly content with bathing, preening, sleeping, and pooping. We waited on that break wall for a good 4 hours, with intermittent snow squalls making our vigil particularly painful. But, we were rewarded for our patience, as the bird eventually got hungry, and came into a chicken carcass that was on the ice near the jetty. It fed on the chicken for nearly 45 minutes while we just stared in amazement at its beauty.

Views from the Rouses Point jetty, where we spent close to five hours watching the Ivory Gull. Note the ice fishermen on the ice in the middle picture.

Sitting through a brief snow squall while watching the Ivory Gull (photo by Carolyn Sedgwick)

The Ivory Gull begins to close in on some tasty chicken

When not feasting on this chicken, this Ivory Gull would pick at fish that the ice fishermen had left out for it

Adult Ivory Gull, Rouses Point, NY.

Ivory Gull going for a stroll on the ice after gorging on chicken

After we had our fill of the Ivory Gull (not that I can ever tire of that bird), we moved onto the Northern Hawk Owl, which had been spotted earlier in the afternoon after a two-day hiatus, for our final twitch of the day. Again, we were not disappointed, as the bird sat on the side of the road, and at one point caught a vole, which it later cached somewhere. Unfortunately, by that time of day, the light was poor, and my camera refused to cooperate.

Northern Hawk Owl, Champlain, NY.

Probably one of my best birding days in New York state (from a rarities perspective), this day was tempered by the thought that this adult Ivory Gull may only be here due to changes in its northern realm. Over the past two winters, an unprecedented number of Ivory Gulls (mostly adult birds, no less) have shown up on the East Coast, one making it as far south as Georgia (roughly 10 birds south of the Canadian border). Typically, vagrant birds are juvenile birds, but the sudden surge of adult vagrants this far south raises questions of the quality of the traditional winter grounds. In the Canadian Arctic, Ivory Gull populations appear to be declining quite rapidly (based on surveys at the breeding colonies), with climate change thought to be one of the primary factors (Mallory et al. 2008). In addition to changes due to climate, Ivory Gulls have been found to have increasing levels of pollutants in their bodies, with high amounts of mercury and other pollutants (Birdlife International 2010)

For a few more pictures of mine, plus a video of the Ivory Gull feeding, check here.

For much better pictures of the Ivory Gull and Northern Hawk Owl, check out Tom's pictures here and here.

References:

Mallory, Mark L., Iain J. Stenhouse, Grant Gilchrist, Gregory Robertson, J. Christopher Haney and Stewart D. Macdonald. 2008. Ivory Gull (Pagophila eburnea), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America Online: http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/175

The First Two Weeks in Churchill: A Wild Goose Chase

2010-03-01T12:00:00.008-05:00

With a good 3-4 feet of snow on the ground in most places around Churchill, and no shorebirds, we had nothing to do (for work). But, put 4 birders together in Churchill, during the first stages of spring migration, with a car… the only logical thing to do is to go birding! And, for the first two weeks, that is pretty much all we did. It was a really incredible experience watching spring migration from beginning to end in a place like Churchill. The first half of spring migration consisted mainly of waterfowl, and of those waterfowl, most were geese. Hundreds of thousands of Snow, Ross’, Canada, and Cackling Geese passed through the area, with smaller numbers of Greater White-fronted Geese. On one particularly warm, clear day in early June, Brad and I counted over 100,000 Snow and Ross’ Geese fly over one point in under an hour. On some days, Ross’ Geese would outnumber Snow Geese (which, coming from New York, is pretty cool). With so many white geese passing through the area, we were ever vigilant for the mythical “Blue” Ross’ Goose, the dark form of Ross’ Goose which is rarely seen and even more rarely photographed. For several days during the first week of June, we found some interesting candidates, but we determined those to be Snow Goose x Ross’ Goose hybrids. However, on June 5th, or vigilance paid off, and we found a pair of seemingly pure dark Ross’ Geese. It was neat to compare those birds to the Blue Snows and the dark hybrids we were finding. In addition to the Blue Ross', we also found some other interesting oddball geese, such as an apparent Snow x Cackling Goose, and a leucistic Cackling Goose.

All five local geese are in this picture... can you find all five?

A mix flock of mostly Ross' and Snow Geese along Goose Creek Road, outside of Churchill. There are also some Northern Pintail in this picture

Foraging geese: in this picture, there are Snow, Ross', Canada, and Cackling

The mythical Blue Ross' Goose: poor digiscope quality, but, you can really pick the one bird out quite easily in the top photo. Both birds are in the bottom photo. It probably helps to click on the picture to get a larger version

With so many Branta geese passing through, of several subspecies, it was a real opportunity to study Canada and Cackling Geese side by side. And what a task it turned out to be. The range of color, shape, and size ran all the way from normal Canada Goose to normal Cackling Goose, and everything in between, to the point that some individuals or even groups of birds were just unable to be identified with confidence.

It's tough to pick out, but this picture shows the leucistic Cackling Goose we found. It's ghostly pale, and blends into the snowy background quite well

Due to the extensive snow and ice cover in early June, most of the geese (and most of the birds around, for that matter) were concentrated in relatively few locations, most of which were low lying, near the Churchill River. As a result, most of these locations experienced heavy goose browsing, and were left barren mud flats when the geese left.

Sandhill Crane hanging out with some Cackling and Canada Geese. There are a few pairs of cranes that nest around Churchill, and during migration, we would get some decent flocks (100-200 birds) around town

As a consequence of a late spring and summer, the Snow Geese that nest around La Perouse Bay, about 30 kilometers east of Churchill, failed. Nests were initiated over a week later than the latest date on record, and many had to be placed in sub-optimal locations due to high water levels. This left goose nests far more susceptible to predation, and by July, most, if not all goose nests had been depredated. Geese farther south, however, along James Bay, had a far more successful year, as did geese elsewhere in the Arctic.

By the end of the second week of June, almost all of the Snow, Ross', Cackling, and White-fronted Geese had departed the Churchill area, and all that was left were the breeding Canada Geese.

One of the last groups of Greater White-fronted Geese we saw for the spring

Gulling in Churchill: A Larophile's Dream

2010-02-28T12:01:00.003-05:00

Oh Canada! Land of the gulls! (adult Thayer's Gull)

If there is one thing that has put Churchill on the birder’s map of North America, it was the arrival of breeding Ross’ Gulls in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Ross’ Gull in North America has always been the holy grail among gulls, second perhaps only to Ivory Gull in beauty and rarity. However, the chance to see a Ross’ Gull, in breeding plumage, reliably, was something that, until found in Churchill, had been only a pipe dream for most birders. Ross’ Gull, though, is not the only neat gull that can be found around Churchill.

Our gulling adventures around Churchill began the first few days of June, at the new dump. Where else would you start a winter gulling expedition, than the local dump? The dominant gull around Churchill by far was the Herring Gull. However, we tried our darnedest to turn up some more species, and we were not disappointed. We were able to track down 3 other species of Larus gulls, with Glaucous Gull being second to Herring Gull, followed, surprisingly, by Thayer’s Gull (although on some days, Ring-billed Gull were more numerous than Thayer’s). We spent quite a bit of time searching through Herring Gull flocks for Thayer’s Gull, and we spent a lot of time photographing them. When in alternate plumage, Thayer’s are a sharp looking gull. We were also able to get some audio recordings of Thayer’s Gull long-call, which was a new species for the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

How many Thayer's Gulls do you see in this flock (hint: there are more than one)?

Adult Thayer's Gull in flight at close range, along the ice edge on the Churchill River

A pair of adult Thayer's Gulls lounging on a rooftop in Churchill

Moving into the second week of June, while the large gulls were still loafing around town and the dump, the Bonaparte’s Gulls started showing up along the Churchill River. Over a three day period, a particularly large feeding flock of Bonaparte’s Gulls had gathered along the Churchill River. In this large flock, to our excitement, were 30+ Sabine’s Gulls, and 5-10 Little Gulls. Also associating with this gull flock were many Arctic Terns. Being able to watch this group of birds forage, often at close range, was incredible, and it was the first time I was able to study Sabine’s Gulls for any length of time.

An adult Glaucous Gull loafing with the Herring Gulls along the Churchill River

A pair of Arctic Terns resting on a rock in a pond near town

Along with the influx of small gulls along the river, came jaegers. At first, we only saw a few Parasitic Jaegers here and there, often either as fly-overs, or along the river. However, we also started seeing Long-tailed Jaegers, as well as a few scattered Pomarine Jaegers (I only saw one myself). The Long-tailed Jaeger was a new bird for me, and quickly became my favorite jaeger. One day, Jay and I watched a pair of Long-tailed Jaegers hawking insects above a small pond. It was quite an incredible sight.

One of a pair of Long-tailed Jaegers that were hawking insects at Akudlik

By the end of the second week of June, most of the non-breeding gulls began departing. Soon, we were left with only Herring, some Ring-billed, Bonaparte's, and some Little Gulls. Unfortunately, we never were able to find a Ross' Gull.

An Adventure into the Great White North Begins

2010-02-17T17:00:00.001-05:00

*Note: Text and photos in Churchill and Chile posts are by Shawn Billerman

On May 27th 2009, I started my summer job. What was my summer job? I was a field assistant for a graduate student from Cornell University studying Hudsonian Godwits in Churchill, Manitoba. I was with a crew of 3 other students, all friends from Cornell. Our primary tasks were to find godwit nests, catch and band godwits, try to recover light sensing data loggers that the crew put out last field season (which are used to figure out the godwits’ movements over the course of the previous year), catch and band godwit chicks, collect insects in daily and weekly transects to get an idea of what is available to chicks to eat, and, finally, complete habitat surveys to get a better idea of the micro-habitat requirements for nest sites, as well as the preferred chick foraging habitat.

But, I’m getting way ahead of myself. I left New York early the morning of the 27th, flew to Minneapolis, then to Winnipeg, and finally I was on a small prop plane on my way to Churchill. I was very excited. The plane could seat roughly 25 people, and I was only one of 8-10 people on the plane. I had an entire two seats to myself. As we fly north from Winnipeg, it started to cloud over. Darn. I was looking forward to seeing the area as I was landing, to get a feel for it. Oh well. After about a 2 hour flight, we start to descend into the Churchill area. Still cloudy… Finally, with only about 2 or 3 minutes of flight time left, we drop below the clouds… and I was stunned by the view. Now, I had some idea of what to expect from what the others told me last year… there was still snow on the ground, but there were open patches, the smaller ponds were all free of ice, and full of birds, such as Pacific Loons, there were shorebirds starting to set up territories, ptarmigans were calling, the works. What I saw was not what I was expecting… the land was covered in snow and ice… and it was still snowing. We land, and I step off the plane and onto the tarmac, and the snow is swirling around me, and I rush to the building to collect my luggage. Lee Ann, the science coordinator for the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, the place I would be living for the next 2 months, was there to pick me up. After introductions, and a short wait, we were off. The study center was a short 15 km drive away, but the roads made that a difficult trip. The roads were coated with snow and ice, with tall, 3 m tall snow banks on either side of the road. I got my first view of Hudson Bay on the drive in… a sheet of ice and snow.
We got to the center, I get a brief tour, I eat a quick dinner, and I am off to hang out, meet new people, and get better acquainted with my new home.

The view I had from the plane coming into the Churchill Airport. The line going down through the boreal is the rail line that connects Churchill to Winnipeg

The road to the Churchill Northern Studies Centre was sometimes very hard to see during the first week, with all the snow that fell. But, rest assured, there is a road there

One of my first views of Hudson Bay. In this particular year, my view of the bay would not change until July, when it finally began to thaw

The Churchill Northern Studies Centre! My home for 2 months

Welcome to the Town of Churchill: Polar Bear Capital of the World, Bird Watchers Paradise, Beluga Whale Capital of the World, and Nature's Lighthouse.

Shortly afterward, I get to my room, dig out some clothes, and go to bed early.

View from my room on the first night. Cold... so cold

Ceding control to a Godwit Lover

2010-02-17T16:36:00.002-05:00

Since I have been grossly negligent in my blog-writing duties for a long time, I am turning over bird reporting for a while to Shawn Billerman, so he can report on his shorebird field work. Shawn has been working as part of field crew tracking Hudsonian Godwits from their nesting areas at the top of North America all the way to their wintering grounds in southern South America. Stay tuned. (Also see Godwit reports from the same field crew on Round Robin)

Conservation, Paper Subdivisions, and the Google Age

2010-02-02T18:57:00.007-05:00

I've been recording Florida Scrub-Jays recently on various sites on the Lake Wales Ridge. I had an interesting experience today trying to make connections between my google maps printouts, my map of the scrub and reserve boundaries, and my on-the-ground field-truthing of where these jays are. My target today was to record every jay in Silver Lake, a scrub reserve that is part of a network of protected areas on the ridge (see map). Here is the Google roadmap of the protected area, most of the area you see north of Columbus Boulevard and Minorca St:

View Larger Map

Basically, besides the patch west of Silver Lake itself, it looks like all subdivision! Zooming in farther, the roads even all have names:

View Larger Map

Now click from street map to satellite view and turn off the labels. Poof! Roads gone! It looks like a subdivision slated for development made it as far as being uploaded to Google Maps before being bought up for scrub conservation. Then I realized what a common pattern this is in Florida conservation. I couldn't be happier to never see those roads developed. We have too many already.

More depressing is the land not currently protected. Go ahead and click the "Show Labels" on Sat View on and off. Watch the habitat magically disappear!

View Larger Map

If that makes you too depressed, like it did me, I checked around and it does look like that parcel is actually targeted for conservation acquisition. Check Appendices 2 and 3 under the "State of the Scrub" report here and search for the Silver Lake properties.

I've encountered other sites like these in my fieldwork in Florida over the past year. Here is a section of another one of these protected sites, Carter Creek. Unlike Silver Lake, this paper subdivision got as far as clearing lanes through the flatwoods and scrub for the roads. There are even a few holdout land parcels with houses scattered through it. Check it out, switch the labels on and off again:

View Larger Map

My current work on the Bombing Range sometimes takes me up to another paper subdivision, this one with a very different history. That story was featured, not particularly kindly, in a book, Redneck Riviera. Basically the roads were never cleared (never even intended to be cleared, if you believe the stories in the book), and it is now under the governing of the River Ranch Property Owners Association. There is a big swath of land dedicated to setting up camp or RV or trailer, and an enormous tract of undeveloped land used for lots and lots of hunting. While it may be criss-crossed by an insane maze of ATV and 4wd and swamp buggy tracks, I don't think this is a particularly bad end for a paper subdivision. Some of the camps get really redneck, which makes working there fun:

Finally, last spring Eric and I, on a herping trip through south Florida, briefly visited the big granddaddy of all paper subdivisions: Picayune Strand. Read that link for the backstory.

View Larger Map

It was a bit of a shock while roadcruising to pop out the back end of Fakahatchee Strand Preserve (that road coming through the wilderness on the right) and into a maze of cleared dirt roads and canals. These road scars through the state forest are easily visible on the zoomed-out satellite view, and they also have names in Google Maps, if you zoom in and turn the labels on.

Is this a uniquely Floridian conservation strategy? I can't recall encountering anything like this in New York, but then upstate NY isn't besieged by swarms of retires looking for nice gated communities.

Edit, postscipt:

I came across a relevant quote in the old Pat McManus book I've been re-reading:

"City planners have shown beyond doubt that old orchards, meadows, and pine woods, which once threatened the outskirts of many of our towns and cities, can be successfully eradicated by constructing a housing development on top of them. To my knowledge there has not been a single recurrence of an old orchard, meadow, or pine woods after one application of a housing development."
(Patrick F. McManus, "The Backyard Safari" in A Fine And Pleasant Misery)

Another New Bird Species for 2009

2010-01-14T16:45:00.009-05:00

The December issue of the Oriental Bird Club bulletin BirdingASIA has added a potential new species to the known birds of the world (see the other birds described in 2009 here). In June of 2009 (how's that for turnaround time?), two birders and tour leaders for Field Guides found a flowerpecker species (Dicaeidae) feeding on fruiting mistletoe above the rainforest canopy walkway at the Borneo Rainforest Lodge. It was unknown to them and the ornithologists working in this large primary forest. In sightings over several days, they took pictures of at least two individuals feeding on the mistletoe and heard one sing (too briefly to get a recording). Then they were gone, and the strange flowerpeckers haven't been relocated by the time of publication.

I have no experience or knowledge of flowerpeckers, so I can't comment on this birds' distinctiveness. The authors knew it was something different though, and ended up combing through the literature and 25,000 museum specimens comparing the photos to every possible look-alike, including little-known juveniles of all the flowerpecker species. Nothing matches. The authors speculate that the bird must be a canopy specialist to have avoided previous discovery in a well birder and surveyed area.

With no specimen in hand, a new species cannot be formally described. Instead, the authors gave it the label 'Spectacled Flowerpecker' and published their findings, ending with a plea to birders and ornithologists to help search for this species.

For more information and photos of the new bird, check out the paper, linked below.

Reference

David P. Edwards, Richard E. Webster, and Rose Ann Rowlett (2009) 'Spectacled Flowerpecker': a species new to science discovered in Borneo? BirdingASIA 12:38-41. PDF

The Unintentional Quest for 400

2010-01-03T18:00:00.004-05:00

In a fit of frustration with my progress in other more meaningful ventures (like getting into grad school and finishing publications), I recently decided to take a brief break and do something else constructive: organize my birding lists, which I've been putting off for oh... about two years. I skipped updating my life list, because that would involve combining lists from three neotropical countries and correcting the various taxonomies, not a brief project. So instead I just updated my ABA-area list, a much easier venture. When I tallied it all up, I came to 397... awesome! Then, I began noticing a few errors. Common Myna was not on the checklist I was using, but it is countable and I saw some in south Florida this year. 398. Oops, how could I forget Hoary Redpoll? 399. Then, I saw another bird I missed on the list, and my ABA tally reaching 400. 400! I glowed with excitement realizing I had reached a birding milestone. Best of all, the species that I forgot to add to the list, the one that pushed me to 400, was also the latest new ABA bird I had seen, and it was a good one.

Way back in August of 2009, I had a month off in between my old job in Florida (Scrub-Jay intern!) and my new job this fall and winter (Scrub-Jay and Red-cockaded technician!). I spent the month in Ithaca, working hard on wrapping up some research, putting a talk together for the AOU meeting, presenting at the AOU meeting, and writing up my research into publishable manuscripts. I was pretty frantic and I needed just a few days truly off so my 'vacation' from Florida actually felt like one. So, I headed down to Long Island with Shawn to get my shorebird fix.

We really canvassed the island, hitting several far-flung birding locations in several days. First up was Avalon Park in Stony Brook. This little place is good for flocks of tame geese, ducks, and gulls along the pond shore, lots of basking Red-eared Sliders and Painted Turtles, and a nice walk in the woods to escape the madness of suburban Long Island.

We took a trip out to the end of the island, Montauk. We ended up not seeing a whole lot interesting bird-wise, but we did find this really awesome Phasmid. Check out its blowing-in-the-wind mimic action.

Farther west along the south shore, we checked the flats near the Ponquogue Bridge on Shinnecock Bay (I love place names on Long Island, by the way). We started tallying up shorebirds, but stayed focused on the tern flocks roosting on the sandbars exposed at low tide in the bay. It had been a while since I had seen a new tern and I was positively itching to find one of the east coast species I've been dipping on for a while.

While scanning through the Commons and Forster's Terns on the distant sandbar, I passed over one tern that was noticeably paler. Taking a closer look... my lifer Roseate Tern was at hand! It was made even better by the fact that I picked it out before Shawn. We found one or two more in the flock, too, before summertime boat traffic stirred up the tern flocks too many times. ABA bird #399... check.

My lifer Roseate Tern, I swear

Jones Beach is a standard stop for my Long Island birding trips, because it is quite close to Shawn's place. I can't admit to liking it much in the summertime though, because so much boat and beach traffic displaces congregating birds. Seriously, why can't everyone else enjoy our shore resources the same way? Well, not much was going on in the bay side of Jones Beach. The little island by the Coast Guard station harbored a few sleeping Oystercatchers and assorted sandpipers. Its a treat for me to get to see Oystercatchers, but after scanning what there was quickly I got bored and started looking at fish and jellyfish in the harbor.

Then the harbor blew up in our faces. A Peregrine came out of nowhere and strafed the little sandbar island, sending oystercatchers, peeps, and gulls flying. The falcon quickly singled out an unlucky Ruddy Turnstone and they began dogfighting over the bay. Shawn and I just froze and watched the two go back and forth. The little turnstone couldn't hope to outrun the falcon in level flight, so the action stayed right in front of us as he twisted and turned. I was secretly rooting for the falcon, but as the chase dragged on without end I had to give that little turnstone some respect. Then the turnstone pulled the craziest maneuver I've ever witnessed*. It turned and actually flew between me and Shawn on the dock. The falcon, slightly more cautious of two birders with their scopes, veered away at the last minute and went sailing overhead. Hot pursuit broken, the falcon failed to relocate the turnstone and wandered off. Looking around, we found the turnstone hiding in the shadow of one of the dock steps. Epic win!

That bit of excitement aside, we could turn our attention to the beach side of Jones Beach, where peeps awaited us. Best birds were Western Sandpiper and Piping Plover (it had been too long since I had seen those, too long...) but I spent the most time just watching the plentiful Sanderling flocks playing in the waves... I already posted about them here. I think I could spend all day watching these beach birds.

Mary Beth walking the beach

This picture was supposed to contain Least, Semipalmated, and Western Sandpipers. I think it only came out with two of those, but the third might be hiding behind that grass clump:

If you think I achieved my shorebird fix with a few quick trips to Jones, you don't know me. Plus, I had yet to find my target bird, the big 4-0-0. So, off to J-bay.

A Pec among Peeps

Unknown photographer getting down and dirty

Least Sandpiper

White-rumped Sandpiper

Can you guess this one?

Look at that schnoz... Western!

Birding Jamaica Bay with Shawn, Drew, Trudy, and Mary Beth was fantastic for getting gobs of up close and personal sandpiper sightings, including a whole bunch of good species (Avocet, White-rumped, Western, etc etc...). On our way out, we had a sighting of a different nature. I ran into Will and Corey, fellow bird bloggers. We stood around, shifty-eyed and uncomfortable at meeting in person instead of the safety of the internet. Then my group left, and Will and Corey went on to take much better photos of the cool shorebirds at East Pond. They even spotted one we missed, an American Golden-Plover, identified by the unique bright blue arrows pointing it out.

Well, by this point Shawn and I had exhausted just about every good shorebirding location on Long Island, and we still hadn't stumbled across my highly desired target species. I had definitely gotten my shorebird fix and was quite sated in that regard. I was also thrilled to have gotten a lifer Roseate Tern. If I didn't get this target though, all of that good fortune would be tarnished by the stain of yet another trip to the coast without finding this common species. I had literally been searching for years, including at least half a dozen similar birding trips to Long Island in multiple seasons and various trips to the coast in other parts of the country. Every trip I made Shawn would swear the locations we visited are reliable, regular locations for this species, but as every trip passed by with no luck this bird began to take on a mythical status in my mind. Never before has there been such a nemesis bird!

We had one more trick up our sleeve - Oceanside Marine Nature Study Area. We walked the boardwalks of this small sanctuary of saltmarsh flats butting right up against suburban sprawl. By the time we reached the preserve, it was already midday and not particularly nice out. As I recall the tides were not in our favor either. At least this Great Egret made a very willing subject:

After scanning the mucky channels as much as possible, we began aiming back for the nature center. Shawn at one point claimed to see my target make a dash across a muddy opening in the marsh, but I laughed at his belief in mythical creatures and shrugged off the sighting. I wandering down one last boardwalk spur, and Shawn stopped at the last bit of marsh before the nature center. Then he started shouting and waving frantically. Rushing back to meet him, clambering atop a bench to get a better look out into a half-hidden channel, was that... ?

YES! A CLAPPER RAIL walked around in the muck followed by six black downy half-grown chicks bathing!!!!!!!! Years of searching and not only do I find my life Clapper Rail, but I get the incredible cuteness factor too! The view into the channel was too reed-choked to get anything better than these pictures, but they are undeniable proof that this species exists, it is no longer just a legend, and yes, I even saw it myself!

This sighting was made even sweeter by my discovery two months later that this long-desired species was #400 on my ABA list. Thanks, Shawn! I owe you big! This almost forgives the infamous Ross's Gull incident. Almost.

Well, I could finally retire to my studies in Ithaca happy. The same could not be said about my boots. Heavy duty saltwater, sand and muck finally killed off what adventures in Costa Rica and Venezuela did not. Farewell, my friends.

Epilogue: This post, a birding trip in late August / early September 2009, was started in November 2009. I set it aside and then picked it up to finish in January 2010. By now, I am at 402 on my ABA list, both of those new birds being lifers. At my current rate of writing, expect a post about those in oh... six months or so.

* The second craziest maneuver - Walking to High School one early morning years ago, a House Sparrow went careening past me and shot up underneath the awning on a house. The Sharp-shinned Hawk right on its tail couldn't maneuver that fast and could only bring up its legs, flare its wings and tail, and it slammed into the wall. That last-second braking action saved the hawk - it bounced off and recovered in a nearby tree, looking more than a little miffed. House Sparrow +1

New Bird Species of 2009

2010-01-01T07:16:00.051-05:00

Welcome to the world! We're sorry we missed you for so many years.

Synallaxis beverlyae, Rio Orinoco Spinetail (Hilty and Ascanio 2009)

Prowling the mighty Rio Orinoco in Venezuela in 1998, Steven Hilty heard something strange singing from a small river island. Since Steven Hilty literally wrote the (excellent!) book on Venezuela's avifauna, this was nothing to dismiss. 11 years and a lot of hard work later, he amassed enough evidence to publish a description of a new spinetail species named for his wife Beverly. The new spinetail is most similar in plumage to S. albescens, a species in the llanos that overlaps S. beverlyae in range, but the song is closer to other species including S. albigularis from other regions of South America.

The new spinetail exhibiting typical spinetail shyness (Source: Hilty and Ascanio 2009)

This spinetail is found only in unique scrubby dense vegetation on river islands that are seasonally flooded. So far it is only known from three widely separated islands (see map below) but the authors guess that it could be distributed on islands in-between, which have been poorly surveyed. See Gunnar's post about this discovery for more as-yet-unnamed potential new species from these river islands (and more pictures of the new spinetail). While the population size and conservation status of these birds is unknown, the authors note that dams on the river threaten the natural flood cycles and the ecology of these islands.

The widely disjunct islands known to have the spinetail (Source: Hilty and Ascanio 2009)

Phylloscopus calciatilis, Limestone Leaf Warbler (Alstrom et al. 2009)

Beginning in 1994, ornithologists began to notice birds thought to be the Sulpher-breasted Warbler (P. ricketti) in breeding condition, singing, in what was their wintering range in Laos. Upon more detailed study, they realized these warblers represented a unique taxon. The plumage was nearly identical to P. ricketti but the Laos birds differed in songs, calls, and morphometrics. Analyzing the genetics, they found this new warbler was actually more closely related to the Yellow-vented Warbler (P. cantator), which is much more distinct in plumage, than P. ricketti, with which it is so nearly identical. Together the three species form a closely related group among Phylloscopus species, and they occupy distinct ranges in southeast Asia that don't quite overlap, as is typical for a closely related species complex. The authors named this new warbler calciatilis ("dwelling on limestone"), the Limestone Leaf Warbler, after the unique limestone karst region it is endemic to.

Limestone Leaf Warbler compared to similar species (Source: Alstrom et al. 2009)

Pycnonotus hualon, Bare-faced Bulbul (Woxvold, Duckworth, and Timmons 2009)

By far the strangest new bird is a bald, ugly, boring thing, like the Limestone Leaf Warbler, discovered in the limestone karst region of Laos. Observations of strange bald unknown bulbuls in the region were made as far back as 1995, but they were met with "good-natured ribbing". It wasn't until December 2008 that good, repeated observations were made by the authors and birds were captured in mist-nets. This crazy new species was named hualon - a Lao word for bald-head - and is noted in the publication as only found so far on one limestone outcrop. Other sightings are mentioned, and it appears to have been recently independently discovered at another location by this guy, who nicknamed them Khammouane Bulbuls. Check out his page for better photos of the species and the habitat.

Meet the Ugly Bulbul (Source: Woxvold, Duckworth, and Timmons 2009)

The birder who independently discovered these bulbuls seems to feel a little peeved at the original discoverers for not getting a publication out sooner. It is worth pointing out in all of the species here that none of them were first seen in this decade. While new species publications can (and should) happen a lot quicker than this, it is an enormous investment of time and effort for the ornithologists involved. Unless the new bird just serendipitously falls into a researcher's mistnet, it takes repeated observations by birders and researchers just to confirm a new bird has been found. Then you've got to go through the effort of capturing the bird and collecting specimens, getting recordings and characterizing the behavior and range of the new species. It needs a detailed comparison with other closely related species, and sufficient material might not be available for study in museums, necessitating more fieldwork. These new species are also not being found in heavily trafficked areas, and require setting up expeditions to remote areas. But I digress...

So, I could only find three completely new bird species descriptions for the year (Note I said descriptions, not discoveries, because as I've rambled about there is a lag time before publication. If you're wondering how many as yet undescribed birds are floating out there, there is a pretty good Birdforum thread about that) I think three is around average based on my recollection from the past few, but I haven't actually looked at the numbers. One of these days I'll get to that. To bolster this year's total, here are two more that don't quite make the cut as full new species.

Honorable Mentions:

Loxia sinesciuris, South Hills Crossbill (Benkman et al. 2009)

When compiling new species discoveries and descriptions, I try not to count those that were already known as populations or subspecies of another species and then split based on new data. There are lots of those every year, and it is plenty hard to keep track. Plus, completely new species are simply a lot cooler. This crossbill blurs the line.

A resident population of Red Crossbills (Loxia curvirostra) with a distinct call note was discovered in the South Hills of Idaho in 1997. Anyone who knows anything should know that Red Crossbills are one of the craziest and complex examples of adaptive evolution and incipient speciation this side of Darwin's Finches. There are 9 or 10 call types in North America, each with a particular conifer specialization and a bill morphology adapted to that conifer's cones. Many of these call types are nomadic across large swaths of North America, and bill morphology varies enough to make identification without call note difficult or impossible. I am less familiar with old world crossbills, but there are at least as many variants of Red Crossbill on that side of the pond. Basically, crossbill systematics are fubar.

The tiny geographic range of this putative new species (Source: Benkman et al. 2009)

So, that's why when the Idaho crossbills were discovered to be a resident population, crossbill guru Craig Benkman wasted no time getting them studied. Through his lab's work, they documented that the crossbills with the resident call type were almost totally reproductively isolated by assortative mating from other crossbill call types that periodically moved through the area. The other calls would breed in the same area as the South Hills call type, but the two weren't mixing. Because reproductive isolation is one of the strongest criteria for delimiting species, Benkman and colleagues lifted these birds out of the curvirostra morass and named them a new species. I could write a whole lot more about this system and all of its problems (I know because I've had a half-finished post started way back when this paper first came out), but I thought a brief summary was due here.

Geospiza sp. nov.?, Darwin's Finch (Grant and Grant 2009)

Remember two paragraphs ago when I mentioned the only more complex example of adaptive radiation than crossbills? Yup, this is it. The Grants have been studying ground finches in the Galapagos since ~~just after Darwin left~~ the early 1970's, and more than any previous work have made them the true example of Darwinian speciation. They've written whole books about their work, others have written books about them and their work, and countless scientific papers. Their paper this year has to be one of the coolest, though.

The Grant team has been tracking the fate of every medium ground finch on the small island of Daphne Major for 30 years through the use of color bands. In 1981, an odd immigrant from the other islands with hybrid characters from medium ground finch (Geospiza fortis) and cactus finch (G. scandens) arrived and started getting it on with the locals. The Grants monitored seven generations descending from this immigrant. In the forth generation, the lineage was reduced to two siblings, who bred and kept the lineage going. After that event, the lineage remained totally distinct, likely due to their distinct song, and have stayed reproductively isolated from the other finches on the island.

I get it now... the immigrants don't like to breed with bluebands (Source: Grant and Grant 2009)

Basically, the Grants just watched the birth of an incipient species. The immigrant lineage had larger beaks than the island native birds, providing ecological niche differences. When song differences arose through inbreeding, the lineage was able to remain distinct from other ground finches through behavioral isolation. This would have been the ultimate new species discovery, but the Grants refrain from giving it full species status (or any taxonomic status at all) and a name. They note that there is no answer to how many generations of isolated breeding are necessary before the lineage can be called a new species. They also note that many incipient species lineages are likely to fail before achieving full reproductive isolation, and predict that theirs will do so either through behavioral breakdowns leading to re-absorption by hybridization into the parent species or stochastic extinction of their tiny population.

So. Freakin'. Cool.

References

Alstrom, P, P Davidson, JW Duckworth, JC Eames, TT Le, C Nguyen, U Olsson, C Robson, and R Timmins (2009) Description of a new species of Phylloscopus warbler from Vietnam and Laos. Ibis 152: 145-168. Abstract

Benkman, CW, JW Smith, PC Keenan, TL Parchman, and L Santisteban (2009) A new species of the Red Crossbill (Fringillidae: Loxia) from Idaho. The Condor 111(1):169-176. Abstract

Grant, PR, and BR Grant (2009) The secondary contact phase of allopatric speciation in Darwin's finches. PNAS 106(48):20141-20148. Abstract

Hilty, SL, and D Ascanio (2009) A new species of spinetail (Furnariidae: Synallaxis) from the Rio Orinoco of Venezuela. The Auk 126(3):485-492. Abstract

Woxvold, IA, JW Duckworth, and RJ Timmins (2009) An unusual new bulbul (Passeriformes: Pycnonotidae) from the limestone karst of Lao PDR. Forktail 25:1-12. PDF

4 Million Tree Swallows

2009-12-02T18:39:00.004-05:00

Two weeks ago I had the great pleasure of visiting LSU as a potential grad school home for my future self. When I mentioned to anyone that I wanted to go birding they all started muttering about going to visit some swallow roost. I missed out on that chance because of a rainy weekend. Luckily, we have youtube to allow us to live vicariously and visit this very same Tree Swallow roost in Louisiana currently estimated to contain 4 to 5 million swallows. Wow.

Bark Sprouts Legs

2009-11-12T14:32:00.006-05:00

Yesterday I went to go scrape the white paint band off of an old RCW cavity tree when a piece of unpainted bark got up and walked out of the path of my bark knife. Yeah, I was surprised, too. Do you see it?

Here's a better look:

It turns out this piece of legged bark has a name: the Grizzled Mantis (Gonatista grisea). It kept skittering in a quick crab-walk around the trunk as I chased it in circles with my camera. I did manage a few more pictures:

In retrospect, I should've cornered it and harassed it more. The result is this spectacular display.

I hadn't realized there were such crazy-looking mantids in the US. I'll have to dig out and share some pictures of even crazier tropical mantis species that I used to keep.

Yellow-knobbed Curassow Day!

2009-11-10T15:29:00.014-05:00

Today is a tribute to an avian great, the Yellow-knobbed Curassow (Crax daubentoni)! Yellow-knobbed Curassow Day was decreed by Brad Walker, one of the current techs working on the Forpus project that I participated in last fall. Reasons for this decree are unimportant - the magnificence and wonder of these birds overwhelms all. During my time in Venezuela, I repeatedly tried to capture that magnificence on camera but was left crying in abject failure. This was the only image I managed to capture of this species:

That will simply not suffice for Yellow-knobbed Curassow Day, so I am forced to turn to Flickr. For the full extent of the yellow knob, click here.

You cannot compete with this hair, ever.

(Source - Flickr)

The only full-body view this Crax is willing to give you

(Source - Flickr)

So, go out and celebrate. If you are actually in the range of this species and have a chance at seeing it - get outside. If, like me, you are not currently in the range of any Crax species, lament your poor fortunes and start planning your next Neotropical trip. Long live the Cracids!

Sanderlings in Molt

2009-11-09T16:59:00.018-05:00

This past August I spent a few days birding Long Island getting my shorebird fix for the year (yes, I am just now putting something together to post). One of the best reasons to visit the Long Island beaches is to see the big flocks of Sanderling playing in the waves.

When taking big flock shots of birds, I like to zoom in afterwards and look for things I missed. When I took a look at the big Sanderling flock, I noticed a large number of birds in primary molt. I thought it unusual for a migrating flock of shorebirds to be molting flight feathers on a staging ground. Upon review of The Shorebird Guide and the Sanderling Birds of North America account, it seems this is not unusual at all. Adult Sanderling should be undergoing a complete prebasic molt into non-breeding plumage, replacing all of their flight feathers in late summer and early fall. Since the staging areas along the Long Island coast are also wintering areas for at least some Sanderling, they are not necessarily even going anywhere. In contrast to the adults, juvenile birds undergoing molt into their first, incomplete, basic plumage retain their juvenile flight feathers and should not be showing this condition in August. So, this neat little factoid I noticed after the fact is actually a roundabout way of aging Sanderling. Fancy that.

The Great Woodpecker Airlift

2009-10-31T09:31:00.024-05:00

I recently defined "Endangered" as a failure to breed in sufficient quantities. That is certainly the case with Red-cockaded Woodpeckers, especially in the small isolated populations towards the periphery of their range in southern Florida. One conservation strategy to help boost these populations is translocation - stealing woodpeckers from large, healthy populations and moving them into empty clusters here, in the hope that they will establish as new pairs.

This year, our study population was slated to receive five pairs of birds from Fort Stewart, Georgia. We lucked out in receiving a ride from our commander in a small aircraft, because it would've been a marathon drive otherwise. On Thursday morning, we crammed the tiny aircraft full of ten empty Woodpecker Moving Devices, two biologists, and two pilots, and set off northward towards the Deep South.

Once on the ground in Fort Stewart, we got swished up into the huge, well-oiled operation that is their wildlife department. Our little biology station could never muster enough people or equipment to send out ten woodpecker trapping teams simultaneously! Our crew was broken up amongst the teams and sent out the door soon after the organizational meeting.

Out in the field, I got a brief taste of some real Georgia pineywoods.

My real shock came when I unfolded the map of the Fort containing all of the RCW clusters... over 400 of them! It's no wonder then that this population can be a source for little groups like ours, with less than thirty active clusters. Here there are also many more natural cavities rather than inserts. Below is much more typical of RCW trees than this insert, with lots of resin flow around the cavity.

My team waited until dusk when our cluster returned to go into roost. After some frantic minutes trying to identify the target bird and its roost, a long-handled net was placed over the cavity hole and the bird was trapped. We were going after specific birds, because only young of the year are translocated. Adults with established territories don't make good subjects for movement because they'll just leave to look for their old home.

My first RCW in the hand

Terrified RCW squeal as we check the band number

With my teams target birds in their WMDs, we waited back at base for everyone to rendezvous. The commander got to check out some baby Gopher Tortoises and other education animals the staff had on hand.

Once all ten woodpeckers were trapped and assembled, Phase 2 of translocation could begin - we all crammed back in the plane and flew back south. Sometime after midnight, we were on the ground and back at APAFR, where the rest of our bird lab was up waiting with coffee in hand. We divvied up the pairs of birds amongst the teams and went out to place them in their new clusters. Each pair gets placed in an empty cluster, with each bird getting put in its own insert. The inserts are then screened off for the night to allow the bird to settle in.

Field work by the light of the moon, circa 3am

Unfortunately, the squeals of a terrified woodpecker brought in an uninvited guest.

We shooed the Barred Owl away, and made sure the woodpeckers were securely screened inside the cavity where they were safe for the night. We also made sure no raptors lurked nearby when we returned at dawn for release. I assure you no woodpeckers were made a snack (at least not before they were flying free and out of our sight - then its not our responsibility).

Pulling on the string to yank the screen cover off

At dawn, after a mere 2 hours of sleep for our crew, we returned to all of the new clusters and yanked down the screens. The new RCWs bolted out and got adjusted to their new homes. Since each pair was actually a young male and female from different families and thus strangers, we watched to see if they would show any interest in each other. In fact, hardly anyone got the cold shoulder, and the hopefully soon-to-be new pairings moved off to forage and face the harsh new world of south Florida together.

The Dangers of Working with Woodpeckers

2009-10-30T10:19:00.004-05:00

The offender's names have been redacted, but they don't deserve such protection.

More Woodpecker Boxes

2009-10-27T15:09:00.006-05:00

A friend read my previous post about artificial nest boxes for Red-cockaded Woodpeckers and forwarded the following press release:

Ithaca, NY - The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has taken a note out of the pages of Red-cockaded Woodpecker conservation plans, and have rolled out a new artificial nest cavity, specifically designed to provide nestling habitat for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. This photo shows the new "Giant Pecker Boxes" before they are shipped to the darkest reaches of the southern United States for implementation.

Building New Homes for Endangered Woodpeckers

2009-10-26T13:20:00.029-05:00

A Step-by-Step Guide (but don't try this at home)

Red-cockaded Woodpeckers (Picoides borealis) are unusual among woodpeckers (perhaps even unique? Can anyone name any other examples?) in that they nest exclusively in living pines, most notably Longleaf Pines (Pinus palustris). The cavities are difficult to excavate into hard, sappy wood and can take a very long time to complete. A typical RCW cluster will have a breeding pair and maybe some helpers (young from previous years that stick around to help) so a cluster requires many cavity trees for roosting and nesting within their territory.

Therefore, if conservation management wants to supplement an RCW population, you can't just throw them in a good-looking patch of pineywoods and expect them to magically drill roost cavities overnight. The solution is nest-boxes, but with the added twist of getting them inside the tree. By adding these inserts to woodpecker clusters, the RCWs quickly get a new home that they can use as a base while they drill their own. They also adapt quite easily to using the inserts as their nest cavities. So, here's a photo essay on how a bird nest box gets placed inside a living pine tree. An alternative title to this post might well have been "Chainsaws for Conservation!"

Picoides borealis bringing food to a nest in an insert (photo by Travis Wilcoxen)

This is an insert, ex-situ. Its just like any other nest box, although tall, narrow, and deep. Also, the front is reinforced with a metal grid and the entrance hole is a PVC or metal pipe, to help prevent the insert from being blown out by other woodpeckers looking for an easy home to steal. A cutaway view shows an ugly woodpecker chick in the nest chamber.

So, to shove this insert inside a tree. Step 1 - gather your resources (chainsaw, wood putty, spray-paint, and the insert) and climb the tree.

Size up the insert

Then slice and dice!

Cut the block up into chunks and start ripping them out

I'm no tree-ologist, but this pine looks approximately 25 years old, kinda young.

The tree has to be big enough so you don't cut more than half-way... wouldn't want the tree snapping off now would we?

I've heard that our trees in south-central Florida are puny compared to those 'up north'.

So, now that the hole is cleaned out, does the insert fit? Nope, not quite yet.

Get in there with a chainsaw for some fine detail work to make that insert fit.

Now it fits! Lather on some ~~peanut butter~~ wood putty and slide that baby right in there.

Still doesn't fit? Good thing you brought your trusty hammer!

Great! Now to give it that rustic look, lather on some more putty and paint it up

All finished! Now you have a fully-functioning woodpecker home, ready for occupancy!

Stealing Shrike Food

2009-10-03T13:15:00.003-05:00

I was moseying along a barbed-wire fence on the bombing range this week, waiting for a Red-cockaded cluster to wake up, when I noticed an odd object along one of the wires. On closer inspection, it was this utterly ridiculous-looking beetle, with a horn to make any rhinoceros or Triceratops jealous. It didn't move upon my approach, and then I realized it was impaled hard upon the barb - it must have been cached by a Loggerhead Shrike. The barb was stuck quite solidly into the thorax plate, but I was able to slide it off without serious damage to the specimen, thereby depriving the shrike of a critical meal (what an a-hole I am, right? Well, it was worth it). Check this thing out:

The entomologist at Archbold identified it for me as Phanaeus vindex, the Rainbow Scarab, a type of dung beetle (I'm sure they do just fine with all the cattle grazing out here). The colors on the thorax armor are just utterly brilliant (and not well captured here) and they change with the angle. This thing is amazing!

Buy One Snake, Get Two Free!

2009-10-01T14:46:00.003-05:00

Check out this thread for one of the craziest field herping experiences ever. Seriously, go now and read it.

The New Vireos

2009-09-30T14:00:00.002-05:00

The oscine songbirds are the most diverse lineage of birds, comprising thousands of species. Resolving their relationships in the molecular age is a complex story that is still unraveling. Barker et al. (2004) and other studies have identified several main groups within the oscines:

"basal corvoids" - not an actual group, but a bunch of basal lineages on the tree that are all australasian, including lyrebirds, australian wrens, and honeyeaters

core Corvoidea - A mainly Australiasian group, with a bunch of notable exceptions radiating out to other parts of the world, including Corvids, Vireos, Birds-of-Paradise, Pitohuis, Shrikes, Bush-Shrikes, and Monarch Flycatchers

Passerida - containing most of the remaining oscines, broadly grouped into:

Sylvioidea - including babblers, bulbuls, old-world warblers, swallows, larks, and tits

Muscicapoidea - including thrushes, flycatchers, mockingbirds, starlings, waxwings, creepers, nuthatches, and wrens

Passeroidea - including old world sparrows, weavers, sunbirds, wagtails, and the "9-primaried oscine" radiation of finches, sparrows, buntings, cardinals, grosbeaks, tanagers, warblers, and blackbirds

Passeriformes, from Barker et al. 2004 (click to view large)

These broad groupings seem well accepted although the membership of each is not fully settled. There has been a lot of family-level revision that is still ongoing in many of the diverse groups, such as babblers, the old-world warblers, and the 9-primaried oscines. Even more radical, there are a number of 'oddball' taxa that, once sequenced, turn up nowhere near where we thought they were classified. For example, Hume's Ground Tit (Pseudopodoces humilis) was previously considered a jay, but has moved from Corvoidea to Sylvioidea to join the tits and chickadees. The Yellow-flanked Whistler (Hylocitrea bonensis) was previously considered a whistler in the Corvoidea radiation, but has been shown to be allied to the waxwings in the Muscicapoidea.

Yellow-throated Vireo (Vireo flavifrons) (source: Wikipedia)

The vireos have had a few recent additions that have come to my attention. The vireos (Vireonidae) are a New World family in the Corvoidea radiation. There are four genera: the vireos in Vireo, the greenlets in Hylophilus, the shrike-vireos in Vireolanius, and the peppershrikes in Cyclarhis. Only vireos make it into North America, the rest are neotropical residents. In general, they are fairly chunky, smallish birds with stout, hooked bills. Click on the genus links above to see some good photos of each.

Rufous-browed Peppershrike (Cyclarhis gujanensis) (source: Wikipedia)

In a strange and interesting biogeographical twist, two new genera have been shown to be closely related to the vireos, both originally from the diverse old-world sylvioid family the babblers (Timaliidae). The White-bellied Yuhina (Yuhina zantholeuca) was found in Cibois et al (2002) to not be related to other Yuhina babblers, and it isn't even a babbler at all. Split into its own genus Erpornis (with a common name change to fit), Barker et al. (2004) found it to be sister to the family Vireonidae. This greenish crested little thing certainly doesn't look like a vireo, particularly lacking the stout hooked bill, but the biogeography makes sense. While the majority of corvoids are an australasian radiation, the vireos are one of the few families that have branched out and colonized the new world. The Erpornis now provides a link back to asian corvoids. See some great images of Erpornis here.

White-bellied Erpornis (Erpornis zantholeuca) (Source: Wikipedia)

In a larger phylogeny of the babblers, Cibois (2003) found the shrike-babblers (Pteruthius) falling far outside the family. Reddy and Cracraft (2007) reanalyzed Barker's dataset and found Pteruthius to be closely allied with Erpornis and vireos. Reddy and Cracraft recommended both Pteruthius and Erpornis be lumped into a broader family Vireonidae to reflect these new relationships.

The placement of Pteruthius among passerines, Reddy and Cracraft 2007 (click to view large)

Shrike-Babblers, like the Erpornis, provide another biogeographic connection between New World vireos and old world Corvoidea. These actually do resemble vireos in being chunky birds with stout hooked bills, although they are a bit more colorful. There are five traditional species in southeast Asia, split into a whopping 19 phylogenetic species by Reddy (2008). To see some great images of these colorful birds, try:

White-browed Shrike-babbler
Black-eared Shrike-babbler
Green Shrike-babbler

Chestnut-fronted Shrike-Babbler (Pteruthius aenobarbus) (source: Wikipedia)

References

Barker FK, Cibois A, Schikler P, Feinstein J, Cracraft J (2004) Phylogeny and diversification of the largest avian radiation. PNAS 101:11040-11045

Cibois A (2003) Mitochondrial DNA phylogeny of babblers (Timaliidae). Auk 120:35-54

Cibois A, Kalyakin MV, Lian-Xian H, Pasquet E (2002) Molecular phylogenetics of the babblers (Timaliidae): revaluation of the genera Yuhina and Stachyris. Journal of Avian Biology 33:380-390.

Reddy S (2008) Systematics and biogeography of the shrike-babblers (Pteruthius): species limits, molecular phylogenetics, and diversification patterns across southern Asia. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 47:54-72

Reddy S, Cracraft J (2007) Old World Shrike-babblers (Pteruthius) belong with New World Vireos (Vireonidae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 44:1352-1357

Hyperactive squeeky toys

2009-09-25T17:28:00.010-05:00

As you might have noticed, I've been bad about blogging lately (lately = this whole year?). I've got gobs and gobs of material to post from New York, Florida, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Mexico... all in due time. In order to not fall even farther behind, I'm going to get right into writing about current sightings. It is another field season and another field job. I spent January through July of this year working at Archbold Biological Station as a scrub-jay intern. I've grown quite fond of Aphelocoma and some posts need to be written about them.

Aphelocoma coerulescens, the Florida Scrub-Jay

My days as an intern are in the past. I spent August in NY, "vacationing" in Ithaca finishing my phylogeography work, presenting a talk at the AOU meeting in Philadelphia, and even managing to fit in a bit of shorebirding on Long Island. Just two weeks ago, I flew back down to south-central Florida to start working again for Archbold, this time as a winter field tech at a different location: Avon Park Air Force Range (APAFR).

Archbold Biological Station is a nice big private reserve mostly composed of endemic scrub habitats found on the Lake Wales Ridge. APAFR is a MASSIVE tract of land encompassing a range of habitats including wet prairie, sand scrub ridge, and large tracts of longleaf and slash pine flatwoods. I'm still working on jays in the scrub habitats, but guess what new species I get to work with in this position?

Mysterious pinewoods...

... contain Red-cockaded Woodpeckers! (source: Wikipedia)

One of the two focal species I am employed to monitor are the local population of Red-cockaded Woodpeckers (Picoides borealis), another endangered cooperatively breeding species of the Southeast. I'm still learning the ropes around here, but I'll be doing population monitoring and cavity maintenance. Most of my actual time spent observing the RCWs is at the crack of dawn, when they wake up from their roost trees, say hello to us researchers, we read their band combinations, and they fly away to forage and we don't see them again.

Because I mostly see them in the early dawn hours with terrible lighting, I don't have lots of pretty pictures to grace this blog yet, hence my reliance on wikipedia for the bird photos here. I did get one good mid-morning observation the other day, when we followed two clusters as they came together and squabbled. There was much wing-lifting and red-cockade-flashing displays, and lots of squeeky noises. Red-cockadeds are hilarious to listen to vocalizing, they sound like hyperactive squeeky toys. So does another pine flatwoods species, the Brown-headed Nuthatch.

Samples of both vocalizations from xeno-canto:

Red-cockaded Woodpecker
Brown-headed Nuthatch

Just imagine a flatwoods patch with both species yammering away constantly, and you'll understand why sometimes I just want to giggle while working.

Sitta pusilla, the Brown-headed Nuthatch (source: Wikipedia)

Well, that's all, but now you know where I am and what I'm up to. Hopefully I'll start getting back into the swing of things with more blogging. Stay tuned. Here's a little Osborne Brothers while you wait.

Fear the fuzzy!

2009-08-23T09:36:00.003-05:00

Going to the AOU meeting next week?

2009-08-08T12:19:00.005-05:00

I heard this talk might be interesting:

ND Sly, AK Townsend, CC Rimmer, JM Townsend, SC Latta, and IJ Lovette

COMPARATIVE PHYLOGEOGRAPHY OF HISPANIOLAN ENDEMIC BIRDS

Within-island avian speciation is unlikely on medium-sized islands, yet Hispaniola supports at least four endemic species pairs. Complex geological history is a likely driver of this speciation: Hispaniola was previously configured as separate northern and southern island blocks, the southern block was itself previously divided by an ancient sea channel, and the present-day island contains several isolated montane regions. We surveyed phylogeographic variation in the four endemic species pairs and three non-endemic species using data from mtDNA, nuclear introns, and morphology. Haplotype networks, multilocus coalescent models, and principal components analysis of morphology revealed two patterns: several species show a north-south division at varying levels of differentiation, and two groups show distinct structure between the Tiburon Peninsula and mainland Hispaniola. No within-island structure was detected in the non-endemic species, which are part of recent Caribbean radiations and may have colonized Hispaniola too recently to be affected by older geological events. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that speciation in some taxa occurred on Hispaniola during ancient vicariance events, but that the history of this speciation differs among taxa.

Abstract (5496); Session G11, Fri 14 August, Location: Cohen Hall, Terrace Room, Oral at 11:00

Meeting Abstracts:
http://www.birdmeetings.org/aou2009/files/aou2009-abstracts.pdf
Meeting Program:
http://www.birdmeetings.org/aou2009/files/aou2009-program.pdf