Loose Feathers #319

Sandhill Cranes at Bosque del Apache NWR / Photo by Marvin De Jong (USFWS)

Birds and birding news

• Extra-pair copulation gives male Great Tits a chance to have chicks with more females but comes with the cost of their mates copulating with other males. As a result, male tits that "cheat" do not have more offspring than those that do not "cheat."
• An endangered Hawaiian goose, the Nēnē, now has a population of 2,000 individuals, a substantial improvement over the situation 60 years ago, when only 20-30 individuals existed.
• Whooping Cranes wintering in Texas may have a hard time finding food this winter because the drought and lack of water flow from nearby rivers are making the marshes of Aransas NWR too brackish. The cranes are currently at the center of a lawsuit over water rights.
• The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia is posting a new page from Audubon's The Birds of America each day.
• The NY Times profiled the Nuttall Ornithological Club, the oldest birding group in the U.S.
• A study shows that populations of British farmland birds continue to fall.
• Elegant Quail proved difficult for scientists to trap during a recent research expedition.

Nature blogging

• Maniraptora: The economics of tree swallow brood sex ratios
• 10,000 Birds: Digiscoping With An iPhone 4S
• The Birdist: Birding the north Mississippi Delta
• Laelaps: Paleontologists Uncover Wyoming’s Formidable Fossil Frogmouth
• Birding Is Fun!: What is Birding?
• Stokes Birding Blog: Photographing Birds in Flight, Tips
• Outside My Window: Winter Trees: White Ash
• The Dragonfly Woman: Sexing Giant Water Bugs
• Bug Eric: Spider Sunday: Spider Sex Ed
• The Nemesis Bird: Are we on the verge of a Snowy Owl irruption?
• The Rattling Crow: Great Tit nestlings respond adaptively to different antipredator alarm calls

Environment and biodiversity

• Vietnam is home to a newly-discovered species of ferret-badger.
• Several new species of butterflies from Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula were identified from collection specimens by DNA barcoding.
• The USDA is releasing a scale insect in Hawaii as a biocontrol for invasive strawberry guava (Psidium cattleianum).
• Two conservation organizations have offered a $500 reward for anyone who photographs the South Florida rainbow snake (Farancia erytrogramma seminola), which is believed to be extinct.
• The Brown Argus butterfly is shifting its range in response to climate change.
• A doctoral student is studying biodiversity at three coffee farms.
• This fall and winter, Monarchs face a tough migration to Mexico because of historic drought conditions in Texas and adjacent states.
• Since wolves were introduced to Yellowstone in 1995-1996, scientists have been studying how environmental changes affect the population.

Cloudy Days in Black and White

The last few days have had some long stretches with heavily overcast skies. This can create some challenges for photography, as the decreased amount of light leads to slower shutter speeds and less contrast. One option to create interesting photos is to make the sky as light as possible and convert to black and white. This emphasizes shapes and makes the photos look a little less gloomy. Here are a few of my attempts at this process.

This is probably my best image of a Turkey Vulture to date.

Ravens Communicating by Gestures

A new study find that ravens can gesture with their wings or bills to point out objects.

To see if ravens communicated using gestures, scientists investigated wild ravens in Cumberland Wildpark in Grünau, Austria. Each bird was individually tagged to help identify them.

The researchers saw the ravens use their beaks much like hands to show and offer items such as moss, stones and twigs. These gestures were mostly aimed at members of the opposite sex and often led those gestured at to look at the objects. The ravens then interacted with each other — for example, by touching or clasping their bills together, or by manipulating the item together. As such, these gestures might be used to gauge the interest of a potential partner or strengthen an already existing bond.

"Most exciting is how a species, which does not represent the prototype of a 'gesturer' because it has wings instead of hands, a strong beak and can fly, makes use of very sophisticated nonvocal signals," Pika told LiveScience.

Apparently, the ability to use gestures for communication is a trait rarely found outside of primates like humans and chimpanzees. It has been recorded among dogs that have been trained by humans, but not among other animals in the wild.

Louisiana Whooping Cranes Not Doing Well

Whooping Crane / Photo by Ryan Hagerty (USFWS)

Over the past year, U.S. and Canadian wildlife conservationists began an attempt to establish a third Whooping Crane population in Louisiana. (The others are a wild flock that breeds in Woods Buffalo National Park in Canada and winters in Aransas NWR in Texas and a reintroduced flock that migrates between Wisconsin and Florida.) So far, the birds have not fared well, with four of the ten birds dying of natural causes and another two being shot to death. Reintroduction is a long-term project, though, and having a third flock is important enough to keep it going despite the initial setback.

Prior to February’s reintroduction, the last time a wild whooping crane was seen in Louisiana was in 1950. The conversion of marsh habitat to farmland, destructive hunting practices and other factors led to the bird’s disappearance from the region.

But the Louisiana reintroduction has had strong backing from Salazar, U.S. President Barack Obama’s top conservation official, who described the whooping crane as “an iconic species” whose return to the state represented a “milestone moment” for international wildlife preservation.

The whooping crane’s population was down to just 22 in 1941, prompting a joint U.S.-Canada recovery effort that has become a global model for endangered-species conservation....

But the proposed Louisiana flock is considered crucial to eventually removing the species from North America’s endangered list because increasing the number of separate, self-sustaining populations — and diversifying the range of whooping crane habitats — is seen as the bird’s best defence against a catastrophic collapse from disease, an extreme weather event or other disasters.

Another 16 Whooping Cranes will be released at the same site in Louisiana next month. Hopefully this group will fare better.

Review: National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Sixth Edition

The National Geographic Society has refreshed its venerable Field Guide to the Birds of North America with a new revised edition. This sixth edition comes with substantial updates and enters a field guide market crowded with some great field guides and many more good ones. In this review, I will focus on what is new in the sixth edition and how it compares to another guide with painted illustrations that covers the same area, The Sibley Guide to Birds.

What is new in the sixth edition? There are 23 new species, which brings the total species covered up to 990. Over 300 painted illustrations (about one tenth of the total) have been added or revised. Range maps are updated to include new data and display migration ranges in addition to the breeding and wintering ranges. There is also an appendix of maps showing the ranges of subspecies for birds that have multiple forms. (My understanding is that both the migration ranges and subspecies maps are new for the sixth edition, but I do not have a copy of the fifth edition to check on this.) Taxonomy is also updated to reflect changes in the AOU Checklist through summer 2011. In the case of wood warblers, the scientific names are updated, but the ordering of species is not.* (I imagine it was easier to alter the text of the species accounts at the last minute than it would have been to reorder the illustration plates.) The plates were redesigned to make the illustrations less crowded, though to my eye, some plates still look rather crowded (especially among gulls and terns).

Harlequin Ducks from Field Guide to the Birds of North America

In comparison to The Sibley Guide, birds are posed more naturally, in the ways in which you might see them in the wild. Birds in the National Geographic guide look more lifelike, for the most part, and their colors seem more true to nature. Many birds are presented in a 3/4 view that shows the breast or back more clearly than in The Sibley Guide. Its smaller size makes it more portable than Sibley's guide for North America (though it is slightly larger than Sibley's regional guides). Despite its smaller size, the National Geographic guide manages to include more descriptive text per species.

The Sibley Guide retains some advantages of its own. Birds are posed more consistently so that you see each species from the same angles as related species, with which they are most likely to be confused. Sibley painted flight illustrations for every bird in the guide; this can make a difference for some situations. In some cases (like Redhead vs. Canvasback), Sibley does a better job of showing differences in shape. I also much prefer Sibley's illustrations of sparrows to those in the National Geographic guide.

Pink-footed Goose from Field Guide to the Birds of North America

The look and feel of this guide is very similar to Svensson et al.'s Birds of Europe, though it lacks some of the instructive text that makes that guide stand apart. I know some birders who still swore by older versions of the National Geographic guide long after the Sibley guide came out. After spending some time with this guide, I can see why. This is a fine resource to use as a primary field guide, particularly if you want one that covers all of North America. I could also see it being useful on cross-country trips, especially to areas where both eastern and western birds are both routine. Birders will probably want to have both National Geographic's Field Guide to the Birds of North America and The Sibley Guide to Birds on their bookshelves.

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This review is based on a copy provided to me by the publisher. The field guide is supplemented by an online birding site.

* That said, the Cerulean Warbler is referred to as Setophaga cerulea in the species account and Dendroica cerulea in the introduction.