Science editor Gus Axelson recently posted about how the warblers of Europe don’t exactly measure up to our spectacular American warblers. That got the attention of Wesley Hochachka, assistant director of our Bird Population Studies program. Wes is an avid birder and has spent plenty of time in the field in both North America and Europe. He’s even visited Hortobágy, the Hungarian town whose warblers prompted Gus’s post. After careful consideration, Wes, who is Canadian, decided it was up to him to argue the case for European warblers. Here goes:

Just to be clear, I don’t have anything against American warblers (which are also called parulids, since they’re in the family Parulidae). I’ve even enjoyed summers doing field research with them, learning among other things that Virginia’s Warblers are the world’s most paranoid parents, while Red-faced Warblers are cute but not that bright. And I’ve spent enough time in Europe to have become familiar with most of their warblers.

I’ll admit that European warblers are not the most photogenic of birds. But if you look more than feather-deep, I maintain that in many ways they’re more interesting than American warblers. Here are seven reasons why:

Know thyself: European warblers may confuse us by looking the same, but at least they aren’t confused themselves. Multiple species live in the same area without mixing up which species is which. Compare that with North American warblers which, in spite of all that flashy plumage, seem unable to tell themselves apart consistently. Can a Blackpoll Warbler really be so oblivious that it can’t tell it has mated with a Northern Waterthrush?  Seriously? And that’s just one of a long line of strange parulid hybrids that have turned up over the years.

Textbook species: Once you get to know the European warblers well, you could literally write a whole textbook on evolutionary biology, community ecology, and evolutionary ecology talking about them alone. And I do mean literally—that book was published a few months ago, and it covers this wide range of topics using just a subset of the Old World warblers: The Reed Warblers: Diversity in a Uniform Bird Family.

Delectable difficulty: I think European warblers demand (and reward) the close attention of birders, who must consider slight habitat differences, subtle variations in vocalizations, slight behavioral cues, and minimal differences in hues of legs and plumage. What’s the greatest challenge with identifying most breeding-plumage parulids? That’s little more than orienting yourself in the correct direction and opening your eyes.

Location, location, location: North Americans aren’t immune to the joys of difficult identifications—but lacking European warblers to challenge them, they are forced to turn to gulls. (Many gulls, I personally think, don’t even believe in the species concept, let alone abide by it.), This leads to American birders clambering around in garbage dumps to satisfy their ID-lust. In Europe, birders can do all this in the civility of a nice shady copse or garden. Personally, I’d say that European warblers are a birder’s bird.

Researchers’ muses: European warblers have made their mark in ornithology in ways American parulids never have. Was a deeper and clearer understanding of the ecological constraints leading to cooperative breeding the result of studies of parulids? No, this came from the Old World Seychelles Warbler. Did we learn that migratory navigation is genetically hard-wired from studying parulids? No again—that claim to fame goes to Blackcaps in Germany. What have we learned about the evolution of obligate brood parasitism from parulids and cowbirds? Not a whole lot relative to the elegant work on Common Cuckoos parasitizing Eurasian Reed-warblers and other species. What about mind-bending, species-blurring concepts like ring species (a sort of game of telephone played with genes)? Was this discovered with parulids? Nope, much of the foundational work was done on Old World warblers.

Trailblazing adventurers: Old World warblers have even colonized the New World—the Arctic Warbler breeds from Scandinavia across Russia and into Alaska. (In an extra show of chops, these Alaskan birds migrate back from the Western Hemisphere to southeast Asia each winter.) And then there’s the Wrentit: an Old World warbler that lives exclusively in the New World. It’s been hanging out in coastal California and Oregon for… oh, only about the last several million years. In contrast, parulids have yet to establish any breeding populations outside of the Americas.

Stamina: How long is a parulid’s song? Maybe five seconds. And they keep repeating the same song they learned from dad (and various neighbouring males) all their lives. Compare that to the Eurasian River Warbler of central Europe. It sings a single song—not a series of songs, but one continuous vocalization—for periods of time that you can measure in the tens of minutes [listen]. For versatility there’s the Marsh Warbler, which intermixes its own notes with imitations of dozens of African and European species [listen].

Basically, what I’m saying is that Old World warblers—with their subtle background hues, abstinence from garish markings, and all—deserve a lot more respect than that for which a North American bird watcher might give them credit. Anybody want to catch the warblers in Europe next spring? The opportunity to sample Europe’s diverse cuisines, old cultures, and millennia worth of historical sites… those would just be distractions from the birds.

 (If you focus on more than just color, Wes argues, European warblers have a lot going for them. Images via Birdshare: European warblers at left: Arctic Warbler by Bill Thompson; Common Chiffchaff by Etienne Littlefair; North American warblers at right: Blackburnian Warbler by Danny Bales; Prothonotary Warbler by A wing and a prayer.)

Science editor Gus Axelson is just back from a tour of eastern Hungary sponsored by Swarovski Optik. (Look for his story about bird conservation in Hungary to appear in a future issue of Living Bird.) As Gus returned to the world of American Redstarts and other brilliant warblers, he turned his attention to a more basic question: what’s with the drabness of the European warblers? Here’s Gus:

I suppose one could say that brownish European warblers are no different than our sparrows—differentiating a Savannah from a Song from a Lincoln’s sparrow can be tricky if you rely on field marks alone. But c’mon, these are WARBLERS. Some of the most cheery, dazzling, brilliant participants in spring’s migratory parade!

Europeans have a different opinion. Dale Forbes, an Austrian, argued on 10,000 Birds last year that “real” warblers are brown, and our warblers are little more than “silly canaries.”  (Although it took only one wood-warbler extravaganza at Magee Marsh this past May for Dale to reconsider his position).

Personal opinions aside, there’s an interesting evolutionary question here. Warblers on either side of the Atlantic aren’t making a fashion choice in their plumage (“Should I wear yellow or brown before Memorial Day?”). Is there some kind of competitive advantage for warblers being brown in Europe and colorful in North America?  I posed that question to Irby Lovette, director of the Fuller Evolutionary Biology program here at the Cornell Lab (and leader of a project that mapped the wood-warbler tree of life).

Irby quickly pointed out that though both groups are called “warblers,” they’re not particularly closely related—so you wouldn’t necessarily expect them to sport similar plumages. Europe’s warblers are all in a superfamily, Sylvoidea, while North America’s all belong to the family Parulidae. That’s why your field guide places the few Old World warblers that show up in North America (like the Arctic Warbler) near the kinglets, and far removed from “our” warblers.

Taxonomic worries aside, Irby was still willing to offer an explanation:

“So scientifically we have to just consider why some birds are drab and others are brightly colored. The reason our wood-warblers are more colorful has to do with various forms of sexual selection. Our male warblers use their bright plumage as symbols of status. Consider the American Redstart. First-year males are more drab, but adult males are brightly colored, and they get the best territories. Colorful male plumage is also beneficial in attracting females. And when you look at our female warblers, they tend to be more drab.

“So, why are European warblers drab? Well, they accomplish the same thing, males compete with other males and attract females, but they do it through their songs instead. They tend to be prolific songsters. So European warblers just chose a different type of communication.”

(And indeed, the Euro birders on the trip bragged their warblers were superior singers.)

Even though I prefer my warblers to be bright and cheery, I will concede that the subtleties of European warblers necessitates better technical ID skills. On my Hungary trip, the British contingent of birders were adept at using setting, posture, behavior, and song in identifying birds, and they relied on field marks only as supporting evidence. That’s also the gist of our Inside Birding video tutorials, in case you’re interested in brushing up on your own skills.

For me, one final anecdote from the trip sums up the debate. After birding in Hungary’s Bükk National Park one day (where I racked up Eurasian Treecreeper, Marsh Tit, Rock Bunting, and Hawfinch), I sat down for a cold Soprani beer with the European birders. A Swede named Per Göran Bentz told me he had a photo of his favorite warbler on his credit card. He opened up his wallet, took out the card, and showed me a striking image of a Blackburnian Warbler.

• Do you agree or disagree? Read the second post in this series: Counterpoint: 7 Ways European Warblers Outperform American Warblers

(Images via Birdshare: European warblers at left: Arctic Warbler by Bill Thompson; Common Chiffchaff by Etienne Littlefair; North American warblers at right: Blackburnian Warbler by Danny Bales; Prothonotary Warbler by A wing and a prayer.)

After watching The Big Year on Friday, our group convened to hash out what we thought. We liked the movie a lot, but as we talked about nitpicky details and larger themes, the reactions were wide-ranging. Among our group was one person with a life list over 3,000 species, several more experts, some casual birders, an ornithologist who doesn’t watch birds as a hobby, and a few people who work at the Lab but don’t really do any birding at all. These are some of the points we pulled out of the movie; we’d love to hear your own thoughts in the comments.

1. Despite the cutthroat competition on display, the bedrock of this movie is the inherent decency of birding. When was the last time you saw a movie about world supremacy where the dirtiest tricks involve fish chum and a little misdirection at a ferry terminal? The closest thing The Big Year has to a villain is Kenny Bostick, and even he refuses to count a Flammulated Owl after hearing a single unsatisfying hoot. Whenever people first hear of competitive birding, the hardest thing for them to believe is the honor system. But it works.

2. The movie takes care to provide details from the real birding world. Brad has a picture of a King Eider in his cubicle, and his Orioles sweatshirt matches a Baltimore Oriole poster on his wall at home. A photo of Crested Auklets adorns one wall in Bostick’s home. Stu’s corporate office has a fancy angle-eyepiece spotting scope pointed out the window. On Attu, one birder is doing the dishes with a National Geographic field guide stuffed in the back of his pants—the time-tested way to carry a field guide that’s too big for a pocket. The rich guys—Stu and Bostick—are sporting $2,000 binoculars while Brad, who’s on a budget, has a more affordable pair. The list goes on and on—please add your own favorite sightings in the comments.

3. Look for a few well-placed nods to birding legends. Anjelica Huston’s character, Annie Auklet, is modeled on veteran pelagic-trip leader Debi Shearwater. Bostick starts his Big Year in Phoebe’s Diner—an homage to the true greatest lister of all time, Phoebe Snetsinger, who died in 1999 with more than 8,000 birds on her life list. Brad finally starts to get somewhere with Ellie when he identifies her imitation of an Audubon’s Oriole. This is either a tip of the hat to John James Audubon or a bit of product placement for the National Audubon Society, or both.

4. We give most of a thumbs-up to the film’s portrayal of the enjoyment of birding. This is a tough one: Big Years are grueling (as real-life Big Year champ Sandy Komito describes in this interview) and the movie, like the book, has little choice but to race along. It does slow down for some choice scenery—birding by bicycle across Attu Island; standing in a golden sunset in South Florida; watching Bald Eagles tangle in the sky; coming upon a surprise rarity in the wet woods of the Northwest. Even an instrumental piano version of the Beatles’ “Blackbird” crops up in just the right place. On the other hand, although the CGI closeups of a few birds were delightfully detailed—Xantus’ Hummingbird’s eyestripe and gorget; Great Gray Owl’s “bow tie”—their movements were just unreal enough to jar me out of the scene. It seemed a pity that at the very moments when birds struck wonder in the characters, the audience was looking at something digital.

5. The movie gets major points for having so few outright errors, but there are occasional inaccuracies that our crowd gleefully pounced on. Eyebrows all over the theater raised at the thought of a Pink-footed Goose bathing in an alpine hot spring. Few of us believed that a Snowy Owl could really elude Bostick for so long, although this species really was Greg Miller’s nemesis bird in the book. Nevertheless, Snowy Owls are one of the few diurnal owls, and we thought Owen Wilson would’ve had better luck looking for them in the daytime. A molting American Goldfinch makes for a great moment with Stu and his grandson, but if you ask our own David Bonter, who leads Project FeederWatch, it was far too late in the season for that bird to be wearing anything but full summer yellow. We all loved the device of handwritten bird sightings appearing as the camera panned across Attu, although we doubted whether the birders had really come all that way to tick a Semipalmated Plover or Northern Shoveler. On High Island, Stu and Brad see an Indigo Bunting moments before Bostick calls out a Blue Grosbeak. As with a real birding trip, it’s possible he was looking at a grosbeak while the rest of us were watching the bunting, but it still made us wonder. And in the flipbook of bird photos during the credits, did anyone notice a nighthawk in with the hawks? A couple of waterthrushes in with the thrushes? And there were more—send us your own favorites in the comments.

6. We would’ve loved to see the stars actually move like birders. Actors prepare for other parts by taking ballet lessons, honing accents, practicing kung fu—even learning to write convincing calculus on a chalkboard. So I wish these actors could have captured some of the movements that all birders learn: we stop walking before we start looking through our binoculars; we hold our arms beneath our binoculars, supporting them, instead of elbows outspread; our upper bodies make tiny, smooth adjustments as we try to keep our focus on a sparrow moving through the undergrowth.

7. Birders are a more diverse lot than the movie let on. The main characters show almost no interest in conservation or environmentalism. That’s actually true for some “twitchers,” for whom the main interest is putting tick marks next to the names of birds on their list. But many birders watch because of the joy it brings and learn about environmental issues along the way. And although top birders do tend to be male, overall the birding world has more women than men in it (read more on birding’s gender roles in this article by one of our scientists). Inspirational people like John C. Robinson and programs like Celebrate Urban Birds are encouraging people of all backgrounds and cultures to take up birding. The characters were quick to throw around phrases like “greatest birder in the world”—and though this is in keeping with their own viewpoints as obsessed listers, there are many superlative birders who never get drawn into competition.

8. Even though it’s set in the present day, the movie doesn’t seem to realize how much birders use the Internet. The movie’s plot gets pushed forward in a few places by a birder-blogger, but otherwise it’s as if the Internet didn’t exist. The main characters are still calling in to a rare bird alert for tips. They should have checked our free eBird program, which has a map-based interface and will even send alerts when someone reports a bird you want to see. Even better, an app called Birdseye makes that information accessible from an iPhone—and gives driving directions. Elsewhere, birdingonthe.net compiles the hundreds of email listservs for local birding groups.

9. Birding by ear is even more important than the movie shows. Brad’s special talent is his “golden ear”—he can identify any species of bird by sound alone. While people’s skills vary, all top-notch birders depend greatly on their ears to find and identify birds. In the movie, Brad mainly identifies other birders’ impressions of birds. While this offers up the amusing sight of birders stretching their necks, waggling their heads, and puffing out their cheeks, most of us quiz each other by playing actual bird recordings. In my opinion, having the ability to mimic a Whimbrel or Greater Roadrunner might be more impressive than the ability to identify it. I would have liked a CSI-like slo-mo shot where a single chip note issues from the canopy and we see it transformed into a spectrogram, then cross-checked against a range of possibilities before Brad calls out the ID.

10. Finally, in the category of things in the movie that we wish were true: What would it be like to live in a world where you can turn on the weather and hear the announcers talking about Pin-tailed Snipe and Eurasian Greenfinches? Where TV news crews scramble to the scene of a fallout so they can explain migration biology to the general public? Just another Hollywood dream world, I guess.

If you liked the movie, check out these posts for more:

• Binoculars and Beyond: Nine Tips for Beginning Bird Watchers
• 10 Great Books on Birds: A Big Year Reading List
• Birds on Film: 10 Must-See Video Moments

(Image: Great Gray Owl by Ron Kube via Birdshare.)

This morning Hofstra University’s radio station, on Long Island, aired an 11-minute interview with Cornell Lab scientist Kevin McGowan. We’re reposting it here because Dr. McGowan gives a good summary of what the likely causes may have been (as well as some things that probably didn’t cause it), why the well-publicized fish kill 200 miles away was almost certainly not involved, why urban birds may be better able to avoid disaster than rural flocks, and related topics. It’s a fascinating and level-headed discussion amid all the uncertainty.

Also: listen to Dr. McGowan discuss the issue on National Public Radio’s On Point radio program, from Thursday, Jan 6, 2011.

Meanwhile, workers in Arkansas and Louisiana seem to be getting a clearer idea of what likely happened, according to this brief summary posted to the Lousiana Birding listserv by Audubon’s Melanie Driscoll. The causes are thought to be fireworks in Arkansas and power line collisions in Louisiana.

In McGowan’s interview, he touches on one last issue to keep in mind. “Birds hit things all the time, but usually it’s only one or two, and so we don’t really notice it,” he says. In fact, we know that hundreds of millions of birds die every year from flying into windows, buildings, power lines, radio antennas, cell towers, and wind turbines. That number dwarfs the present event, but it goes unnoticed because it’s spread across the country and throughout the year.

This news from Arkansas should inspire us to pay attention to the things we can do to make these more dispersed, less newsworthy tragedies less commonplace (see also Audubon president David Yarnold’s CNN op-ed yesterday.) That includes making our structures and towns as safe for birds as possible, by turning off skyscraper lights at night, making our windows safe for birds, keeping cats indoors, and a host of other small actions that can add up to great effect.

(Image: Red-winged Blackbird by ashockenberry via Birdshare. Audio courtesy WRHU.)

Back in the olden days, “Hello world!” was the traditional greeting whenever anyone logged onto the Internet for the very first time. And this week we had our own “Hello world” moment when we launched the Cornell Lab’s Facebook page.

http://twitter.com/#!/lab_of_O/status/2352832678199296

If you’re a Facebook user, we hope you’ll stop by our page, “Like” us, and take a look around at some of the conversations, questions, photos, and videos that are up there already. Going forward, it’ll be a way to stay current with what we’re up to, and with what’s happening in the wider world of birds.

You may already be a Facebook fan of one of our programs—such as NestWatch, FeederWatch, Celebrate Urban Birds, Sapsucker Woods, and nearly a dozen others. Becoming a fan of our main page as well is just a way to hear about a wider range of activities and topics that you may not already know about. Give us a try!

(Image: Ian Taschner took this touching photo of a statue sheltering an American Robin’s nest. It was a winner in our Celebrate Urban Birds “Funky Nests in Funky Places” photo challenge. You can see more winners in our Facebook photo albums.)

(Click photo for larger version)

It’s technically still fall, even if we do have snow on the ground already. Perhaps the warm colors in our photo quiz will bring back some toasty memories of birding a couple of months ago. Did you see any of the above species? For that matter, what are the species up there? It’d even be helpful to know the genus for starters.

As always, our photo quiz welcomes answers from all comers, whether you know what these birds are, you’re outright guessing, or you’re just thinking out loud the way you might on an outing with your friends. In the scheme of things, these aren’t the absolute hardest little songbirds we could throw at you—but there’s nothing straightforward about them, either. Newer birders, in particular, have lots of odd anatomical features to focus on here.

We’d love to hear a description of what aspects of each bird and photo lead you to your identification, and not just the final identification you come up with. It’s like in math class: show your work for full credit. Thanks for playing!

Like these photo quizzes? Check out Quiz 1, Quiz 2, and Quiz 3.

(Images via Birdshare. Clockwise from top left: [spoiler alert: clicking on these links may give away the IDs] Ganesh Jayaraman, Greg Page, kellycolganazar, Ganesh Jayaraman)

It’s nearly winter, and those of you lucky enough to live near some beaches or mudflats probably enjoy gazing out over motley assortments of shorebirds like this one. Until you can get outside, though, cast your eyes over this photo and help us answer the question: How many species are in this photo? (Of course, we’d also like to hear which species you think are in the photo—and how you can tell.)

One thing I love about this kind of birding is there are always a few birds on view that draw your eye as either pleasantly familiar or at least easy to figure out. I can gauge the intensity of my bird watching partners by how long they’re willing to scrutinize the other birds, like those little inkblots at the top of the frame. I also love the stark contrasts in size. I always find myself surprised by how my mental picture of a bird’s size in isolation doesn’t stack up against reality when two birds are side by side.

So have at it! Let’s try to compile a complete list of species for this photo. And if we need to I’ll try and get one or two of the Lab’s eBirders to weigh in on those mirage birds at the top.

(Click the picture to sink your eyeballs into a larger version. Image by Birdshare contributor Robinsegg, taken October 4 in Utah. It’s a crop of a much larger image, with even more species in it. Spoiler alert: following the link will reveal some of the bird IDs in this picture.)