PEEPS

Red-footed Booby - Dry Tortugas

On 26 April 2008, an immature Red-footed Booby, Sula sula, was reported from Dry Tortugas National Park, a cluster of seven islands almost 70 miles west of Key West, Florida. The bird has been most recently reported by Murray Gardler and many observers on Garden Key (also reported on nearby Long Key) on the 27th.   

Although the exact age of the Red-footed Booby has not been discussed, it was reported as a dark morph bird.  This species is truly polymorphic with a white morph, black-tailed white morph, "golden" white morph, brown morph, white-tailed brown morph, white-headed brown morph, and white-tailed brown morph.  It is the only booby with a white tail, although in some morphs the tail is brown.  It is one of two booby species that nest in trees, where it will also roost.

Red-footed Booby is pantropical in distribution with long foraging flights that make plotting its movements difficult.  Juveniles are notorious for long flights, some recorded over 200 miles from the nearest land.  They are reported to leave on foraging journeys at first light, often returning after dark.

This booby is one of the most abundant and widespread, yet is an ABA Area Code 4 species.  Its food preferences, flying-fish and squid, are both caught by plunge-diving, although flying-fish are also caught in flight.  Red-footed Booby have large eyes which help explain how this species can hunt during moonlit nights, when squid come to the surface.  It is a species that often perches on ships. 

Bill Maynard

Editor - Winging It

Flame-colored Tanager - Arizona

Flame-colored Tanager - Miller Canyon, Arizona

Although a Flame-colored Tanager, Piranga bidentata, has been reported yearly for the past few years at the Kubo in Madera Canyon, Santa Rita Mountains, Arizona, it is rarely reported in the Huachucas.  On Saturday, 19 April, a male Flame-colored was reported by Joe Woodley above the Beatty's Guest Ranch and orchard, near the intersection of Miller Canyon Trail and Hunter Canyon Trail.

In the ABA Area, Flame-colored Tanager, was first discovered in Arizona in the Chiricahua Mountains in the South Fork of Cave Creek Canyon, where it remained mid-April to Mid-July 1985.  Since then, both pure and hybrid Flame-colored x Western Tanagers have appeared in the Santa Rita, Huachuca, and Chiricahua Mountains.  Since the first 1996 Flame-colored Tanager report from Big Bend National Park, Texas, there are at least four records from the Trans Pecos, and one from South Padre Island.

Until new editions of filed guides correctly pictured the flaming orange bidentata group of Flame-colored Tanager, the group from West Mexico and the one expected in Southeast Arizona, confusion of this tanager's identity occurred.  The East Mexico and Central American group, sanguinolenta, has males with heads and underparts red to orange-red, and with wingbars often with a reddish wash. 

Keys for separation of young males and females from Western Tanagers and hybrids is discussed in the ABA's A Birder's Guide to Southeastern Arizona by Richard Cachor Taylor.

Bill Maynard
Editor - Winging It

Barnacle Goose - Virginia

The short-billed Barnacle Goose, Branta leucopsis, has one population of about 8,000 birds which breeds in northeastern Greenland.  They begin migration in late August-early September, and most birds stage in southeast Iceland.   Having left Iceland in late September, by November most have reached their British and Irish wintering grounds.  Studies have shown that these birds are faithful to their wintering grounds, with over 70% of banded birds returning to the same location the following winter.

Historically, coastal pastures and saltmarshes are favored feeding areas, where rhizomes, grasses, herbs, crop stubble, and undersown grasses, have been the winter food.  Although the ABA Checklist gives a Code 5 status to Barnacle Goose, the number of individuals present in New England states this winter is greater than their current status would indicate. Winter site fidelity might explain why this species has been present in the same areas the previous few winters.

Recently, a Barnacle Goose was reported on 13 April by William Leigh in Rockbridge, Virginia.  Sightings of this species west of the Atlantic seaboard have been dismissed by most records' committees as escapees from captivity, as this species is one of a number of non-native waterfowl species raised by waterfowl fanciers.

A group of geese, in addition to being called "a gaggle of geese" has also been called "plump of geese", "string of geese" "chevron of geese", "knot of geese", and "blizzard of geese."  The common name, Barnacle Goose, comes from the imagined similarity of this species' head and neck pattern, to a goose-necked barnacle.  In folklore and before their breeding grounds were discovered, Barnacle Geese were thought to develop from these barnacles, which attach themselves to flotsam, drifting about in ocean currents. While the biology of Barnacle Goose has been sorted out, evidence of the provenance of many individuals that appear each winter in the ABA Area, has not.

Bill Maynard
Editor - Winging It

Black-hooded Parakeet - Florida

As summarized in “Flight Path” in Birding, November/December 2006, Black-hooded Parakeet ("Nanday Conure"), Nandayus menday, is an established species in the central Florida Gulf Coast region, occurring at least in the area from Bayonet Point in Pasco County, to Sarasota, Sarasota County, with another isolated population found at St. Augustine, St. Johns County, and scattered along the South Atlantic Coast from Boynton Beach, Palm Beach County, to Kendall, Miami-Dade County.  This exotic was unanimously accepted to the Florida State Bird Checklist by the Florida Ornithological Society Records Committee in 2004, and  failed being on the ABA Checklist by one vote (6 out of 8 voted in favor; 7 yes votes needed for acceptance), in 2006.

The parakeet might be best looked for in Pinellas County, where it is widely established. Since many birders head to seek South Florida specialties in April, it might be prudent to look for these psittacids, native to Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina, and first discovered in Florida in 1969.  This approximately 14-inch long bird is pictured on page 249 of the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Fifth Edition.

Bill Maynard
Editor - Winging It