BirdWatching September/October 2022

CONSERVATION The Center for Biological Diversity and Healthy Gulf sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on June 30 for failing to designate critical habitat for the Eastern Black Rail. The rail needs healthy and intact wetland habitat to survive. PHOTOGRAPHY In July, the National Audubon Society announced the winners of its 13th annual Audubon Photography Awards. The grand prize went to Jack Zhi for this image of White-tailed Kites exchanging prey. Follow, like, and share! FACEBOOK: BirdWatchingMagazine INSTAGRAM: @birdwatchingmagazine TWITTER: @BirdWatchDaily FLICKR: BirdWatching group photo pool…

A PAIR OF American Robins have nested at the top of a downspout on the back of my house for the last few summers. (Are they the same birds each time? They’re not banded, so there’s no way to know.) Most of their nests have been preyed upon, probably by crows, but this summer, they fledged at least one youngster. Late in the nesting cycle, I could see at least two small beaks poking up for food when the parents visited. I hope that one fledged when I wasn’t watching, but I know for sure that its sibling left the nest successfully because I saw it happen on the evening of July 3. The bird scooched along a diagonal drainpipe next to the nest, and then, after a few minutes,…

On October 17, 2020, Bobby Harrison was in a canoe on a southern waterway heading back to his car when a large bird flew in front of him, turned, and then flew down the channel and out of his sight. He says he knew immediately that the bird was an Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Harrison has been searching southern swamps for the species for more than 20 years, and it was a sighting he had in 2004 with former Living Bird editor Tim Gallagher that set off a large search for the bird led by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. That search effort ended in early 2007, and Harrison has continued looking for better evidence on his own ever since. And that’s what he says he obtained with the October 2020 encounter.…

Birders have speculated for decades that Eastern Meadowlarks in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico may be a distinct species, and now, it’s official. The North American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society has separated the lilianae and auropectoralis subspecies of Eastern Meadowlark into a new species known as Chihuahuan Meadowlark (Sterna lilianae). The news appears in 63rd supplement to the Check-list of North American Birds published in the journal Ornithology. Chihuahuan Meadowlark breeds from northern Arizona, northern New Mexico, and western Texas (and possibly southeastern Colorado) to northern Sonora and northern Chihuahua in Mexico. And separately, the subspecies auropectoralis breeds in Mexico, in southern Sinaloa and Durango south along the coast to Nayarit and in the interior to Michoacán and México states. The new species winters from…

A 22-year study shows that northeastern Illinois is a stronghold for breeding birds and of global importance for several avian species. Breeding Bird Trends in the Chicago Region 1999-2020 provides an update on the status of more than 100 nesting species across grassland, shrubland, wetland, and woodland habitats. The report shows that some breeding bird species are stable or expanding, while others face declines. The Bird Conservation Network (BCN), a coalition of 21 conservation organizations dedicated to the preservation of birds and the habitats they need to survive, collected the data from managed lands within six counties: Cook, Lake, McHenry, DuPage, Kane, and Will. During the 22-year analysis period, volunteer monitors conducted nearly 30,000 surveys across more than 2,000 points annually in June and early July. The surveys followed strict…

If you’re camping in a forest 50 miles from the nearest coast, seabirds probably aren’t top of mind. But if you’re in the Pacific Northwest, you might be pitching your tent under the hidden nest of an endangered seabird called a Marbled Murrelet. Your trash could be their downfall. Messy campers attract crafty corvids like Common Ravens or Steller’s Jays, which eat murrelet eggs and chicks. An American Bird Conservancy-led initiative launched in Oregon this past summer aims to save murrelets from this fate by asking campers to pick up their crumbs. Marbled Murrelets are enigmatic little black-and-white seabirds that live along North America’s Pacific coast from Alaska to northern California. During the breeding season, they fly inland to lay a single egg hundreds of feet above the ground on…