Birder's World Field of View

A hawk watch update from Corpus Christi

Since the listservs have been crackling with reports of migrating birds of prey this past week, I thought it might be fun to check in with Joel Simon. Joel is the watch coordinator and official observer at the Corpus Christi Hawk Watch at Hazel Bazemore Park in Texas as well as an author and frequent speaker about raptors. He wrote a fascinating article about the Corpus Christi Hawk Watch for our October 2008 issue, which is on newsstands now. I asked him how this year's count was going, what birds had been seen so far, and about the effects of Tropical Storm Fay and Hurricane Gustav. His answers follow. --C.H.

In your article, you wrote that the first three weeks of the season, in August and early September, are traditionally "kite time." Has this again been the case so far this year?

Yes. Using last year's total of 20,966 and this year's total of 15,349 through August 28 (Thursday), the percentage of kites to total raptors for August is 99%. The Broad-winged Hawk takes over during September, of course; it accounts for about 94% of that month's flight.

How have this year's early results compared with those from previous years?

An anniversary interview with Lee Peterson

It's Thursday, August 28, a great day and an important one for anyone who's ever used a field guide to identify a bird.

Why? Because today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the man who invented the field guide -- Roger Tory Peterson.

Today also happens to be the official pub date of the new one-volume Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America, which we reviewed in our October 2008 issue. 

To celebrate both, the anniversary and the field guide, we chatted recently with Lee Allen Peterson, the younger of Roger's two sons and a Peterson-guide author himself. His answers to our questions are below.

Birder’s World: Did your father ever consider creating what this book is: an all-in-one guide to North American birds? Would he be pleased with this new edition (left)?

Lee Peterson: Yes, he thought about doing a combined guide, but for one reason or another, he never did. He would have been very pleased with the sixth edition.

BW: What makes a good field guide?

LP: A good field guide needs to be both comprehensive and concise. And it needs to be portable. This is a balancing act because these goals are somewhat opposite. The degree to which any guide achieves this balance is a measure of its success. Over the years, Dad's books have done this more successfully than the others.

A fledgling in front of my mower

I was mowing my front yard last Saturday when Zachary, our 8-year-old neighbor, edged into my field of view and pointed to a spot a few feet ahead of my path. He had seen a bird. My grass is more brown than green at this time of year, so the bird was barely visible, but following his gaze, I soon saw it too. I turned off the mower, and he and I watched together.

Only the bird's motion gave it away. It was a young American Goldfinch. It must have just left its nest and was now hopping around, calling BEE-boo, BEE-boo. There are dozens of goldfinches in the neighborhood, so seeing a fledgling wasn't a surprise. My wife, observing from behind the screen door, asked if it was injured. As if to answer her question, the chick flew a few feet above the grass and settled into another place. 

As I'm sure you know, the experts always say the best thing to do in such a situation is nothing: Leave the bird alone; chances are, its parents are nearby. (You can read more about what to do if you find a baby bird on our website.)

Our view of two great hawk watches

 

That's Associate Editor and Web Wizard (and hawk watcher) Matt Mendenhall, taking a close look at the Birder's World website on his computer screen. 

The reason? Our website is now where he and all you other raptor freaks can read about two of the coolest hawk watches we know about:

-- The Florida Keys Raptor Migration Project located in Curry Hammock State Park, Little Crawl Key, Florida. (Yes, those Florida Keys. Think bright sunshine, blue water, palm trees, drinks with little umbrellas in them...) Bird guide and Key West resident Mark Hedden writes that more Peregrine Falcons are counted there each fall than at any other North American count site, about 10-12 percent of the combined total population in North America.

-- And the Corpus Christi Hawk Watch at Hazel Bazemore County Park in Corpus Christi, Texas. Watch coordinator and official observer Joel Simon writes that there's good reason why it's been described as a world-class watch site: Last year, almost 650,000 raptors were tallied there -- including more than half a million Broad-winged Hawks. Sure wish I were there now.

Both articles tell when to visit, what birds to expect, and how to get there. You can find them in our October 2008 issue, and on our website -- thanks to Matt. --C.H.

Herons in a square

It's Thursday, high time for another piece of art from the upcoming Birds in Art show. This one, entitled "Displaying," comes from the pencil of well-known artist and conservationist Robert Bateman. 

Herons, as you know, are lengthy creatures. They have long bills; they stand on long legs that trail behind them when they fly; they have long necks; and they fly on huge wings that can stretch six feet from wingtip to wingtip. 

They come in a size and a shape, in other words, that seems to demand a rectangular canvas -- one that's either tall enough to accommodate snaky necks and spindly legs or wide enough to allow spread wings -- but Bateman's portrait is square. 

Wingtips are cut off. Feet and legs below the tibiotarsus aren't visible. It's as if Bateman wants us to look through special binoculars with an exceptionally narrow (and four-sided) field of view, to focus not on topographical completeness but on courtship. 

Forget the feet, forget the primary feathers, he seems to be saying -- and get a load of those nuptial plumes! --C.H.

New species discovered in Africa

A small songbird previously unknown to science has been discovered in the west African nation of Gabon.

The Olive-backed Forest Robin (Stiphrornis pyrrholaemus) was named for its distinctive olive back and rump. Adult birds measure 4.5 inches in length and average 18 grams in weight. Males exhibit a fiery orange throat and breast, yellow belly, olive back, and black feathers on the head. Females are similar but less vibrant. Both sexes have a distinctive white dot on their face in front of each eye.

Brian Schmidt, a research ornithologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and colleagues described the species in a new paper in the journal Zootaxa. The robin occurs in dense forest undergrowth, and little is known about its diet, breeding habits, or range. — M.M.

Swallows and sunshine

 

What a beautiful day. It's sunny and breezy, and the leaves of the silver maple in my backyard are whistling each time the wind blows. 

New Zealand-born artist Adele Earnshaw must have had a day like today in mind when she painted the scene above ("In the Wind," 2008, oil on canvas). The sunlight on the sheets and pillow cases is just like the light dappling the lawn outside my window, and since Barn Swallows can be found just about anywhere on the planet, it's easy to imagine them zipping past laundry waving in the breeze here in Wisconsin, in New Zealand, or anyplace.

Earnshaw's painting is one of 126 original works by 113 artists selected to appear in this year's Birds in Art exhibition, held annually at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin. The show opens three weeks from today, on Saturday, September 6, 2008. --C.H.

Notes from the AOU meeting

Here's a fraction of what I've heard here in Portland over the last few days:

During a symposium on free-ranging cats and bird conservation on Tuesday, Bob Sallinger, director of Audubon Society of Portland, described his organization's alliance with the Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon in a campaign to reduce the number of free-roaming cats in the Portland metro area. Since bird groups and cat groups usually go at each other like, well, cats and dogs, the alliance is unlikely, to say the least, but it's also promising. 

Instead of framing the problem as birds vs. cats, Bob emphasizes protecting birds and cats -- that is, reducing the number of free-roaming pet cats in order to address predation on native birds and to reduce inflow of new cats into feral cat populations. A win-win.

In her plenary lecture yesterday, Helen Grant reminded us all that neither environments nor species are static entities. Both change constantly. To preserve species, Grant said, we must preserve their capacity to change. Rising to ask a question after she finished, John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, called her lecture one of the most exciting and inspiring talks he'd ever heard. We all agreed.

Among friends in Portland

Hello from Portland, Oregon, everyone.

I'm in the beautiful Pacific Northwest -- far from the Birder's World offices, far from the all-Brett-all-the-time coverage of the Wisconsin local news -- at the annual gathering of the American Ornithologists' Union, which is meeting with the Cooper Ornithological Society and the Society of Canadian Ornithologists at the Hilton Portland & Executive Tower until Friday, August 8.

And I'm a happy camper.

Many friends are here. Just to name a few: Julie Craves, supervisor of avian research at the Rouge River Bird Observatory and author of our popular column Since You Asked; woodpecker expert, Ivory-bill skeptic, and longtime magazine contributor Jerry Jackson; and Peter Stettenheim, founding editor of the series that became the Birds of North America and the author of the incredible article about feather functions that appeared in our June 2006 issue. It's great to see people you would otherwise communicate with only by e-mail.

And it's great to be surrounded by so many bird people, so many smart bird people doing fascinating research. Don't know if you ever realized it, but a fair number of the articles that have run in Birder's World started out as presentations delivered at an AOU meeting. Future articles may originate here this week.