Indholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2023 i BirdWatching

The importance of water is the focus of this year’s World Migratory Bird Day, an annual celebration of migratory birds and a call to action to protect them. Throughout 2023, organizers are spreading the message that “water sustains bird life” and highlighting ways to conserve and protect aquatic habitats. This year’s WMBD poster (at right), featuring original art by Augusto Silva, highlights 10 species that represent the variety of ways in which birds need water. From the top: Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Osprey, Northern Shoveler, Rufous Hummingbird, Northern Waterthrush, American White Pelican, Magellanic Penguin, Wilson’s Phalarope, Barn Swallow, and Dickcissel. World Migratory Bird Day 2023 is officially celebrated on May 13 in the United States and Canada and October 14 in Latin America and the Caribbean. Celebrations take place all over the…

I’ve spent many a steaming hot late spring and early summer day at California’s Salton Sea for nearly three decades helping my wife, Kathy Molina, monitor and band Gull-billed Terns and study their breeding biology. At this only major land-locked colony in North America, these terns have had their ups and downs and now face grave threats as the sea recedes due to cutbacks in the Colorado River water that sustains the Imperial Valley’s agriculture and, as a by-product, the sea’s surface level. The trials of these terns at the Salton Sea are emblematic of difficulties facing many colonial ground-nesting seabirds, causing declines and engendering conservation concern for Gull-billed Terns throughout their North American range. The multiple problems they face include increased coastal flooding, sea level rise, barrier island development…

ABOUT A DOZEN years ago, this magazine’s name was changed from Birder’s World to BirdWatching. The move, which was meant to broaden our audience, sparked some angry emails, as I suspect this editorial will, but overall, the decision was positive. More readers found us, and most of those who were already with us understood the reason behind the change. Now, the birding community is once again debating a name, albeit one that is more consequential than this magazine’s moniker. Over the last several months, chapters of the National Audubon Society in Seattle, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Portland, Oregon, and Madison, Wisconsin, decided to drop “Audubon” from their names. In the early 1900s, the national group named itself after John James Audubon, the prolific bird artist of the early 1800s, and its…

BOOK Field Guide to North American Flycatchers By Cin-Ty Lee, illustrated by Andrew Birch, Princeton University Press, 2023, paperback, 168 pages, $19.95. A daunting bird-ID challenge just got a bit easier. This essential new guide to flycatchers and pewees, which is compact and field-friendly, trains readers to observe subtle differences in structure, color patterns, and vocalizations before delving into the finer details of a particular species. Because the plumages of flycatchers are so similar, the guide uses illustrations that highlight slight variances among species that photos often miss. One of the last frontiers of bird identification is now accessible to everyone, once one knows what to look for. FILMS Giants of Big Sur Directed by Ross Thomas A new series of three short films by documentary filmmaker Ross Thomas takes…

Birding in the American tropics can be a delightfully distracting experience. Armed with binoculars, bird books, cellphone, camera, and a wish list of birds, birders frequently find their attention diverted by curious monkeys, lizards, treefrogs, and yes — butterflies and moths. Tropical butterflies and moths possess incredible beauty, colors, and patterns that can stop the most avid birder in their tracks: the iridescent blue flash of a Morpho butterfly flashing across a forest trail, swordtail butterflies on an Amazon riverbank, swallowtail butterflies at a peccary wallow in the Brazilian rainforest, or a Julia butterfly sipping “turtle tears” from the eyes of a river turtle in Ecuador. Next thing you know, a butterfly has landed on you or your binoculars to “borrow some salt.” The insects often imbibe saline-loaded human sweat…

WHAT TIME OF day is best for birding? Ask anyone, even a non-birder, and the answer will almost always be “at dawn.” I used to repeat this myself, but over the years, I’ve come to realize that it is simply not true. Generally, morning is best, and earlier is better than later, but with some qualifiers. Of course, it depends on what kind of birding you’re doing. Hawk migration peaks in mid to late morning, falcons in late afternoon, hummingbirds and waterbirds are active all day, and so on. The rest of this discussion applies to songbirds, especially in brushy or forested habitats. I think dawn’s reputation as the best time for birding stems mostly from the “dawn chorus” — a surge of birdsong that begins at first light and…

Last fall, we invited birdwatchers and photographers to enter photos in our 2022 Bird Portrait Contest. The response was fantastic. Contestants submitted more than 540 photos of birds. Thanks to all who entered! The selection of images was outstanding, giving the judges a difficult task. We announced the finalists and winners on our website in late March, and we’re presenting the top three winners on the following pages. FIRST PLACE BIRD PORTRAIT PHOTO CONTEST Dustin Huntington CALLIOPE HUMMINGBIRD Dustin Huntington won first place with this remarkable image of a Calliope Hummingbird that he photographed from the deck of his house in Tijeras, New Mexico. “I had set up to photograph the various hummingbirds at close range in the morning light,” Huntington says. “The birds were very tolerant of the camera…

Computer scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in collaboration with biologists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, recently announced in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution a new, predictive model that is capable of accurately forecasting where a migratory bird will go next — one of the most difficult tasks in biology. The model is called BirdFlow, and while it is still being perfected, it should be available to scientists within the year and will eventually make its way to the general public. Many past and current studies have tagged and tracked individual birds, yielding invaluable insights. But it’s difficult to physically tag birds in large enough numbers — not to mention the expense of such an undertaking — to form a complete enough picture to predict bird…

As a group, screech-owls do make screeching sounds that they are named for, but they’re not as common as their other vocalizations. Whiskered Screech-Owls give a variety of trills and whistles that are used in pair bonding, to declare territories, and to advertise nest cavities. When predators or intruders are nearby, the owls produce a series of calls that increase in intensity depending on the circumstances: from a hoot to a bark to a screech. The name “Whiskered” comes from the bristles on the ends of the bird’s facial feathers, which are difficult to see unless you’re holding a bird in the hand. The screech-owl prefers montane pine-oak and oak forests and canyons with oak and sycamore trees. The species is found at elevations from 1,000-2,900 meters (3,280-9,514 feet) from southeastern…

Cannon Beach Settling Ponds CANNON BEACH, OREGON 45°53'53.29"N 123°57'26.82"W Sitting just a few blocks from the beach, the Cannon Beach Settling Ponds provide freshwater and forest habitats away from the bustle of this charming coastal village. Just as birders visit this site to escape the hordes of beachgoers, coastal birds find shelter from stormy seas in the calm ponds and brushy woods. Located next to a large parking lot and public restroom, the Settling Ponds host an observation deck and a level gravel path that loops around four ponds and an active wastewater plant. The ponds attract a nice variety of waterfowl, including Lesser and Greater Scaup, Ring-necked Duck, and Gadwall. The western edge of the loop trail passes by a wetland that is home to Virginia Rail, Marsh Wren,…

JIM BURNS Western Grebe Early one morning in late September, wildlife photographer Jim Burns found a Western Grebe that had overnighted at a fishing pond in Maricopa County, Arizona. It was diving for fish, and Burns sat down at the water’s edge, camera in hand, on the off chance he might catch the grebe surfacing with its catch. No such luck ensued, as half an hour passed without the grebe coming up with breakfast. As the rising sun began to warm things up, several dragonfly species began patrolling over the water, a few of them males flying in tandem with females as they mated on the wing. Magic happened as the grebe turned its attention to the action above its head and made several unsuccessful leaps out of the water…