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.)

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  Iceland is home to nearly half of the world´s breeding Atlantic Puffins.

  

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  The Westman Islands off the south coast hold about 830,000 pairs.

  

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  Iceland is a land of majestic scenery, like this waterfall at Skogafoss.

  

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  Graylag Geese survey lupine meadows near the coast.

  

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  The Westman Islands are made of steep-sided volcanic rock.

  

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  In the evenings, Atlantic Puffins gather in groups on the cliffs.

  

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  Lucy Quinn and Nick Richardson use a burrow camera to check puffin nests.

  

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  Erpur Hansen examines a puffin egg on the Westman Islands.

  

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  Two sunlit Northern Fulmars shine against black basalt rocks.

  

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  High atop the island, Common Eiders nest in the short grass.

  

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  At another island, thousands of Northern Gannets can fill the sky.

  

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  Common Murres by the thousands line Vestmannaeyjar´s tuff cliffs.

  

I’m spending 10 days in Iceland to learn about research on Atlantic Puffins. My host is Erpur Hansen, an Icelandic biologist who has been studying puffins here since 2007. He visits most of the country´s large puffin colonies twice each year to assess their breeding success. And that’s no small task, as nearly half of the world’s Atlantic Puffins breed on this small nation in the North Atlantic. The grass-topped cliffs and sea stacks that rise out of the ocean here are home to some 2.5 million breeding pairs.

We’ve started on Hansen’s home turf, the Westman Islands. Their Icelandic name, Vestmannaeyjar, has a mighty ring to it when you read it off the sterns of the fishing boats in the harbor. This string of islands off Iceland’s south coast mark where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge surfaces—where the North Atlantic and Eurasian plates meet like the seam on a baseball. Volcanic activity is high here, and the islands are towering cliffs of basalt and tuff, wave-worn at the base or, higher up, eroded into smooth fluting columns by rain and bird guano.

Above the sheer cliffs the islands slope toward their peaks. Here grass can get a foothold and turn the lava rock into soil. Puffins promptly turn this soil into burrows in which they lay their single egg each year, largely safe from predators. And so it is that you can walk along the cliffs and see hundreds of the little black-and-white birds looking out to sea, their sharp black backs, white chests, and impossibly brilliant bills gleaming in the sun. Out in the water, the white cheeks of thousands more puffins sparkle among the waves as the sun angles toward a leisurely sunset around 11:30 p.m.

These steep hillsides are the kind of place where you need to watch your step. I follow Hansen’s lead as we climb down the cliffs on a ladder bolted to the rock to reach a band of bright-green grass below. It’s hummocky—quite good footing, actually, and riddled with burrows. Every yard or two in any direction is a small earthen hole, just as big around as a puffin, that stretches back about 4 feet into the soil.

Though the burrows are easy to find, they hide the part that Hansen needs to know about: how many puffins have decided to breed this summer? The ones that have are nestled inside the burrows, well out of sight, with an egg tucked under a wing to keep it warm. To find out, Hansen has adopted a trick he learned from his friend Marino, a plumber and former puffin hunter. He pushes a stiff cable into the burrow with a lipstick camera and infrared light attached to the end. Then, wearing video goggles, he can watch a gray-and-white image of the burrow’s contents. If at the end of the burrow he sees the white cheek and curving bill of a puffin, he marks the burrow as occupied. He’ll return in late summer to see how many are still raising chicks.

Each burrow takes only a few minutes to check, but Hansen has a lot of burrows to get to. He’s interested in whether warming waters are changing the fish stocks around Iceland, particularly the small sandeels that feed many of the region’s seabird species. In most of southern Iceland there has been virtually no puffin breeding success since 2005. The little seabirds can live for 20 years or more, so their population size is still high, but Hansen worries that so many consecutive breeding failures mean fewer puffins in the future. And he wonders when—or if—the system will turn around and the sandeels will return.

The Icelandic Puffin Rally, as Hansen calls his two-week road trip, is a burrow-checking marathon. Hansen and his assistants, Ph.D. student Lucy Quinn from the University of Aberdeen, and marine ecologist Nick Richardson, will drive around the entire country clockwise, stopping in on most of the country’s colonies. I’ll be with them for about half of it, along with my photographer colleague Chris Linder.

Though we’re still getting started, we’ve already seen enough to be amazed by the sheer number of seabirds that nest along these coasts. Vestmannaeyjar is home to Iceland’s largest Atlantic Puffin, Northern Gannet, Northern Fulmar, Manx Shearwater, and Leach’s Storm-Petrel colonies. It’s also home to thousands of Common Murres, Black Guillemots, Black-legged Kittiwakes, and Razorbills. We’ve seen minke whales, harbor porpoises, and seals as well. That any of these species can exist in this frigid water or on these forbidding cliffs is a testament to the abilities of animals to adapt to harsh environments. Together, they’re a potent reminder that these cold northern seas can produce immense volumes of food for animals and people alike, if they stay healthy.

More coverage of puffin research in Iceland:

• Iceland Photos: Digiscoping Puffins With a Phone (slideshow)
• Peek Into a Puffin Burrow in Iceland (sounds and video)

(Photos by Chris Linder [see more of his photos].  Watch for the full puffin story to appear in Living Bird magazine in the coming year.)

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  Laughing Kookaburras are bold birds with fantastical calls (listen below).

  

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  The Blue-winged Kookaburra looks like a slightly insane Laughing Kookaburra.

  

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  This Boyd's Forest Dragon is about the gentlest-looking dragon you'll ever see.

  

This is Part Two of a post about searching for the 12 endemic birds of northeast Queensland’s Wet Tropics World Heritage Reserve, with the help of many of the region’s wonderful guides and lodges. Part One of the story is here. Part Two introduces six endemic species not mentioned in Part One: Grey-headed Robin, Bridled Honeyeater, Bower’s Shrike-Thrush, Atherton Scrubwren, Mountain Thornbill, and Chowchilla.

If aliens were invading Earth and you had just half a day in which to see the 12 endemic birds of Australia’s Wet Tropics (see Part One), your best bet might be a drive up Mt. Lewis, just outside the hamlet of Julatten. Especially if the aliens were willing to let you take along Del Richards, of Fine Feather Tours, as a guide. A wiry 70-year-old with a quiet manner and an impressive roster of bird calls he can mimic, Del drove us up Mt. Lewis for a six-hour parade of rarities and endemics. Over just a few miles and a few thousand feet of elevation gain, we saw 8 of the 12 endemics that lure birders to this part of Queensland—and I got the distinct feeling Del was saving the others so we’d have something left for the second half of the week.

Del picked us up at Kingfisher Park Birdwatchers Lodge, a small lodge/caravan park run by two expat British birders, Keith and Lindsey Fisher. Kingfisher is itself a remarkable spot for both birds and strange Australian mammals. We didn’t see regional endemic birds here, but Keith showed us the way to a few unforgettable Australian specialties nonetheless, including kookaburras, a Channel-billed Cuckoo with a bill like a toucan’s, and a Buff-breasted Paradise-Kingfisher.

Kingfisher Park in the Dark

When night falls, Keith turns into something of a mammalogist—he leads nighttime prowls to look for bandicoots, gliders, quolls, and melomys, as well as frogs and owls. At the edge of a pasture we awakened a group of Laughing Kookaburras, which filled the air with their incredible, unhinged-sounding voices. For a few minutes it actually sounded like aliens were invading Earth. This is what we heard (recorded on my iPhone):

A bit later we rustled up some Blue-winged Kookaburras as well. Where Laughing Kookaburras can look cute and harmless, Blue-winged Kookaburras, with their enormous heads and staring yellow eyes, look like escapees from an asylum.

Down along the creek behind Kingfisher Park we walked around a sort of drowned orchard left over from previous owners. Marvelous fruits hung from twigs or collected in heaps underneath: starfruit, mango, longgon, rambutan, custard apple, and others. After the week’s heavy rains, the ground squelched under foot. Small, quick mosquitoes swarmed over our elbows and ankles. Noisy Pittas called from the depths of the forest, and later we glimpsed the flat tail of a feathertail glider hanging over the edge of a palm frond, as if he’d forgotten to pull it up out of view after landing. A couple of Spectacled Monarchs (looking like a cross between a Phainopepla and a Blackburnian Warbler) roosted on loops of vine about four feet over our heads, and we found them with our flashlight beams. At dinner, a forest dragon sat by the bird feeders in the light of the patio.

Parade on Mt Lewis

Del arrived in a cream-colored Land Cruiser, immaculately kept and sturdily built in the last century, with carpet lining the dashboard and stiff leather seats. He’s thin and silver-haired, an ex-cattleman who has been leading nature tours for 30 years. He wears a wide-brimmed leather hat—ubiquitous in Australia—with feathers in the hatband. Del climbed carefully aboard, remarking that he was just back to work after knee surgery (“my seventh knee if you count the two I started with”), and we wound around the narrow roads. We passed Julatten’s football field, tennis court, and public library in one go, and turned onto the narrow strip of asphalt that leads to Mt. Lewis.

I was struck everywhere I went by how familiar the tropical vegetation looked and how unfamiliar the birds were. I’m sure the plant species were as unique as any of the birds, but to the casual observer the dense walls of dark green that climbed the hillsides, the tree ferns that spread out like table umbrellas, and the thorn-encumbered palm fronds looked familiar from my visits to Panama and Costa Rica. And just as in Central America, we entered the forest only gradually: first cruising through cattle pastures, and then into the broken shade of the first scraggly trees bending over the road. The asphalt disappeared and Del began negotiating the Land Cruiser around chuckholes and over washboards. Clouds descended, and the vegetation became thicker and wetter.

We were using one of the standard ploys of bird watchers the world over: drive a dirt road up a mountain, and watch the birds change as you climb through elevations and habitats. Every time we stopped the car we heard unusual sounds—the sharp descending notes of Yellow-spotted Honeyeaters; the thin trills of a Chestnut-breasted Cuckoo. Each time, Del’s fingers hovered over the ignition key as he gauged whether to stop against his goal of reaching the grassy end of the road, where Blue-faced Parrot-Finches cling to seedheads and Australian King-Parrots wing over.

Foraging flocks of 20 birds or more made their stately way over the road through the twigs, vine tangles, and crumpled brown leaves. In one of these, a parade of little warbler- and vireo-like birds turned into something of an endemic explosion: As Fairy Gerygones chattered in the canopy, a Mountain Thornbill worked its way down slender vines and a couple of Atherton Scrubwrens came up from the midstory to meet it. Suddenly a longer bird with a heavier bill hopped in to have a look around: a Bower’s Shrike-Thrush making its way methodically through, a bit like a Summer Tanager might move (my colleague Mike Weedon got some good photos). Below them, along the road-edges, Grey-headed Robins were both common and showy. These rich-brown, short-tailed birds swooped from ground to low perch and then stood at attention (not unlike an American Robin’s alert posture, although the two species are not the least bit closely related).

One of my favorite activities in Australia was working through the honeyeater family and its 70+ species. Around Mt. Lewis and Kingfisher Park I puzzled over Graceful, Yellow-spotted, Lewin’s, and Bridled honeyeaters. All of these are smoothly  colored olive-green birds, each with a prominent dot, crescent, or teardrop on the side of the face. Yellow-spotted were perhaps the most common; Graceful were a bit daintier (see photo here), but hard to distinguish alone; Lewin’s was larger and darker on the head. And now, at the top of Mt. Lewis, Bridled Honeyeater, the one with the stormiest coloring, and the least yellow, made an appearance high in the treetops.

At the top of Mt Lewis, Del showed us one of the gaudiest finches I’ve ever seen, the Blue-faced Parrot-Finch, and then gestured down a dirt track at a Golden Bowerbird territory he knew about. But it was getting late—shadows were already making it hard to see under the canopy—and anyway Del wanted his guiding friends David “Chook” Crawford and Alan Gillanders to have their chance to show us some new species, too.

As we jounced back down the mountain, a couple of dark birds scampered off the side of the road and Del whispered “Chowchillas!”—our last regional endemic for the day. We crept to the edge of the road and looked what seemed like straight down a steep, leafy slope. Chowchillas are long-legged, sociable birds that haunt the understory.  They are smartly colored in rich dark brown with white (male) or buffy (female) underparts. In the gloomy understory they were almost invisible, but my binoculars gathered just enough light to make out the bold, staring eyering and their gingerish way of stepping through the leaves. After my eyes adjusted, I could see 6 or 8 of them scattered down the slope. These large groups spend so much time together that their songs are a group effort, with some of the birds shouting “Chow” and others “Chilla” in a tight, circular rhythm [listen].

As we got in the Land Cruiser to head back down, I half-wondered if it was the sound of aliens invading. But then I remembered, of course—all these outlandish creatures live here, and I’m the alien.

(Photos iphoniscoped by Hugh Powell. The Laughing Kookaburra pic was taken at Villa Marine, a delightful accommodation in the town of Yorkeys Knob adjacent to Cairns.)

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  A good warbler day can add upwards of 20 species to a team's total—so it's important to have a plan.

  

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  Resident warblers sing from territories in Belleplain State Forest, where the mountain laurel is just coming into bloom.

  

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  Our shorebirding was briefly interrupted by a Peregrine Falcon hunting at high speed.

  

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  Charles Eldermire of the Anti-Petrels demonstrates how to take a photo with a phone and binoculars.

  

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  Common and Forster's terns gathered at the beach at Cape May Point in the afternoon.

  

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  Eric Gulson, Hope Batcheller (center), and Jack Hruska of Team Redhead recount their best birds of the day.

  

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  With the sun setting in Cape May, we scanned the water one last time and prepared to go night scouting.

  

Here in New Jersey, the Anti-Petrels spent the morning refining our route for the dawn hours of the World Series of Birding on Saturday. The students of Team Redhead scouted saltmarshes, then headed inland to Belleplain State Forest’s warblers, tanagers, and woodpeckers before hitting Cape May to look for shorebirds and a rare Mississippi Kite. This close to the event, both teams are finalizing their routes, trying to link together the species they need without sinking too much time into travel.

Since we’re a bike-powered team, we have to minimize the amount of back-and-forth riding we do, particularly in the early morning when birds are most active and vocal. A 10-mile side trip by car isn’t a huge investment—but for us it’s close to an hour out of our day. So how do you balance all these concerns? Here’s a look at how our plan for warblers is coming together.

Warblers are one of the main attractions of spring birding—they’re brilliant, frenetic little jewels that come in a great variety, from the ubiquitous, like the Yellow or Yellow-rumped, to skulkers that you long to see, such as Cerulean, Connecticut, and others. Eastern North America has some 40 species of warblers, most of which are at least theoretically possible in southern New Jersey in mid-May. So if you’re looking to stretch your day’s bird list, warblers are essential to focus on. [Watch a Lab video about birding for warblers.]

We’re hoping to record somewhere between 12 and 30 species of warblers on Saturday. To make the task manageable, first we divide them into two categories: resident species that breed in southern New Jersey, and migrants that pass through. The difference between the two groups exemplifies the balance of patience vs serendipity it takes to make a big day work.

The two groups of birds behave differently: residents arrived a while ago and are spread out across the state. As long as we can find them, they’ll stay in the same place from day to day and (usually) sing late into the day. Residents in this part of the state include Yellow-throated, Hooded, Kentucky, Black-and-white, Prairie, Prothonotary, and nine other species. If we can get them all that’s 15 species on our quest for 150 or more total birds for the day—so it’s well worth putting in time to find singing males. This year, we’re worried about Kentucky Warblers, which seem even scarcer than usual. And we always worry about Louisiana Waterthrush: last year we burned 30 minutes waiting for a normally reliable bird to show up. (It never did.)

On the plus side, once we’ve found these breeding birds we can visit them later in the morning, since it takes less luck to find them. That frees up the most active hours (until about 8 a.m.) to look for birds we can’t predict: the migrants. These birds are on their way through the state to breeding grounds farther north. They fly at night, land to refuel for a day or two, and then head on out. The best way to find them is to look early in the morning in low, wooded habitat near the southern tip of the state—which is one reason why Cape May is a world-famous birding spot.

Migrants on a big day are a little like a bonus roll in Yahtzee—we know we’ll get some migrants to add to our base list, but it’s hard to know how many. Among the possibilities are Black-throated Green, Black-throated Blue, Chestnut-sided, Blackpoll, Blackburnian, and 10 others. Last year the World Series fell during a streak of poor migrant weather; we got only the most reliable of these including Black-throated Green, Black-throated Blue, and Blackpoll. But this year, the weather is looking more promising. Yesterday’s storm brought winds from the south (and several Mississippi Kites). Fair weather the next two days, coupled with winds from the west, could encourage a new wave of migrants to cross the bay from Delaware. As Redheads captain Hope Batcheller cautiously predicted in an email, “Migrants are going to be TOTALLY BOSS!!!”

So we spent the morning doing the next best thing to scouting migrants—and that’s scouting migrant habitat. Lots of car-powered teams head straight to Cape May for this; it’s one of the best migrant spots on the Eastern Seaboard. But on our bikes, we need to find our migrants within just a mile or two of where we’ll be at dawn, and also near Heislerville, our shorebird mecca (where we found a Stilt Sandpiper this morning, as well as two Peregrine Falcons. After a morning of searching, we found a grove of low trees, brush, and grasses near the bayshore. And the early results were promising: on an otherwise slow migrant day we found Blackpoll Warbler, Magnolia Warbler, Swainson’s Thrush, Scarlet Tanager, a migrating Eastern Wood-Pewee, and two lingering White-throated Sparrows.

Armed with a good plan for our morning, we’re back to looking for nighttime prospects such as Clapper and King rails, Least Bittern, Seaside and Swamp sparrows, and three owls (Great Horned, Barred, Eastern Screech). After jouncing down a washboarded road we’re deep inside Tuckahoe marsh. It’s a clear night with stars and city lights visible across the moonless reaches—and unfortunately very quiet. As I type, my teammates, France and Charles, bundle up against the chill and walk the road. But all they can hear is frogs. Night scouting has become the next thing to worry about. But thankfully, all the scouting will be over in about 24 hours, when the World Series begins. Thanks to everyone for following along!

(Thanks to Bob’s Red Mill for sponsoring the Anti-Petrels and Carl Zeiss Sports Optics for helping equip the Redheads. You can donate to support the teams here. Photos by Hugh Powell except Peregrine Falcon, by France Dewaghe.)

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  Marshall Iliff makes the final tally just after midnight—264 species for the day.

  

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  Big Day 2012 dawned near the Mexico border with birds like this Rufous-capped Warbler.

  

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  A flat tire put a crimp in Team Sapsucker's precision-timed schedule.

  

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  The Hill Country produced fabulous birds like this Varied Bunting.

  

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  Scissor-tailed Flycatchers are a fairly common and uncommonly beautiful Texas bird.

  

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  By afternoon, the team was scouring Gulf Coast beaches for shorebirds.

  

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  On a Big Day tally sheet, the incomparable Roseate Spoonbill counts the same as any other bird.

  

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  Local support: three Sapsuckers (Chris, Marshall, Tim) work on our eBird project.

  

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  Four minutes before midnight came bird #264: Purple Gallinule.

  

The concept of a Big Day is a bold one—a midnight-to-midnight sleepless birding blitz to see or hear as many species as humanly possible. Team Sapsucker—Chris Wood, Jessie Barry, Andrew Farnsworth, Marshall Iliff, and Tim Lenz—took on that challenge in Texas last year, setting the North American record at 264, and then they doubled-down for Big Day 2012, drawing up a never-before-tried-route that they hoped would net them even more birds.

Their run started in San Antonio in the wee hours of Friday, April 27. After a promising start, misfortune struck in the form of an old nail at a city dump, traffic in Houston, and a late-day shift in the sea breeze. By the time the clock struck midnight, the team had tied their own record of 264 species, getting their final bird with just four minutes to spare.

Big Day 2012 began at midnight with a Yellow-crowned Night Heron at Brackenridge City Park in San Antonio, then a sweep through the city that included a nesting American Robin beneath a streetlight. A flashlight scan yielded a swimming Least Grebe (as Barn and Great Horned owls called), and a bevy of ducks in the moonlight: Canvasbacks, Redheads, Wood Ducks, and Northern Pintails. Three of the team also heard an Elf Owl, but the other two missed it—crucially, as it turned out.

At daybreak, the Sapsuckers scooted west toward Uvalde, an area rich in Mexican birds. During scouting, Iliff had drawn up a plan to connect the dots between the birds, timed to when they began singing at dawn—a Tropical Kingbird at 6:20 a.m., a Green-tailed Towhee at 6:55 a.m., then a Ringed Kingfisher that regularly flew by the same spot at Chalk Bluff Park at 7:08 a.m. The Sapsuckers arrived at 7:04, but the kingfisher didn’t show. A precious half-hour ticked by. The team scooped up a Rufous-capped Warbler—one of very few records ever in the state—and an unexpected American Pipit, but still no Ringed Kingfisher. From there, the team rolled into the Uvalde Fish Hatchery, where the hatchery manager had granted the team special access to pick up Cinnamon Teal, Ring-necked Duck, and Yellow-rumped Warbler—three species the team didn’t see anywhere else during the day.

Next, the team made the fateful decision to go for a Chihuahuan Raven at the Uvalde city dump. They pursued one to the top of the landfill before a whishing sound grabbed their attention: a nail protruding from a rapidly deflating tire. And the spare tire storage mechanism wouldn’t release.

Time to call it quits and try again the following day? Not for team captain Chris Wood. “There are no ‘re-dos’ in Big Day,” he said. “A hockey team couldn’t get into the Stanley Cup playoffs, then decide they’re having a bad day and they want to try again tomorrow. Same thing with Big Day.”

The Sapsuckers pulled into Garza’s Radiator Shop in Uvalde and Wood, speaking Spanish, persuaded the repair man to do a quick fix. “Evidently, he likes birds,” Wood said. Farnsworth sprinted two miles to an ATM while Iliff, Barry, and Lenz huddled around their computer to recalibrate the route. Within 30 minutes the Sapsuckers were back on the road. They had to drop a few locations (and birds) from their route to make up time, but soon the team was in the Hill Country, where they nailed Black-capped Vireo, Golden-cheeked Warbler, and Varied Bunting in short order. Iliff called in a Greater Roadrunner, and by 11:08 the team was leaving the Hill Country for Houston—30 minutes behind schedule, but at roughly 150 birds for the day, a little ahead of where they had hoped to be on their Big Day list thus far.

On the four-hour drive to Houston, Farnsworth used his uncanny skill at long-distance spotting, picking out Cooper’s Hawk, Red-shouldered Hawk, White-tailed Hawk, and Franklin’s Gull from his seat in the back. When the team pulled over to verify the gull they found themselves standing atop a fire ant nest. A painful price, yet worth it, for a bonus bird that migrates at high altitudes and often flies right over Texas.

Near Houston, misfortune returned. Rice fields that were brimming with water, and waterfowl, just a day earlier were almost completely dried up. A flock of 25 Hudsonian Godwits was gone. A few shorebirds pecked around in the muck: Wilson’s Phalarope, Baird’s Sandpiper, and Buff-breasted Sandpiper. In a patch of piney woods in Houston, the Sapsuckers hit eastern species including Downy, Red-bellied, and Red-headed woodpeckers and Prothonotary and Pine warblers, but missed Great Crested Flycatcher. The misses were adding up.

So was the traffic in Houston. Still 30 minutes behind schedule, the Sapsuckers hit rush hour. Farnsworth used driving skills honed in Manhattan to weave through the gridlock and reach the route’s most critical point: the ferry to Port Bolivar. Miss that 4:30 connection, and their Big Day would be over. But the team arrived 15 minutes early—enough time for the authorities to conduct a full inspection of this suspicious-looking car filled with five people with binoculars. The team netted a Magnificent Frigatebird during the crossing, and the ferry arrived in port one minute early.

At Bolivar Flats, the team marched down the beach to rack up several gulls and terns, along with a Lesser Scaup, though they missed American White Pelican. In trees just off the beach, the team found a cluster of eastern migrants such as Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Indigo Bunting, and Baltimore Oriole. At High Island, a legendary spot for migratory songbirds, they scored 15 species in 75 minutes, including Cerulean, Magnolia, and Blackpoll warblers.

But then the sun went down, the winds picked up, and the birding came to a grinding halt. At Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge the team listened for marsh birds in the dark for three hours, adding only Seaside Sparrow, Yellow and King rails, and Common Gallinule. At 11:56 p.m., a Purple Gallinule called once, and that was it. The final bird for Friday, April 27.

Thirty seconds after midnight, several gallinules erupted into a chorus of laughter, and Team Sapsucker laughed right along with them. “It had been a tough day, and we all needed a good laugh,” Wood said.

Minutes later, Iliff tallied the day’s score in the dark, his face illuminated by the glow of his laptop screen. Jubilation at first—265 species, a new record!—then mellowed with the realization that the team had to subtract some birds due to the 95 percent rule. This rule states that 95 percent of the birds on a team’s list must be seen by everyone on the team. Upon double-checking the numbers, Iliff realized that that Elf Owl in San Antonio wasn’t unanimous. Off the list it came, and the day’s tally dropped to 264—a repeat of the record.

In tying the record—tallying 11 new species every hour of the day, or one new species every five and a half minutes, all day long—the Sapsuckers proved once again how remarkable a record of 264 species in 24 hours really is. More importantly, though, the generosity of all of our Big Day donors helped us raise needed funds for the Lab’s conservation work. Sponsorship by Carl Zeiss Sports Optics ensured that all donations go directly to conservation.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the Sapsuckers aren’t already thinking about getting just one more. As Farnsworth said, “We’ll definitely be coming back to Texas again next year.”

Though next time, they might avoid the dump.

Special Thank-You Video From Team Sapsucker

On the day after Big Day, the members of Team Sapsucker took a few minutes to say a big thank-you to all who donated or pledged in our biggest fundraiser of the year.

And for those of you keeping track at home, here’s Team Sapsucker’s Final Big Day 2012 List
(in taxonomic order)

Black-bellied Whistling-Duck
Fulvous Whistling-Duck
Wood Duck
Gadwall
American Wigeon
Mallard
Mottled Duck
Blue-winged Teal
Cinnamon Teal
Northern Shoveler
Northern Pintail
Canvasback
Redhead
Ring-necked Duck
Lesser Scaup
Red-breasted Merganser
Ruddy Duck
Northern Bobwhite
Wild Turkey
Pacific Loon
Common Loon
Least Grebe
Pied-billed Grebe
Brown Pelican
Neotropic Cormorant
Double-crested Cormorant
Anhinga
Magnificent Frigatebird
American Bittern
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Snowy Egret
Little Blue Heron
Tricolored Heron
Reddish Egret
Cattle Egret
Green Heron
Black-crowned Night-Heron
Yellow-crowned Night-Heron
White Ibis
White-faced Ibis
Roseate Spoonbill
Black Vulture
Turkey Vulture
Osprey
Swallow-tailed Kite
White-tailed Kite
Mississippi Kite
Northern Harrier
Cooper’s Hawk
Harris’s Hawk
Red-shouldered Hawk
Broad-winged Hawk
Swainson’s Hawk
White-tailed Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk
Crested Caracara
Peregrine Falcon
Yellow Rail
Clapper Rail
King Rail
Sora
Purple Gallinule
Common Gallinule
American Coot
Black-bellied Plover
Snowy Plover
Wilson’s Plover
Semipalmated Plover
Piping Plover
Killdeer
American Oystercatcher
Black-necked Stilt
American Avocet
Spotted Sandpiper
Solitary Sandpiper
Greater Yellowlegs
Willet
Lesser Yellowlegs
Upland Sandpiper
Whimbrel
Long-billed Curlew
Marbled Godwit
Ruddy Turnstone
Red Knot
Sanderling
Semipalmated Sandpiper
Least Sandpiper
White-rumped Sandpiper
Baird’s Sandpiper
Pectoral Sandpiper
Dunlin
Stilt Sandpiper
Buff-breasted Sandpiper
Short-billed Dowitcher
Long-billed Dowitcher
Wilson’s Phalarope
Laughing Gull
Franklin’s Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Least Tern
Gull-billed Tern
Caspian Tern
Black Tern
Common Tern
Forster’s Tern
Royal Tern
Sandwich Tern
Black Skimmer
Rock Pigeon
Eurasian Collared-Dove
White-winged Dove
Mourning Dove
Inca Dove
Common Ground-Dove
White-tipped Dove
Monk Parakeet
Yellow-billed Cuckoo
Greater Roadrunner
Barn Owl
Eastern Screech-Owl
Great Horned Owl
Elf Owl
Barred Owl
Lesser Nighthawk
Common Nighthawk
Common Pauraque
Common Poorwill
Chuck-will’s-widow
Chimney Swift
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Black-chinned Hummingbird
Belted Kingfisher
Green Kingfisher
Red-headed Woodpecker
Golden-fronted Woodpecker
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Ladder-backed Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Eastern Wood-Pewee
Acadian Flycatcher
Black Phoebe
Eastern Phoebe
Vermilion Flycatcher
Ash-throated Flycatcher
Brown-crested Flycatcher
Great Kiskadee
Tropical Kingbird
Couch’s Kingbird
Western Kingbird
Eastern Kingbird
Scissor-tailed Flycatcher
Loggerhead Shrike
White-eyed Vireo
Bell’s Vireo
Black-capped Vireo
Yellow-throated Vireo
Hutton’s Vireo
Red-eyed Vireo
Blue Jay
Green Jay
Western Scrub-Jay
American Crow
Chihuahuan Raven
Common Raven
Horned Lark
Northern Rough-winged Swallow
Purple Martin
Bank Swallow
Barn Swallow
Cliff Swallow
Cave Swallow
Carolina Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
Black-crested Titmouse
Verdin
Cactus Wren
Rock Wren
Canyon Wren
Carolina Wren
Bewick’s Wren
Sedge Wren
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Black-tailed Gnatcatcher
Eastern Bluebird
Gray-cheeked Thrush
Swainson’s Thrush
Wood Thrush
American Robin
Gray Catbird
Northern Mockingbird
Long-billed Thrasher
Curve-billed Thrasher
European Starling
American Pipit
Cedar Waxwing
Tennessee Warbler
Orange-crowned Warbler
Nashville Warbler
Northern Parula
Tropical Parula
Yellow Warbler
Magnolia Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Golden-cheeked Warbler
Black-throated Green Warbler
Yellow-throated Warbler
Pine Warbler
Blackpoll Warbler
Cerulean Warbler
Black-and-white Warbler
American Redstart
Prothonotary Warbler
Ovenbird
Northern Waterthrush
Kentucky Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Rufous-capped Warbler
Yellow-breasted Chat
Olive Sparrow
Green-tailed Towhee
Canyon Towhee
Cassin’s Sparrow
Rufous-crowned Sparrow
Chipping Sparrow
Clay-colored Sparrow
Field Sparrow
Lark Sparrow
Black-throated Sparrow
Lark Bunting
Savannah Sparrow
Grasshopper Sparrow
Le Conte’s Sparrow
Nelson’s Sparrow
Seaside Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Summer Tanager
Scarlet Tanager
Northern Cardinal
Pyrrhuloxia
Rose-breasted Grosbeak
Blue Grosbeak
Indigo Bunting
Varied Bunting
Painted Bunting
Dickcissel
Red-winged Blackbird
Eastern Meadowlark
Western Meadowlark
Yellow-headed Blackbird
Brewer’s Blackbird
Common Grackle
Boat-tailed Grackle
Great-tailed Grackle
Bronzed Cowbird
Brown-headed Cowbird
Orchard Oriole
Hooded Oriole
Bullock’s Oriole
Baltimore Oriole
House Finch
Lesser Goldfinch
House Sparrow

We’re in the midst of creating a free, online bird ID tool that can answer everyone’s first birding question, “What is that bird I saw?”—and we need your help to train the system.

The project, called Merlin™, combines artificial intelligence with input from everyday birders and bird occurrence data from eBird. By using observations from birders like you, Merlin will be able to account for the many different ways that people interpret the size, color, and patterns of birds. That’s why it’s so important to get your input. To do that we’re creating online activities that let you practice your observation skills, enjoy beautiful bird photos, and train Merlin at the same time.

Our latest activity, launched this week, is Mark My Bird—a set of 18 questions about what a bird looks like. Play once or play a hundred times—every answer you give us gets Merlin closer to completion. You’ll be guided to estimate the size and shape of each bird, along with describing the size, colors, and patterns of each of its parts.

We’ve already tested Mark My Bird with a small group of volunteers. They liked how they needed to pay attention to specific parts of the bird that they might otherwise have overlooked.  One remarked, “It’s a fun way to develop the habit of looking carefully.” By spending more time with the bird, you’ll notice things you’ve never seen before and are more likely to remember when you see it in the field.

We also include questions that ask you to pick out the parts of a bird. This may seem pretty basic to you, but Merlin isn’t yet as good as you are at dividing a bird into its various parts. Just imagine being able to upload a mystery bird photo and have a computer help you identify it. This is a feature the birding community has only dreamed of, but it’s not far down the road. We just need your input to get us there.

You may think one person’s contributions don’t amount to much, but together you can have a huge effect. Do you remember our first activity, the Bird Color Challenge? It launched in August, and in less than six months we’ve received 170,000 submissions from more than 13,000 players! In fact, we’ve gotten so much data that we’ve had to add a whole new crop of photographs for you to work through!

We hope you’ll try out Mark My Bird now and that you find it just as much fun. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this exciting project.

(Merlin is funded by the National Science Foundation. Image: Mark My Bird screenshot, Prairie Warbler photo by Andy Johnson.)

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  Rachael Butek's amazing field notes helped her win the ABA's Young Birder of the Year award in 2010.

  

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  Rachael's hand-drawn map of her family's Wisconsin farm.

  

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  Rachael also kept detailed watch as Blue Jays gathered acorns in the fall.

  

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  Keep reading to learn about how Rachael was inspired by a Song Sparrow.

  

All through our lives we draw inspiration from our elders, but there comes a point when we can turn around and start drawing inspiration from the young people coming up behind us. At a recent meeting of the Ohio Young Birders Club, we had a chance to hear from Rachael Butek, a recent high-school graduate who combines great birding skills with keen powers of observation and interest in the world around her.

Rachael gave the keynote address at the meeting and shared her story of how she got started, the pioneering bird watcher who gave her inspiration, and her pursuit of the American Birding Assocation‘s Young Birder of the Year award. We found her presentation so enjoyable and inspiring that we asked her to retell it on our blog. Here’s Rachael:

I first got interested in birds when I was 16, all because of a sparrow in my Wisconsin backyard.

It was just a “little brown bird” at first sight, but when I took a closer through my grandparents’ binoculars, I saw it was a delightful blend of buff and chestnut and stripes. And that was about all it took—just one simple little bird to change my life.

I pulled out our Golden Guide and was nearly scared off by how many different kinds there were. But I was determined, so I started narrowing down my possibilities. The nifty little range maps helped narrow down the species considerably. Then I noticed that the sparrows divided neatly into two groups, the birds with stripes on their breast, and the ones without.

From there I started reading descriptions, checking off birds one at a time. Mine didn’t have any yellow by his eye, and he had too long of a tail to be another one. He didn’t seem to have a buffy collar, and he definitely didn’t have that eyering either. Eventually, the only one left was the Song Sparrow.

That was my first real bird identification, and I have to say, I was pretty proud of myself! Ever since then I have loved Song Sparrows, and sparrows as a whole have become one of my favorite families of birds.

From sparrows to warblers to tanagers

I didn’t realize it then, but I was already hooked. I kept a list of feeder birds all winter long, and six months later I knew them well enough to start noticing migrants. When I saw my first American Redstart in real life, after months of seeing them in my field guide, I was astonished to realize they actually lived in Wisconsin!  A little yellow bird in our plum trees stumped me until I noticed his rufous cheek patch—which immediately gave him away as a Cape May Warbler.

Then, one day a brilliant yellow bird with an orange head landed on our feeder pole. I was so astonished I could hardly call my family or reach for the camera. It was a Western Tanager, a rare bird in Wisconsin. I reported it to eBird—I don’t recall exactly what I said, but I’m pretty sure it was something classic like, “It looked just like the picture in the book!” When it came to taking field notes, I had a looong way to go yet.

Lessons in watching, from one of the best ever

By early summer I was thoroughly infatuated with birds. Soon I became fascinated with Margaret Morse Nice. This woman, born in 1883, became a busy wife and mother but still found enough time to study Song Sparrows in her yard in Columbus, Ohio, for eight years. Her studies were so groundbreaking that Ernst Mayr (one of the most prominent biologists of the twentieth century), said, “She almost single-handedly initiated a new era in American ornithology.”

I was captivated by this, so I got “The Watcher at the Nest,” her story of studying these birds. I fell in love with her detailed observations and her style of note taking. She described things in such detail, yet simply enough to make perfect sense.

That year I decided to compete in the American Birding Association’s ‘Young Birder of the Year‘ contest. My focus was on note-taking and, inspired by Margaret Morse Nice, I knew I shouldn’t have to go far from my backyard to find good note-taking material. Sure enough, our 10-acre hobby farm easily provided me with a summer’s worth of mini-research projects.

A summer of study

I began by taking a census of the birds breeding on our property. Each day of the week I counted different groups of birds. For instance, Thursday was sparrow and bunting day. I would set out early in the morning and start counting the half-dozen different species in that “group,” keeping notes on where I saw or heard individual birds. By counting almost every day for a few weeks, I was able to get a good idea of the overall population of birds breeding on our property.

Later that summer, a massive rain storm flooded about half our acreage and brought in a whole new array of wildlife. So, I started my “pond project,” spending the next month and a half exploring this interesting change in my little ecosystem. I investigated everything from snails to sandpipers, highlighted by a pair of Soras that let me watch and sketch them for an entire morning.

Next came Blue Jays. I realized they were swallowing acorns whole and then flying off with them, presumably to store them for the winter. I wondered just how many acorns a Blue Jay could hold in its crop, so I started watching and counting. After a couple of days, I concluded that they normally took two or three at a time, but the occasional greedy jay took as many as five at once!

Young Birder of the Year

After one of my most wonderful summers ever, I packed up all my entries and shipped them off to the ABA. All winter long I continued taking notes, painting, and taking photos. I kept track of my favorite Northern Shrike as she terrorized the feeder birds, and I followed the regrowth of the tail on one of our cardinals, who showed up at our feeders without his tail.

One fine spring day, I was astonished and delighted to hear I had been named the 2010 Young Birder of the Year. Among the great opportunities that came from this, I especially treasured getting an invitation to visit, and then join, the banding crew at nearby Beaver Creek Reserve. They are now kindly training me in MAPS (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship) bird-banding methods. Ever since learning about Margaret Morse Nice and her studies on Song Sparrows, researching birds has been a passion with me. What better way to get started than by banding them?

Birding has radically changed the way I see the world. As I look forward to college, I’ll remember Margaret Morse Nice’s suggestion to look closely at things and to consider what they mean. When she began watching Song Sparrows, she recalled, “I went to the books and read that this species has two notes beside the song, and that incubation lasted ten to fourteen days and was performed by both sexes; meager enough information and all of it wrong.”

Hopefully, as I further my education in the natural world, I’ll be able to learn some new things myself, and make a difference to the birds in my own backyard.

(Images courtesy Rachael Butek.)

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  Can you find the Spoon-billed Sandpiper chick? Hint: Look for the bill.

  

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  A male Spoon-billed Sandpiper takes his turn incubating a clutch of eggs.

  

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  Sandpiper chicks aren't the only ones—these Common Raven chicks are growing up, too.

  

It may not feel like the end of summer where you are, but in arctic Russia, where Gerrit Vyn has been watching endangered Spoon-billed Sandpipers, birds are already headed south. Here’s Gerrit’s description of the closing of the season, complete with a late, surprise encounter with a Spoon-billed Sandpiper and its newly hatched chicks:

From here on out, each time I see a Spoon-billed Sandpiper I wonder if it will be my last for the season. Most of the adults who failed to breed have departed and the few that remain are quietly leading hungry, growing chicks through a landscape under constant aerial surveillance by predatory gulls, jaegers and ravens.

One male whose territory was closest to the village and was especially confiding has departed. He was the first spoonbill I filmed and the first known arrival, on June 3. We sat together in cold pelting rain that day and I filmed him several more times in the weeks that followed. I regret not having gone to see him one last time before he left.

In early July the last nest I knew about was due to hatch. The weather was not ideal—almost constant 30–40 mph winds—but over the course of several days I was able to capture the first intimate footage and sounds of Spoon-billed Sandpipers at their nest. I filmed adults incubating and brooding the young, the young spoonbills’ emergence from the nest, and their first stumbling attempts at capturing prey.

I also recorded several interesting vocalizations including a rousing series of calls given by the pair during an incubation exchange (males sit on the nest during the day and females at night) and a quick jrrrrt call that is used by the adults to freeze their well-camouflaged chicks in their tracks so they avoid detection by predators. It was difficult to watch the young depart the nest for the last time. Their tiny bodies look so vulnerable in the seemingly unforgiving landscape—it’s a wonder that any of them survive.

A few days later I went to an area we had searched without success for Spoon-billed Sandpiper nests. I was hoping to film an Emperor Goose nest, but it too had hatched and the family departed. Amazingly, an adult Spoon-billed Sandpiper popped out of the tundra delivering that jrrrrt call to warn their chicks of danger. I stood back and after some time four puffball chicks on spindly legs emerged from various spots and began making their way over the lichens and willows to the adult. They were no more than a day off the nest. It was somehow refreshing to know that at least one nest had existed unbeknownst to us.

My time in Chukotka is winding down and this will likely be my last blog post. Next week I’ll begin the long journey back to the States—first, three rugged days overland by Vezdehod (imagine a home-made armored personnel carrier) during which we’ll do the first ornithological surveys of several remote mountain valleys. Then a boat ride from the town of Beringovsky to Anadyr through waters rich with Beluga whales and seabirds. And finally the long flights through Moscow and New York to Seattle. Capturing part of the life of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper has been a success and a great adventure, but I am definitely looking forward to being back home. Thanks to everyone who followed along!

(Images: Gerrit Vyn)

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  Spoon-billed Sandpipers nest among low moraine hills like these.

  

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  A Spoon-billed Sandpiper pauses while foraging among arctic sedges.

  

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  Recently, Gerrit found a pair of shy Arctic Loons nesting on a distant lake.

  

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  A Lesser Sand-Plover rests amid arctic wildflowers.

  

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  Gerrit Vyn (at right) shows local community the first HD footage of a calling male Spoon-billed Sandpiper.

  

Gerrit Vyn, a producer in our Multimedia program, has been spending the summer in remote eastern Russia filming one of the world’s most endangered birds, the Spoon-billed Sandpiper. In the last post he sent us, he described the plight of this species as well as his first sighting of a Spoon-billed Sandpiper. Here’s his next story, about watching several male sandpipers contend for the attention of the last unmated female in the area.

Tonight the winds were calm and the sun was shining for the first time in a week. The tundra, which was brown when we arrived, has greened up. Sedges, grasses and the leaves of small willows and other plants have emerged from the crusty carpet of mosses and lichens. In most places the ground is covered with the small dancing heads of arctic wildflowers.

So far, filming Spoon-billed Sandpipers has been difficult. Skittish, sparsely distributed birds, challenging weather, and poor light have contributed to far more filming failures than successes. But this evening was one of those that makes up for all of the long hours, frustrations and hardships you endure on a trip like this. With calm winds, gentle evening light, and a confiding pair, the conditions were ideal.

I had hiked up into the rolling moraine hills where the last snow still clung to the draws and hillsides where winter winds had left the largest deposits. Along the edges of these snowfields is often where you’ll find a Spoon-billed Sandpiper, or a pair, quietly picking up invertebrates and small seeds with their spatulate bill. So far, I’ve seen this bird use its odd bill no differently than any other small sandpiper. Perhaps its shape is useful for foraging on migration or in winter, or somewhere in its evolutionary past.

The last few weeks had been rather quiet in the moraine hills. Pairs had formed and the rhythmic calls of displaying males had given way to the quiet and secretive periods of egg laying and incubation. In total, the team found six nests in these hills and another two farther up the coast.

The first nest found was later destroyed by an unknown predator, along with the female that laid the clutch. Seeing a Spoon-billed Sandpiper lying dead on the tundra was a sobering event, a reminder of how vulnerable a small population is. At this point even random natural events—a lingering flock of migrating jaegers held back by weather conditions, a roving gull or weasel, even a stray dog—could push this population over the brink.

This evening I was hoping for one last chance to film courtship before it was over for the year. I soon located a female standing motionless on the tundra beside a snowfield, its bill tucked neatly into its russet and black scapulars. I saw the male too—a beautiful russet-headed bird intently foraging but always aware of potential predators, freezing momentarily and cocking its head skyward whenever a gull would pass in flight. The two were clearly bonded. The male kept a tight watch on the female and the female followed him in her own unhurried way.

Over several hours, the pair worked their way around the edge of the snowfield and up to a knoll. As they neared the top, a different male began giving display calls in flight and landed close by. The male of the pair quickly took a position atop a tussock and began delivering steady calls. It stood tall, craning its head forward, its spooned lower mandible vibrating wildly with each trill. The intruder responded but with less vigor, and the female indicated she was committed to her selection by walking close to her male. With wings raised, tail cocked, and a burst of calls he ran toward her in a bid to copulate. She avoided his advances this time but remained close. Perhaps her body was not yet willing to expend the energy necessary to produce a second clutch.

As this was going on, yet another bird appeared. I recognized his pale, frosted plumage—he was the mate of the female that the unknown predator killed, only a few hundred meters away over the next hill. He entered the scene and gave a spirited few advertising calls before departing. For him the breeding year is over. The last unmated female had made her selection. I could only hope that things will improve for this species on their wintering grounds, and that perhaps next year or the year after a young female will make its way north and he’ll have the chance to try again.

As skylarks and pipits sang overhead and the pair drifted away among the tussocks I took a moment to savor what I had just seen. When you are in a place where a rare species can be readily found, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that you are in one of very few places on earth where that can be done. I had just spent an intimate couple of hours in the middle of nowhere, Chukotka, Russia, with four of the remaining 400 or so Spoon-billed Sandpipers on the planet. I felt very lucky to have had the experience at all, not to mention capture it in pictures, video, and sound. I’m looking forward to bringing a piece of the experience back to the Lab to share with all of you.

(Images by Gerrit Vyn)

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2011/06/gv_sbs2.jpg

  The Spoon-billed Sandpiper is one of the world's most critically endangered birds.

  

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2011/06/gv_thawing2.jpg

  This summer, UK and Russian scientists journeyed to the sandpiper's breeding grounds to try to save it.

  

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2011/06/gv_tundra.jpg

  Our photographer Gerrit Vyn is along to document the bird's natural history and surroundings.

  

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2011/06/gv_ptarm.jpg

  As summer sets in, Rock Ptarmigans are starting to molt into brown summer camouflage.

  

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2011/06/gv_wagtail.jpg

  This White Wagtail was one of the first migrants to return to its breeding grounds.

  

In the arctic tundra of eastern Russia, a sparrow-sized shorebird with a one-of-a-kind beak is facing extinction—and a few scientists are doing all they can to save it. In recent years the Spoon-billed Sandpiper‘s population has dropped by a staggering 25 percent per year. Fewer than 200 pairs now remain. So this year, shorebird experts from the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and Birds Russia are enacting an emergency plan to begin a captive breeding program (read their expedition blog here). Their hope is to stall the species’ decline and give scientists time to learn why it’s happening.

The Cornell Lab’s Gerrit Vyn, a photographer and video producer in our Multimedia Program, is in the field along with the scientists. He’s there to record, for the first time, the natural history of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper on its breeding grounds in high-definition video and sound. He’ll be there throughout the brief arctic summer, and we’ll feature a few posts from him during his stay in Meynypil’gyno, Russia (see a map). In this first installment, he describes what’s known about the threats facing the bird, as well as his first encounter with Spoon-billed Sandpipers in the wild:

The Spoon-billed Sandpiper is likely the most critically endangered bird species in the world. It breeds on remote coastal tundra and migrates to the south through key staging sites in Kamchatka, Korea, and Japan. It winters across South China, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, and Bangladesh. But with fewer than 200 breeding pairs remaining, unless the rate of decline is stemmed the Spoon-billed Sandpiper will become extinct in a decade.

Thus far, determining the most important factors behind its population decline has been difficult—a common problem for migratory species that travel large distances and live in multiple locations throughout the year.  The two main factors currently thought to be at the root of the decline are habitat loss around key migration sites in the Yellow Sea, where tidal estuaries are being walled off and turned into land; and subsistence hunting pressure at wintering sites. (Some local people use nets to trap larger shorebirds for food; Spoon-billed Sandpipers, though too small to eat, sometimes end up as casualties.) The loss of habitat to land reclamation is also causing continuing declines in several other shorebird species of the East Asian–Australasian Flyway.

Our destination for this project is the village of Meynypil’gyno—about 500 people living on a long gravel spit at the edge of the Bering Sea. Nearby is the largest known core breeding area of Spoon-billed Sandpipers, where at least 12 pairs bred last year. We arrived in early June, just before the males arrived to begin their courtship flights and nesting.

Just inland from Meynypil’gyno is an area of rolling moraine hills interspersed with small tundra ponds. Beyond that is a range of frigid, unexplored mountains. When we arrived, snow was still deep in many areas and the main water bodies were still frozen, but things were thawing quickly. The weather is cold and windy as is to be expected for most of our stay.

Lately, the snowdrifts have shrunk enough for us to venture farther afield, on foot or by ATV. In the two weeks we’ve been here, the Spoon-billed Sandpipers have returned and many are now incubating eggs. I’ve just come back to town after three days camping out, watching and recording these marvelous birds. (Read more about what the scientists have been doing at the Wildfowl Wetlands Trust expedition blog.)

Elsewhere, bird migration has been in full swing. When the winds are right there is constant passage of Common and Steller’s Eiders, Harlequin Ducks, scoters, Long-tailed Ducks, Brant, four species of loons, assorted auks, Black-legged Kittiwakes, and regular flocks of 50 or more Pomarine Jaegers. Shorebirds are moving too, including Ringed Plover, Lesser Sand-Plover, Red Knot, Ruff, Wood Sandpiper, Dunlin, Red-necked Stint, and others.

There’s been mammal migration too: Gray Whales swimming within 20 feet of the gravel shore. Many are feeding and just passing by but others are using the coarse gravel to rub their bodies free of barnacles and other skin irritants. I stood knee deep in the surf and watched a group of three whales, within 15 feet at times, rolling, splashing and spyhopping (bobbing vertically in the water to look around). It is tempting to dive into the frigid waters with them if only for a moment.

(Images by Gerrit Vyn)