Birder's World Field of View

Avian Odyssey 2

Chuck, Ernie, and I are going birding for a good cause tomorrow (Monday, May 12). We're participating in the Wisconsin Humane Society's 2008 Avian Odyssey, the annual birdathon-fundraiser that supports the society's Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Milwaukee.

We will be birding in some of the best spots in Milwaukee County — Lake Park, where we saw the Red-headed Woodpecker above during last year's Avian Odyssey, Kletzsch Park, the Coast Guard Impoundment, and maybe more. We're hoping to top the 81 species we saw last year.

See more of Ernie's photos and read about the birds we saw on Avian Odyssey 1 last May.

If you'd like to support us with a donation to the center, we'd sure appreciate it, as would the center. Donations can be made any time in May via our team page on the Avian Odyssey website. To learn more about the good work performed for wildlife by the Rehab Center, see a story I wrote last June about a Chimney Swift that the staff nursed back to health.

We'll let you know how we do on Monday! — M.M.

Celebrate migratory birds today

Today, Saturday, May 10, is International Migratory Bird Day. Through birding walks, festivals, and education programs, IMBD recognizes the great spectacle of migration. This year's theme, "Tundra to Tropics," highlights the vast distances birds fly between their breeding and non-breeding territories.

Mexican wildlife artist Eleazar Saenz painted the poster promoting this year's celebration. (Click it to see it big! You won't be disappointed.) Saenz displays 12 species against a backdrop of mountains, forest, desert, and other habitats. From the top, the birds are: Long-tailed Jaeger, Northern Harrier, Blackpoll Warbler, American Redstart, Northern Shoveler, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Ruddy Turnstone, Cinnamon Teal, Bobolink, Azure-rumped Tanager, Short-eared Owl, and Bananaquit.

Most are birds you can see in the U.S., but you won't find all 12 species on one bird walk. (You'd have to go to Mexico's Chiapas region or neighboring Guatemala to glimpse the tanager, which is endangered.) But if Saenz's art doesn't make you want to get out and see birds this spring, nothing will. Find an IMBD event near you, and watch birds! — M.M.

Read more about International Migratory Bird Day.

Read an article on climate change and birds by IMBD Program Director Susan Bonfield.

Wisconsin Whooping Cranes abandon their nests

The 11 pairs of Whooping Cranes that nested in central Wisconsin this spring have abandoned their nests. One nest failed in mid-April, and seven more were lost between April 30 and May 5. The last three pairs of cranes deserted their nests on Tuesday, May 6, a day when the temperature climbed into the 80s. According to Operation Migration, biologists collected at least seven fertile eggs from the nests and transported them to the International Crane Foundation for incubation.

"The nest desertions are reminiscent of last April, when during the same short space of time, all four 2007 incubating pairs abandoned their nests," notes Liz Condie of Operation Migration. "Then too, the birds leaving their nests appeared to be associated with a surge of warm weather."

On a brighter note, chicks have begun to hatch at the captive breeding center in Patuxent, Maryland. In a few short months, they'll begin learning to follow ultralights for their first migration to Florida. — M.M.

Read our behind-the-scenes report on the crane-reintroduction program.

Read our news story about the deaths of 17 young cranes in Florida in February 2007.

Careful planning put Vermilion Flycatcher in focus -- and on our cover

It's difficult to get a sharp, clear, and unobstructed photograph of a wild bird like the stunning Vermilion Flycatcher on the cover of our June 2008 issue.

But let's suppose it's your lucky day, and the red and black bird lands nearby. Do you really think its perch will be bathed in beautiful light with no distracting branches? And will your luck last long enough to snap the picture before the bird flits away?

There's a saying -- chance favors the prepared mind -- and no one could be more prepared than veteran bird photographer Alan Murphy, who took this remarkable photo on the Ramirez Ranch in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, Texas.

The ranch has a side business catering to bird photographers (you can write to Roel Ramirez, the owner, for information), and Murphy visits annually. On his first visit, he noticed a Vermilion Flycatcher that hunted for bugs in one four-acre patch of land. "When hunting, they'll have several perches, in a circle," he said. But this particular flycatcher liked a space that was a little short on perches.

So two years ago, Murphy put his observations to work. He made a perch from a dead branch and took it into the flycatcher's territory. "I took note of the sun's direction in the morning and placed the perch in front of some mesquite trees, so the background would be green. Within hours, the bird started using the perch."

Then Murphy set up a tent-like photo blind about 15 feet away, in a spot from which he could see the bird in the best morning light. But he didn't take any pictures. He left the blind unattended for three days, so the bird would not sense any threat.

On photo day, he arrived at the blind before sunrise, cut a fresh mesquite branch, and attached it to the perch. "My goal is to create a perch with the same diameter as the bird's feet or grip." Within 20 minutes of sunrise, the flycatcher came over, hovered for a second, then settled on the mesquite branch, but not in the precise spot Murphy had anticipated. Instead, the bird perched on the flimsy, topmost boughs. "They like to get as high as possible," he said.

"It stayed for 20 minutes." Murphy told me. "It would fly off and come back. I got multiple shots as it turned its head and posed. It doesn't always work out that way."

The flycatcher, of course, had no idea it was the star of a precisely built stage. But that's the beauty of Murphy's fieldcraft. His setups are built around the bird's desires and needs, not his own.

The bird you see on our cover is a wild bird, pictured at a moment when it felt safe and secure, despite Murphy's presence. And because of his advance observation of lighting and sight lines, the image you see is what he saw through his lens, with no retouching or digital alteration. --E.M.

To save the world's rarest stork, turn poachers into rangers

Approximately 8,500 miles (13,700 km) from where I sit, people in small villages in the Prek Toal region of Cambodia, located on the northwest shore of Tonle Sap Lake (map here), are restoring the fortunes of eight species of waterbirds, all but one of which are globally threatened.

(A bit of background on the region: Tonle Sap is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia and a UN-designated Biosphere Reserve. BirdLife International lists Prek Toal as an Important Bird Area. And the Sam Veasna Center for Wildlife Conservation is a local hub for ecotourism.)

The bird populations are increasing because former poachers are being employed as rangers. Species that have benefited include the world's rarest stork, the Greater Adjutant (at right in the photo above), and the Spot-billed Pelican (the two birds at left). But we'll get back to the individual species in a minute.

The colonies first came to the attention of conservationists in the mid-1990s. At that time, about 70 local people were collecting eggs and chicks from the colonies. "The eggs and chicks were sold locally in the village for food and were sold for trade to wealthier individuals in towns," says Tom Clements of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Cambodia Program.

A masterpiece from the 2008 Master Wildlife Artist

My friend Marcia Theel, associate director of the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum here in Wisconsin, sent me a sure sign of spring earlier this week. She let me know that James Morgan, the artist who painted the Cinnamon Teals above, has been named as the museum’s 2008 Master Wildlife Artist.

Those of you who are art lovers as well as birdwatchers probably already know that it’s Marcia’s charming museum that organizes the annual exhibition known as Birds in Art, and that Birds in Art showcases only artists who showcase birds in their work.

This year’s exhibition, on view between September 6 and November 9 (here’s a Google map), will feature more than 125 original bird-inspired paintings, sculptures, and graphics from around the world, including a dozen paintings and drawings by Morgan, who hails from Utah.

He will become the museum’s 30th Master Artist, adding his name to a list of previous honorees that reads like a who's-who of acclaimed wildlife artists: Owen Gromme, George Miksch Sutton, Roger Tory Peterson, Don Eckelberry, Robert Bateman, Lars Jonsson, and so many others. We wrote about the 2006 Master Artist, the printmaker Andrea Rich, in our October 2006 issue. --C.H.

T. rex's modern-day relatives

An article in this week's issue of the journal Science throws more kindling on the heated debate over whether birds are the descendants of dinosaurs. Researchers say molecular analysis of a shred of 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex protein — along with that of 21 modern species — shows that dinosaurs share common ancestry with chickens, Ostriches, and to a lesser extent, alligators.

“These results match predictions made from skeletal anatomy, providing the first molecular evidence for the evolutionary relationships of a non-avian dinosaur,” says co-author Chris Organ, a postdoctoral researcher in organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard.

He and his colleagues published a phylogenetic tree that places Tyrannosaurus in the Archosauria next to Struthio (Ostrich) and Gallus (chickens, or Red Junglefowl).

The research began after John Horner, curator of paleontology at Montana State's Museum of the Rockies, uncovered a T. rex femur bone (left) in 2003 in a barren fossil-rich stretch of land that spans Wyoming and Montana. Two years later, Mary H. Schweitzer of North Carolina State and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences discovered soft-tissue preservation in the bone.

Then John Asara of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, an expert in mass spectrometry techniques, was able to extract precious slivers of collagen protein. (Salvaging DNA from the bone appears to be impossible.)

“We determined that T. rex, in fact, grouped with birds — Ostrich and chicken — better than any other organism that we studied,” he says.

If that wasn't enough, the scientists also report a similar analysis of 160,000- to 600,000-year-old collagen protein sequences derived from mastodon bone. The results establish a close evolutionary relationship between the extinct species and modern elephants. — M.M.

Events for birdwatchers in April and May

News about the May events below came from visitors to our Birding Events Forum. If you know of a fun event and want to spread the word about it, it's the place to go!

Ward World Championship Wildfowl Carving Competition and Art Festival
Roland E. Powell Convention Center, Ocean City, Maryland
April 25-27, 2008

13th Annual Grays Harbor Shorebird Festival
Hoquiam, Washington
May 2-4, 2008

27th Annual Havre de Grace, Maryland, Decoy & Wildlife Art Festival
Havre de Grace, Maryland
May 2-4, 2008

Spring Migration: Hitting the Peak Workshop
Bruce Peninsula Bird Observatory, Ontario, Canada
May 9-11, 2008

11th Annual Horicon Marsh Bird Festival
Dodge County, Wisconsin
May 9-12, 2008

Wings & Wine Festival
Veneta, Oregon
May 10, 2008

Birds of America: John James Audubon
Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa
February 2-May 31, 2008

Read and share news about more events for birdwatchers in the Birding Events Forum.

In Europe, a migration system going 'fundamentally wrong'

According to an unpublished survey produced by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), populations of birds that migrate between Africa and Britain are in shocking decline.

"The falls in numbers are so sharp and widespread," writes the environment editor of London's Independent newspaper today, "that ornithologists are waking up to a major new environmental problem -- the possibility that the whole system of bird migration between Africa and Europe is running into trouble."

The study was compiled by the RSPB research biologist Steven Ewing and is likely to be published later this year. You can read the Independent's story about it here.

He found that 21 of 36 British-African migrant species for which there is population data going back to 1967 have declined significantly. Two of the 21, the Red-backed Shrike and the Wryneck, have become extinct in Britain, while another 11 have suffered declines of more than 50%. Three species -- the Spotted Flycatcher, Tree Pipit, and Turtle Dove -- are down by more than 80%.

Even more ominous, the pattern of decline is not limited to Britain but can be seen in species that migrate between Africa and Europe as well. According to the study, 27 of the 37 European-African migratory species for which there is reliable long-term population data -- 72% of the total -- are declining. Among them is the Nightingale. Its numbers are down 63% across Europe between 1980 and 2005.

Scientists theorize that habitat degradation in Africa and climate change may be to blame but also point to the possibility that "after millions of years, the Afro-European bird migration system is going fundamentally wrong." The problem, writes the Independent, may be on the birds' journeys, which are full of hazards, or on their wintering grounds south of the Sahara. --C.H.

Two suggestions for birders on Earth Day

Undecided about what to do on Earth Day? I have two suggestions for you:

1. Call or write your representative in Congress and ask him or her to co-sponsor the Borderlands Conservation and Security Act (H.R. 2593). It's our best chance to check what can only be described as a mad dash to construct Berlin Wall-style fences along our border with Mexico. Yes, border security is important, but pursuing it doesn't have to be mindless. We need to slow down enough at least to comprehend what we stand to lose -- and it's a lot.

Endangered species, critical habitat, migratory birds, Bald Eagles, antiquities, farms, deserts, forests, native American graves -- they're all at risk, and so are some of our most popular birding sites.

Did you know that current plans call for the wall in Texas to be erected north of the National Audubon Society's Sabal Palm Grove, north of the Nature Conservancy's Southmost Preserve, and north of parts of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge? It's true. If we don't act now, we birders will be walled off from these precious places, and they likely will be forced to close.

You can read more about all this on David Sibley's excellent blog, on the Defenders of Wildlife website, and on the No Border Wall blog.

2. And while you have your representative on the phone, why don't you ask him or her to support the legislation introduced last week by Reps. Ron Kind (D-WI) and Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD) that would reauthorize the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act? Their legislation (H.R. 5756) is the subject of my editorial in the June 2008 issue of Birder's World.

In case you don't already know, the act supports partnership programs to conserve birds in the United States, Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Projects include such activities as habitat restoration, research and monitoring, law enforcement, and outreach and education. Between 2002 and 2007, grants enabled by the act supported 225 projects, all of which benefitted bird populations, but too few.

Staffers at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency tasked with distributing the grants, say they receive many more requests for high-quality conservation projects than they can currently provide grants for. The proposed reauthorization would address this shortcoming, and it can't happen soon enough.

Happy Earth Day! --C.H.