PEEPS

Rustic Bunting - Saskatchewan

An ABA Code-3 Rustic Bunting (Emberiza rustica) was found at the residence of Brenda and Harvey Schmidt in Creighton, Saskatchewan, on 3 December (still present on Sunday) in the willows and coming into the yard with juncos.

Rustic Bunting is common in northern Eurasian taiga where it is found in marshy areas including willow thickets associated with damp spruce forests or margins of bogs. Fall migration routes from western parts of its range take birds east, skirting deserts and steppes, turning south when they reach eastern Siberia.  Most birds winter in Japan, Korea, and China (Sparrows and Buntings, A Guide to the Sparrows and Buntings of North America and the World, Byers, Curson, and Olsson).

Photographs can be viewed at: http://birdschmidt.blogspot.com/2009/12/arriving-with-four-juncos-yesterday.html

Winter Wren Proposed as Two Distinct Species

Three intriguing proposals of interest for birders in the ABA Area were submitted to the A.O.U. Check-List Committee: split Western Scrub-Jay into two species, split the non-migratory Red Crossbill song type found in south central Idaho and call it South Hills Crossbill, and split the eastern and western populations of Winter Wren.  Although results of the voting are not made public until July in the annual Supplement to the A.O.U. Check-List, a reliable source told me that Winter Wren has been split into two species.  The two Winter Wren groups breed side by side without any hybridization in a narrow zone of contact in northeastern British Colombia.

The proposal to split Winter Wren in copied here: "Deep divergence in mitochondiral DNA (8.8% ND2 maximum likelihood divergence (Drovetski et al. 2004) and singing patterns (Kroodsma 1980) between 'eastern' (Trogoldytes troglodytes hiemalis) and 'western' (T. t. pacificus) subspecies of Winter Wren have led to the suggestion that this species may in fact consist of multiple cryptic species, with the group in western North America being specifically distinct from those in eastern North America and Eurasia (Hejl et al. 2002; Drovetski et al. 2004; Kroodsma 2005)."

The authors who conducted the research also wrote the proposal for splitting. They proposed naming the western pacificus group, Pacific Wren.  Call notes, not songs, are unique in these cryptic wrens. Eastern birds do average more white spots on their backs and they have lighter-colored throats, and show duller brown (less rufous), but it is the differences in call notes that most characterizes their uniqueness.  Calls of birds in the pacificus group are much noisier and higher pitched.  Check out Xeno-Canto www.xeno-canto.org/browse.php?query=winter+wren for recorded calls of representatives from both groups and learn their differences before you begin your CBCs.

Cuban Kite Discovered - Eastern Cuba

Only a few hundred miles south of Key West, Cuba's most endangered bird of prey, the critically endangered subspecies of Hook-billed Kite (Chondroierax uncinatus wilsonii) was discovered in the Humbolt Park area of Guantanamo Province in eastern Cuba.

Photograph, one of the few of this taxon, is courtesy of Nils Navarro Pacheco.

ABA's Birders' Exchange program supplied the camera and lens that enabled Nils Navarro Pacheco and Ernesto Reyes to document their sighting.  From Field Guide to the Birds of Cuba, Garrido and Kirkconnell, Clements Checklist of the Birds of World, Sixth Edition, and Handbook of the Birds of the World, Volume 2, we learn how little is known about this taxon. Some authors believe "Cuban Kite" is a valid species, separate from Hook-billed Kite, although the A.O.U. Check-list of North American Birds, Seventh Edition, treats it as a subspecies of Hook-billed Kite.  Almost no information is known about "Cuban Kite" natural history, and it's range is thought to now only include eastern Cuba, with only about 250 pairs in existence.  In a 30-year period before the year, 2000, only three sightings of "Cuban Kite" had been confirmed.

Ivory Gull - New Jersey

On 27 November Jim Dowdell found a 1st-cycle Ivory Gull (Pagophila eburnea), ABA Code-3, flying about Cape May Harbor, New Jersey, the bird showing some interest in the Lobster House.

Ivory Gull photograph is courtesy of Tony Leukering.

Ivory Gull, the only member of the genus Pagophila, is a two-cycle gull that may skip a prealternate molt.  Instead, juveniles molt directly into adult plumage during their second cycle (Gulls of the Americas, Howell and Dunn).  This is a holarctic breeding species found mostly above the Arctic Circle and in winter they primarily remain at the edge of the pack ice.  For these reasons, this species was given the name, Pagophila, from the Greek and meaning frost-lover.  Eburnea is a Latin reference to ivory (Dictionary of the Birds of the United States, Holloway).

If you own the ABA Checklist, Seventh Edition, Pranty, et. al., you may have noticed the skull-and-crossbones symbol, indicating Ivory Gull is a Species of Conservation Concern.  Mallory et. al, documented local declines in local arctic populations of Ivory Gulls in 2003 in a paper titled "Local Ecological Knowledge of Ivory Gull Declines in Arctic Canada."

Common Shelduck - Newfoundland

For good reason, most Common Shelducks (Tadorna tadorna) are written off as exotics, escapes from captivity, that is, unless they are seen in Newfoundland waters. On the early morning of 17 November, Bruce Mactavish found a female Common Shelduck at Quidi Vidi Lake.  Of unknown provenance, the bird flew off by 0830,  but based on the observer's description of the wind direction when he found the bird, the bird's plumage and its behavior, Bruce believes it is a wild bird.  There are currently no accepted records of this species in the ABA Area.

HBW, Volume 1 states that Common Shelduck is the least typical of the shelducks and it is often considered as a link between the other members of the Tadora genus and the Alopochen ducks. It breeds from northwest coastal Europe, scattered Mediterranean sites, and east across central Asia to northeastern China, and south to Iran and Afghanistan, preferring coastal tidal mudflats, but frequently flies to fresh water to drink.  During migration, northern and interior populations move south.  Some parts of the population are mostly sedentary but others are thought to fly extensive distances to molting areas.

A New Species of Scrub-Jay in the ABA Area?

In March 2009, Carla Cicero and Jon Dunn recommend to the AOU Check-list Committee that the californica and woodhouseii groups of Western Scrub-Jay be treated again as full species. Delaney, K.S., S. Zafar, and R.K. Wayne, 2008, in their paper, “Genetic divergence and differentiation within the Western Scrub-Jay (Aphelocoma californica)” Auk 125:839-849, analyzed control region sequences in Western Scrub-Jay samples throughout the species’ range. Samples of Western Scrub-Jays spanned from northern Oregon to southern Baja California (californica group), and from western and central Nevada to southern Mexico (woodhouseii-sumichrasti group). Results indicate the californica group is as divergent from the woodhouseii (Interior Group) as it is from A. insularis (Island Scrub-Jay) and these two groups have had a long history of separation. The two groups are diagnosable by plumage and morphology (interior birds are more grayish-blue, with less contrasting breast bands, and they have a thinner, straight bill, lacking the hook of coastal birds), occupy different habitats (oak woodland vs. pinyon-juniper), and they are known to behave and vocalize differently. Dunn and Garrett qualitatively described vocal differences between these groups saying: “the calls within the woodhouseii group are consistently higher pitched and on average consist of two syllables compared with the harsher, lower pitched, and one syllable notes from coastal birds.” Genetic differences between the californica and woodhouseii groups are congruent with phenotypic and ecological differences, with a possible exception of birds in the narrow contact zone in western Nevada’s Pine Mountains. Divergence between the californica group and A. insularis (Island Scrub-Jay) was 3.8 percent, which is a lot. In the proposal, the names California Scrub-Jay (californica group) and Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay (woodhouseii group) have been suggested.

Texas Trio

Northern Jacana, Rose-throated Becard, and Masked Duck(s) were reported from Texas.  On 1 and 2 November an ABA Code-4 Northern Jacana was reported by Pat Bowen, Glenda Janca, and Jo Ann Andrews from the 75-Acre Lake in the Calliham Unit of Choke Canyon State Park.

A female-plumaged Rose-throated Becard, ABA Code-3, was photographed on 30 October at Eagle Pond at Bentsen RGV State Park.  Also in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, a pair of Masked Ducks, ABA Code-3, was at Santa Ana NWR at Cattail Lakes where they were photographed and seen, at least from 31 October through 2 November. Both rarities were discovered by Larry Therrien from Massachusetts.

Photo courtesy of Larry Therrien

Becards were recently removed from the Tyrant Flycatcher family (and before that removed from the Cotinga family) and now reside in the newly created family, Tityridae, along with the tityras, Cinereous and Speckled Mourners, and White-naped Xenopsaris (Nov. '09 Supplement to Clements Checklist of the Birds of the World).

More arguments about the correct pronunciation of "jacana" probably occur among birders than debates over the pronunciation of other ABA species' names.  Northern Jacanas exhibit sex role reversal and after the average clutch of four eggs hatch, males care for the young for up to 12 weeks.  Males are the only ones with brood patches so after females lay the eggs, males do all of the incubation.  Females spend much of their time chasing away potential predators, but they have been observed, on occasion, touching breast feathers to their eggs.  The females are polyandrous (multiple males) and on large flooded territories, extra male partners incubate eggs on the periphery of the main territory.  Much of the nest sits below water level (HBW, Volume 1).

Changes to the ABA Checklist

From the November 2009 issue of Birding, four new species were added to the ABA Checklist and one species was deleted, for a new total of 960 species recorded in the ABA Area.  The newest additons are: Swinhoe's Storm-Petrel (Oceanodroma monorhis), White-crested Elaenia (Elaenia albiceps), Crowned Slaty-Flycatcher (Empidonomus auarantioatrocristatus), and Sinaloa Wren (Thryothorus sinaloa). Caribbean Elaenia (Elaenia martinica) was removed from the List.

A detailed analysis of each new ABA species, plus the reasons from removing Caribbean Eleania from the ABA Checklist, is discussed in detail in the newest issue of Birding.  Of note, the South American Checklist Committee (SACC) recently voted to delete the hyphen in Crowned Slaty-Flycatcher and from a few other South American species. The SACC members felt hyphens were "part of the ongoing debate generated by Gill & Wright (Birds of the World: Recommended English Names) on when to use hyphens in bird names" especially if hyphens "(a) unite groups of... close relatives, or (b) involve "Bird-Bird" last names, e.g., "Hawk-Eagle".

http://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCprop401.html.

If your fall birding is slow, try saying Empidonomus aurantioatrocristatus five times rapidly, the word translates as orange-colored black crest (A Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names, Jobling).

American Flamingo - Texas Coast

On a 20 October coastal Texas waterfowl survey that included Aransas NWR, biologist Patrick Walther reported seeing a pair of flamingos in the Whitmire Unit (Calhoun County).  From second hand information, one is described as being an escaped "Greater" Flamingo from the Wichita Zoo from June 2006 while the other was described as being a bird from the Yucatan, MX, which makes it an American Flamingo, ABA Code-3.

American Flamingo (Phoenicoterus ruber) was recently split from the Old World Greater Flamingo (P. roseus) in the 49th Supplement to the AOU Chek-list of North American Birds. American Flamingo is the only flamingo species currently on the ABA Checklist.

Flamingos are in their own family, Phoenicopteridae.  They all possess lamellae as bill structures which enable them to feed in a manner similar to the baleen whales.  Between two mandibles, a tongue functions as a piston, pumping water through the lamellae. Backward-facing bristles move food items backwards to the throat, while the tongue expels water back out of the birds' mouths.

Adult flamingo of all species are pink in color.  The pink coloration comes from carotenoid pigments synthesized by algae or by the organisms which feed on algae.  These carotenoids are converted by enzymes into usable pigments called canthaxanthins which are found in the feathers and in the bare skin regions of flamingos (HBW, Vol. 1).

12 Blue-footed Boobies - Salton Sea, CA

On 25 October in the Whitewater River Delta portion of California's Salton Sea, 12 Blue-footed Boobies (Sula nebouxii), ABA Code-4, were found during a survey of the north end. 

Blue-footed Booby is a resident of the eastern Pacific, where it breeds on islands in the Gulf of California, south to northern Peru.  It has been a sporadic visitor to the Salton Sea and to inland California, as far north as Washington.  They have also been found in southern Nevada, southwestern Arizona, and many people saw the long-staying bird at Lake Lyndon B. Johnson, Texas (ABA Checklist, Seventh Edition, Pranty et. al.). Blue-footed Boobies make periodic flights into the ABA Area during flight years when food becomes scarce in their breeding grounds.

The Sulids, boobies and gannets, have no brood pouches, so they incubate their eggs by standing on top them with their highly vasculated feet.  Their egg shells are thick enough to allow for the entire weight of the incubating birds (HBW, Volume 1).  Blue-footed Booby is the Sulid best known for collaborative fishing.  They fly as a group and when potential prey is spotted, one of the group members, usually a male, gives a whistle and the group plunge-dives together.