The Birding Community E-bulletin is
distributed to active and concerned birders, those dedicated to the joys
of birding and the protection of birds and their habitats.
(Sponsored by ZEISS Sport Optics)
RARITY FOCUS
In last month's issue, we mentioned a Tufted Flycatcher in Arizona, a bird first observed on 22 May discovered foraging, calling, and even showing nesting behavior about two miles from the famous Ramsey Canyon Preserve in the southeastern part of the state.
Since then,the
flycatcher became a lot more interesting when both a male and female
Tufted Flycatcher were seen together and a nest was found.
This is an exceptional
discovery since this species, commonly found only in the highlands and
foothills of Mexico (from central Senora and south Tamaulipas) to
Central America, and has only been seen in the U.S. about a half dozen
times previously.
Many birders who were
willing to take a fairly rigorous hike of four miles round-trip were
rewarded by getting views of the birds. It appeared unlikely, however,
that the nest and its eggs were viable, although one or the other adult
bird was observed in the area for much of June.
You can access a short report on this remarkable rarity and many photos (including the nest) here:
ADDRESSING TRICOLORED BLACKBIRD IN CALIFORNIA
The plight of the
Tricolored Blackbird, one of California's most emblematic passerines,
was previously covered in the E-bulletin last July :
and again in September:
Tricolored Blackbirds
were given emergency protection in December under the California
Endangered Species Act (CESA), and the species has also been petitioned
for Federal ESA listing. It is estimated that Tricolored Blackbirds have
declined by more than 90% over the last 80 years, and have specifically
exhibited a 63% loss between 2008 and 2014.
The Central Valley Bird Club has recently published a special expanded issue of the Central Valley Bird Club Bulletin on the Tricolored Blackbird. This special issue includes nine articles by active researchers and conservationists.
The issue specifically
provides up-to-date information on the status of the Tricolored
Blackbird, previous and new techniques for estimating the size of the
population, and ecology of California's Central Valley and Sierra
foothill populations. Most importantly, the journal includes key
conservation recommendations regarding Tricolored Blackbird recovery
needs and management guidelines for both the species' nesting and
foraging habitats.
With a lack of insects
and the destruction of areas hosting breeding colonies as the two most
important causes for the recent population decline, this special issue
is required reading for anyone interested or involved in Tricolored
Blackbird conservation. The potential on-the ground cooperative roles
for cattle ranches, dairy farms, rice lands, National Wildlife Refuges,
State Wildlife Areas, and private duck clubs are all covered in this
publication.
To get a copy of the special issue ($15), look for the option that indicates "Tricolored Blackbird Issue" here:
You also can find other information and reports on the species at the UC Davis Tricolored Blackbird Portal:
BOOK NOTES: REVISITING BIRDING BY IMPRESSION (BBI)
Practically all
modern bird identification guides reflect a response to, or dialogue
with, a 26-year-old Roger Tory Peterson who, in 1934, created a birding
breakthrough with the creation of his A Field Guide to the Birds (1934). Does this claim sound exaggerated?
Perhaps. But perhaps not.
The young Peterson
unequivocally revolutionized bird identification, moving it from a
museum-based and specimen-based pursuit to one that could be enjoyed and
managed by almost anyone with binoculars and sufficient field time to
understand and appreciate that bird identification "may be run down by
impressions, patterns, and distinctive marks, rather than by the
anatomical differences and measurements that the collector would find
useful" (Peterson, 1934). With Peterson's "new plan," stressing
color-values (rather than actual colors), profiles, and outstanding
marks, even at a distance, bird watching would never be the same again.
Since then, there has
seemingly always been a question of how much detail one might want, or
need, in order to make an identification, thus marking the progressive
contributions of all field guides since the introduction of the first
Peterson guide. And all birders are the better for it.
An example of a recent variation on this theme and deserving special mention was The Shorebird Guide
by Michael O'Brien, Richard Crossley, and Kevin Karlson (Houghton
Mifflin 2006) - a guide which effectively deepened the emphasis on size,
structure, behavior, and general color patterns when making
identifications. Richard Crossley took this approach further with his Crossley ID Guide, Eastern Birds
(Princeton 2011) - and his follow-up guides to raptor identification
and identification of European birds - stressing size, structure, shape,
behavior, probability, and color patterns.
Now, Kevin Karlson and Dale Rosselet have pushed the envelope with their new Birding by Impression (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2015), with its subtitle "A Different Approach to Knowing and Identifying Birds."
The assertion that
this is a "different approach" may be debatable however. A
birding-by-impression (BBI) approach still represents a
back-to-fundamentals approach to bird ID, which underscores the notion
that an initial appreciation of size and shape is a prerequisite to the
identification process. Karlson and Rosselet do an admirable job in
presenting ID issues and ID problems in their family-by-family
presentation, all skillfully illustrated with fine photos, and
intertwined with regular quizzes throughout their book.
Although some choices
of species covered appear to be eclectic; others are eminently logical
and much-desired. Clearly, there is something in this book for
everybody. Are you having grebe problems? It's in there. How about
egrets? Well done. Plovers? The group is covered. Nightjars? There are
some fine hints. And swifts? The book has good material. Are you
confused by yellow kingbirds? The book should help. And how about
blackbirds? You could learn something from the coverage in this handsome
new guide.
Perhaps you will even
be convinced that BBI has been developing and deepening ever since the
presses at Houghton Mifflin rolled in 1934 with the printing of RTP's
book, including some bumps and detours along the way. Or, perhaps you
will choose to deny the connection. Regardless, the new Karlson and
Rosselet guide is full of juicy information and ID skill-building that
deserves close attention.
IBA NEWS: PEA ISLAND NWR SETTLEMENT
Pea
Island National Wildlife Refuge is an outstanding Important Bird Area
(IBA) on the North Carolina Coastal Plain. It is one of North Carolina's
most significant sites for shorebirds and waterfowl, including several
species of conservation concern, particularly because of its water
impoundments that vary in salinity and are managed for shorebirds,
waterfowl, and other migratory birds. Among other things, North
Carolina's largest regularly occurring flock of American Avocets winters
there, and the habitat there is also important for Piping Plovers.
This NWR has long had
two ongoing conservation issues which have been difficult to resolve: 1)
the artificial (soft) stabilization of the beach with dunes to protect
Highway 12, and 2) the eventual fate of the related Bonner Bridge and
its replacement. Of the many options considered for the bridge, the
construction of a replacement bridge could be very damaging to the
refuge and could seriously impact habitats for birds.
Last month, the
settlement of a lawsuit regarding the Bonner Bridge and North Carolina
Highway 12 (NC-12), which runs through the Pea Island NWR, was
announced. Because of the settlement, the North Carolina Department of
Transportation and the Federal Highways Administration will now be
looking at moving portions of NC-12 out of the fragile NWR, off the
unstable barrier island, and into Pamlico Sound. The project sections
described in the settlement agreement, if fully approved, will provide
safe, reliable transportation by moving the road off the parts of
Hatteras Island where erosion, washouts, and rising seas frequently shut
it down and prevent access. The approach calls for a "phase 1" bridge
replacement across Oregon Inlet, followed by a future extension
extending five miles down Pamlico Sound before it connects again to
NC12.
For more details on the settlement between multiple parties, see here:
You can access information on all of North Carolina's IBAs (as of 2010) here:
And for additional
information about worldwide IBA programs, including those in the U.S.,
check the National Audubon Society's Important Bird Area program web
site at:
CALLING FOR AN END TO DEADLY PIPES
PVC pipes used to mark
boundaries at over three million mining claims and similar pipes on
federal lands have proven to be deadly traps for certain species in the
American West. Tragically, small birds often see the opening of PVC
mining claim markers and other pipes - such as fence or gate posts - as
openings suitable for nesting. When birds go in, however, some may never
come out. We previously covered this story in December 2011:
Last month, more than
100 groups signed a letter to the Interior Department's Bureau of Land
Management (BLM) and the USDA Forest Service (FS) concerning this
problem. In the letter, the groups called on the two agencies to
accelerate efforts to address this long-standing threat to birds at
mining claims under their jurisdiction.
You can read a copy of
this letter, originally circulated by the American Bird Conservancy,
and see all the groups that called for change, here:
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES VS. MBTA
Last month, we
described the announcement of intent from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service to strengthen implementation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act
(MBTA) in order to address some new "incidental takes" from some oil
pit, power line, communications towers, and other potential hazards. Our
report indicated that comments were to be due by the 27th of this
month:
In what seemed to be
by many as a reaction to this proposal, the U.S. House of
Representatives passed and sent to the Senate an appropriations bill for
Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS), HR 2578, which
contained a rider. This rider, presented by Congressman Duncan (R-3-SC),
amendment 347, would defund enforcement of the MBTA by the Department
of Justice for one year.
Bird conservationists
around the country were stunned and outraged, prompting a flood of
letters, calls, and e-mails to the Senate to make sure the rider would
not be part of the Senate companion bill.
While the Senate
struck the anti-MBTA rider from its initial consideration of the CJS
appropriations bill, there is still a chance that it could reemerge.
Congressman Duncan has been trying to get a similar amendment through
the House Interior Appropriations bill.
You can get more information from the Ornithology Exchange, here:
TIP OF THE MONTH: TRY MERLIN PHOTO ID
It was only a matter of time, but we are now about to get a glimpse of the bird-watching future.
In a true
breakthrough, computer researchers and bird enthusiasts have now
developed a computer program able to identify hundreds of North American
bird species by photograph. Called Merlin Bird Photo ID, the results
were presented at a Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)
conference held in Boston on 8 June. Essentially, the identifier is
capable of recognizing 400 of the mostly commonly encountered birds in
the United States and Canada.
"It gets the bird
right in the top three results about 90% of the time, and it's designed
to keep improving the more people use it," said Jessie Barry at the
Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
To see if Merlin can
identify the species in your photo, you can upload an image of the bird
and tell Merlin where and when you took it. Then to orient Merlin, you
draw a simple box around the bird and sequentially click on the bird's
bill, eye, and tail. Merlin, almost magically, does the rest.
Merlin's success,
according to the researchers and developers, relies on collaboration
between computers and humans. The computer gets to recognize each
species from tens of thousands of images identified and labeled by bird
enthusiasts. It also taps in to more than 70 million sightings recorded
by birders in the eBird database, reducing its search to the species
found at the location and time of year when the photo was taken. Perhaps
best of all, because the Merlin photo identifier uses machine-learning
techniques, it has the potential to improve the more people use it.
According to Serge
Belongie, a professor of Computer Science at Cornell Tech. "The
state-of-the-art in computer vision is rapidly approaching that of human
perception, and with a little help from the user, we can close the
remaining gap and deliver a surprisingly accurate solution."
Merlin's computer
vision system was developed by Steve Branson and Grant Van Horn of the
Visipedia project, led by professors Pietro Perona at the California
Institute of Technology and Serge Belongie at Cornell Tech. Their work
was made possible with support from Google, the Jacobs Technion-Cornell
Institute at Cornell Tech, and the National Science Foundation.
You can try it with some of your own bird photos here:
What's next? Would it
be broad-scale photo recognition in aerial waterfowl surveys? Could it
be digital ID reliance in long-term seabird surveys? Would the system
eventually be modified to be built into what we today call binoculars,
so that the observer gets ID help while seeing the bird itself and in
real time?
Some birders are
claiming that Merlin will take "all the fun out of birding." Still,
using binoculars a century ago was a step forward from shotgun
ornithology. And few people today, in the age of digital images, mourn
the loss of Kodachrome.
Perhaps the real question will be: How can helping us with this new technology help the birds?
ACCESS MATTERS: A FREE PASS TO NRWs
If you want a free
pass to all National Wildlife Refuges that charge for entry - Santa Ana
NWR in Texas, Forsythe NWR in New Jersey, Bosque del Apache NWR in New
Mexico, Ding Darling NWR in Florida, Bombay Hook NWR in Delaware, Parker
River NWR in Massachusetts, Ridgefield NWR in Washington, and more -
get yourself the latest Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp,
often called the "Duck Stamp."
Carrying the stamp
constitutes a free pass to all the NWRs in the US that charge for entry.
The latest Stamp was released for sale at the end of June. This is the
first of these stamps to cost $25, an increase of $10 over the previous
price of the stamp. The new stamp shows a lovely pair of Ruddy Ducks, an
image painted by Jennifer Miller, of Olean, New York. Miller is only
the third woman ever to have her art grace a Migratory Bird Hunting and
Conservation Stamp.
Besides being a free
NWR pass through next June and a fine collection item, it is a true
conservation-funding vehicle. Proceeds from the Stamp go into the
Migratory Bird Conservation Fund (MBCF) to secure habitat in the
National Wildlife Refuge System, mostly grasslands and wetlands today.
If access matters, so should holding a Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp.
You can find out more on the stamp and its conservation uses from the Friends of the Migratory Bird/Duck Stamp:
and from the Federal Duck Stamp Office:
THE OLDEST BALD EAGLE
Early last month, the
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) reported a
Bald Eagle killed alongside a road in Monroe County in upstate New
York, . The bird, a male banded with the number 03142, had actually been
an individual that had been brought to New York from Minnesota as a
youngster in 1977 and released at Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge.
The USGS Banding Lab Longevity Records indicate that the eagle turned
out to be the oldest banded Bald Eagle on record to date - older by a
surprising five years. Once this 38-year-old male reached breeding age
in 1981, he began nesting at Hemlock Lake, about 50 miles to the west of
Minnesota NWR which is today part of Hemlock-Canadice State Forest. The
Hemlock Lake nest territory continued, and this eagle became a steady
and successful father to many eaglets fledged from that site for many
more years.
"In my first year as
the Minnesota DNR Nongame Wildlife Program Supervisor, 1977," remarked
Carrol Henderson, "I arranged for the capture of four Minnesota nestling
Bald Eagle chicks for restoration in New York and accompanied Peter Nye
of the New York DEC to northern Minnesota where we hired a tree climber
and took a total of four chicks - a chick from each of several nests,
leaving a healthy chick in each nest." One of those chicks was 03142.
Peter Nye, the now
retired DEC Wildlife Biologist who spearheaded New York's Bald Eagle
Restoration Program, commented on the bird, "His longevity, 38 years,
although ingloriously cut short by a motor vehicle, is also a national
record for known life-span of a wild Bald Eagle. All I can say is, hats
off to you, 03142; job well done!"
You can access all the past E-bulletins on the National Wildlife Refuge Association (NWRA) website:
If you wish to distribute or reproduce all or parts of any Birding Community E-bulletin, we simply request that you mention the source of any material used. (Include a URL for the E-bulletin archives, if possible.)
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Also,
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E-bulletin mailing list, they can also simply contact either:
Wayne R. Petersen
Director, Massachusetts Important Bird Areas (IBA) Program
Mass Audubon
781/259-2178
or
Paul J. Baicich
Great Birding Projects
410/992-9736
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