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  Team Redhead 2013: co-captains Ben Barkley and Andy Johnson; Teresa Pegan, Jack Hruska, and Benjamin Van Doren.

  

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  Ben Barkley and Teresa Pegan scout for breeding forest songbirds—here watching a brilliant male Summer Tanager sing

  

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  Summer Tanager. Photo by reddirtpics.

  

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  Green-winged Teal. Photo by Brian Hampson via BirdShare.

  

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  Kentucky Warbler. Photo by Ryan Schain via BirdShare

  

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 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.)

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:

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This is one of my favorite plates in the book, not only because it provides a really interesting perspective on these birds, but the scenery is spectacular. Raptors are often seen flying overhead, especially hawkwatching sites in the flatlands. But on ridgetops you can often see raptors from above with great regularity. Topside views offer an interesting and exciting perspective, and they can be an ID challenge if you’re not familiar with this kind of viewing. Shape and flight style traits still hold useful, but plumage traits may still be necessary for some identifications. See how you did with the species in this photo:

1. First-year Swainson’s Hawk. Dark brown on top with blackish flight feathers and tail, pale uppertail coverts, and obvious buffy fringes to upperwing coverts. Note long, tapered wings.
2. First-year Swainson’s Hawk. Dark brown on top with blackish flight feathers, pale uppertail coverts, pale eye-line, and faint buffy fringes to upperwing coverts. Note pointed wing tips and the variation in the amount of pale fringing above. This bird has virtually none, but quiz bird #1 has a lot. This is typical variation in juvenile Swainson’s Hawks.
3. First-spring Golden Eagle. Dark brown on top with a golden wash on the head, and a white-based tail. Note that first-years in spring have a broad fade to the upperwing coverts that resembles the narrow, pale mottled upperwing bar of older birds. Also note shorter inner primary still growing in. Note the long, broad wings held in a dihedral.
4. Adult Bald Eagle. Unmistakable, uniformly dark with a white head and tail, and large yellow bill!
5. Adult Golden Eagle. Overall brown above with paler mottling along the upperwings, a golden head, and grayish bands on the tail. Note that in bright sunlight, grayish areas can look white. Golden Eagles are long-winged and long-tailed, with small heads compared with Bald Eagles. In strong sunlight, the Golden’s hackles on the nape can appear white, so beware confusion with adult Bald Eagle (believe it or not!).
6. First-year Red-shouldered Hawk. Brownish on top overall with translucent primary “commas.” Note squared off wings and somewhat long tail with indistinct banding. Red-shouldered Hawks show thin wings hunched forward in a glide.
7. First-year Northern Goshawk. Pale underneath with heavy dark streaking throughout. Note somewhat short wings that are very broad but taper at the hands; also note the broad chest and long tail.
8. Osprey. Blackish on top with a white head and black eyeline. Note white underbody and long, narrow wings. This is an adult based on the pure white chest and lack of dark streaking on crown.
9. First-year Sharp-shinned Hawk. Distant accipiters are hard, but this one has the classic field marks for Sharp-shinned Hawk. Dark brown on top with faintly banded tail. Note long, narrow tail, short, broad wings, and small head.
10. Immature Bald Eagle. Dark brown overall with blackish flight feathers. Note significant whitish mottling in tail and uneven secondaries; this denotes a subadult. Also, note the browner back with darker upperwing coverts. First-year birds are even toned throughout the back and upperwings.
11. Adult Red-shouldered Hawk. Plumage is a beautiful rusty underneath with a brown head, and blackish on top with clean, narrow white bands throughout the flight and tail feathers, and whitish comma-shaped primary windows.
12. Adult Red-shouldered Hawk. Rusty underneath with a brown head, and blackish on top with clean, narrow white bands throughout the flight and tail feathers, and whitish comma-shaped primary windows. Note reddish “shoulders” of adult. A strikingly patterend hawk, especially when seen from above.
13. First-year Broad-winged Hawk. Brown on top with slightly paler primaries, faint pale mottling on upperwings, and indistinctly banded tail with darker band at tip. Note compact structure with stocky, pointed wings and large head. Tail appears somewhat long on first-years.
14. Adult Red-tailed Hawk. Dark brown on top with a bright rufous tail, and a golden wash to the head. Rufous uppertail coverts rather than whitish are much more common on the western race than the eastern.
15. First-year Red-tailed Hawk. Brown on top with pale upper tail coverts and pale mottling on the upperwings. Note the long but broad, bulging wings that taper slightly at the tips. First-year Red-tailed Hawks show pale squarish wing panels on the outer wing that contrast with the darker brown secondaries. It takes a year to acquire the red tail of adults.
16. First-year Cooper’s Hawk. Dark brown on top with faintly banded tail similar to a goshawk, but lacks the pale mottling along the upperwings, and pale eyeline. Note long tail with obvious white tip, short, broad wings, and noticeable head projection. Wings and tail are slightly longer in relation to other accipiters.
17. Osprey. Note blackish topside with white crown, and very long, narrow wings. Aged as adult based on lack of pale fringes on upperwing coverts.
18. First-year Northern Goshawk. Brown on top with tawny-streaked nape, pale mottling on upperwing coverts, whitish eyeline, and long banded tail. Note broad wings compared to other accipiters.
19. First-year Broad-winged Hawk. Brown overall on top with slightly paler primaries, and indistinctly banded tail with darker band on tip. Note stocky tapered wings and big-headed look.

(Plate image courtesy Princeton University Press; Brian Sullivan photo by Jessie Barry.)

“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.

Bill Rhein (right), with his friends George and Walter Kohler in the Sierra Madre in 1953, during the first of three expeditions in search of the Imperial Woodpecker.

Living Bird editor Tim Gallagher’s newest book, Imperial Dreams, hit bookstores on Tuesday with its tales of exploring Mexico’s Sierra Madre in pursuit of the largest woodpecker that ever lived. The book has received some great reviews, and Tim will appear on the Diane Rehm show on Thursday, April 25, 2013, to discuss it. Here’s a little bonus material from Tim about William Rhein, a dentist and amateur ornithologist/filmmaker who provided some of Tim’s most important clues:

I’ve always loved the story of William Rhein—the indefatigable Imperial Woodpecker searcher who launched three self-funded expeditions into the vast Sierra Madre of Mexico in the 1950s to try to document these remarkable birds as they hovered even then at the edge of extinction. I sometimes wonder why he did it. Rhein had an excellent income from his dental practice in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; a nice home; and no children, so he and his wife could afford to indulge themselves in every way. But instead he chose to drive south with a few buddies and spend up to two months at a time, roughing it in the outback of Mexico, living on beans, booze, and tortillas.

Of course, it was a great adventure. These guys were World War II veterans, and perhaps they missed the thrills, danger, and sense of camaraderie they’d experienced in combat. And bird study was a lifelong obsession with Rhein. Although he did not have a degree in ornithology, he was an ornithologist to the core—and also a gifted bird photographer and cinematographer. Rhein’s lucrative dental practice provided all the funds and time he needed to do anything he wanted, and the Imperial Woodpecker was the ideal species for an obsessive quest—a bird that had barely been studied and never photographed alive. Perhaps it was the challenge of accomplishing something that had never been done that spurred him on.

In the course of working on my new book, Imperial Dreams, I was fortunate enough to interview two surviving members of Rhein’s expeditions—Frederick K. Hilton (who went with him in 1953) and Dick Heintzelman (who went in 1956)—and they filled me in on the details of the expeditions and shared their photographs with me.

The first thing Rhein did to prepare for his expedition was to visit famed Cornell professor Arthur A. Allen (founder of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology), who had searched for Imperial Woodpeckers in 1946. Allen—along with his wife Elsa and 20-year-old son David—had spent six weeks in Mexico, driving the atrocious mountain roads in a station wagon and a sedan, both laden to the gunwales with camera and sound-recording equipment. They actually located one of the birds, a lone female, but were unable to photograph it or make a sound recording. Allen was generous to Rhein, providing him with maps, advice on where to go, and the names of people to contact in Mexico. He even loaned Rhein a huge parabolic microphone and a wire recorder (an early sound-recording device that recorded sound onto thin steel wire) in case he got a chance to document the bird’s voice, which had also never been done.

Rhein and three of his friends loaded up his Chevy panel truck with all of their gear and headed south in the late spring of 1953, driving all the way from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to the city of Durango, Mexico, some 2,500 miles away. Although they struck out in the first two areas they explored, the men eventually found several Imperial Woodpeckers (including a pair with two young) near Los Laureles, a tiny village in the high country of Durango.

Walter Kohler looks at a fallen tree where seconds earlier three Imperial Woodpeckers had been foraging.

Some of the local people were suspicious of the strange equipment they carried, such as the odd-looking metal parabola, which was bigger around than a sledding disk, and the wire recorder. This was in the early days of the nuclear age, and some of them suspected the Americans were searching for uranium.

The sound-recording equipment proved to be impractical for the job at hand. They brought along six truck batteries to power the setup, which did not allow them the mobility they needed to follow an Imperial Woodpecker closely and record its call—which is too bad; no recording of the bird’s voice exists, and no one has ever had a better chance to record it than Rhein and his friends. They were also unable to take still photographs or film footage on this or their follow-up expedition in 1954.

On his third and final expedition to Mexico in 1956, Rhein finally successfully documented an Imperial Woodpecker, capturing a variety of behaviors on 85 seconds of 16-mm Kodachrome motion-picture film. But unfortunately, the film didn’t meet Rhein’s strict professional standards, and he kept it to himself for decades. He had filmed the segment from the back of a mule as the woodpecker hung around, flying from tree to tree in a circle, and occasionally foraging.

Clips from William Rhein’s 1956 footage of a female Imperial Woodpecker.

The world might very well never have learned about Rhein’s Imperial Woodpecker film if not for the efforts of my colleague Martjan Lammertink, who tracked down Rhein and interviewed him less than two years before his death. Martjan had read a letter in the Cornell archives that Rhein had written to woodpecker researcher James Tanner in the early 1960s, in which he had briefly mentioned the Imperial Woodpecker footage he shot in Mexico. Martjan was living in the Netherlands at the time, but the next time he came to America, he tracked down Rhein at his home in Pennsylvania.

Rhein and his wife greeted Martjan warmly and invited him inside. Later, they sat down in the living room and Rhein set up his old 16-mm projector and screen and began running the film. Martjan had the foresight to turn on a tape recorder as he sat with them as the projector rolled. Pat Leonard at the Cornell Lab has put together some of Rhein’s best footage and used the conversation between Rhein and his wife and Martjan as a voiceover. You can view it here:

I love hearing the comments of Rhein and his wife. Neither of them had viewed the film in decades. As for Martjan, he was stunned. Although it only ran a total of 85 seconds, the film was far better than he could ever have imagined. The bird was easily identifiable and engaged in a variety of behaviors—flying, foraging, hitching up a tree. It holds a goldmine of information about a species that has barely been studied. To this day, it is the only photographic documentation ever made of an Imperial Woodpecker, and its importance cannot be overstated.

(Images courtesy Tim Gallagher. To learn more about the Imperial Woodpecker, visit Tim’s blog.)

They’re a couple of weeks later than last year, but the Great Blue Herons of Sapsucker Woods have returned to their nest outside our offices. The male from past years (recognizable by the missing rear toe on his right foot) was first spotted on April 4, and on April 8 a female joined him on the nest. For more than two hours, the herons perched near one another, taking time to preen, joust with their bills, and tug at the sticks in the nest as spring peepers chorused and the light grew dim.

In past years, these first days of courtship have rapidly led to egg-laying and incubation. Bird Cams viewers have watched the birds continuing to court and arrange the nest in recent days. The birds copulated on April 9, suggesting a first egg may arrive soon.

This nest has a four-year history of fledging young (last year saw a bumper crop of five juvenile herons). Don’t miss the incredible courtship of these beautiful birds, viewed live from 40 feet above Sapsucker Woods Pond.

We’ll continue to post updates on the Bird Cams Facebook page and on twitter at @birdcams. Thanks for joining us as we share the beauty and excitement of another breeding season unfolding in Sapsucker Woods!

(Image: screen capture from Bird Cams)

Tim Gallagher, who edits our member magazine,

I’ve always been fascinated by the ability of an artist to capture the essence of a bird in a simple illustration. How can they possibly convey so much detail about the life of an individual bird in a two-dimensional sketch or a watercolor? I’ve been in the field many times with John Schmitt, who writes (and illustrates) the Naturalist’s Notebook column in Living Bird, and have peeked over his shoulder as he created yet another instant masterpiece in his field notebook. I could only shake my head and frown at the cartoonish representation of a bird I’d drawn in my own notebook.

I had a chance to spend a few hours with John as I was working on my new book, Imperial Dreams, about the Imperial Woodpecker of Mexico. I was visiting several museums and bird collections to examine and photograph specimens of these spectacular birds, and we arranged to meet at the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology in Camarillo, California.

John is no stranger to the place. He’s been using the Western Foundation’s specimens for years (long before it moved to its current location) to ensure the accuracy of his artwork as he works on field guide illustrations and other projects. As he went to fetch a couple mounted Imperial Woodpecker specimens for me, I thumbed through his sketchbook. I was stunned to see a pencil sketch he’d done of a male Imperial Woodpecker in the collection. The bird had been collected more than a century ago in the Sierra Madre Occidental of northwestern Mexico.

John’s sketch is a lot more lifelike than the withered old bird skin that lay before him as he drew it. And the specimen did not have a spread wing. John meticulously measured the length and the amount of white on each feather to recreate the wing accurately. Looking at the sketch now, it looks like it’s ready to fly off the page.

John uses his study sketches as reference material later when he creates watercolors, often adding other birds and habitat details. To view a completed illustration of a group of Imperial Woodpeckers by John Schmitt, see my blog post, “Imperial Woodpeckers of the Sierra Madre.”

To me, John’s illustrations of birds like the Imperial Woodpecker—which he has never seen and indeed may be extinct—are far more remarkable than those he’s done of the living birds he’s observed in nature. It takes a lifetime of bird observations, close-up study of specimens, and a giant leap of imagination.

(Photos courtesy of Tim Gallagher. At top, a sketch by John Schmitt; top left, Tim Gallagher in Mexico; middle left, John Schmitt with a mounted Imperial Woodpecker specimen. Read more on Tim Gallagher’s Imperial Dreams blog.)

HBO is airing a documentary that should make bird watchers do the unthinkable: put down their binoculars and head for the TV set. You’ll be amply rewarded. “Birders: The Central Park Effect” follows an eclectic group of birders through the seasons as they pursue their passion in New York City’s Central Park.

Central Park? A bird paradise? You bet. Despite the fact that everything about the 843-acre park is man-made (except for the glacier-strewn boulders) it is a magnet for birds migrating up and down the East Coast. It’s one of the few green spaces where birds can rest and refuel on their grueling journey. This is the “Central Park Effect” explained in the documentary by one of the experts in the film, Cornell Lab of Ornithology director Dr. John Fitzpatrick.

One hundred species can be seen in the park during spring migration in April and May. And you will see them in this film–gorgeous video of colorful migrant warblers all shot within Central Park, no stock footage. The film captures magic moments of discovery and rediscovery. Even when a bird has been seen before, there’s something special about seeing it for the first time when another spring rolls around.

The film is narrated by the birders themselves and, combined with music and bird sounds, can be a serene, almost meditative experience. Even the hard-driving, fast-paced New York City lifestyle gives way before the gentle pleasures of bird watching. Walking through the park, author Jonathan Franzen describes his reaction when he was handed a pair of binoculars and saw what he was missing: “It was like the trees were hung with ornaments,” he says. “It was one of those rare times in an adult’s life where the world suddenly seems more magical rather than less.”

One of the key players in the film is Starr Saphir who has been leading bird walks in the park for 40 years. Saphir has been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer and your heart aches when she wonders aloud if she is seeing a particular bird for the last time. There is a new urgency to her walks as she waits to see the “light go on” when people recognize a bird. She says, “Birding makes you forget about yourself for a while and gain perspective about your place in nature. We watch birds, perhaps, because we feel the wildness slipping away and birds are a bright, visible link to the wild.”

Ultimately, this documentary is about the effect of green spaces on the birds and about the effect birds have on us. It is about the persistence of nature, despite our best efforts to pave it over. But it is also a call to preserve our green spaces and create more of them before dwindling species lose a foothold in this world entirely and we lose one of our most accessible bridges to the natural world.

The film will appeal to and move people who already watch birds and may help non-birders “get” why we’re so passionate about it. A few may fall asleep in the recliner, but they’ll do it to the sounds of birds singing sweetly.

–Pat Leonard

Go here to check all show times. Click on the “schedule” button on the lower right. Click here to read film synopsis and credits and watch trailer.

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  Chuck-will's-widow spotted at High Island.

  

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  Purple Gallinule found at Tyrell city park.

  

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  Roseate Spoonbill seen at High Island.

  

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  A rare Rufous-capped Warbler at Chalk Bluff.

  

Science editor Gustave Axelson is staying in contact with the Sapsuckers in Texas and providing daily Facebook updates on the team’s scouting preparations leading up to the Big Day. Here’s his latest:

The birds and the weather appear to be cooperating with the Sapsuckers, and everything looks like a go for a Friday Big Day attempt to break the single-day North American birding record of 264 species in 24 hours.

Sapsucker weather expert Andrew Farnsworth has been studying the forecasts, and he likes what he sees. After several days earlier in the week when northerly winds kept the migration bottled up, fair winds are now blowing out of the south, which could open the spigot for migrant birds flying out of the Yucatan Peninsula. Plus, Farnsworth sees the possibility of light easterly winds as well, which could push some birds that migrate through the Caribbean, such as Bobolinks, toward Texas.

“There’s nothing in the weather forecast that gives us a reason to go Saturday instead of Friday,” Farnsworth said. By doing Big Day on a week day, the Sapsuckers will avoid heavy road traffic headed to the beaches, as well as crowds at the ferry to the Bolivar Peninsula—a critical connection point in their Big Day route.

After six days of scouting, the Sapsuckers have a minute-by-minute plan for Big Day, right down to a Ringed Kingfisher that’s been flying by the same spot at Chalk Bluff every morning around 7:08 a.m. In the past couple days, the team has picked up more locations for birds that they missed in their Big Day last year, such as a Scaled Quail (“We always knew they were around, but we could never find it,” said Sapsucker Marshall Iliff) and a Tropical Kingbird (a species more common in Mexico that just expanded into Texas in the early 1990s). There are still a few birds MIA on the Sapsucker’s most wanted list, though, such as a Green Jay. Iliff says they have twice seen Green Jays flying by near Uvalde, but they have yet to find a reliable location for one. “At this point, we’re resolved to miss it, but you never know,” Iliff said.

Even so, the Sapsuckers have sourced more than 300 bird species during their scouting over the past week. “I’m trying to temper my optimism, but at this point I’d be very surprised if we don’t break the record, barring something like a missing the ferry,” Iliff said.

According to Farnsworth, the team’s new Texas Triangle strategy this year—San Antonio to the Hill Country, then to Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula instead of Corpus Christi—is worth the extra hour of drive time. “It’s definitely putting more birds into play,” said Farnsworth. “We’ve got a little section of the Piney Woods in our route this year, which gives us birds like Red-headed Woodpecker and Pine Warbler that weren’t on our radar screen last year.”

Farnsworth said a stop-off at Houston on the way from the Hill Country to Galveston is also a key addition to the route. “We’ve found good numbers of Hudsonion Godwits there. That’s a species we missed last year that I’m very optimistic about.”

The big question now is, will the godwits and the other migrant birds stay where the Sapsuckers scouted now that migration-friendly south winds are blowing again? How many of the 300 species scouted can the Sapsuckers re-find on Friday?

Today is a final day for the team to re-check the locations of birds, then rendezvous at their hotel in San Antonio tonight for a big dinner. The Sapsuckers will be in bed by 8 p.m. tonight, and then up at 11 to roll out. They’ll start Big Day at midnight on the River Walk, listening hard for their first target species—Barred Owl.

The Cornell Lab submitted 14 conservation stories to Maya Lin's What is Missing? project, including one about the Golden-winged Warbler Conservation Action Plan.

Renowned artist Maya Lin—whose artwork and architecture over the past three decades has included the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. and the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama—has chosen Earth as the subject of her last memorial. And she chose the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to help tell the story.

Entitled What is Missing?, the artwork is a tribute to species and wild places both gone from our planet forever and currently being rescued from extinction. And it challenges the notion of a memorial as a singular static object, instead existing in multiple forms and multiple places. That multiplicity was on display on Earth Day 2012 at the Bloomberg Tower in New York City and on the Web.

At Bloomberg Tower last Friday, employees were transported from Manhattan into the world’s wildest places via What is Missing? multimedia exhibits. A massive video installation in the atrium featuring roaming polar bears of the Arctic and the watery wilderness of mangrove swamps in Florida. The elevators at Bloomberg Tower became mini-sound studios filled with the haunting calls of Commons Loons and reverberating songs of humpback whales. You can download a free digital release of the natural sounds used at the Bloomberg Tower Earth Day 2012 celebration from the Cornell Lab’s Macaulay Library.

On the Web, Lin debuted a new section of her What is Missing? website on Earth Day 2012 called Conservation in Action, which is a dot-based map of more than 400 conservation success stories from environmental groups around the world (including the Cornell Lab, which contributed 14 stories about species such as Golden-winged Warblers, northern right whales, Bermuda Petrels, and forest elephants). Conservation in Action joins the Global Map of Memory, which was launched on Earth Day 2011 as a map of more than 600 accounts of species or places diminished or lost forever.

On both maps, each click of a dot unlocks a new multimedia story—tales from the days when 5-foot-long lobsters were harvested in New York and sturgeon swam the Hudson River; haunting underwater ballads of humpback whales, along with the cacophony of manmade noises that disrupt ocean ecosystems; video of dancing prairie-chickens, a species not yet extinct but threatened by development; an audio slideshow depicting the annual loss of tropical rainforests equal in size to the United Kingdom.

“Maya Lin is an extraordinarily gifted, multidimensional artist. She sees and embraces connections between people and nature everywhere, and expresses these beautifully in sculpture, architecture, and now multimedia,” said Cornell Lab executive director John Fitzpatrick. “The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is proud to be collaborating with Maya’s haunting and ambitious What Is Missing? memorial, helping to raise global awareness about the need to protect threatened species and habitats all around the world. Archived sound and video recordings from our Macaulay Library and the expertise of our scientists achieve an important new voice through Maya’s elegant blending of vision, passion for the Earth, and attention to scientific detail.”

Lin hopes her What is Missing? project is a wake-up call to what’s being lost on Earth, and also a call-to-action that everybody can play a role in conservation.

“Some people said that a memorial to our living planet was depressing, but I believe that using memories and history to show the abundance of biodiversity the planet once held can spur people to realize their power to connect with work that is under way and take steps in their everyday lives, no matter how small,” she said.

Some of those everyday steps are on display at Conservation in Action, which spotlights how people can make a difference in in global conservation by what they buy, eat, and drink. Check it out at www.whatismissing.net.

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  Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, a crucial common Texas bird.

  

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2012/04/white-tailed_hawk.jpg

  White-tailed Hawk spotted on drive to Houston.

  

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  This Rufous-capped Warbler is a Texas rarity.

  

New science editor Gustave Axelson is staying in contact with the Sapsuckers in Texas and providing daily Facebook updates on the team’s scouting preparations leading up to Big Day. Here’s his report:

Coming in to Scout Week for Big Day 2012, the Sapsuckers were hoping a new strategy for birding a Texas Triangle—San Antonio to the Hill Country, then east to Galveston instead of Corpus Christi—would pay off with more species and a chance to break the single-day birding record.

After a test run of this new triangle over the weekend, those hopes are a little higher.

“Our biggest concern was that the Google Maps estimate was true to the actual drive time,” said Sapsucker team member Marshall Iliff. “It’s crucial that we get to the coast by late afternoon with enough time to clean up the shorebirds and get out to High Island for warblers. It will be tight, but this route should work.”

The biggest find from the test run was a Rufous-capped Warbler in the Hill Country, which the team thought they heard on Saturday, and team member Tim Lenz confirmed by zeroing in on the bird’s location on Sunday. This is a species typically found from Mexico south into Central America, with fewer than 50 records ever in Texas. Bonus birds like that could be crucial in tipping the Sapsuckers over the 264 species mark for a new North American single day birding record.

The team plans a stop-off in Houston on the way from the Hill Country to Galveston, and that detour proved fruitful during the test run—netting eastern species like Tufted Titmouse, Scarlet Tanager, Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, and Red-headed Woodpecker, all species not seen during last year’s Big Day.

Then at Galveston, the team tallied more birds they didn’t get at Corpus Christi in 2011—Pacific Loon, Bonaparte’s Gull, Short-billed Dowitcher, and Red Knot. All told, the Sapsuckers racked up more than 190 species on a day when they were more concerned with drive time than birding, and they called it quits at 5 p.m. for a leisurely dinner on the coast. On Big Day, they’ll bird midnight to midnight.

“So far, things are looking real good for us,” said Iliff.

And the weather is looking good, too. While the ideal perfect storm that could produce a massive fallout of migratory birds at High Island doesn’t appear to be in the cards, forecasts show steady winds out of the north through mid-week, switching to fair winds from the south pushing out of the Yucatan Peninsula later in the week. “Our hope is that those north winds bottle up the migration, then the south winds release a flood of migrants just in time for Big Day,” said Iliff.

On Monday, the team will be testing the crucial first leg of the Big Day route, from San Antonio to the Hill Country. The pressure will be on for the Sapsuckers to reach 120 species by 10 a.m. when they must head east towards the coast.