Learn About Birds From Anywhere: New Online Webinar and Course Offerings

May 17, 2013 – 10:33 am


New online-learning offerings are the latest additions to the Cornell Lab’s collection of educational materials. The options now range from live, one-hour webinars with an expert ornithologist all the way to an in-depth, college-level correspondence course with a 1,200-page textbook.

If you enjoy watching and learning about birds, you might like the chance to investigate a little deeper with one or more of our courses. From simplest to most in-depth, here’s what we offer:

  • NEW: a series of Be a Better Birder webinars. We currently are offering a four part series on waterfowl identification (May–June 2013), and are working on more topics. The live, one-hour webinars are conducted by an expert ornithologist on our staff and include instruction, polling the audience about mystery photos, and a chance to ask questions.
  • NEW: a self-paced series of Be a Better Birder tutorials aimed at beginning birders who want solid instruction in the basics of bird identification. The tutorials build on the concepts introduced in the Inside Birding and Building Skills sections of All About Birds. They feature interactive components to help you practice your skills, rather than just telling you how. You can go through them as many times as you like for 6 months after you sign up.
  • Investigating Behavior: Courtship and Rivalry in Birds is a five-week online course perfect for people whose  interests lie beyond identification, and who want to know how and why birds communicate and display. It’s been a popular course over the last four years, taken by more than 650 people in 19 countries.
  • Our Home Study Course in Bird Biology is a comprehensive correspondence course in ornithology that has been taken by tens of thousands of people from all over the globe in the 41 years it has been offered.

The Education program at the Cornell Lab is dedicated to providing opportunities for lifelong learning about birds in a variety of ways to a multitude of audiences all over the world —and we’ll continue working on new ones. Already the most common response on our post-webinar surveys is, “More, please. What other ones will you offer?”

 (Images: example screenshots from our online offerings. This post was written by Kevin McGowan, who developed the tutorials and is an instructor for the Home Study Course, Courtship and Rivalry, and webinars.)

By Hugh | Posted in Birds, education | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Ornithologist, conservationist Robert Ridgely receives 2013 Allen Award

May 16, 2013 – 11:27 am

Three Allen Award recipients: Linda Macaulay, 2013 recipient Robert Ridgely, Victor Emanuel

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology bestowed its prestigious Arthur A. Allen Award for 2013 to Dr. Robert Ridgely, at a ceremony May 14 at the New-York Historical Society Museum and Library. The award, named for Cornell Lab founder Arthur Allen, was established in 1967 to honor those who have made significant contributions to ornithology by making it accessible to the general public.

“No individual alive today has contributed more to the understanding and widespread public appreciation of South American birds than Bob Ridgely,” said Cornell Lab director John Fitzpatrick. “Through his own pioneering explorations in the Andean wilderness, his meticulously researched books and articles, and his relentless pursuit of conservation milestones in Ecuador and beyond, Bob embodies everything that the Cornell Lab of Ornithology strives to achieve and support. ”

“As founder of the Cornell Lab, Arthur Allen broke important ground by blurring the lines between amateur naturalists and professional scientists,” Fitzpatrick said. “Today we honor Allen’s vision by recognizing other leaders who help build this vital bridge, and nobody does this better than Robert Ridgely.”

Dr. Ridgely is an expert on Neotropical birds and coauthor of The Birds of Panama, The Birds of Ecuador, and The Birds of South America. Ridgely and fellow birder John Moore discovered a new species of antpitta in Ecuador in 1997.  Subsequently named the Jocotoco Antpitta, it has gangly blue legs, a white cheek patch, and vocalizations that range from a soft hooting to a sharp bark. The endangered bird was given the scientific name Grallaria ridgelyi to honor Dr. Ridgely.

Jocotoco Antpitta by Patty McGann via Wikipedia

Listen to the bird’s call and song, recorded by Dr. Ridgely in 1997. The recording is archived in the Lab’s Macaulay Library collection.

Ridgely is the cofounder and president of Fundación de Conservación Jocotoco, which runs 10 nature reserves in Ecuador. He has worked tirelessly to promote bird conservation during his tenure at the Academy of Natural Sciences and the American Bird Conservancy, continuing to the present in his role as Honorary President of the World Land Trust-US.

“Dr. Robert Ridgely is a trailblazer in conservation as well as one the world’s foremost field ornithologists and tropical researchers,” says Dr. Paul Salaman, Chief Executive Officer of World Land Trust-US. “His no-nonsense approach to conservation has resulted in the purchase of private lands for the protection of birds and their environment, producing real world results.”

Ridgely has been awarded the Eisenmann Medal by the Linnaean Society of New York (2001); the Chandler Robbins Award from the American Birding Association (2006); and the Ralph W. Schreiber Conservation Award by the American Ornithologists’ Union (2011).

Past Winners of the Arthur A. Allen Award include Roger Tory Peterson, Alexander Wetmore, Sir Peter Scott, Alexander Skutch, Tom Cade, Victor Emanuel, and Linda Macaulay.

(Image: 2013 Allen Award recipient Robert Ridgely, center, with two past recipients, Linda Macaulay and Victor Emanuel. Photo courtesy John Fitzpatrick.)

By Hugh | Posted in conservation, News, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Student World Series Team Wins Cape May County With 166 Species

May 15, 2013 – 11:29 am

Team Redhead wins the 2013 Cape May County Division in the World Series of Birding

By Pat Leonard

Imagine standing in a marsh at night with the rain pouring down and wind blowing through the tall grass, masking all other sounds. Imagine standing there for 20 minutes and not hearing a single bird. That’s the way Team Redhead’s World Series of Birding began on May 11 at midnight. Despite the soggy start, these five intrepid Cornell students followed their plan in an efficient, clockwork-like manner and tallied 166 species to capture the Cape May County division championship. At the same time they raised money earmarked for undergraduate research and conservation projects (see video examples).

After that first silent 20 minutes, a Canada Goose broke the ice and the birding got a lot better in the Tuckahoe Wildlife Management Area in the north end of the county. The Redheads then checked off Virginia, Clapper, and King rails, plus Great Horned Owl, Chuck-will’s-widow, and Whip-poor-will.

“Benjamin Van Doren is amazing with night-flight calls,” says team co-captain Ben Barkley “That’s how we got Least Bittern flying overhead and Rose-breasted Grosbeak–our only chance to get those species all day.”

A seawatch at dawn at Cape May Point brought better weather as well as Royal Tern, Red-breasted Merganser, and Black Skimmer. While Andy Johnson, Jack Hruska, and Van Doren scoped the ocean with Teresa Pegan doing the same with binoculars, Barkley watched for migrants and pulled in Bank Swallow and Green Heron.

At Higbee Beach and Hidden Valley, the team scored 20 species of warbler along with a Blue-headed Vireo. Wintering birds that typically would have moved on to their breeding grounds by now helped swell the species total, including Ruddy Duck, Red-breasted Nuthatch, and Pine Siskin.

The breeding birds up north all showed up on cue as midday stops produced key species including Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Yellow-throated Vireo, Summer Tanager, Eastern Meadowlark, and Horned Lark. A quick sweep of expected shorebirds along the Atlantic brought the team to Cape Island where they finished the daylight hours with Lesser Black-backed Gull, Gull-billed Tern, Eurasian Collared-Dove, and a very unexpected Brown Pelican.

Every Big Day team has a nemesis bird, and for Team Redhead this year, that was the Northern Flicker.

Between 8:00 and 11:00 p.m. the Redheads also did well. Johnson and Barkley did a Barred Owl duet that sounded sufficiently enticing to have the real thing respond. During an impromptu stop for screech-owl, Barkley says, “Andy did a perfect whinny and trill and the bird responded. He just nailed it, it was awesome!” That was the last bird tallied for the day, number 166.

At the finish line, the Redheads checked over their list, checked it again, and handed it in. They had to wait for one more county-wide team to turn in its list before finding out they’d won—too tired to whoop and holler but well satisfied with the end result!

“You put so much work in beforehand, studying the songs, holding team meetings, and then you work like crazy during scouting, and you work so hard during the day and to find out you won is just incredible,” Barkley says. “We made sure we ran between every stop—running to the car, running back to the car, we were all out and we worked incredibly well together.”

Thanks to all who donated in support of Team Redhead—and produced such an inspiring performance!

(Image: Team Redhead in black—Ben Barkley, Benjamin Van Doren, Andy Johnson, Teresa Pegan, and Jack Hruska—accepting their award from Dale Rosselet [left] and Pete Dunne [right].)

By Hugh | Posted in Big Day, Birds | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Scouting Report: Students of Team Redhead Prepare for World Series of Birding

May 10, 2013 – 9:29 am


Team Redhead is doing its homework. These five Cornell students, all top-notch birders, are into their second full day of scouting ahead of this Saturday’s 30th annual World Series of Birding in New Jersey. As always, the goal is to identify as many bird species by sight or sound as possible in a slightly manic 24-hour period.

This year’s team roster includes Big Day veterans and co-captains Andy Johnson and Ben Barkley along with returning Redhead Jack Hruska. The newcomers are Benjamin Van Doren and Teresa Pegan.

They have Cape May County’s 620 square miles to cover, scoping forest, marsh, protected bays, and open ocean for species they can count on when the competition begins at the crack of midnight on May 11. They want to win their division for bragging rights, of course, but most importantly to raise vital funds for undergraduate student research and conservation projects. You can spur on the team and support their cause.

The Redheads first full day of scouting in Cape May was on Wednesday—a day that dawned foggy, cold, and drizzly. Barkley, Van Doren, and Pegan spent their time scouting the northern half of the county, in Belleplain State Forest. They were on the lookout for local breeding bird species that are hard to find farther south in the county, such as Kentucky Warblers and Summer Tanagers. The Big Day route traditionally begins up here, in a dark, damp marsh, listening for the hoots of owls and the calls of other nocturnal necessities such as Gray-cheeked, Swainson’s, and Wood thrushes that may be migrating overhead.

Johnson, Hruska, and scouting assistant Jacob Drucker did a seawatch Wednesday morning and scoured areas of Cape Island where tired migrants tend to stop for a rest. Johnson reports the team is finding most of what they’re looking for, though there have been no major “fallouts” like the one last month on the Texas coast that helped Team Sapsucker set a new Big Day record.

Ducks are always a challenge in May because you never know if any will be lingering on their migration—most have already moved north. So far, scouting has turned up Green-winged Teal, Gadwall, Black Duck, and Long-tailed Ducks.

There were several highlights on Wednesday: a Pine Siskin that should have packed its bags and headed north weeks ago, three jaegers, and… the sun. After a drippy start, the day turned warmer, with clear skies that should hold for today’s scouting.

Weather is always the wild card for Big Day and can make or break a team’s tally sheet. The Redheads have some idea of what to expect though, thanks to weekly, regional predictions of bird migration from our BirdCast project. Cornell Lab researcher and BirdCast project leader Andrew Farnsworth has taken a look at what the Redheads might encounter this weekend, and it’s a mixed bag. Light rain and an occasional thunderstorm means migrants already in Cape May will probably stay put, he said. That’s the good news. The bad news is that if there’s a lot of rain, there won’t be many new species of migrants arriving, despite favorable winds from the south to help them along. The wind may pose some difficulties during the day as well, keeping birds hidden and making it hard for the Redheads to hear and see any birds that are moving. The Redheads will get one more BirdCast update just ahead of the Big Day.

Armed with the latest migration and weather information, plus their scouting efforts, The Redheads will work out the fine details of their tightly timed route, deciding whether to cover singing forest birds in the north at dawn, for example, or focus on migrants at the southern tip of the Cape May peninsula first.

Cape May Map

Cape May County includes many bird-friendly habitats as it juts into the ocean with protected bay on one shore and the open Atlantic on the other.

Overall, Andy Johnson says the team feels optimistic about their chances on the Big Day, despite a fair amount of sleep deprivation and the fact that three of the team members have to take finals during the scouting period. Unlike the rest of the World Series teams, they’ll have to factor study time into their scouting equation! But there will be a good supply of New Jersey staples, such as Tastykakes, available from the famous WaWa gas stations that dot the landscape. With a little luck, well-honed talent, and lots of support from donors, Team Redhead will cross the finish line at the Cape May fire station Saturday night with a tally sheet that can’t be beat. Go Redheads!

Keep track of Team Redhead during the World Series on their Facebook page.

(This post was written by Pat Leonard.)

By Annetta | Posted in Big Day, Birds | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

New Crossley ID Quiz Challenges You to ID Raptors From Above

May 8, 2013 – 3:20 pm

Plate from The Crossley Guide, Topsides

Click image for a larger version. (Right-click to open in a new window if you’d like to have the photo visible while you read the answers below.)

The new Crossley ID Guide: Raptors came out in April. Crossley’s innovative technique of cramming lots of photos onto a page seems to work especially well with such large birds and open spaces. They force the reader to assimilate details of shape and size while limiting the amount to which we can obsess over fine feather details (just like we have to do in the field).

This new book turns 15 “mystery” plates into a hands-on ID workshop interspersed throughout the pages dedicated to individual species.  It’s a book that invites you to keep turning pages, luring your subconscious into calling out names almost as soon as your eye passes over them.

The photo above is the third of our three examples of plates from the book (the other two are mystery hawks on the prairie, and a Sharp-shinned Hawk workout). This one takes a look from an unusual perspective, looking down at these normally high-flying birds. Can you tell how many species are here? Which is which? Take your best guesses, and then scroll down for answers, tips, and commentary provided by our own raptor expert, Brian Sullivan, an eBird project leader and a coauthor of the Crossley guide.

Scroll down when you’re ready to read Brian’s answers:

Read More »

By Annetta | Posted in Birds, identification, products, quiz | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Found a Funky Nest? Enter It in Our New Challenge

May 1, 2013 – 3:07 pm


Whether you find a robin’s nest on a statue or a hummingbird’s nest on wind chimes, your picture of a bird nest in a funky place can win big in our Funky Nests in Funky Places contest. With nesting season underway, this contest challenges everyone to get outside and watch nature in even the most unexpected places.

“Just start looking,” says Karen Purcell, who created the contest several years ago as part of the Cornell Lab’s Celebrate Urban Birds citizen-science project. “Past experience has shown us you can find bird nests in the most surprising places. We’ve seen them in helmets, old boots, stoplights, store signs, car tires, clotheslines, mailboxes, potted plants, and even a stuffed moose head!”

The Funky Nests contest lasts until June 15. Entries may be photos, videos, artwork, poems, or stories. You don’t have to be a bird expert or an expert photographer. People of all ages are welcome to participate as individuals or with a class, community center, or afterschool program. Prizes include binoculars, bird feeders, cameras, an iPad, and more.

Entry deadline is June 15.

Find more information about how to find nests, approach nests without disturbing the birds, and enter the contest at www.FunkyNests.org

Celebrate Urban Birds is a free, year-round project that focuses on the arts, creating green spaces for birds, and learning how birds use urban spaces.

A Few Funky Facts About Nests:

  • Most common backyard birds lay two to eight eggs. Hatching usually begins about two weeks after the last egg is laid and it takes another two weeks before the young are ready to leave the nest.
  • Even if a nest has been built in a somewhat inconvenient place (for you), be patient! In a few weeks the birds will be gone. Meanwhile, you get a front-row seat to a wonder of nature.
  • Baby birds have brightly colored beaks that help parents hit the bull’s-eye with food!
  • For their first three days of life, nestling pigeons and doves depend solely on “pigeon milk,” a liquid loaded with protein and fat that is produced by both the mother and father!

What should I do if I find a baby bird?
This is one of the most common springtime questions we receive at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Get the answer here.

By Annetta | Posted in Birds, citizen science | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

294 Species and One Shattered Record on “Almost Perfect” Big Day

April 27, 2013 – 10:52 am


As midnight struck on Thursday, April 25, 2013, the six members of Team Sapsucker made North American history with 294 species recorded in a single day—a new record. Buoyed by good weather, excellent scouting help, and one of the largest migration fallouts in recent memory, they raced from the desert washes of south-central Texas to the live oaks of the coast to amass a total larger than almost anyone had imagined possible.

In 2011, Team Sapsucker—Chris Wood, Jessie Barry, Andrew Farnsworth, Marshall Iliff, Tim Lenz, and Brian Sullivan—had set a new record with 264 species. That was three more than the previous high mark. In 2012 they returned to Texas and managed to repeat their result. It seemed as if Texas’s potential might be reaching a plateau, which is why it was on no one’s radar (except for the Sapsuckers themselves) that this year’s total would be a full 30 species higher.

“We’ve always known, or at least had some faith, that 300 is possible,” Iliff said. “But it requires not only perfect planning and perfect execution, which is hard enough, but it also requires perfect weather. Somehow this year all those things happened.”

Early on, the Sapsuckers knew this year could be special. A weather forecast was calling for an unusually strong cold front to make it through Texas and out into the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, conditions in the Yucatan Peninsula were ideal for migrants to begin their long flight north. “When migrants meet these fronts it’s a serious challenge for them,” said Andrew Farnsworth, a bird migration expert and project leader for BirdCast. “They hit rain and strong winds, they look for the closest coastal habitat they can find, and they fall out.” After two straight years of strong south winds and  poor migrant turnout, it looked like Thursday could bring calm conditions and migrants galore.

On Wednesday, a report from High Island by team scout Tom Johnson whetted their appetite. Later, he described the scene:

On Wednesday morning as I headed west on the Bolivar Peninsula, I started to notice large waves of Barn Swallows and Chimney Swifts arriving from offshore. I started to see Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Scarlet Tanagers, and Yellow-billed Cuckoos flying low over the beach and landing in marginal shrub habitat, so I hightailed it back to High Island, the only substantial strip of coastal forest for dozens of miles around. The woods had turned into a rush of color. Summer and Scarlet Tanagers were attempting to make landfall after a tough water crossing into north winds. Tennessee Warblers, 330 of them, streamed across 5th Avenue and toward Smith Oaks, a Houston Audubon preserve. Orioles, grosbeaks, and buntings were everywhere. Hundreds of warblers were zipping around the treetops, while others poked around on grassy areas and bare trails, trying to refuel after their marathon flight.

The migrants were good news, but they also meant the team had to pack all their scouting into fewer days. Normally they have a full week to ferret out every last rarity and make endless recalculations to their carefully timed itinerary. In the end, they were still making route adjustments up until the night before. At 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday they decided to allot 30 minutes to a great duck and shorebird spot near San Antonio called Mitchell Lake, but this meant staying up until 10:00 figuring out where to win back the time elsewhere in the route. Then to bed, maybe—they were getting up at 10:30.

A lot of strategy goes into a Big Day. To best coordinate the route, they divide the day into thirds and a two-person team takes responsibility for leading each third. Marshall Iliff and Tim Lenz handled the morning in San Antonio and the Hill Country; Andrew Farnsworth and Brian Sullivan planned out the central portion all the way to the piney woods east of Houston; and Jessie Barry and Chris Wood orchestrated the final push from 4:30 onward into the migration hotspots and shorebird flats of High Island and Bolivar Peninsula.

The team got into position before midnight and began their day with a rare Ross’s Goose that had been hanging out at a suburban park near San Antonio. From there the team hopscotched to Uvalde, pausing for opportune species—a robin and a Blue Jay whose nests were lit by streetlights; pauraques, poorwills, Chuck-will’s-widows; two nighthawks and five owls. By the time dawn broke they were on a quiet road in the desert listening for Scaled Quail, then racing to Chalk Bluffs for a dawn chorus worth 79 species.

Though it wasn’t 8 a.m. yet, the day began to pick up its pace. Racing up a hillside after a Black-tailed Gnatcatcher, Andrew Farnsworth watched Brian Sullivan tumble over some barbed wire; on the way back down Farnsworth snagged the exact same strand. The team had to use their full supply of safety pins to repair his pants leg. Iliff briefly raised blood pressures by driving into the Uvalde dump after a Chihuahuan Raven—the same choice that last year led to a flat tire and an hour’s delay. This year: no flat tire, but no raven.

The team’s last-minute decision to add Mitchell Lake paid off with hundreds of ducks and shorebirds, along with a half-dozen soaring raptors. Another detour  that Farnsworth and Sullivan had fretted over also paid off in some wet fields near the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge. In the end, it was fast and productive: brake pedal, exit ramp, wet field, Le Conte’s Sparrow, Upland Sandpiper, on ramp, accelerator.

Now the team had to make it through Houston in midafternoon traffic. On the far side of the city, some of the last fingers of eastern piney woods creep down into Texas, and with it come Pileated Woodpeckers, Prothonotary Warblers, Brown-headed Nuthatches, and Red-headed Woodpeckers. A Swainson’s Warbler, a difficult bird to find at the best of times, sang on cue. A Bald Eagle soared above a reservoir. “And the whole time Brian and I were thinking ‘Oh geez, we’re not going to find any of these woodpeckers we scouted… we’re not going to have enough time,’” Farnsworth said. “We weren’t thinking about numbers, we were thinking about finding birds.”

“One of the hardest things about a Big Day is you have to stay on your pace,” Sullivan added. “When you miss a bird, you can’t linger on it. You just have to say ‘Oh well, we missed it. We’ve got to go,’ even if it’s just 30 seconds or a minute.  Chris and Jessie’s portion of the route starts at 4:30, and if you’ve added minutes onto your day and you’re starting there at 5:15, you’re going to miss 30 birds later.”

When they hit High Island the migration fallout that had begun on Wednesday was still going on. All six of the Sapsuckers are serious, no-nonsense birders who know how to focus. But they’re also people who have loved looking at birds for as long as they can remember. They were having trouble concentrating.

“One of our biggest problems was being distracted by too many adult male Scarlet Tanagers and Rose-breasted Grosbeaks,” Iliff said. “We missed at least three or four species that way, probably more.”

“It was like being in a confetti of all different colors,” Farnsworth said. “It was beyond our abilities to comprehend and stay focused. These red and black Scarlet Tanagers were everywhere in your field of view, such an incredibly intense color, and we’d see 100 of them in a small area, everywhere you look, hopping on the ground.”

As good as the birding was, Barry kept pushing them forward. At one point, Philadelphia Vireos were so close at hand that Iliff photographed one using his iPhone. But despite the nagging sense that among those flitting masses there must be a new species or two—maybe a Bay-breasted or a Golden-winged Warbler—they needed to get to Bolivar with enough daylight to pick up the dozens of species that awaited them there: thousands of avocets, plovers, stilts, dowitchers, knots, yellowlegs, sandpipers, skimmers, gulls, and terns.

When the sun went down Iliff, in the passenger seat, started entering birds into his laptop. A big number at the top of his spreadsheet flashed the total, but he refused to look at it until he was done. All he could hear were Barry and Lenz, sitting behind him and gasping at the numbers; and Farnsworth and Sullivan in the back of the van, asking what was going on. They were at 292. They spent the rest of their time slapping mosquitoes at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, getting King Rail around 10 p.m. and then Virginia Rail at 11:41. As the clock struck midnight, they were still listening for a Black Rail’s kee-kee-kerr. It didn’t come.

A total of 294 immediately raises the question of whether 300 really is possible. For Wood, it’s hard to say. “It’s in the back of our minds as we do this,” he said. “We’re at this point in time where technology will continue to advance, and our knowledge about birds and their exact requirements will continue to increase. But the other question is will there still be areas for birds? The area where we went to see Seaside Sparrow and Nelson’s Sparrow—along that road out into this great estuary—it’s all slated to have homes built on it. And there’s questions like how long will these birds be able to continue moving in these types of numbers? It speaks to so much that the Lab does, and the power of partnerships with local organizations.”

He was talking about help the team had received from dozens of people: expert scouters, crack local birders, birding organizations, kind permission from landowners, and team sponsorship by Carl Zeiss Sports Optics. Scouters included Andy Guthrie, Matt Hafner, Cornell Lab conservation scientist Ken Rosenberg, and Cornell grad Tom Johnson. The team also thanks Michele Crawford, Grant Webber at the Uvalde Fish Hatchery, Neal’s Lodge, Susan Albert and the staff at the Mitchell Lake Audubon Center, National Audubon Society, Brad Wier at the San Antonio Botanical Gardens, Noreen Baker, Jimmy Laurent at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, Harvey Laas, John Berner, Elizabeth Eddins, George and Clarence at Beaumont Waste Treatment, and Patti Ryan, whose delicious cookies powered the team through the day.

(Images taken by Tom Johnson at High Island, Texas, over the last few days. You can still donate in support of Team Sapsucker’s record and to aid our conservation work. You can view the full species list in the team’s eBird checklist.)

By Hugh | Posted in Big Day, Birds | Tagged , , , , | Comments (7)

Texas Big Day Looking “Very, Very Good,” Starting at Midnight

April 24, 2013 – 5:29 pm

Team Sapsucker by Tim Gallagher

Tonight at midnight, the Cornell Lab’s competitive birding team will kick off a 24-hour Big Day in San Antonio, Texas. During every single minute of April 25, 2013, the six members of Team Sapsucker (left) will train their eyes and ears toward finding birds. They’re hoping for 265 species or more to break the North American record. Thanks to supporters’ pledges, it’s also our biggest conservation fundraiser of the year.

This year the team decided to push up their schedule owing to a favorable weather forecast. It gives them less time to scout for rarities along their route, but they hope that good migration conditions along the coast will make up for that.

“The way this [cold front] is timing out on Thursday, it provides a very unique window for us,” said Brian Sullivan. “Every time you do a Big Day you’ve got to put together all the breeding birds you can, and you can’t leave any of them on the table because you never know what’s going to happen with the migrants.” But after two years that have offered up slim migrant showings, the winds look poised to deliver on Thursday.

“Fitz would probably say ‘cautiously optimistic,’” said team captain Chris Wood, referring to Cornell Lab director and former team captain John Fitzpatrick. “But yeah, it could be very, very good.”

The day will start around San Antonio, said team member Jessie Barry. Bird number one might be an American Robin with a nest the team can check off without disturbing it, or possibly a Canvasback that often roosts at a nearby and well-lit lake. They’ll listen for owls, herons, nightjars, and the soft calls of passing migrants as they make their way toward the Hill Country for the dawn chorus. Last year, the team had 129 species by 9 a.m.

As the morning activity winds down they’ll make a long push 300 miles east to the Texas coast. They’ll swing through some wooded patches to pick up classic eastern species that are hard to come by in the Hill Country—birds like Downy Woodpecker, Acadian Flycatcher, and Pine Warbler. They’ll try to remember all the correct turns to get to the best sparrow fields as well as find the perfect flooded rice field for shorebirds.

“It’s always tricky with the rice fields, Wood said, “You’ve got to get the water levels just right” to produce clutch species like Buff-breasted Sandpiper, Long-billed Curlew, and Hudsonian Godwit. “Healthy godwits that have had good success on their wintering grounds don’t even want to stop along the Texas coast,” he said, referring to research by former Cornell Lab Ph.D. student Nathan Senner that showed that in good weather, the godwits keep right on going as far as Nebraska or Minnesota in one jump. “They might put down in Texas in adverse winds, but maybe only stay for a few hours,” Wood said. “So those are species that you always worry about it.”

Their meticulously timed route itinerary has them pulling in at 5:45 p.m. to High Island, one of the most famous spring migrant spots in North America. With any luck, rain and north winds will have forced migrating songbirds to seek shelter here on Wednesday instead of carrying on northward, and Team Sapsucker hopes they’ll stick around to refuel for Thursday.

This is a crucial part of the route for this year’s Big Day attempt—the team had a fairly poor showing for migrants last year but still managed to reach 264 species. On a good day, High Island can produce nearly 30 species of warblers alone. If eastern winds blow across the Gulf of Mexico there might even be a Caribbean influence to the migrants on offer—birds like Black-throated Blue Warbler and Cape May Warbler, said team member Andrew Farnsworth.

The team will spend the last of their daylight on Bolivar Peninsula, “one of the arguably very best concentrations of shorebirds in North America,” Wood said, where 10,000–15,000 shorebirds await them. “It’s a really good place for Snowy Plover, Wilson’s Plover, Piping Plover, hopefully Red Knot,” he said. “If we get out there right around sunset, we can hope for Peregrine Falcon and White-tailed Kite too.”

Then they’ll be back in darkness, using their ears to try to squeeze out a last few species. Here again, the predicted weather, if it holds, will help them. “The last couple years, the wind has not been tremendously kind to us,” said Brian Sullivan, referring to steady 25-mph breezes that made it hard to hear and probably kept birds inactive during the team’s last two attempts. “Last year in particular, the whole last night we ended up getting about four species, and we had a dozen that we should’ve found,” Wood said.

As I spoke with them, the team was converging on San Antonio from their various scouting territories. They planned to meet up around 5 p.m. and make final preparations: wash the car, meticulously clean the windows inside and out, decide on seating arrangements, and practice getting in and out smoothly. They’ll make a grocery run. From midnight to midnight there will be no meal stops; everything the team eats will come out of a single cooler. “Basically everybody gets to pick one item they want,” Barry told me. “Other than that it’s peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.” With any luck they’ll get to bed around 9 p.m. tonight—and back up a little before midnight.

We’ll have running updates on Facebook during the event, and a full recap posted here afterwards. Good luck, Team Sapsucker!

(Thanks to sponsorship from Carl Zeiss Sports Optics, 100 percent of your pledge goes directly to support conservation. Team Sapsucker image by Tim Gallagher. Left to right: Marshall Iliff, Tim Lenz, Jessie Barry, captain Chris Wood, Brian Sullivan, and Andrew Farnsworth.)

By Hugh | Posted in Big Day, Birds | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

Migration Forecasts Help Birders Target Best Date for a Big Day

April 23, 2013 – 3:58 pm


As Team Sapsucker prepares for their Big Day in Texas, our new BirdCast project is helping pin down the best day of the week for their attempt on the North American record—and its weekly reports can help birders all over North America, too.

On a good day, springtime can deliver spectacular birding. But picking that day can be tricky. Migrants by the millions are flooding into North America, but are they coasting on tailwinds, battling through thunderstorms, or being buffeted by crosswinds? For decades, biologists have noticed that great sightings often go along with certain weather patterns—particularly the near-mythical “fallout,” when northerly winds stop migrants in their tracks as they arrive on the Gulf Coast after an all-night flight from Mexico.

Recently, our BirdCast project began formally compiling weather reports, radar maps, recent sightings, and other data into specific, weekly predictions about what birds are moving, and where they’re likely to be seen. The project aims to develop detailed predictions for conservationists and environmental planners—today, their regional reports are already proving useful to birders like our Team Sapsucker as they plan their Big Day. Thanks to your pledges, each extra species they find helps raise more funds for conservation.

We caught up with BirdCast project leader Andrew Farnsworth, who is also a member of Team Sapsucker, to see how the forecast looks for Texas this week. His short answer: Thursday could be really good.

The elements are already in motion, Farnsworth said. A cold front pushing across central Texas is likely to bring north winds and rain to east Texas and into the Gulf of Mexico by tomorrow morning. “It’s an almost ideal situation to create a fallout,” he said.  ”Later tonight, birds are going to take off from the Yucatan, parts of the Mexican coast, and the Caribbean, because conditions are really good down there. Once they take off, they don’t usually turn around.”

As they near the end of their flight they’ll run into the cold front, with its rain and opposing winds, and they’ll start looking for the nearest shoreline to make landfall. (See a more complete breakdown on BirdCast’s weekly forecast page.)

Thursday should dawn cloudy but calm. The exhausted migrants should spend the day where they landed, resting and replenishing their energy stores. Meanwhile, Team Sapsucker will spend the morning scouring the Texas Hill Country, 300 miles away, and aim to arrive at High Island, on the coast, at around 5:45 p.m. They’ll have about two and a half hours of daylight left to look for 20+ warbler species as well as other migrants.

At least that’s the way it looks right now. “Whether it’s going to be as epic as it appears on paper is hard to say,” Farnsworth said. “But I think the chances for a fallout are better than 50:50 and increasingly better with each passing forecast that I’ve seen.”

There’s still time to help spur Team Sapsucker along by making a pledge for each species they see. Thanks to sponsor Carl Zeiss Sports Optics, 100 percent of every pledge goes directly to aid conservation.

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(Images by Chris Wood, Team Sapsucker captain.)

By Hugh | Posted in Big Day, Birds, what you can do | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

Bicknell’s Thrush Surveys Turn Up Illegal Clearing in Dominican Republic

April 19, 2013 – 4:14 pm


Surveys for a rare North American songbird are shedding light on illegal forest clearing in the Dominican Republic, according to researchers from the Vermont Center for Ecostudies and Grupo Jaragua. The ongoing cutting in Sierra de Bahoruco National Park threatens some of Hispaniola’s last remaining undisturbed cloud forest. The park’s forests are a winter home to many North American migrants, refuge for 32 endemic Hispaniolan species, and an important source of freshwater for the people of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The deforestation was discovered as researchers surveyed for Bicknell’s Thrushes in the national park. These small, delicately spotted birds have flutelike songs and breed in mountaintop forests from New York and New England through Quebec and Nova Scotia. The entire population spends winters in the Caribbean, mostly on Hispaniola with lesser numbers in parts of Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico.

“It’s a cruel irony that as our Grupo Jaragua colleagues conducted surveys to document where Bicknell’s Thrush occur, they ended up documenting severe habitat loss in one of the species’ important strongholds,” said Chris Rimmer, director of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies. “They were literally counting thrushes while watching the cloud forest disappear.”

Because of severe population declines, Bicknell’s Thrush has been called the most threatened migrant songbird in northeastern North America and is under review for listing by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Endangered Species Act.

Cutting in the park has been going on since at least 2009, said Yolanda Leon of the Dominican nonprofit Grupo Jaragua. To date, an estimated 30 square miles of forest inside the park boundaries has been cleared. Surveys this winter indicated that clearing was creeping farther upslope and into the sensitive cloud forest.

“A lot of people get confused because they see a huge expanse of pine forest [higher in the park] and they say ‘Oh, the forest is fine,’” Leon said. “But we are looking at this fringe of forest that has a very specific band of occurrence, where the clouds meet the forest. It’s a very complex, beautiful forest, where you have a lot of migratory birds, and a lot of endemic birds.”

In this 2009 aerial photo, agricultural clearing along the park's southern boundary is already evident. Red dots mark locations where the survey team found ongoing clearing. Map courtesy Yolanda Leon, Grupo Jaragua.

In November 2012, Leon and two colleagues, Esteban Garrido and Jesús Almonte, found high concentrations of wintering Bicknell’s Thrushes near the regions of Las Abejas and Los Arroyos on the mountain’s southern slopes. When they returned for more surveys in the first week of April, they discovered that patches of forest had been cleared to the ground. Some had already been planted with avocado, potatoes, beets, carrots, and beans. Elsewhere, cows grazed and makeshift ovens were turning felled timber into charcoal.

Deforestation is a major problem on Hispaniola, where economic conditions force many people to clear forests to collect firewood and grow crops. However, much of the current clearing appears to be a well-funded project of several influential Dominican landowners rather than subsistence agriculture, Leon said. They have instituted a sharecropping system, encouraging Haitian immigrants to clear and farm the land in return for a small share of the harvest.

Complicating the issue is the fact that the southern boundary of the park, though it appears on maps, is not marked on the ground. “A lot of people, they don’t want to get into trouble,” Leon said. “But if they don’t see a marker… they think they are just using fallow land.”

The cloud forest is one of the most important and threatened habitat types in Hispaniola. Sierra de Bahoruco is a part of the Jaragua-Bahoruco-Enriquillo UNESCO biosphere reserve and is a center of biodiversity for birds, amphibians, orchids, and other species. Beyond Bicknell’s Thrushes, other species that depend on the park’s forests are the globally endangered Black-capped Petrel and La Selle Thrush, and more than 30 unique species such as the Hispaniolan Parrot, Hispaniolan Trogon, Hispaniolan Crossbill, and Golden Swallow (more info in a BirdLife International PDF fact sheet).

Preserving intact forest is directly important for humans, too. “The montane forest is the sponge that captures moisture from the clouds. If we don’t have these forests, there’s no freshwater for Haiti and the Dominican Republic,” said Eduardo Iñigo-Elias, who coordinates the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Neotropical Conservation Initiative. The cloud forest of the Sierra de Bahoruco, specifically, feeds the Pedernales River, which forms part of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and supplies towns in both countries.

A separate pressure on the Sierra de Bahoruco’s drier, lower-elevation forests is the harvest of a shrub called guaconejo, or torchwood (Amyris spp.). Fragrant oils contained in the bark put this plant in high demand from the perfume industry, but few sources remain outside of parks, Iñigo-Elias said. Harvesters have begun to freely infiltrate the Dominican Republic’s protected lands, cut the trees, and bring them back to Haiti to ship to France, he said.

The Ministry of the Environment in the Dominican Republic is in charge of enforcing the regulations in national parks, Iñigo-Elias said. Representatives from Grupo Jaragua and Vermont Center for Ecostudies wrote to the ministry and met with staff to describe the situation and express their support for action to curtail the illegal activities. The main goal, according to Leon, is to begin negotiations with the landowners who are underwriting the clearing to arrive at an amicable resolution that protects the park’s lands without unfairly treating the Haitian immigrants hired to do the work.

In the meantime, Grupo Jaragua has launched a Friends of the Sierra de Bahoruco Facebook page (largely in Spanish) for people who want to keep up with developments. They also hope to raise funds to conduct a land occupation study so they can help make effective conservation interventions. The Cornell Lab is a longtime research partner of both Grupo Jaragua and Vermont Center for Ecostudies, and has trained Hispaniolan biologists in mist netting, acoustic surveys, and radio telemetry, and studied threatened species such as the Black-capped Petrel, Golden Swallow, and Bicknell’s Thrush. This work has been made possible by grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to the Cornell Lab.

“This is the wintering ground for so many species that we share with the people of Haiti and the Dominican Republic,” Iñigo-Elias said. “It’s an area of high humanitarian crisis given the lack of freshwater and the lack of fuel. And then on top of that, the last remaining resources are being cut for a few crops. I hope that all involved can come to an agreement that allows the park to do its job in protecting some of these last undisturbed remnants, and continue to provide ecosystem services to the local inhabitants.”

(Images: Bicknell’s Thrush by Pedro Genaro Rodriguez; other photos and maps by Yolanda Leon of Grupo Jaragua.)

 

By Hugh | Posted in Birds, conservation, News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)