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Alvaro Jaramillo
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"I'm not a taxonomist, but I play one on TV" is what came to mind when Steve mentioned he was not a taxonomist. I think a taxonomist is one who does taxonomy, and for years Steve you have been doing this, in your field guides and books and scientific papers dealing with the relationships of birds. So out of all of the stuff I read above, this is the part that stuck out. You do taxonomy Steve, doesn't that make you a taxonomist? Maybe not a professionally funded one? Like it or not you are one of "THEM" :-) Saludos and enjoy the tequila.
Open Mic: Never Mind the Bullock's - Taking Molecular Studies with a Grain of Salt
At the Mic: Steve N.G. Howell Steve is a senior international bird tour leader for WINGS and has written several books including A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America, Gulls of the Americas (with Jon Dunn), and most recently, Petrels, Shearwaters, and Albatrosses of North A...
Super job! A couple of points, in States/Provinces I think there is no need to divide them up, pile all together alphabetically. It is odd to have an alphabetical list and then have to go past "Z" to find British Columbia. I think in the long run this will make it easier for users.
Also why not use some of the categories popular in Surfbirds lists? In particular yard list...the one I really care about!! Maybe I missed it. Also are there country lists accessible, did I miss that? If this aims to be listing central then it should have more and wider categories, and I think this will also bring in interest and new members perhaps? Good stuff - I hope the feedback is useful. Alvaro.
The ABA presents Listing Central!
LISTING.ABA.ORG In the last couple years, the ABA has been making changes in the way we present our traditional offerings, the annual Big Day & List Report among them. Today we’re really excited to announce Listing Central, which will continue the legacy of the Big Day & List Report as well ...
To me the tricky one is bird 1, 2-3 look like pretty standard Pomarine based on bulk/shape, bill etc. Similarly 4 looks like a petite, narrow winged, small billed Long-tailed. Number one trips off the ID switches in my brain as a Long-tailed, not sure why. But the analytical part of my brain tells me it is a Pomarine - with that long bill, short tail and most important of all active outer primary molt in August. I would not expect to see primaries at this stage on a Long-tailed in the northern hemisphere, but I could be wrong. See also that all three (1-2-3) of the Pomarines are in molt, #4 (Long-tailed) is not. Cheers - Alvaro.
Jaeger ID
Steve Howell, in a recent comment to The ABA Blog (click here, and scroll waaay down to the extreme bottom) posted: “Basically, there are two kinds of birders—those who make mistakes and those who lie about it. I haven't misidentified a bird since the last time I went birding, yesterday, and t...
Ted - I am conducting a growing number of pelagic trips out of California (Half Moon Bay and Monterey Bay). Indeed county listing is a big deal here, and some of my trips have been San Francisco focused or San Mateo county focused to give some examples. Also on any pelagic trip we have lots of local folks interested in which county waters we are in. We use the principle of equidistance, and have have for a long time. Don Roberson thought about the topic and brought it to everyone's attention here many moons ago. Some counties get gobbled by others (Santa Cruz is one that comes to mind), but it is just the way it is. I don't think it causes any debate here. It would be like debating where the land based county border is, no one would do it. From my experience it is very easy to apply, I created county lines on google earth and have them on my GPS when I am on the boat to know roughly where they are. But then if we have a Hawaiian Petrel or Flesh-foot that we need to figure out, I take the coordinates, get home and measure it out on google earth in minutes. It is pretty easy to do, and entirely unambiguous. This year we had Hawaiian Petrel in San Mateo and San Francisco counties :-)
Open Mic: The Question of East Coast Pelagic Boundaries
Open Mic: Nate Dias Nate Dias, of Charleston, South Carolina, is SC's top lister (life list and big year), has been a pelagic birder since the 1980s, and has organized pelagic trips out of Charleston off and on since the early 1990s. His "day jobs" have included gigs as MIS Director for the Dem...
You know, this bird looks unusual for an Elegant Tern. The bill is thick and does not narrow in the typical way that Elegant Tern bills do. The face pattern appears odd as well, with such a big indent of white below the eye. The crest is also not as shaggy as typical. In every way that this bird is unlike a typical Elegant, it is more Royal Tern like. I think it would be worthwhile for the committee and birders watching it to assess whether it may be a hybrid Royal x something. In fact some Atlantic Elegants have been quite typical, but many are odd looking and suggest that they are in fact hybrids of some type. The other unusual thing is that from what I recall, that few if any Elegant Terns have the classic rose coloration on their underparts. Right now Elegants are nice and rosy, so why are the vagrants not rosy? It all strikes me as unusual, but keep in mind that any overexposure and you lose the rose color in a photo.
#ABARare - Elegant Tern - New Jersey
On September 2, Tom Boyle discovered an apparent Elegant Tern at the Sandy Hook Unit of the Gateway National Recreation Area, known more widely as Sandy Hook, in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Pending acceptance, this is a first state record for New Jersey. photos by Sam Galick, used with...
Post breeding dispersal refers to the process and behavior as a whole, not the individual history of the bird. So I would argue that a juvenile can be a post-breeding disperser, no problem. Alvaro.
Rare Bird Alert: June 29, 2012
The post-breeding dispersal season begins with a vengeance this week, as the extraordinary temperatures experiences across the majority of the continent seem to have instigated some expansion instincts among the usual suspects. And handful of expected, but unexpected, wading birds are doing thei...
For more subspecies info and discussion, see this:
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=168201
On Avian Subspecies: Buyer Beware? - Part 2
By Steve N.G. Howell Part 1 is here Part 2 Shortcomings of the Subspecies Concept Like any attempt to draw lines on natural processes, the subspecies concept is not perfect. Frequent criticisms of the subspecies concept have led some ornithologists to refine its definition to something...
Ted - A prof of mine at U of T was a Vireo fanatic, Jon Barlow. He told me that he had areas he was looking at in Alberta where eastern and western Warbling Vireos bred side by side. Jon was good at doing field work, not so good at publishing. He was a collector (of all sorts of things, including punk and garage bands on vinyl) as such he collected tons of audio material on vireos. Unfortunately he passed away a couple of years ago and much of his knowledge on vireos passed away with him. However, I was able with very little finagling to have his audio material be sent to Cornell, so it is there now and would be ripe for a grad student to go through and get all sorts of stuff from it! So Jon was convinced that these were biological species as he said they acted like that on the breeding grounds. I think that you in Colorado are best placed to figure out some of this stuff, as here or in the east we have one or the other. I have always wondered exactly what it is that makes the songs different, I hear the differences, but wonder if it is all in my imagination. Thanks Nathan for clarifying exactly what to listen for. How about the scolds, I bet they are different n'est pa? I recall that the DNA fingerprinting work found something like 4% mtDNA difference between eastern and western Warbling Vireo populations, something like that anyway. Alvaro.
Pieplow Made Me Do It
A few evenings ago my kids and I were exploring Walden Ponds, a bucolic birding spot in Boulder County, Colorado. We were in the buggy back end of this sprawling complex of marshes and woodlots, listening to the sounds of early summer in the foothills of the Rockies: twittering Violet-green Swal...
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