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.)

(Click image for a larger version)

The new Crossley guide hits bookstores this week, bringing Crossley’s unique approach to the task of helping you identify more raptors—whether they’re familiar, unfamiliar, faraway, backlit, immature, adult, light-morph, dark-morph, soaring, hovering, or sitting.

With raptors for a subject, this guide concerns itself with far fewer species than 2011′s Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds, and the authors have used the extra room well. Crossley has always wanted readers to engage with his books—to puzzle over each plate’s many shapes and patterns as much as they read the ID tips at the bottom of the page.

This new book adds even more of an ID workbook feel than the last guide. Interspersed with the book’s 67 two-page identification spreads are 15 “mystery” plates that challenge readers to put the book’s advice immediately to use in working out identifications.

As an example, check out the one above: you’re out birding on the central prairies, and a host of buteos are circling in the sky. Which is which? Take a close look and see if you can identify each numbered bird (for the smaller specks, try clicking for a larger image). Then scroll down for the answers, provided by Crossley’s coauthor Brian Sullivan, who is an eBird project leader and raptor expert.

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

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Answers to the Quiz: by Brian Sullivan

(Tip: right-click on the image above and select “Open link in new window.” Then you’ll have the image next to you as you read the answers instead of scrolling up and down.)

How many species? There are four species in this composite photograph: Ferruginous Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, Swainson’s Hawk, and Rough-legged Hawk. These are all buteos—large, long-winged birds with rather short tails. These characteristics help them soar efficiently over open country; several species also regularly hover or kite. They have shorter tails than accipiters and broader, rounder wings than either falcons or kites. Bear in mind that most buteos can occur in several color patterns: “light-morph” (generally more common) and “dark-morph” (less common), as well as occasional intermediates.

So which is which? Next, to identify these buteos, focus on subtleties of shape and broad plumage patterns. (Flight style is also key to identification, but that is difficult to discern from still images.) Here are the points to look for in each example:

1. Adult light Ferruginous Hawk. Snow-white underneath with rufous leg feathers, underwing mottling, and upperwing coverts. Light Ferruginous Hawks have long, rather pointed wings and are overall very pale.
2. Adult light Red-tailed Hawk. Pale underneath with dark patagial bars and belly streaks. Virtually all light Red-tailed Hawks have these dark patagial bars (the leading edge of the underwing). Note rufous tint to underside, dark trailing edge to wings, and reddish tint to tail; these denote an adult.
3. First-summer light Red-tailed Hawk. Not all Red-tailed Hawks have red tails! First-years have brown, banded tails. They molt into the red tail during the first summer, as shown in this bird. Brown overall on top. Broad wings with new, darker inner primaries, outer primaries showing first-year paleness, which can look like a window in the wing. Brownish, faintly banded tail with new, reddish adult feathers.
4. First-year light Red-tailed Hawk. Pale underneath with dark patagial bars and bellyband. Lacks the buffy or rufous tint to the underbody, dark trailing edge to the wings, and reddish tail of adult. Shows translucent primaries.
5. First-year dark western Red-tailed Hawk. Broad, somewhat long wings in a full soar. Note that the uniformly brownish body and underwing coverts is an uncommon plumage. Lack of defined trailing edge to wings and reddish tail denote a first-year bird.
6. First-year light western Red-tailed Hawk. Pale underneath with dark patagial bars and belly streaks. Note: translucent primaries and plain buffy coloration denote a first-year bird.
7. Adult intermediate Swainson’s Hawk. This bird shows long, pointed wings in a shallow glide. Swainson’s Hawks usually show pale underwing coverts contrasting with dark grayish flight feathers. This one also shows a dark chest bib and paler belly. Many intermediate adults are mottled on the belly.
8. Adult light Red-tailed Hawk. Pale underneath with dark patagial bars, belly streaks, and reddish tail. Somewhat long but broad wings.
9. Adult dark Ferruginous Hawk. Dark underneath with whitish, plain flight feathers, and minimal dark on wingtips. Wings are long and tapered, but unlike dark Swainson’s, Ferruginous have very pale flight feathers. Dark trailing edge to the wings, rufous overall body plumage with whitish throat, and lack of dark on the tail tip denote adult.
10. Adult female light Rough-legged Hawk. Pale underneath with blackish belly and wrists. Dark trailing edge to the wings and defined dark tail tip denote an adult. The single dark tail band, complete bellyband, and wrist patches denote a female.
11. Adult “Krider’s” Red-tailed Hawk. Pale and nearly unmarked underneath with minimal dark on patagials, reddish and whitish tail, and dark trailing edge to wings. Broad wings slightly tapered in shallow glide is classic Red-tail shape. Krider’s is a pale subspecies of the Red-tailed Hawk that breeds mainly on the northern Great Plains and winters on the southern Great Plains.
12. Third-year light Swainson’s Hawk. Pale underside with dark bib and flight feathers with darker trailing edge to wings and tail. Bib is near complete, and paler outer primaries help denote age. Unlike many buteos, Swainson’s takes three years to acquire full adult plumage. This summer bird is in the process of molting into its adult plumage.
13. First-year light Rough-legged Hawk. Pale underneath with solid blackish belly and wrists, and buffy, unmottled underwing coverts. Dark trailing edge to the wings is ill defined, but appears to have a dark tail tip. Translucent primary panels somewhat visible. First-years and adult females can be difficult to tell apart.
14. Adult light Ferruginous Hawk. Snow-white underneath with rufous leg feathers, underwing mottling, and minimal dark on wingtips. Wings are long and lack bulge along secondaries, body is robust. Compare shape with other light buteos on this page.
15. Adult female light Rough-legged Hawk. Most light Rough-legged Hawks are easily identified by the dark belly and wrist patches that contrast with the overall pale underparts. This is especially true of adult females and immatures. The dark trailing edge to the wings and defined dark tail tip denote an adult. The single dark tail band, rufous underwings, complete bellyband, and wrist patches denote a female.

(Image courtesy Princeton University Press.)

Big Days are intense: Last year, our Team Sapsucker spent all 24 hours of April 27 scouring central and eastern Texas for birds. They had three dozen species on their list before dawn broke, and hit triple digits shortly before 8 a.m. They kept going, adding an average of one species every 11 minutes throughout the day.

To help the rest of us picture what that sort of daylong deluge of birds feels like, we’ve condensed their Big Day into a 4-minute slideshow. Watch and enjoy as the birds flash by!

Curious about which species is which in the slideshow? Refer to the table below—or download a printable PDF. (Note: the slideshow does not show all 264 species, and these photos were not taken on the Big Day itself.)

Species recorded during Big Day but not pictured in slideshow

(Photos courtesy Chris Wood and Tim Lenz.)

(Click image to enlarge)

We were pretty impressed with Richard Crossley’s first bird ID guide when it came out in 2011. So we can’t wait for the next installment: a guide dedicated specifically to raptors, due out in April 2013. Could our excitement have anything to do with his coauthors? Yes it could: they include raptor wizard Jerry Ligouri (author of a guide or two of his own), and the Cornell Lab’s own Brian Sullivan, an eBird project leader.

The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors continues Crossley’s turned-on-its-head approach to bird guides. Instead of putting one or two large, detailed images front and center against a white background, Crossley inundates the reader with photos of the bird in all postures, plumages, and—most importantly—sizes. The birds skitter across a single landscape photo, forcing the reader to pay attention to the most important aspect of identification: size & shape.

This approach is especially well suited to raptors, which you typically see from a long distance away in challenging light. The first thing we learn about raptors is how to tell the shape of a buteo from an accipiter from a falcon. Refining that ability to judge shape is what makes raptor watching an enduring pursuit. Take this sample plate for example—how many jump out immediately as Sharp-shinned Hawks, and how many surprise you?

I asked Brian Sullivan for some tips on this small accipiter, and here’s what he told me:

Distinguishing the accipiters is one of the most challenging aspects of bird identification. Let your eyes roam across these images, and pay particular attention to shape. How do the various shapes translate as the birds get farther away? Sharp-shinned usually shows a relatively small head, a narrow-based, often squarish-tipped tail, and short, stocky, rounded wings. The wings are pressed forward at the wrists, often making Sharp-shinned appear smaller-headed than the other two accipiters, Cooper’s Hawk and Northern Goshawk. Ageing accipiters is often easier than identifying them: first-years are brownish above and streaked brownish below; adults are blue-gray above and barred reddish or (for the goshawk) grayish below.

Keep an eye out here and on our Facebook page for more raptor quizzes from Brian, coming your way in April. And read more about the new Crossley guide as the book tours the major bird watching blogs this week (tip: click through and read to the bottom of the post for a chance to win a great prize package).

(Image courtesy Princeton University Press.)

Our third annual March Migration Madness tournament kicked off on Tuesday, March 12, when the Whooping Crane faced off against the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. After more than 2,700 total votes, the crane stretched its long legs and walked away with the victory. It will reappear in Round 2 against the winner of the American Kestrel vs. Pileated Woodpecker round.

This year’s species roster features more than a few surprises. They were chosen by fans of the many separate projects here at the Cornell Lab. For example, the stately white crane was a write-in candidate chosen by fans of our Facebook page. The sapsucker represented our Sapsucker Woods page, which gives people news about the 220-acre nature preserve where the Cornell Lab has its offices.

Other species in the tournament represent efforts like Project FeederWatch (Tufted Titmouse), NestWatch (Eastern Bluebird), eBird (Swallow-tailed Kite), YardMap (Pileated Woodpecker), and Merlin (er, Merlin). There are even—gasp—a couple of mammals in play this year. They earned their spots representing projects of ours that study (and conserve) whales and African forest elephants. For the whole list, check out this bracket:

Click the image to download a printable version:

To vote, visit our Facebook page each weekday. We’ll post a photo album with photos of the day’s two contenders—just click “Like” on the one you want to win. There’ll be a new matchup each weekday until April 1, when we’ll decide our new “Chirpion.” Thanks for playing!

By Jason Martin and Robyn Bailey

In many parts of North America, handsome male Northern Cardinals are already singing to attract mates. A bird so visible in the winter landscape begs the question, “How does a flame-red bird that nests close to the ground manage to be so common?”

Many people puzzle over how this conspicuous species can be so successful, despite its low rate of nesting success. Typically, fewer than 40 percent of nests fledge at least one young. And if predation is a problem for cardinals, why don’t the males try to blend in a little more? Our NestWatch team has some answers, fed by details of cardinal nesting behavior gleaned from the 268 nesting attempts reported to the program so far. Here’s project leader Jason Martin:

The answer may lie in their long breeding season. Cardinals do not migrate and can begin building nests as early as late February. They can continue nesting into late August or September, giving them plenty of opportunity to raise one or two broods of young per year.

Another factor could be that cardinals are habitat generalists. They can nest in open woodlands, dry shrubby areas, disturbed tangles, suburbs, backyards, and even deserts. And they seem to put their nests pretty much anywhere: a recent study in Texas found that cardinal nest sites weren’t particularly different from sites the researchers chose at random. This suggests that cardinals may not be limited by suitable nesting locations.

Cardinals build their nests in live trees, shrubs, or vine tangles, anywhere up to about 15 feet high. Higher nests, and nests placed in denser tangles, seem to offer some relief from predators. The bright male carries nesting material to the female, who does most of the building. She uses her big beak to crush twigs until they’re pliable, then bends them around her body to make a nest cup that fits her, wedged into a small fork of branches for support. The nest is a sophisticated structure that takes 3–9 days to build. By the end, it’s about four inches across and three tall, lined with a snug layer of grapevine bark and fine grasses and pine needles.

But how does the male get away with being so colorful? The flamboyant males sing from high perches and do not trade their breeding plumes for a drab winter coat—they seem like obvious targets for hawks. It turns out that male cardinals are probably bright and loud for the same reason: to advertise what good mates they’d make.

According to the Birds of North America Online, brighter males have higher reproductive success, hold better territories, and offer more parental care. The intensity of a cardinal’s redness is related to what he’s been eating. So when females see a bright male, it’s a signal that he’s healthy and holds a good territory. (Interestingly, recent research by Amanda Rodewald, the Cornell Lab’s new director of Conservation Science, shows that this relationship may be getting less reliable for cardinals in urban areas, because of the novel food sources available in town.)

By responding to redness as a sign of a promising mate, females have encouraged the evolution of bright coloring in males. This process is called sexual selection, and it’s an everyday example of a process that can lead to extraordinary creatures like the birds-of-paradise. At the same time, the female’s muted colors provide her (and her nest) with a protective camouflage that the male lacks. Furthermore, cardinals tend to have high survival rates, possibly because they don’t endure the stress of migration. The oldest recorded cardinals lived to be at least 15 and a half years old (one recorded in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia).

If you are lucky enough to find a cardinal nest this year, won’t you help us learn more about this fascinating species? Last year, NestWatch participants monitored a record 81 Northern Cardinal nests. Can we get more in 2013? Head over to NestWatch for tips, stats, and focal species information, plus details about how to monitor nests safely as part of this great, free project.

(Image by Daniel Behm via Birdshare. This post was written by NestWatch project leader Jason Martin and program assistant Robyn Bailey.)

This post was written by Andrea Alfano, a Cornell University junior.

Would you pull over your car just to watch some starlings? A gathering of only a few of these speckled, iridescent-black birds isn’t a very alluring sight—particularly in North America, where these birds are invaders. The European Starling was originally introduced here by a group of well-meaning Shakespeare enthusiasts in 1880, but many Americans now consider them to be pests that serve little purpose other than to dirty car windshields and destroy crops.

But Grainger Hunt, a senior scientist at the Peregrine Fund, tells a different story in Living Bird magazine. He marvels at the way thousands of the birds gather in flocks called murmurations. They are “a dazzling cloud, swirling, pulsating, drawing together to the thinnest of waists, then wildly twisting in pulses of enlargement and diminution,” he writes. It’s certainly worth stopping your car for, or stopping to watch a video like this one, a YouTube hit recorded over the River Shannon, Ireland:

Almost always, Hunt writes, these aerial spectacles are caused by a falcon near the edge of the flock. It turns out that the beauty of a murmuration’s movements often arises purely out of defense, as the starlings strive to put distance between themselves and the predator.

So how do these masses of birds move so synchronously, swiftly, and gracefully? This isn’t an idle question—it has attracted the attention of physicists interested in how group behavior can spontaneously arise from many individuals at once. In 2010, Andrea Cavagna and colleagues at the National Council of Research and the University of Rome used advanced computational modeling and video analysis to study this question. They found that starling flocks model a complex physical phenomenon, seldom observed in physical and biological systems, known as scale-free correlation.

Surprising as it may be, flocks of birds are never led by a single individual. Even in the case of flocks of geese, which appear to have a leader, the movement of the flock is actually governed collectively by all of the flock members. But the remarkable thing about starling flocks is their fluidity of motion. As the researchers put it, “the group respond[s] as one” and “cannot be divided into independent subparts.”

When one starling changes direction or speed, each of the other birds in the flock responds to the change, and they do so nearly simultaneously regardless of the size of the flock. In essence, information moves across the flock very quickly and with nearly no degradation. The researchers describe it as a high signal-to-noise ratio.

This scale-free correlation allows starlings to greatly enhance what the researchers call “effective perceptive range,” which is another way of saying that a starling on one side of the flock can respond to what others are sensing all the way across the flock—a huge benefit for a starling trying to avoid a falcon.

Last week, a new study on starling flocks appeared in the journal PLOS Computational Biology. The researchers, led by George Young at Princeton, did their own analysis of murmuration images to see how the birds adjust to their flockmates. They determined that starlings in large flocks consistently coordinate their movements with their seven nearest neighbors. They also found that the shape of the flock, rather than the size, has the largest effect on this number; seven seems optimal for the tightly connected flocks that starlings are known for.

Imagine a game of telephone: one person passes a message along to the next person, who repeats it to another, and so on. For humans, the telephone message loses information very quickly—that’s what makes the game fun. The first finding, by Cavagna’s team, suggests that very little information is lost in a starling flock. The second finding, by Young’s team, suggests that starlings “play telephone” with their seven nearest neighbors. Somehow they are able to process messages from those seven neighbors all at once, and this is a part of their method for achieving scale-free correlation.

Still, neither finding explains how starlings are capable of such extraordinary collective responses. As the researchers admit, “How starlings achieve such a strong correlation remains a mystery to us.”

Murmurations remind us that nature’s beauty can take limitless forms, and can shock and inspire us. A number of commenters on the River Shannon video mention a feeling of connection that they experienced while watching the video. It’s as if seeing that synchrony, that seemingly perfect connection between each starling, also reminds us to value our connection to the world around us, for connection can be truly beautiful.

(This post was written by Andrea Alfano, a junior at Cornell University. Image is a collage of European Starling by simonglinn via Birdshare, and murmuration photo by ad551 via Creative Commons.)

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2013/01/gbbc_cedw.jpeg

  First place, Overall: Cedar Waxwing by Ben Thomas, Georgia.

  

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  Fourth place, Overall: Eastern Bluebird by Glenda Simmons, Florida.

  

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  Third place, Composition: Black-capped Chickadee by Michele Black, Ohio.

  

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  Fourth place, Composition: Willet by Donald Dvorak, California.

  

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  Fifth place, Habitat: Blue-winged Teal by Scott Kinsey, Florida.

  

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  Fifth place, Behavior: Barred Owls by Shane Conklin, Massachusetts.

  

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  Second place, Overall: Wood Duck by Bob Howdeshell, Georgia.

  

This year’s Great Backyard Bird Count is happening Feb 15–18. Last year’s count set a new record for participation, netting more than 100,000 checklists. This year could be even bigger, because for the first time ever, the GBBC is going global. Drawing on the international reach of eBird‘s online checklists, we can now accept entries from anyone, anywhere in the world.

I have a hunch it’s going to make the judging for the annual photo contest even more difficult. Already, every year our judges have a tough time sifting through more than 7,000 photo submissions to award prizes and honorable mentions in six categories. What’s going to happen when the field opens up to (hypothetically) six more continents and some 9,000 more species? We can’t wait to find out.

With the aim of giving you a little inspiration, here are the winners of the 2012 photo contest. We’ve chosen a smattering of the winners’ photos to put in the slideshow above—see what we mean about it being hard to decide? You can also check out submissions from 2012 and past years on the GBBC website.

While you’re there, look over the summary of the 2012 results—tangible evidence of how GBBC participants have helped us understand the winter distribution of birds across the continent. We can’t wait for this year’s count to expand our view to the rest of the world. Where will you be counting from?

(New to the GBBC? Find out how to participate. Veteran counter? Tell your friends and let them in on the fun!)

How can we make life easier for birds in our neighborhoods? That’s the question behind the latest seasonal challenge from Celebrate Urban Birds. This Cornell Lab of Ornithology citizen-scence project focuses on birds in urban settings and how they benefit from green spaces created by humans. Enter by December 15, 2012, and you could win a prize!

Several times per year the project holds contests, or “challenges” to get participants thinking about birds in their neighborhoods. Challenge entries may be photographs, artwork, video, a story, or a poem showing how birds are surviving and making use of their habitat.

“As part of this challenge, we want to see the creative or interesting ways in which people help wild birds,” says project leader Karen Purcell. “Or it could be as simple as setting up feeders or nest boxes, providing water, or planting flowers that provide seeds.”

Deadline for entries is December 15, 2012. Learn more about how you can take part.

Great prizes include feeders from challenge sponsor Kaytee, plus bird guides, sound recordings, posters, fun bird books for adults and children, and more.

How to participate:
1. Email your entry to urbanbirds@cornell.edu
2. Write your FirstName_LastName_City_State_NOBIRD in the subject line
3. Include your postal address in the body of the email
4. Please explain where the photo was taken and the name of the bird if you know it
5. Read and agree to the terms and conditions of the Challenge

See examples of current entries for this bird-inspired challenge.

Celebrate Urban Birds is a free, year-round citizen-science project focused on birds in neighborhood settings.

(Image: Cedar Waxwing by Bob Howdeshell via Celebrate Urban Birds)

Thirty-nine of the most gorgeous, outlandish animals in the world—the birds-of-paradise—live only in New Guinea, associated islands, and adjacent tropical Australia. Though they’ve been known for centuries from paintings and specimens, it’s only now that all 39 can be admired in glorious photographic detail, thanks to ground-breaking work by Cornell Lab biologist Ed Scholes and National Geographic photojournalist Tim Laman.

On October 13, Scholes and Laman gave a lecture on their work to a packed house at Cornell University. Their talk kicks off a lecture tour,  TV documentary, and museum exhibit (details and dates here) jointly developed by the Cornell Lab and National Geographic. The pair astonished the audience with stunning photos, video, and sounds of the birds, their plumage and behavior so far out of the ordinary they almost defy the imagination. The pictures are now part of a gorgeous coffee-table book (on sale Oct. 23 and available for preorder now), copublished by the two organizations. Cornell Lab writer Pat Leonard was at the lecture, and she captured the excitement in this review:

The walls of the auditorium reverberated with the hum of conversation and a sense of anticipation, punctuated by eerie recorded bird calls—just a hint of the eye-popping oddities to come. Cornell Lab biologist Ed Scholes (left, with laptop) and National Geographic photojournalist Tim Laman (right, with camera) took the stage to guide the audience through New Guinea’s remote swamps and cloud forests. Following in the footsteps of legendary explorers like Ferdinand Magellan and Alfred Russel Wallace, Tim and Ed spent 544 days in the field over 8 years, visiting 51 sites to document all 39 known species of the birds-of-paradise.  Along the way, Tim Laman shot more than 39,000 photographs. “We can’t show them all,” he quipped. By the time the evening was over, you rather wished he would have.

Tim and Ed were entertaining speakers with a tag-team style to their commentary. They described journeys to 11,000-foot mountaintops, home to the Splendid Astrapia, and to lowland swamps where the Twelve-wired Bird-of-paradise woos a female by brushing her face and throat with his long wirelike tail feathers. (Click on species’ names to see videos of them.)

Most of the remaining bird-of-paradise species inhabit the middle ground, laying claim to small slivers of territory and to unique courtship behaviors. “The males play no role in the care of the young,” Ed explained. “Their only goal is to mate with as many females as possible. So it’s the females who call the evolutionary shots.”

The more subtly beautiful females obviously have a taste for the outlandish. Over the millennia, they have chosen males with ever more iridescent colors, flashy plumes and wires, or fancy footwork. It’s “survival of the sexiest,” according to Ed. In evolutionary biology lingo, that’s “sexual selection.”

Some species put their efforts into brilliant and varied colors to get attention. The male Wilson’s Bird-of-paradise has evolved bright blue skin on its head, yellow, green, and red feathers, purple legs and feet, and two longer tail plumes that form tight outward curls. He spends his days fussily tidying his display court.

The King of Saxony Bird-of-paradise  banks on embellishment and behavior. Laughter accompanied a video clip showing him bouncing enthusiastically on a branch, making a loud crackling call, and waving long plumes that sprout from skin behind his eyes. The human equivalent, Tim pointed out, would be 10-foot appendages jutting from our temples.

Occasionally, it seems the courtship adaptations might be a bit of a nuisance. The Ribbon-tailed Astrapia’s tail is three times the length of its body. Tim and Ed said they’ve seen this bird checking for the whereabouts of its tail before taking off because its plumes sometimes get wound around trunks and branches during foraging.

The sicklebills use shapes and poses to attract attention. These “transformers” of the avian world include the Black Sicklebill who performs many wing shrugs before spreading his feathers up and over his head to create a startlingly unexpected hooded cloak (3:06 into video clip).  Tim and Ed showed the first video ever taken that captures this behavior with both sexes participating—the female going beak-to-beak with the displaying male to play her part in the mating dance.

Another favorite was the Superb Bird-of-paradise. Deftly balancing on a log, he raises special feathers that transform him into a black blob punctuated with iridescent blue markings that look rather like a wide grin and two blazing eyes. He makes a loud snapping noise to accompany his bounding dance steps around the female (at 0:55 in the video clip).

Tim and Ed made one of their most intriguing discoveries when they decided to capture the “ballerina dance” of the Wahnes’s Parotia from the female’s point of view. It took multiple cameras and two weeks of trying. Tim whiled away long hours in the blind reading The Count of Monte Cristo on an e-reader and counting the number of finger-swipes it took to finish (11,000). Looking down from a branch above the courtship display area reveals a much different view than from ground level. We see a bobbing, weaving, black ovoid shape with flashes of iridescent yellow breast feathers and a wiggling blue line that marks the back of the male’s head, highlighting his movements.

The presentation closed with a high-canopy image of the Greater Bird-of-paradise, bathed in golden morning light, taken with the ingenious “leaf-cam.” (You’ll be able to read more about it in the October issue of Living Bird, our member magazine) The bird flourishes its russet wings and its yellow and cream-colored plumes. The impenetrable rainforest spreads to the horizon. The image prompted an audible gasp from the audience and a sustained standing ovation.

Tim and Ed hope the exotic evolutionary adaptations of the birds-of-paradise will exert another kind of attraction: drawing public attention to all that could be lost if threatened rainforest habitat is not protected around the world. You can donate to support our work here.

(This article was written by Pat Leonard. Photographs by Tim Laman. The Birds-of-Paradise book and exhibition are collaborations by the Cornell Lab and National Geographic.)