Rare Arctic bird leaves fans flying

Visit to coast doesn't end well for Ross's gull 

 

By Carina Woudenberg

Jan 18, 2017

Bird enthusiasts near and far were treated to a visit last week from an elusive gull that appeared Thursday in a Pillar Point Harbor parking lot — far from its breeding grounds in the high Arctic.

Known as the Ross’s gull, this special bird is often at the top of the “must see” list for many in the know. Sightings are infrequent and that rarity adds to its allure.

Typically, Ross’s gulls don’t venture too far from their icy tundra of a habitat in the most unpopulated northern reaches of the high latitudes, experts say. Sometimes the bird will venture as far south as Alaska for the winter and while sightings have been reported in Canada and sometimes on the East Coast of the United States, it’s really unusual to see one come as far south as California.

In fact, last week’s sighting was only the second ever reported in the state. The gull was also spotted at Salton Sea in 2006.

The bird is smaller than many other gulls — lending it a sort of delicate presence that is only enhanced by its blush pink chest and necklace-like markings around its neck. To the untrained eye, the bird could be mistaken as a pigeon, save for its webbed feet, perhaps.

The bird has enjoyed celebratory status since the mid-1970s. It was considered one of the first rare birds discovered when it was found in Massachusetts in 1975, said local birding expert Alvaro Jaramillo.

“At that time they considered it the bird of the century,” he said.

In the Coastside’s first appearance, discoverer Don Pendleton spotted it just before 2 p.m. on Thursday near the RV lot by Pillar Point Harbor. Pendleton had a hunch that he had landed on something special. He called up fellow bird enthusiast and El Granada resident Donna Pomeroy and she rushed over.

Together, the pair identified the bird as the elusive gull. Pomeroy took photos to make sure the sighting would be documented and they each called and sent out messages to more of their bird-loving friends.

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'A Waxwing Winter': Soaring numbers of rare bird species

An unusual species of bird is enjoying a winter vacation here in the UK, according to the RSPB charity. 

Waxwings are a small starling-sized bird with a prominent crest and colourful markings. They only travel here from Siberia and northern Scandinavia when they experience a particularly harsh winter or if there is a shortage of food.

So many have been spotted this year, the RSPB has described it as a ‘Waxwing Winter’.

They're moving across the country from east to west and they're devouring trees full of berries .... Only ever 3 or 4 years do these birds come in large numbers.

The wildlife conversation charity hopes the rare winter visitor will encourage more people to take part in its annual Big Birdwatch, the world’s biggest wildlife survey.

Children across the country have already been getting involved in the Big Schools' Birdwatch. Others can join in on the Big Garden Birdwatch Weekend - 28 - 30 January. Those taking part are asked to spend an hour counting the birds in their garden or local green space.

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Conservation of ivory-billed woodpecker's habitat urged

Footage of what appears to be the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker calls conservation rules into question 

Date: January 24, 2017
Source: Elsevier

The Ivory-billed Woodpecker's habitat should be protected despite the lack of definitive evidence of this species' existence, according to a new study published in Heliyon. Currently, bird conservation efforts rely on indisputable photographic evidence, which according to the new study could take many years to obtain, by which time it may be too late.

The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is an iconic species that is symbolic of the wilderness of North America. Threatened by habitat destruction and other factors, it has been declared extinct only to be rediscovered several times. In the absence of indisputable evidence, the discourse on the bird's existence has been dominated by opinion. After ten sightings during an eight-year search, Dr. Michael Collins of the Naval Research Laboratory in the US believes the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is alive -- but the bird needs our conservation efforts now, regardless of the proof, if it is to survive.

The birds live in vast swamp forests in North America -- Florida and Louisiana, in particular -- which are difficult and dangerous to access: with alligators, wild boars and venomous snakes, along with the risk of being accidentally shot in areas that are heavily hunted, most bird watchers will never visit the Ivory-billed Woodpecker's habitat. What's more, the thick vegetation means it is only possible to see for a few meters -- a challenge for searching areas of more than 100 square kilometers.

Ivory-billed Woodpeckers are highly elusive and wary of human contact, hiding away and keeping quiet at the first sign of threat. Using these behavioral and habitat factors, Dr. Collins has been able to approximately quantify the elusiveness of this bird, concluding that it would take significantly longer to photograph the Ivory-billed Woodpecker than similarly rare North American birds.

The analysis suggests we need to take a more pragmatic approach to documenting this species while it may still be possible to save it from extinction. In the past, sightings have led to intensive efforts to obtain a photo. But as well as being expensive, inefficient and ineffective, this approach could interfere with the birds' nesting attempts.

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Gull decline on Scottish island linked to decline in fishing discards

Date: February 1, 2017

Source: Taylor & Francis Group


The research, published in the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) journal Bird Study, looked at the breeding populations of three species of large gull; Herring Gull, Great Black-backed Gull and Lesser Black-backed Gull on the Hebridean island of Canna, and the relationship between these gull populations and the fall in the quantity of fish landed in the nearby harbour of Mallaig.

Between 1985 and 2000 an annual average of 13,726 tonnes of fish was landed in Mallaig. However, between 2007 and 2014 this had fallen to 4,456 tonnes. This has apparently had a profound effect on the Canna gull population. The number of breeding pairs of Herring Gulls peaked at 1,525 in 1988, Great Black-backed Gulls reached 90 pairs around the same time and the highest number of Lesser Black-backed Gulls was recorded at 63 pairs.

At the latest count around 130 pairs of gulls bred on Canna in total, comprising of up to 95 pairs of Herring Gulls, 18 pairs of Great Black-backed Gulls and 13 pairs of Lesser Black-backed Gulls. This population decline has also been associated with low breeding success, with only a small number of chicks successfully fledging in more recent years.

Simon Foster, lead author on the paper, said "The Canna seabird study is one of the longest running annual studies in the world. It is an enormous privilege to be part of the team of highly skilled, dedicated volunteers who have been collecting the data for over 48 years. This has allowed us to track the changing fortunes of seabirds. The gull data are interesting -- if you look over a short time period you can see large changes, however over a longer period and using anecdotal information from the 1930s it becomes apparent that Canna gulls may be returning to more normal, albeit lower levels."

 

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Hitting the right notes

Biologist studied how songbirds in remote areas of Costa Rica learn new duets when paired with a new mate 

Date: January 30, 2017 
Source: University of Miami

Karla Rivera-Cáceres, a University of Miami biology graduate student, plays a harmonious duet of singing wrens from a recording she captured out in the field during a recent trip to Costa Rica.

"The song sounds like one bird but if you listen closely, it's a male and female wren singing a duet in perfect unison," said Rivera-Cáceres.

Along with songbirds, many animal species perform duets, an uncommon vocal interaction that can occur between mated or unmated species, such as frogs and crickets. But the coupled wrens Rivera-Cáceres recorded in Costa Rica sing alternating phrases, or parts, of the song so smoothly and with such complexity and fast tempo that the untrained ear may hear just a single bird.

For years, Rivera-Cáceres studied the "duet codes" (non-random association of song types) of paired wrens and wondered if the ability to perform their complex and seamless music was a skill the birds were born with or learned during juvenile or adult stages of life. Now, after two months of intense listening in Costa Rica, she knows that they can learn new songs with new partners, even as adults. She says the newly learned songs are akin to prenuptial agreements.



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Bird lovers help scientists discover secrets of beak evolution

Date: February 2, 2017

Source: University of Sheffield

Citizen scientists and bird lovers across the world have helped researchers to uncover new secrets about the evolution of bird's beaks over time in a ground-breaking study.

Researchers at the University of Sheffield asked the public to help measure beak shapes from more than 2000 bird species which have been 3D scanned from specimens at the Natural History Museum and the Manchester Museum.

Using the crowdsourced data, the team were able show that the diversity of bird beaks expanded early in their evolutionary history. The most unusual beak shapes often involved periods of exceptionally fast evolutionary change.

However, once extremes are reached, the changes to bird beaks over time became much smaller as birds filled ever-narrower evolutionary niches.

There are some examples -- such as birds who have evolved in comparative isolation on remote islands such as the Galapagos and the Hawaiian archipelago -- who have continued to evolve rapidly.

Gavin Thomas, the project lead from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, said: "The shape of a bird's beak is an important indicator of the food it eats and the way it forages -- its ecological niche.



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Is Australia the birthplace of birds nests?

February 1, 2017

The most common birds nests found today had their birthplace in Australia, and these nests may be key to many of our birds' success, according to new research from Macquarie University, released today.

The research, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, looked at the birds nests of passerines – common song birds which include lyrebirds, fairy-wrens and magpies – and found the ubiquitous 'open' cup nest evolved in Australia multiple times more than 40 million years ago.

The birds resulting from these open cup nesting lineages gave rise to many of the worlds' birds today, and this study suggests that the open nests were perhaps a key to their success – measured both in terms of how many species they evolved into, and how far they have spread around the world.

"Among the passerine birds – which make up 60 per cent of the worlds birds – most species today build open cup-shaped nests, and only a minority build more elaborate roofed structures. The study shows that open cup nests evolved multiple times independently during early passerine evolution on the Australian continent, eventually becoming the most common nest type across the world today," said study co-author Professor Simon Griffith from the Department of Biological Sciences.

The fact that these common open cupped nests appear to have arisen several times in different lineages, but around the same time, suggests that this was driven by the emergence of new predators or parasites or with changing climates and habitats.

"Australia is host to the ancestors of today's common birds around the world, and the open cup nest that originated here is one of the innovations that perhaps has made them so successful," said Professor Griffith.

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