Archive for November, 2011
Jon Dunn on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s very sad, but the latest report of the ABA Checklist Committee probably sums it up: there’s no evidence whatsoever that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker survives.
And here’s what the new, sixth edition of the National Geographic Field Guide has to say:
…intense searching subsequently [after the April 2005 announcement] has yet to produce more documentation, [a circumstance] seemingly not possible in an age when most rarities discovered are photographed and those images are posted on the Internet the same day…. sightings that lack provable evidence more likely represent wishful thinking.
The seventh edition will see that fine bird relegated to the appendix shared by Eskimo Curlew, Bachman’s Warbler, and Labrador Duck.
Oh, to have been born 150 years earlier! No, never mind.
Over at the ABA Blog Today
Posted by: | CommentsA brief, informal review of the new NatGeo.
My advice: buy it!
Of Course They Do
Posted by: | CommentsYears ago, I told a Tucson Audubon group about swimming Rock Pigeons–and they didn’t believe me. Fortunately, we were birding the shores of Kennedy Lake at the time, and hardly had the eyebrows been lowered when a small flock of RoPi’s flew in and landed on the water. They believed me.
I think every birder has seen pigeons paddling around at one point or another, but to my continual surprise, the old canard about terns’ not swimming still rears its nonsensical head with some regularity.
They may, like feathered scriveners, prefer not to, but they certainly do a lot of it. These Forster’s Terns were part of a flock of 110 far out on the waters of Barnegat Bay yesterday noon.
(Click on the picture to enlarge it so you can see more than just the Bonaparte’s Gull passing through.)
What surprised me was not the natatory sternids, but rather the fact that they stayed out there for the entire hour I was facing that direction, flushed repeatedly by boats, harried by Parasitic Jaegers, but each time settling back onto the cold water.
Watch for this behavior next time you’re out in ternland. But check carefully to make sure they’re not just pigeons.
Great Deal from the ABA!
Posted by: | CommentsJoin today or tomorrow and get $10 off your 2012 membership in the American Birding Association!
Be part of North America’s* only organization for birders.
* North America is a big place, so there’s room for all of us!
The Purple Patch
Posted by: | Comments
Purple Sandpipers, those most beautiful of Arctic scolopacids, winter in small numbers all up and down the New Jersey shore, from Sandy Hook to Cape May. But nowhere are they as common or as confiding as at Barnegat Light.
Normally it’s an icy cold day when we’re out on the half-mile-long jetty, but today was exceptional: bright, warm, and calm. Timorous as I normally am, even I risked the walk out on the wet rocks this morning.
And as always, it was well worth the clambering. At least some–17, to be exact–of the winter’s Harlequin Ducks were in; this traditional flock is the southernmost on any Atlantic Coast, only individual stragglers making it as far south as Virginia and the Carolinas.
Still a novum, the flock of Common Eiders numbered well over 100 today.
I remember when this was the rarer of the eiders in New Jersey. Today, though, it took me considerable time and effort to pull a female King Eider out of the flock as it bounced in the surf; twenty years ago, that would have been the “less good” of the two species, but it’s now outnumbered everywhere on the Jersey shore by its abundant southern relative. It felt a bit like an uncharacteristically warm day on Cape Ann today, with the large flock of Commons attended by Surf, White-winged, and Black Scoters, Long-tailed Ducks, and Red-breasted Mergansers.
Even better than the waterfowl, though, was the jaeger show. There were hordes of Bonaparte’s Gulls
and Forster’s Terns
on the ocean, up the inlet, and in Barnegat Bay, and Parasitic Jaegers–at least four individuals, likely more–were having a field day. It’s hard to imagine anything more acrobatic than a Parasit in full chase, twisting and turning and easily outmaneuvering what are usually far the most nimble birds of the shore. Tough day to be a small larid, I suppose, but the spectacle was once in a lifetime: until it’s repeated tomorrow, of course!
The most beautiful Purple Sandpiper photograph ever made.
