John Fitzpatrick

Two recent experiences - the first happy, the second unfortunate - illustrate how evolutionary biology teaches us about living birds and their conservation. On a drizzly day in early December, Steve Kelling (our director of Information Technologies) and his son, Taylor, spotted a small bird repeatedly diving and resurfacing near the middle of Cayuga Lake here in Ithaca. With each dive the bird threw its wings out to propel itself down, so Steve knew immediately that they had found a "good bird." Only penguins and 'alcids' (auks, murres, puffins, and their allies) use their wings to swim under water. It obviously wasn't a penguin, and alcids are extremely rare away from the sea.

Had this bird been spotted only 15 years ago, it would have been identified as a Marbled Murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus), an endangered species that nests in mossy, old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. However, recent research has shown that a population breeding in Siberia is biologically distinct from the Marbled Murrelet, and that the several dozen scattered records from inland North America - including the Kellings' remarkable find - all represent this Siberian species, now called Long-billed Murrelet (Brachyramphus perdix). Long-billed Murrelets are apparently relatively mobile compared with the sedentary Marbled Murrelets, now known to be dependent in winter entirely on healthy near-shore waters from British Columbia to central California. Insights from evolutionary biology thus helped us appreciate the distinct histories of two murrelet species and clarified important ecological and behavioral features of an endangered bird. To the delight of bird watchers from around the country, they also allowed us to recognize the Ithaca murrelet as a stray from Siberia!

My second experience began when a young Colombian biologist recently emailed me three photographs of a dark-eyed, tawny colored screech-owl he had captured in the Central Andes. Having discovered and named such a bird myself some years ago, I knew that his mystery owl probably was a very important discovery - the endangered Colombian Screech-Owl (Otus colombianus) previously known only from beleaguered Pacific slopes of the Colombian and Ecuadorian Andes. Existence of this species in the central Andes adds vital new information on how this bird and its disappearing cloud forest habitat should be protected. Checking Birds of Ecuador, the spectacular new field guide by my good friend Bob Ridgley, I then discovered a disappointing oversight. Bob had followed earlier authors' errors and "lumped" the rare Colombian Screech-Owl together with a widespread species to which it is only distantly related. Should undiscerning authors perpetuate the mistake, the effect will be to bury a rare and highly threatened species whose existence as a "flagship" could help conservationists pinpoint habitats of highest priority for protection in the northern Andes.