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Summer/1982
Volume 1 Number 1

Editorial Board

Jill Crane, Editor
Linda G. Hooper, Art Director
Charles R. Smith, Technical Editor
Donna J. R Crossman, Editorial Assistant
Richard E. Bonney, Jr., Contributing Editor

LABORATORY STAFF

Charles Walcott, Executive Director
Tom J. Cade, Director, Raptor Research

Program

James L. Gulledge, Library of Natural

Sounds

Linda G. Hooper, Administration
Helen S. Lapham, Library
Thomas S. Li twin, Seatuck Research

Program

Donald A. McCrimmon, Jr., Cooperative

Research Program
Charles R. Smith, Public Education

Administrative Board

James W. Spencer, Chairman
Morton S. Adams
John Frederick Barry
Benjamin P. Burtt
William G. Conway
Alan Crawford, Jr.

Robert G. Engel
Paul J. Franz, Jr.

Kenneth E. Hill
Imogene P. Johnson
Hamilton F. Kean
Josephine W. KixMiller
T. Spencer Knight
John D. Leggett, Jr.

Harold Mayfield
Donald S. McChesney
G. Michael McHugh
Edwin H. Morgens
Olin Sewell Pettingill, Jr.
Chandler S. Robbins
Lester L. Short
Alexander Sprunt IV
R. Eliot Stauffer
Peter Stettenheim
Charles E. Treman, Jr.
Charles D. Webster
Charles Walcott, Ex Officio

Reprints available on request. © 1982 Cornell University
Laboratory of Ornithology.

FRONT COVERS. Outside—Puffins at Great Island, Newfoundland.
Photograph by Stephen Kress.

Inside—A shorebird’s time is divided almost equally between earth and sky.
Photograph by M. Hopiak.

BACK COVER. Outside—A long-eared owl is quick to defend its nest by
assuming a menacing posture. Photograph by J. Hough.

THE LMNG BIRD

QUARTERLY

4 Reproductive Success in Songbirds

Raymond J. O’Connor

8 The Fledging of ICF: 10 Years of Progress

Alice D'Alessio

II The Return of the Atlantic Puffin to Eastern Egg Rock, Maine

Stephen W Kress

15 The Crow’s Nest

Selections from our bookshop

16 Portrait of a Young Cuckoo

George Miksch Sutton

18 Research & Review

Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

19 News & Notes

20 Extinction. It’s Forever.

21 An Amiable Giant: Fuertes’s Gorilla

Dian Fossey

WELCOME...

Dear Member:

I’m delighted to introduce the first issue of The Living Bird Quarterly. I truly hope
you enjoy this magazine from the Laboratory of Ornithology. It will be coming to
you four times each year as a benefit of your membership in the Laboratory.

Our new quarterly follows a long line of Living Birds going back to 1962. At that
time Dr. Sewall Pettingill, then director of the Laboratory, produced the first Living
Bird as an annual publication for members. Sewall Pettingill had a special mission
in mind for TLB which he described in the Laboratory’s Newsletter that year: “The
Living Bird will present varied articles, each significant and stimulating. The
journal writes neither down to the amateur ornithologist, bird watcher or bird
hobbyist, nor writes up to the professional ornithologist or biologist.” We intend
for our new quarterly to continue in the tradition established by Dr. Pettingill 20
years ago.

The concept of promoting and encouraging the study of living birds is rooted
deeply in the mission of the Laboratory. It is embodied in the very name of our
publication. Now more than ever we must press forward with our studies of living
birds, especially in the face of the increasing demands human populations are
imposing upon our environment.

To inform, excite, and challenge you, we are planning articles on virtually every
aspect of bird study: behavior, habitat studies, conservation, art, and the latest
updates on ornithological research here and around the world.

As members of the Laboratory, this is your magazine. We welcome comments,
suggestions, and ideas for articles. We know that we can make this a publication for
all who are interested in the study of living birds.

Sincerely,

Charles Walcott, Executive Director

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by Raymond J. O’Connor

Birds lead busy lives. Among other
things they must learn to fly, find food,
build a nest, defend themselves, sleep,
grow and reproduce. Like the rest of us
they have a finite amount of time and
energy to spend on each of life’s proces¬
ses. One of the birds’ most necessary
functions is reproduction. No matter
how vigorous and active a bird is during
its lifetime it has not really succeeded
unless it leaves descendants to carry on
its genes. Because a bird frequently
lives on the edge of survival, it some¬
times has to choose between saving its
own life and saving its offspring. Its
lifetime reproductive success is deter¬
mined by a balance between reproduc¬
tive effort and its own risk of mortality,
sometimes putting more effort into
producing eggs, sometimes putting
more effort into simply staying alive.

Success is not determined solely by
how many eggs it lays in a single clutch.
Rather, it is the totality of its breeding
efforts over a lifetime, irrespective of
whether it rears one enormous clutch
and dies immediately afterwards or it
achieves moderate success with many
smaller clutches spread over its
lifetime. The whys and wherefores of
these strategies have long fascinated
ornithologists. Here 1 review some of
the more important factors which de¬
termine how successful a bird is at fledg¬
ing independent young from its eggs.

Song thrush provides nestlings with glistening
earthworms

Clutch Size

What determines the number of eggs a
bird lays? For many years it was thought
that clutch size equaled the number of
young a pair could feed during the
nestling period. This idea — named
Lack’s hypothesis after the English or¬
nithologist Dr. David Lack who pro¬
posed it — remains at the core of our
understanding of clutch size in the
Temperate Zone. The amount of nutri¬
ents and energy a nestling requires
limits the extent to which the parents
can take on yet another nestling to
rear; more young require more feeding
and if the parents are already working
flat out, the extra young can be fed only
at the cost of poorer growth of the exist¬
ing young.

One way to test the hypothesis is to
add extra eggs or nestlings to a nest. If
the adults can rear the young from the
experimentally enlarged brood they
cannot have been operating at their
foraging limit. Experiments of this type
have been conducted and have shown
that, in general, the experimentally en¬
larged clutches or broods produced no
more fledglings than do normal-sized
broods. In one species, the red-winged
blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus, the
adults succeeded in rearing the en¬
larged brood to fledging by increasing
the rate they collected food, but even
so, the nestlings each received less food
and they fledged at lighter weights.
Such underweight fledglings are less
likely to survive to enter the breeding
population the following year, hence
the adults are better off with the
normal-sized broods which they can
feed adequately.

Adjusting the number of eggs in the
clutch allows a bird to match its repro¬
ductive effort to its food-collecting
abilities, but only roughly, particularly
among species with small clutches. For
example, a European blue tit, Parus
caerukus, laying 10 eggs annually, has
the option of a 10 percent increase in
clutch size by adding one egg if a par¬
ticular year looks 10 percent better
than normal. However, for the same
improvement in food level a song
thrush, Turdus ericetorum, laying four
eggs, must choose between a minimum
25 percent increase (one extra egg) or
no increase at all. Thus, reliance on
changes in clutch size can result in
underuse of available food.

Where such mismatches are regular,
the young’s rate of growth may evolve
to take up the slack: by reducing
growth rates slightly a species which
could raise optimally, say, 2.8 young,
can afford to lay three eggs and raise
them more slowly. In fact, growth rates
do vary in just the way expected, be¬
ing very variable among species with
clutches of two eggs and progressively
less variable among species with larger
clutches.

Insurance Schemes

How does a bird determine if it has
enough food to feed the clutch? After
all, the clutch has to be completed
three or more weeks before the nest¬
lings are large enough to run into food
shortages. If over the years a female lays
a clutch appropriate to the average
brood, she can expect to rear too many
young in half of her broods and too few
in the other half. Playing safe, by laying
the minimum number, wastes food she
could have exploited, while laying the
maximum number risks the loss of the
whole brood through starvation.

Two strategies seem to be in use by
songbirds to meet this problem. Some
species seem very good at predicting
food levels. Whether they do this by
responding to an environmental cue to
which their prey also responds, or
whether they can directly assess the
amount of food available, we do not
know. They do get it right, however,
and wind up with about the correct
number of nestlings for the food abun¬
dance. Other species lack this ability,
apparently because they depend on
feeding their young on sudden flushes
of rather short-lived and unpredictable
prey. Such species use a strategy termed
brood reduction. Not knowing how
many young they eventually can rear,
they lay an excess of eggs, but build in
adaptations that allow them quickly to
starve out any excess nestlings until the
brood size matches the food supply.

These adaptations are directed to
setting up a competitive hierarchy
within the brood and may include: (1)
starting incubation before clutch com¬
pletion, so that early eggs hatch early
and start to grow sooner, a habit wide¬
spread among birds of prey, such as
great horned owls. Bubo virginianus;
(2) a gradiant in egg size, where large
early eggs hatch into large chicks and

Photos by David Hosking

The Living Bird Quarterly 5

Blue tit flies from its nesting hole with a faecal sac in its bill to keep the nest clean

small late eggs into small chicks, as in
the European swift, Apus apus, and
many gulls; (3) fast growth so that early
chicks quickly magnify their advantage
over later-hatching siblings, a feature
demonstrated in house sparrows. Passer
domesticus, and in several species of
raptors and herons.

The strongest young can then secure
parental attention by pushing juniors
aside. Parents feed the largest chick
selectively until it is satisfied, then they
feed the next largest, and so on. In this
way the later-hatched chicks get little
or no food in conditions of scarcity and
quickly starve to death.

The Time of Laying

Once they know how many eggs to lay,
food-limited species should time their
laying to have young in the nest when
food for the nestlings is at its
maximum. However, not all birds lay at
that optimum time of year. Some factor
must be acting that stops these indi¬
viduals from breeding earlier than they
do. One such influence is likely to be
the seasonal availability of food for
laying females at the time of egg
formation.

To see how this works, consider a
female songbird faced with the ap¬

proaching breeding season. The low
temperatures, short days, and scarce
food resources of winter have necessi¬
tated that all her energies be devoted to
finding enough food to stay alive. As
spring develops, however, tempera¬
tures rise, the days lengthen, the insect
prey begins to appear once more and
the female can meet her own energy
and nutrient requirements more easily.
She can devote resources to breeding
activities, first to gonadal growth to
enter breeding condition, then to find¬
ing a mate and territory, and finally to
producing eggs.

Small surpluses of energy suffice for
the earlier activities but such is not the
case with egg formation. For many
small songbirds the eventual clutch
may weigh as much or more than the
female’s own body. To take in the quan¬
tities of nutrients required for this task
is obviously difficult when food is
scarce in early spring. Later, when
warmer weather requires lower expend¬
itures of the female’s own metabolism
and when food is more abundant, the
task is easier.

But for many songbirds the longer
the female delays laying, the poorer the
rearing conditions. Even a three or four
week delay makes a difference. In great

tits, Parus major, in English oakwoods,
the young are reared on the seasonal
hatch of defoliating caterpillars. Be¬
cause these insects pupate in the
ground, they become steadily scarcer as
the season progresses. In some species
of hummingbirds a similar scarcity
arises over nectar production in
flowers.

How can a pair accommodate to this
dilemma? One evolutionary adaptation
requires the male to assist the female in
gathering enough food for her to form
her daily egg. This is called courtship
feeding. The female frequently inter¬
rupts her own foraging to solicit food
from the male, using begging postures
and calls very much like those seen
later in the fledglings. In response, the
male departs and returns with a cater¬
pillar or other food item which he pre¬
sents to his mate. Originally thought to
promote a stronger pair bond, such
courtship behavior serves an important
energetic role. The food brought to the
female may approach in energy and nu¬
trient content the amount she needs to
lay an egg that day. In the great tit
about one-third of the female’s daily
intake is provided by the male.

If the timing of the breeding season is
really determined by egg-laying re¬
quirements, one would expect an ear¬
lier breeding season if food were to be¬
come available earlier. The Swedish
ornithologist, Hans Kallender, con¬
ducted just such an experiment, by
providing mealworms within the ter¬
ritories of great tits ahead of and during
the laying period. He found that
females with access to such food laid up
to a week earlier than did females with¬
out such access. A similar result was
obtained in Scotland when carrion
crows, Corvus corone, were given
winter food supplements. One can
conclude that the laying date is deter¬
mined not by the abundance of nestling
food but by the availability of food for
egg formation.

One fascinating consequence of this
phenomenon is that small birds can
breed earlier than large ones. Because a
small bird needs less total energy for its
own maintenance than does a larger
one, it can start diverting energy and
nutrients towards egg formation earlier.
This is shown strikingly by the lay¬
ing dates of titmice in Britain: the
tiny long-tailed tit, Aegithalus longi'
caudatus, breeds an average of 15 days
before the heavier great tit. This effect

6 The Living Bird Quarterly

also occurs intraspecifically, for within
the great tit population in Wytham
Woods near (Oxford, England, small-
bodied females lay significantly earlier
than larger ones. That this is a direct
consequence of energy expenditures on
self-maintenance is suggested by the
finding that females nesting in well-
insulated nest-boxes lay significantly
earlier than females in boxes with
poorer insulation.

Why do great tit females not evolve a
smaller size to allow them to breed ear¬
lier and therefore more successfully?
One reason is that selection is not de¬
termined solely by reproductive success
in any single breeding season. Females
also have to survive the winter and,
because of the nature of their food sup¬
ply at that time of year, must do so in
flocks. In the wintering flocks larger
birds are dominant over smaller ones
and often supplant them from food
finds. In such conditions the smaller
females are less likely to survive the
winter. This disadvantage certainly
balances any advantage being smaller
carries in terms of breeding earlier.

Reproductive Commitment
and Survival

The notion that reproduction and sur¬
vival are antagonistic, with trade-offs
of one for the other, is a recent but very
important one. A bird can increase its
chances of success with its current re¬
productive attempt by investing more
heavily in it, but in doing so it reduces
its chances of success with future at¬
tempts. Species that produce a large
number of eggs in a single clutch in¬
crease their output of young but do so at
the expense of their own survival.
Other species produce fewer eggs per
clutch but live longer and so are likely
to produce more eggs over their
lifetime. Another point worth noting is
that those species that produce eggs in
several clutches during a single breed¬
ing season survive better than those
producing one clutch containing the
same total of eggs.

These trade-offs between survival
and reproductive efforts allow some
predictions as to how parent birds
should behave. For example, a young
bird breeding for the first time has a
lifetime of breeding attempts before it
and should not jeopardize its future for
the sake of its first clutch and brood.
An older bird, on the other hand, has
fewer future breeding attempts and

therefore can take more risks with its
own life in the current attempt. One
thus arrives at the unexpected (for hu¬
mans) prediction that the young should
be cautious and the old more reckless.
This does indeed seem to be the case,
with young birds often laying only a
small clutch and abandoning it to risks
relatively readily. Older birds generally
lay larger clutches, feed the young more
intensively, and defend them more vig¬
orously against predators. (Of course,
these effects might be due to experi¬
ence and not reproductive success.)

One strong piece of evidence that
risk-taking and reproductive success
are traded within an individual species
comes from Dr. David Bryant of the
University of Stirling, Scotland, in his
study of house martins, Delichon urbica.
This migrant species builds closed mud
nests under the eaves of tall buildings
and feeds the young on insects takeri in
flight from foraging sites near the nest.
The first broods are normally in the
nest in late June and early July, when
aphids are especially numerous in the
aeroplankton. But if a second clutch is
laid, the young hatch when aphids are
scarcer, and larger, more mobile insect
prey must be pursued. Even though
young from the first brood may assist in
feeding the second brood, conditions
are difficult and the adults, especially
the females, may lose weight. Dr.

Bryant has shown that those females
rearing two clutches a season have
slightly poorer lifetime success than
those attempting only one brood
per season but surviving to breed
more often.

For a small songbird, therefore, re¬
productive success is a tricky business,
the balance between knowing when to
save one’s own life and when to risk it
on behalf of the young. The cautious
bird may live long but leaves few de¬
scendants, while a bird that produces
too many eggs or defends them too
closely does not live to see them fledge.
Yet the facts speak for themselves: most
birds do produce just that number of
young that human biologists and their
computers judge mathematically as
being most productive—truly a re¬
markable testament to the power of
natural selection.

FURTHER READING

Krebs, ]. R. and N. B. Davis. Behavioural Ecol¬
ogy: an evolutionary approach. Sinauer As¬
sociates, Inc. Sunderland, Mass. 1978.
Murton, R. K. andN. J. Westwood. Avian Breed¬
ing Cycles. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 1977.
O’Connor, R. J. “Energetics of reproduction in
birds.” Proceedings, 17th International Or¬
nithological Congress. 1980.

THE AUTHOR

Dr. Raymond J. O’Connor is director of the
British Trust for Ornithology.

Teleonomically Speaking

We speak of birds having “strategies” as
if they consciously determined their
own behavior. Of course, birds do not
plan to “maximize their reproductive
output” but we have fallen into the
habit of referring to them as if they do.
This habit is really a kind of shorthand
that biologists and ornithologists use,
and it is so pervasive that it even has a
name. It is called teleonomy.

Teleonomy makes evolution seem as
if it were ruled by an overall purpose or
design, as if the animals themselves had
some say in its direction. Actually birds
and all other species have evolved as a
result of the action of many natural
forces, such as weather, predation, and
disease. So when we speak of a songbird
having reproductive strategies we
mean: what assemblage of characteris¬
tics have been observed, which ones
have been shaped over many genera¬

tions by the process of natural selec¬
tion, and have allowed this bird to sur¬
vive? What is it about its shape, size,
color, behavior, or distribution that has
contributed to its ability to survive, re¬
produce, and pass on its genes? Why
has this individual survived to repro¬
duce, while that one has perished?
Flow have species responded and
adapted to their environments over the
millennia? We do not mean to imply
that foresight and reasoning were
called for on the part of the individ¬
ual bird.

In his book. This View of Life—The
World of an Evolutionist, George
Gaylord Simpson relates that biologists
speak teleonomically when they are
trying to answer the how and why of
the events they observe, and these are
some of the most intriguing questions
in nature.

The Living Bird Quarterly 7

The Fledging of ICF: 10 Years of Progress

by Alice D’Alessio

There is irony in the struggle for survi¬
val of the crane. Throughout history it
has been revered in many cultures as
the symbol of long life and good for¬
tune. Today, of the 15 species of cranes,
seven are severely endangered. After
60 million years on this earth, the
cranes’ own good fortune seems at an
end. However, despite the plundering
of their numbers in their native India,
and the disappearance of their habitat
in China and elsewhere, the crane
population flourishes in the unlikely
setting of Baraboo, Wisconsin.

In 1972, while George Archibald
was completing his Ph.D. on crane be¬
havior at the Laboratory of Ornithol¬
ogy at Cornell, he met Ron Sauey, who
was beginning his graduate research on
the Siberian crane, Grus leucogeranus.
Their concern over the plight of the
great birds spurred them to establish a
special foundation dedicated to the
preservation of cranes. They selected
Baraboo as the home of the new con¬
servation center, the International
Crane Foundation.

In the beginning there was little
more on the converted horse farm than
a lonely pair of sandhill cranes, Grus
canadensis, and plenty of dedication.
But through field research and discus¬
sions with other experts, George and
Ron learned what had to be done. The
ICF program would include five areas:

(1) research, both in the field and at
the foundation; (2) habitat conserva¬
tion; (3) breeding of captive cranes; (4)
restocking, after preservation of an area
is assured; and (5) public education.

Since some species, such as the Sibe¬
rian crane and the red-crowned crane,
Grus japonensis, had already declined to
a critical level, captive propagation was
a first priority of the young foundation.
A “species bank” of endangered cranes
would guard against extinction.
George and Ron contacted zoos and
wildlife centers all over the world re¬
questing birds on special breeding loan
agreements.

And the birds started to arrive—from
the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, Busch
Gardens in Tampa, from the Honolulu
Zoo, from San Antonio, and Tokyo’s
Ueno Zoo, from Milwaukee Zoo, and
the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
in Maryland. The inventory grew. Six
European or common cranes, Grus
grus, arrived as eggs from Sweden. Six
brolgas, Grus rubicunda, came from
Australia after George received permis¬
sion from the Australian government
to capture the elusive creatures in the
“outback.” By 1977, 14 of the 15
species were represented at ICF. Only
the black-necked crane, Grus nigricol-
Us, was missing.

Summer of 1975 was a milestone for
the young organization. In July, a pair
of bedraggled chicks pulled free of their

shells and became the first cranes laid,
incubated and hatched at ICF. “Tan-
cho” and “Tsuru” were also the first
red-crowned cranes ever hatched in the
United States. No more than 300 were
known to exist in the wild. The follow¬
ing summer five more of this species
hatched, as well as offspring from four
other species.

With the breeding program off to a
good start, George and Ron headed for
countries where the birds were most
endangered to continue their research
and diplomacy. George flew to Korea,
where 1,000 white-naped cranes, Grus
vipio, and several red-crowned cranes
had been counted in the Han River
Estuary at the western edge of the De¬
militarized Zone (DMZ). George pro¬
posed to the South Korean government
that the vast marsh be made into a
bird preserve. His appeal was successful
and today this area teems with wild
waterfowl.

In the interior of the mine-studded
DMZ, George counted more than 30
red-crowned cranes, and suggested that
the North and South Koreans cooper¬
ate in feeding the beautiful birds.

“Since these birds symbolize good
fortune to North and South Koreans
alike, they seemed to be perfect sub¬
jects for cooperation,” said George.
Amazingly, the two hostile camps
agreed, and a DMZ crane feeding sta¬
tion was established.

8 The Living Bird Quarterly

Brownie and Lindsay are the first Australian
brolgas produced in North America

George also made aerial surveys in
northern Japan, where he discovered a
population of red-crowned cranes nest¬
ing in the Hokkaido marshes. The birds
had previously been thought to migrate
to mainland China for breeding. Since
the marshes were about to be drained
and developed, the situation was criti¬
cal. George gathered local support and
established a Japanese branch of IGF,
with the goal of enlisting businesses to
sponsor wetland acreage for the cranes.
This campaign, still being fought with
agonizingly slow progress, highlights
the ultimate question; can humans and
cranes live side by side?

While George fought for the cranes
in East Asia, Ron was completing his
thesis research on Siberian cranes. He
visited their wintering grounds in India
and Iran, huddling in marshes before
dawn to observe feeding habitat and to
trace migration routes. He also made a
point of establishing contacts with
local scientists and wildlife lovers, and,
as a result, an IGF public education
campaign gained the personal support
of Prime Minister Indira Ghandi.
Shortly thereafter, the Bharatpur Bird
Sanctuary in central India, where the
Siberians winter, was designated a na¬
tional park, promising increased pro¬
tection for the big birds.

Threats to the Siberian crane con¬
tinued to be a major concern of George

and Ron, and led to an ingenious
U.S./Soviet project. Alarmed over
the decreasing number of the rare white
bird, Soviet scientists agreed to provide
eggs to IGF as the nucleus of a captive
breeding program, and thus “The Great
Egg Heists” were begun.

Vladimir Flint, of the USSR Minis¬
try of Agriculture’s Central Laboratory
for Nature Conservation, gathered eggs
on the Siberian tundra in 1977 and
1978 and delivered them to IGF repre¬
sentatives in Moscow in elaborate and
carefully timed operations. The 1977
egg lift went flawlessly, and from the
four Soviet eggs two healthy chicks
were raised.

The 1978 egg lift had a few nerve-
wracking moments. In Moscow, Ron
was handed a suitcase containing seven
eggs, and was hustled aboard a plane for
the remainder of the 10,000 mile jour¬
ney. Somewhere over the Atlantic the
suitcase started cheeping, and for 13
sleepless hours Ron juggled the eggs in
the suitcase to keep them uniformly
warm and to monitor the over-eager
chick. When the little one emerged
over Cleveland, he promptly named it
“Aeroflot,” for the Soviet airline that
had brought it halfway around the
world. From the other six eggs, three
more chicks survived to join the grow¬
ing Siberian enclave.

Eggs from these Siberian cranes may

be part of a re introduction program
similar to the whooping crane “foster
parent” program in this country. The
goal is to place Siberian crane eggs in
nests of common cranes, and thus to
re-establish flocks in safer habitat.
Meanwhile, IGF has helped the Soviet
scientists start their own captive breed¬
ing program on the Oka State Nature
Reserve southeast of Moscow. Grateful
Soviet scientists named their first
chicks “George” and “Sauey.”

Back in Baraboo, innovation and
experimentation have led to major
breakthroughs in the breeding pro¬
gram. Artificial insemination proved
the most reliable means of gaining fer¬
tile eggs. But stimulating the birds to
lay required creativity. Phillis, a female
Siberian, danced and called in typical
crane fashion with Wolfe, an elderly
male from the Vogelpark Walsrode in
Germany. But in 24 years at the
Philadelphia Zoo, Phillis had never
laid an egg. Perhaps the missing
stimulus was the long daylight Sibe¬
rians experience during their breeding
season in the arctic. As an experiment,
floodlights were installed to provide
the extra period of light, and Phillis
responded with a total of 12 eggs! Al¬
though no eggs were fertile, it was an
important step.

The brolgas presented a different
challenge. In Australia they breed dur-

Above: Even though not in its native habitat, this red-croumed crane juvenile has
adapted to life in Baraboo

Left: George Archibald, left, Aeroflot, center, and Ron Sauey, arrive on V. S. soil

The Living Bird Quarterly 9

The protection this red-crowned crane
receives at ICF helps to insure future
generations

ing the monsoon season. A Wisconsin
monsoon seemed improbable, but a
sprinkler system substitute encouraged
the brolgas, and in spring of 1979 they
produced the first of their species
hatched in the United States.

By 1981, more than 125 cranes of 14
species preened, strutted, and per¬
formed their elaborate rituals on the
rolling Wisconsin hillsides. The 25
new babies hatched last year cheeped
and wobbled on the lawns under the
watchful eyes of human volunteers
dubbed “chick mamas.” The biggest
news was the birth of Dushenka, the
first Siberian crane ever bred and
hatched in captivity.

In January of 1982 George Archibald
visited China to assist the government
in mapping a conservation strategy for
the seven crane species that inhabit or
migrate through China. It was a long-
awaited visit, the culmination of years
of delicate negotiations. In addition to
the opportunity to survey crane wet¬
lands and influence habitat conserva¬
tion, George hopes to obtain eggs or
adults of the one crane not represented
at ICF, the rare black-necked crane.
Reports from its remote Tibetan home¬
land suggest that its numbers have been
severely depleted and captive breeding
may be its last hope.

The story is far from over. Restock¬
ing programs are still in their infancy.
Human population pressures continue
to threaten crane habitats around the
world, and the ultimate question of
co-habitation with humans has not
been answered. However, the ICF can
look back on a decade of remarkable
success, and through its continued
efforts, long life and good fortune may
once again smile on the cranes.

FURTHER READING

Britton, Dorothy. The Japanese Crane: Bird of
Happiness. Kodansha Intemational/Harper &
Row, New York. 1982.

McNulty, Faith. The Wildlife Stories of Faith
McNulty. Doubleday, Garden City, New York.
1980.

THE AUTHOR

Alice D’Alessio is a free-lance writer from Madi¬
son, Wisconsin.

10 The Living Bird Quarterly

Photographs thanks to ICF

THE RETURN OF THE ATLANTIC
PUEHN

to Eastern Egg Rock, Maine

by Stephen W. Kress

1887: Deep under a huge boulder, an Atlantic puffin, Fratercula arctica, wedged itself into a shadowed
corner to incubate its single egg. For 10 years it had returned to this hidden crevice on a wind'blasted jumble of
granite called Eastern Egg Rock, eight miles to sea off the Maine coast. But even here there was little safety.
Above, muffled voices reviewed plans to spread herring nets over the boulders to trap puffins as they emerged in
the early dawn.

Puffins and other seabirds had been hunted on this tiny island for several hundred years. But by 1887,
seabirds were scarce. Only a few terns flushed from the trampling feet of grazing sheep and virtually no puffins
teased fishermen by circling within gunning range. Trapping efforts were poorly rewarded; only one puffin
struggled in the waiting net.

Little did the disappointed fishermen realize that there were no more puffins on Eastern Egg Rock,

Atlantic puffin, Handa Island, Scodand. Photograph © by J. C. Carton (Bruce Coleman Inc.)

or on nearby Western Egg Rock, and
that most seabird populations from
Florida to Labrador were in a state of
serious decline. By 1900, puffins had
been eliminated from all but two col¬
onies in the Gulf of Maine: Machias
Seal Island and Matinicus Rock.
Where once they had been abundant,
puffins and most other seabirds had al¬
most disappeared from the islands of
Maine.

However, by 1900, things began to
change. With protective legislation,
such as the federal Migratory Bird Trea¬
ty Act of 1918, The Lacey Act and
Maine’s Model Wild Bird Act (both of
1900), puffins received a legal reprieve
from more than 200 years of excessive
hunting. Even more important to the
renaissance of seabirds were the life
style changes affecting coastal Mainers
around the turn of the century. Long
isolated by the convoluted coastline,
highways and railroads were starting to
connect even remote communities.
With the advent of electricity and re¬
frigeration, fresh seafowl meat and eggs
became less important. Gasoline-
powered boats made it possible for
fishermen to commute to and from the
mainland. This combination of life
style changes and protective legislation
made the islands suitable for nesting
once again.

Arctic and common terns. Sterna
paradisae and S. hirundo, were among
the first birds to re-colonize islands
such as Eastern Egg Rock. And their
return was noteworthy. They had not
inhabited Egg Rock since the millinery
raids of the 1880s destroyed their popu¬
lations. But puffins, unlike terns, are
not quick to settle into new nesting
sites nor are they known for their abil¬
ity to arrive en masse to a suit¬
able habitat. If puffins were to re-col-
onize Egg Rock in the near future, we
would have to devise a plan to help
them along.

Our effort to re-establish a breeding
colony of puffins at Eastern Egg Rock
began in 1973 with financial support
from the National Audubon Society
and private contributors. Dr. Robert
Noyce, a good friend and neighbor of
the Audubon Ecology Camp in Maine,
flew us to Newfoundland in his private
plane to collect puffin chicks during
the first three years of the project.
These chicks and those from sub¬
sequent transplants were reared on Egg

Rock by biology students from Cornell
and other universities.

Our re-establishment program was
based on the premise that young puffins
usually return to breed at their natal
island, sometimes in the immediate vi¬
cinity of their parents’ burrow. All we
had to do was to transplant some young
puffins to Egg Rock and hope that
eventually they would return there to
breed. As simple as this sounds, we had
no way of knowing if it would work.
However, the vision of bright-beaked
adults coursing over the boulders was
incentive enough for us to try.

“Can’t be serious, ’’ grumbled a crusty
old lobsterman when I explained my
plan to have assistants live in a tent on
Eastern Egg Rock. Surely if the winds
didn’t shred the tent, the rigors of rain,
sun and flood tides would prevent us
from surviving on this seven acres of
salt-sprayed, treeless granite. Yet our
resolve, the novelty of the adventure
and a good dose of blind optimism
made the goal of re-establishing puffins
on Eastern Egg Rock seem highly plaus¬
ible and worth whatever physical dis¬
comforts the island had in store.

It was August, 1973 when we arrived
at Egg Rock with some very unusual
cargo. As the greater black-backed
gulls, Larus marinus, chanted over¬
head, five fledgling puffins huddled
against the walls of the artificial bur¬

rows we had constructed for them.
These two-week-old chicks were from
the large puffin colony on Great Island,
Newfoundland, and were hand reared
on nearby Hog Island. We reasoned
that by this age, young puffins are cap¬
able of maintaining their own body
temperature and should be strong
enough to resist the shock of the trans¬
plant. We gambled that they probably
had not learned where home was and
that if we transferred them quickly to a
new island, finish rearing them there
and then permit them to fledge, they
should acquire their homing informa¬
tion at the release site and return there
to breed several years later.

Little is known about how seabirds
find their way home after winter migra¬
tions that may take them thousands of
miles away, but the transplant program
rested on the hypothesis that while the
puffin’s methods for homing were of a
genetic nature, the specific informa¬
tion was learned some time during the
development of the nestling. Although
resident gamebirds such as turkey and
pheasant have been successfully trans¬
planted for years to stock vacant
habitat, this was the first time such a
program had been ventured for a mi¬
gratory seabird.

While waiting for our transplanted
puffins to mature on Egg Rock, we pre¬
pared the island for them by establish-

Stephen Kress places nestlings in carrying case for the 1,000 mile journey from
Great Island, Newfoundland to Eastern Egg Rock

12 The Living Bird Quarterly

Both male and female puffins bring
food to their single nestling

ing ten colonies to control the gull
population, and by securing the island’s
status as Audubon’s Allan D. Cruick-
shank Wildlife Sanctuary.

Besides gaining safety for the puffins,
we studied the development of our
nestlings, examining the sequence in
which new feathers and behaviors
transformed the helpless and clumsy
chick into a trim and alert young sea¬
bird. To learn as much as possible about
these changes, we built an observation
blind over four plexiglas-roofed bur¬
rows and noted the behavior of four
nestlings from 1976 to 1978. These puf¬
fin chicks showed remarkable variety in
personality. Some were vocal, restless
birds that actively roamed their under¬
ground domain, excavating side cham¬
bers of their own design, pursuing
intruding flies and mosquitoes and
sometimes arranging platforms of vege¬
tation on which they rested in their
nest chamber. By contrast, other chicks
seldom moved from their nest chamber
except to consume their daily rations.

Our studies of nestling behavior re¬
vealed some of the ways that puffin
chicks avoid the menacing gulls which
frequently wait outside their burrows.
By monitoring the puffin chicks in our
observation burrows, it soon became
evident that even the most active avoid
the vicinity of the burrow entrance
until they are about four weeks old.
During these weeks the slow, awkward
chicks would be easy prey if they ven¬
tured too close to the entrance. We
observed that deep inside the burrow
the young chicks have a well-defined
toilet area just outside their nest
chamber. Here they back to the toilet
wall, bend forward and squirt their
excrement against it. By concentrating
the excrement in one location the
chick stays clean and avoids danger at
the burrow entrance.

After four weeks, the chicks usually
move their toilet closer to the burrow
entrance. Even though they are now
much quicker and more coordinated,
they still show the greatest caution.
The usual approach is to edge slowly
toward the entrance with the head held
low. If all is clear, the nestling makes a
quick 180 degree turn, backs up a few
steps and ejects a vigorous stream that

may be propelled more than a foot out¬
side the burrow. Then, without hesita¬
tion, the chick dashes back to the dark
safety of its nest chamber.

As fledging time approached, the
nestling puffins became increasingly
active, pacing the length of the burrow,
frequently rejecting food in the day or
two prior to fledging. At night, when
gulls sleep, the young puffins left their
burrows to clamber over intervening
boulders and crevices until they
reached the sea. I have hidden among
the boulders to watch the procession,
listening for the clinking sound of
metal bands against the granite. If
moonlight permitted, a small white ap¬
parition appeared, for only the fledg¬
ling’s white breast was visible, the dark
head and body feathers blending into
night shadows.

Balancing with wing and sharp
claws, the fledgling may climb up the
boulders, only to tumble into a crevice
and struggle forward again. Once I saw
a bird gain the peak of a tall boulder and
fly off to sea in a single attempt, but
most plunge into the foaming surf,
sometimes to be thrown back re¬
peatedly to the island. When clear of
the surf, the young birds dive and bathe
as if they have done this many times
before. By dawn the fledglings are no
longer in sight from the island and no
longer vulnerable to the predatory gulls
which patrol the inshore waters.

By June of 1977 we had released 248
young puffins from Egg Rock without
having a single return. We were con¬

cerned that if the puffins did return,
they would hesitate to come ashore
without seeing established adults to
attract and hold their interest. To
overcome this problem, we prepared
standing decoys and secured them atop
several granite outcrops. We also
moored floating decoys to the ocean
bottom near the island, but strong seas
soon broke them free, scattering them
southward in the Gulf of Maine
current.

Even though we had watched daily
during the summers of 1974 through
1976, we had sighted only one adult
puffin at Egg Rock, that being a solitary
bird that circled the island once in
1974. It was therefore a momentous
occasion on June 12, 1977 when a puf¬
fin rounded the shore of Egg Rock and
splashed down just as we were rowing
ashore. With absolute confidence, the
bird swam up to our landing boat where
we could easily see that it carried a
white band on its left leg—proof at last
that at least one transplanted chick
from Newfoundland had found its way
back to Egg Rock.

Our studies of two and three year
olds show that puffins freely move
among the Gulf of Maine colonies, but
when they are three and four years old,
they become involved in burrow pros-
pecting and do less inter-island
traveling. In 1979, at Matinicus Rock,
26 miles from Eastern Egg Rock, we
observed a four-year-old transplanted
puffin that seemed especially fixed to a
particular boulder site. This bird, iden-

The Living Bird Quarterly 13

tified as white #14 by its metal band
and white plastic leg band, was one of
91 nestlings transplanted to Egg Rock
from Great Island in 1975. Now at
Matinicus Rock, it was defending a ter¬
ritory, growling and chasing other puf¬
fins that ventured too close. In 1980,
white #14 was observed carrying fish
into the same rock crevice for its own
young. This was an exciting discovery
for not only was it proof that trans¬
planted puffins will breed near the re¬
lease site, but it also demonstrated that
puffins will select their nesting colony
and defend a burrow site the year before
they actually nest, thus shedding some
light on at least one reason for delayed
breeding.

It was late May, 1981 when we
landed at Egg Rock and already the
puffins were coming and going among
the boulders. We had observed this be¬

must hatch soon because it would take
the adults at least another six weeks to
rear the chicks—a process that must be
complete before the migratory urge
pulls the adults back to the open sea by
mid—August.

It was nearly dark on a very hazy
fourth of July when I spotted a puffin
winging around the south end of Egg
Rock, its beak packed with glistening
herring. Without hesitation, it landed
and scrambled into the boulders to
emerge a moment later without a trace
of its catch. After nearly 100 years of
absence, puffins were nesting again at
Egg Rock.

Five pairs of puffins hatched young at
Egg Rock in 1981 and, as far as we
know, all successfully fledged their
young. Both members of three pairs
were four-year-old birds, one pair con¬
sisted of a four year old and a five year

Decoys are used to attract puffins to Eastern Egg Rock

havior for the past two summers, but
most of the puffins were four and five
years old now and the chances for
breeding had never looked better.

Through late May, June and July the
puffins teased us with their secretive
habits. At Matinicus Rock, puffin
chicks hatched as early as June 7, but
these were older, more experienced
breeders that lay their eggs soon after
arrival in mid—April. Yet as July began
to unfold, we reasoned that if puffins
were breeding at Egg Rock, their eggs

old, and surprisingly, both members of
the remaining pair were unbanded.
Since there has been relatively little
band loss, it is likely that these un¬
banded birds are recruits from either
Matinicus Rock or Machias Seal Is¬
land. A certain amount of inter-colony
breeding is normal even under com¬
pletely natural conditions and these
welcome additions may play a vital role
in expanding the new Egg Rock colony,
offsetting the loss of transplanted birds
to other colonies.

Once puffins select a nest site and
successfully breed, they usually return
to the same island and burrow for many
years. Thus the future of the new Egg
Rock colony looks encouraging since
this core of breeders will help attract
increasing puffin numbers to the is¬
land. Of the 530 transplanted puffins
old enough to have returned by 1981,
111 or 21 percent have been sighted at
Egg Rock, Matinicus Rock, or Machias
Seal Island. In the next year or two
numbers will further increase as the
1980 and 1981 transplant groups reach
breeding age and return.

While the future of the Egg Rock
puffin project looks bright and the
techniques developed could have ap¬
plication for other colonial seabirds,
restoration projects must be only part of
a comprehensive management pro¬
gram. Puffins are declining throughout
their extensive range on both sides of
the North Atlantic. Tragic losses result
from poaching, drowning in fishing
nets, and predation from increasing
herring and greater black-backed gull
populations. Although puffins still nest
in a few colonies of more than a
hundred thousand pairs, the losses from
oil spills and overfishing of their food
supplies can be enormous.

Puffins have survived hundreds of
years of human history on the Maine
coast, but it has taken all the tools of
conservation to restore them from the
grim days of seabird exploitation. Legis¬
lation, enforcement, sanctuaries, and
active management are necessary if the
puffin is to maintain its precarious
posture on the Maine coast. Certainly
the ability to re-establish puffins
to former breeding sites is a useful
new management tool, but to secure
the puffins’ future, we need a world¬
wide commitment to work toward
maintaining the highest possible pro¬
ductivity and diversity of the seas.

FURTHER READING

Friedman,]. Puffins, Come Back. Dodd, Mead&.
Co,, New York. 1981.

Lockley, R. M. Puffins. Devin-Adair Co., New
York. 1953.

THE AUTHOR

Dr. Stephen W. Kress is a staff biologist and
lecturer for the National Audubon Society and
director of the Audubon Ecology Camp in
Maine. He is also a laboratory associate of the
Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.

14 The Living Bird Quarterly

CROW’S NEST FEATURED
BOOK

Birds of North America,

A Personal Selection

by Eliot Porter

Personal Selection reveals Porter’s work as
an artist and writer. It records the
adventurous life of the birder, his
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camera. This is a book to savor, to return
to again and again as a record of beautiful
and elusive avifauna. It represents the
commitment of a man who recognizes the
importance of wild lands and animals in
our daily lives. Magnificently designed,
this exquisitely printed volume contains
80 pages of photographs, most in color.

144 pages, cloth, 1979, $30.00/25.50
members.

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493 pages, cloth, 1981. $45.00/38.25
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The Living Bird Quarterly 15

George Miksch Sutton

... Then had come the day when, miracle of miracles, the blood-quills had broken open at the tips and lo, the
little reptiles were birds after all...

Portrait of a Young Cuckoo

by George Miksch Sutton

C3n June 24, 1948, Nate Potter III found a well
feathered though not fully fledged young cuckoo in the
arboretum at Ann Arbor, Michigan. He had heard me
say to his friend Josselyn Van Tyne that I wanted to
draw birds directly from life, so he brought the little
thing to me as promptly as possible. He explained that
it had tried to avoid capture not by flying but by
climbing slowly from twig to twig through the shrub¬
bery not far from the ground; that he had caught it
without trouble; that he had found no nest of any sort
close by; and that no adult cuckoo had scolded him, or
even shown up, while he was handling the young bird.

The only cuckoos any of us had seen in the ar¬
boretum that summer were yellow-billed cuckoos,
Coccyzus americanus, so we jumped to the logical
conclusion that the baby was of that species. There was
not a word of argument about the matter. I was espe¬
cially interested in the fact that there was no hint of
yellow in the bill or of red in the skin surrounding the
eyes. What I wanted was an authentic record of the
colors of those fleshy parts.

The winsome creature was perfect as a model. It
made not the slightest attempt to fly, nor did it beg for
food. It did lift its stub of tail occasionally, as if excited
by some sound. As I worked I could not help thinking
of the many cuckoo nests I had found in other parts of
the yellow-bill’s wide breeding range. Especially did I
remember those that I had visited day after day in an
attempt to pin down facts about the period of incuba¬
tion, the behavior of parent birds, and the appearance
of newly hatched chicks. The hatchlings had been
weird creatures — dark-skinned, scrawny, covered not
with down but with grayish white “hairs” that looked as
if they had been smeared on.

At one exceptionally low nest that my class at the
University of Pittsburgh and I had found within walk¬
ing distance of the campus, the parent bird had amazed
us by continuing to brood the small chicks until I had
almost touched it. Then, instead of flopping to the
ground, feigning injury, it had slipped from the nest
with wings spread wide and descended gently, coming
to rest on some leafy twigs where it stayed as if sure that
I would try to catch it.

We had watched the young ones at that nest de¬
velop. The “hairs” had presently been pushed from the
skin by the incoming blood-quills and many had bro¬
ken off. The quills had been so neatly lined up in tracts
that I could lecture to my heart’s content on pterylosis

and feather-growth. Then had come the day when,
miracle of miracles, the blood-quills had broken open
at the tips and lo, the little reptiles were birds after all!
The baby cuckoo before me was feather-covered all
right, but many of its feathers were still sheathed at the
base.

This is not the end of my story. For over 30 years, I
have told everyone that my sketch was of a yellow¬
billed cuckoo. But I have wondered, and quite sin¬
cerely, whether my model could have been a black¬
billed cuckoo, C. erythropthalmus. To be sure, no one
had reported seeing black-bills at the arboretum early
in the summer of 1948. Identification of my model as a
yellow-bill was sound enough. But I had observed the
black-bill repeatedly at the Edwin S. George Wildlife
Reserve, not far from Ann Arbor. Indeed I had found
several black-bill nests there. The two cuckoo species
had long been known to lay their eggs in each others’
nests (a curious, somewhat pointless form of social
parasitism), so my model could have been a black-bill
hatched and reared in a yellow-bill’s nest [see Forbush,
1927, Birds of Massachusetts and Other New England
States, Norwood Press, Vol. 2, pp. 243, 246; Bent,
1940, U.S. Natl. Mus. Bull. No. 176, pp. 56, 72; Todd,
1940, Birds of Western Pennsylvania, Univ. Pittsburgh
Press, pp. 275—6]. I was truly bothered by the fact that
my model’s bill had been so dark. It had not had a trace
of yellow in it.

The bird I drew was indeed a young yellow-bill. The
underparts of a young black-bill of the same age would
have been grayish white with a buffy tinge on the chin
and throat, and the dark plumage of the upper parts
might have been edged with pale grayish buff, produc¬
ing the effect of faint scalation. But I continue to
wonder when the yellow begins to show on a young
yellow-bill’s bill and whether the featherless area
around the eye of a young black-bill ever shows a trace
of red. In a young male black-bill specimen (Carnegie
Museum No. 137643) found dead in Butler County,
western Pennsylvania on September 25, 1957, and
prepared as a skin by Kenneth C. Parkes, the “cir-
cumorbital ring” was “bright yellow.” The change
to red probably takes place on that species’ winter¬
ing ground.

THE AUTHOR

George Miksch Sutton is an artist, author, and lecturer as well as George
Lynn Cross research professor of Zoology Emeritus and Curator of Birds at
the Stovall Museum of Science and History at the University of Oklahoma.

The Living Bird Quarterly 17

RESEL\RCH&REVIEW

by Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

Birch, Beech, Maple?

Consider an insect-eating bird feeding
among forest trees. To a bird watcher,
the trees all look pretty much the same.
But how do they look to the birds? Does
the bird use certain species of trees
more than others? Or does it forage
randomly through the forest?

These questions are the most recent
to gain attention in the ongoing bird
studies at the Hubbard Brook Experi¬
mental Forest in New Hampshire’s rug¬
ged White Mountains. Under the di¬
rection of Dr. Richard Holmes, avian
ecologists at Hubbard Brook have been
studying bird foraging techniques and
patterns since 1974. Holmes and his
colleagues have published several pa¬
pers that give insight into the ways in
which vegetation affects the distribu¬
tion and abundance of forest birds. The
most recent paper, “Tree species prefer¬
ences of foraging insectivorous birds in
a northern hardwoods forest” (Holmes,
R. T. and S. K. Robinson, Oecologia,
vol. 48, pp. 31—35) contains some sur¬
prising results.

Holmes and Robinson analyzed sev¬
eral thousand foraging observations
collected over a three-year period, and
found that birds feeding in the Hubbard
Brook Forest do indeed have distinct
preferences for and/or aversions to cer¬
tain tree species. The study site is
dominated by American beech, Fagus
grandifolia, yellow birch, Betula
allegheniensis, and sugar maple, Acer
saccharum, with scattered white ash,
Fraxinus americana, and conifers. Of
the 10 foliage foragers, that is, birds
that feed primarily in the leaves of the
forest canopy, yellow birch is favored by
all species. Beech is almost entirely
avoided, except by scarlet tanagers,
Piranga oUvacea; sugar maple is gener¬
ally avoided except by red-eyed vireos,
Vireo olivaceus, and American red¬
starts, Setophaga ruticilla. Conifers, rare
and patchily distributed, are used only
by solitary vireos, Vireo solitarius,
and blackbumian and black-throated
green warblers, Dendroica fusca and
Dendroica virens, while ash is used
rarely except by the high-canopy for¬
aging Philadelphia vireo, Vireo philu'
delphicus.

18 The Living Bird Quarterly

Perhaps, if you have spent much
time carefully observing birds, these re¬
sults do not seem too surprising. You
may well have noticed that some birds
are more commonly observed in certain
types of trees. It is surprising, however,
to many avian ecologists.

The primary reason for this surprise
can be traced to a classic paper pub¬
lished by Robert and John MacArthur
in 1961. They proposed, on the basis of
investigations in eastern deciduous
forests, that the diversity of forest bird
communities could be predicted by
measuring the amount of foliage at dif¬
ferent heights in the forest—regardless
of the plant species present. They
added that knowledge of the number of
plant species in the forest did not im¬
prove their ability to predict the
number of bird species. Since that
time, dozens of papers have been pub¬
lished either supporting or disputing
MacArthur’s correlation. But differen¬
tial use of tree species has generally
been ignored as an important influence
on distribution and abundance of
birds.

Why do insectivorous birds prefer or
avoid certain tree species? Holmes and
Robinson offer two explanations. The
first concerns prey abundance; the sec¬
ond, the ease with which birds can for¬
age in the different kinds of trees.

Numbers and types of insects found
on leaves of the different tree species
are known from a related study. The
types of prey found on each species are
similar. However, yellow birch, the tree
favored by all 10 bird species, supports
the highest prey density throughout the
breeding season. It is logical, then, that
the birds would concentrate their feed¬
ing efforts on birch.

But the researchers don’t feel that
differing prey abundances are sufficient
to account for the extreme preferences
or aversions of some bird species. They

Head raising and strutting are typical
aggressive postures of cowbirds defending their
territory

suggest that, additionally, some birds
may have an easier time foraging in
yellow birch because of the structure
and arrangement of its twigs and
leaves. Yellow birch leaves are close
together, have short stems which place
them close to their supporting twig,
and are arranged so that a bird can see
the surfaces of many leaves at once. In
contrast, maple and beech leaves are
less visible and less accessible from the
twig to which they are attached. Con¬
sequently, for birds that feed by picking
stationary insects from leaves while
standing on a branch or twig (glean¬
ers), less energy would be expended
foraging in birch than in beech
or maple.

The foraging techniques used by dif¬
ferent species of birds feeding in differ¬
ent kinds of trees at Hubbard Brook
support this idea. Gleaners do have the
strongest preference for yellow birch.
In contrast, those species that show
lesser preferences are the hoverers—
birds that pick stationary prey from
leaves while hovering or flying. These
birds are probably less constrained by
foliage structure.

One further finding bears noting:
the abundant bird species in the Hub¬
bard Brook Forest are the least particu¬
lar about the trees from which they
feed, while those with the strongest
preferences are least common. Holmes

and Robinson feel that the distribution
and abundance of rarer bird species may
be linked to the presence and distribu¬
tion of particular species of trees. For
example, on the study site, blackbum-
ian warblers occur only where there is
at least one large conifer.

What are the implications of these
findings? For one, the study shows the
potential importance of tree species—
even species that look similar—in de¬
termining the structure of bird com¬
munities. Certainly differential use of
tree species should be considered in fu¬
ture studies.

But perhaps more importantly, these
findings have a direct bearing on forest
management. For anyone concerned
about wildlife conservation—whether
as the manager of a large national forest
or the owner of a small backyard wood-
lot— it is necessary to recognize that
tree species diversity almost certainly
affects the distribution and abundance
of forest birds. Imagine the effect of a
heavy selective logging of yellow birch
at Hubbard Brook, for example. This
tree is of high veneer quality and is of
value to the lumber industry, but its
removal could result in a lowering of
the number of most songbirds in the
forest. Or consider the removal of the
conifers; blackbumian warblers could
disappear. Clearly, we must see through
the forest to the trees.

V V

Accept, Bury, Desert

What can a bird do when a brown¬
headed cowbird, Molothrus ater, lays an
egg in its nest? It can accept the egg;
bury it, along with its own, by building
a new nest floor; eject it from the nest,
or desert the nest. In an effort to under¬
stand these responses, Karen Clark and
Raleigh Robertson of Queen’s College,
Ontario, examined 45 naturally par¬
asitized yellow warbler, Dendroica
petechia, nests {Wilson Bulletin, vol. 93,
pp. 249-258).

The warblers accepted the egg at
only 28 percent of the nests; those nests
usually had two or more warbler eggs
when the cowbird egg was laid. Fledg¬
ing success was considerably lower than
at unparasitized nests. Cowbird eggs
were rejected at 72 percent of the nests:
48 percent by burial and 24 percent by
nest desertion. These nests generally
had one or no warbler eggs when

parasitized. Fledging success at nests
with buried cowbird eggs was nearly
equal to that of unparasitized nests. No
birds ejected eggs.

The response to parasitism, then,
varies with the amount of time and
energy already invested in young. Buri¬
al, resulting in high fledging success,
occurs earlier in the season when few
eggs have been laid; acceptance occurs
later, when there is insufficient time to
lay a new clutch.

V V

Saving Energy

Weight loss, commonly observed
among nesting female songbirds, has
been thought to result from physiologi¬
cal stress placed on them as they strug¬
gle to meet the food needs of their
hungry offspring. Another explana¬
tion, however, has been suggested
by Leonard Freed of the University
of Iowa (Ecology, vol. 62, pp.
1179-1186).

Freed weighed more than 100 male
and female marked house wrens. Trog¬
lodytes aedon, at various stages of their
breeding cycles. He found that females
lost 13 percent of their total body
weight during the period from incuba¬
tion through fledging of their young.
However, half of the weight loss oc¬
curred before hatching was completed,
and nearly all loss was achieved before
food demands by the nestlings became
greatest. Also, females with larger
broods did not lose more weight than
females with small broods.

Freed concluded that weight loss is
not caused by stress. Instead, because
males and females have similar weights
at the end of the nesting period, he
feels that female weight loss results
from degeneration of reproductive tis¬
sue. Since lowered body weight reduces
the power required for flight. Freed
points out that it is probably important
for females to lose bodily substance
necessary only for egg formation and
incubation when it comes time to sup¬
ply their young with food. Weight loss,
then, may actually be an energy-saving
adaptation.

THE AUTHOR

Richard Bonney is an environmental and
natural history writer and photographer from
Pittsfield, Mass.

NEWS&NOTES

Noted Canadian sound recordist Wil¬
liam W. H. Gunn will be the recipient
of the 14th Arthur A. Allen Award.
Roger Tory Peterson will present the
medal at the banquet on October 2 of
this year.

A Gift of Rare Wines from Laboratory
member Norman Kraft grossed $20,000
in an auction held in Chicago recently.
The money will help establish the Cor¬
nell Wild Bird Research and Rehabili¬
tation Fund, joint project of the Labo¬
ratory and the New York State College
of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell.

The Home Study Course in Bird
Photography is now available. A new
incentive for students will be a photog¬
raphy competition. Winning photos
will be published in The Living Bird
Quarterly. Contact D. Blanton, % the
Laboratory of Ornithology.

The 19th Edition of The Living Bird
will be sent to you within the next few
months.

Find a Sick or Injured Bird in the
Ithaca area? Call the Laboratory. We’ll
make arrangements to treat the bird at
the Avian Clinic at the N.Y. S. College
of Veterinary Medicine. Doctors and
students have returned many recovered
birds to the wild.

New Record Release! Bird Songs of
the Dominican Republic, recorded by
George B. Reynard; features 100
species including all species endemic to
Hispanola. $11 post paid, $9.50
members (N.Y. S. residents add 7%
sales tax). Available at The Croiv’s
Nest Bookshop, % the Laboratory of
Ornithology.

The Laboratory’s Photographic De*
partment needs high-quality slides of
birds for its collection. In particular;
scotors, hawks, alcids, flycatchers,
thrushes, vireos, warblers, and spar¬
rows. Please send donated slides
to Photo Dept., % Laboratory of
Ornithology.

The Living Bird Quarterly 19

EXTINCTION.

rrs FOREVER.

One quarter of all species of animals and plants on Earth may disappear in the next 30 years
because of man’s destruction of their habitat. The rate of extinctions is increasing enormously as
forests are destroyed and other wild areas are lost. Organisms that evolved over hundreds of
millions of years will be gone forever. The complex interdependence of all creatures, from the
largest mammals to the smallest plants, is being shattered. It is a crisis with profound implications
for the survival of all life. Unfortunately, little is being done to save our planet’s natural heritage.
Here are some warnings by leading scientists:

“The worst thing that can happen—will happen—in
the 1980’s is not energy depletion, economic coUapse,
limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian
government. As terrible as these catastrophes would
be for us, they can be repaired within a few
generations. The one process ongoing in the 1980’s
that wiO take millions of years to correct is the loss of
genetic and species diversity by the destiuction of
natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are
least likely to forgive us.”

DR. EDWARD O. WILSON

Baird Professor of Science • Harvard University

“We are encroaching on nature, in the G.S. and
around the worid, at an unprecedented rate. A large
proportion of the chemicals in use in our present-day
civflization were ‘invented’ by nature, not by the
chemist in the laboratory. An estimated 40% of all
drug prescriptions in the G.S. contain as their chief
ingredients compounds derived from plants. There is
no end to the potential for discovery in nature, because
we have only begun the chemical exploration of nature.
Tragically, we are burning our library of priceless
genetic treasures with our reckless destmction of

species.” THOMAS EISNER

Schurman F’rofessor of Biology • Cornell University

“Few problems are less recognized but more
important than the accelerating disappearance of
Earth’s biological resources. In pushing other species
to extinction, humanity is busily sawing off the limb on

which it is perched.” dr. PAUL EHRUCH

Bing Professor of Population Studies • Stanford University

“The extermination of a quarter of the plant species
on Earth during the coming few decades could lose
forever the medicines and food sources we need to
cure the diseases and hunger that plague mankind.”

DR. PETER RAVEN

Director • Missouri Botanical Garden

The Ark is sinking. We need the help of every concerned citizen to conserve the diversity of life
on Earth. For information about how you can help, please write to us at:

1 --

I Save Endangered Species

I P.O. Box 50771 • Washington, D.C. 20004

I Please send me more information about

I endangered species and how I can help

, conserve the diversity of life on Earth.

I Name --

Address
CHy_

I State_Zip I

I_I

Save Endangered Species

P.O. Box 50771 • Washington, D.C. 20004

FURTHER READING

Akeley, C. E. In Brightest Africa. Garden City
Publishing Co., Inc. New York. 1923.
Boynton, M. E Louis Agassiz Fuertes: His Life
Briefly Told and His Correspondence Edited. Ox¬
ford University Press, New York. 1956.

Fossey, D. “The Imperiled Mountain Gorilla.”
National Geographic; Vol. 159, No. 4; pp.
501-523.

THE AUTHOR

In 1966 Dr. Dian Fossey was chosen by the late
Dr. L.S.B. Leakey to conduct a long-term moun¬
tain gorilla study in the Virunga Mountains of
central Africa. Under the sponsorship of the Na¬
tional Geographic Society, Dr. Fossey established
the Karisoke Research Centre. She came to Cor¬
nell University in 1980 as a visiting associate
professor.

Mountain Gorilla by D. Fossey, with permission,
National Geographic Society.

LABORATORY OF ORNITHOLOGY
CORNELL UNIVERSITY

159 Sapsucker Woods Road
Ithaca, New York 14850

fatory

Discover Bird Photography

Now... with an exciting new
course offering from Cornell
University's world famous center
for the study of birdlife... you can
study at home, at your own pace,
and learn the art of bird
photography.

A COMPLETE GUIDE TO
PHOTOGRAPHING BIRDS
This unique new course brings
together the experience of
well-known bird photographers in

the most comprehensive text
available. You receive an
easy-to-read text illustrated with
over 200 photographs and
drawings, essays by noted bird
photographers and ornithologists,
and other special study materials.
From your own backyard, to Lake
Elmenteita in East Africa, to
Canada's Northwest Territories,
you'll travel with professionals to
learn how they take their
award-winning pictures.

INDIVIDUAL TUTORING
You not only get a complete text
and other study materials, but
equally important, you receive
individual tutoring through the
assignments you submit. Your
progress through the course is
personally monitored by your
instructor who provides comments
and guidelines on your work.

LEARN HOW TO

□ Select and use equipment

□ Photograph at home at feeding
and watering stations

□ Photograph at nests

□ Construct and use blinds

□ Photograph birds in flight

□ Use motion picture equipment

□ Sell your photographs

□ And much more

A special feature of the course: the
chance to have your photographs
published in the Laboratory's new
full-color magazine.

TO ENROLL, FILL OUT AND MAIL
THE ACCOMPANYING CARD
TODAY.

Autumn/1982

Volume 1 Number 2

THE LIVING BIRD

QUARTERLY

EDITORIAL STAFF

Jill Crane, Editor
Linda G. Hooper, An Director
Charles R. Smith, Technical Editor
Les Line, Consulting Editor
Donna J. P. Crossman, Editorial Assistant
Lynne H. McKeon, Editorial Assistant
Richard E. Bonney, Jr., Contributing Editor

Laboratory Staff

Charles Walcott, Executive Director
Tom J. Cade, Raptor Research
Jill Crane, The Living Bird Quarterly
Samuel A. Eliot, Public Affairs
James L. Gulledge, Library of
Natural Sounds
Linda G. Hooper, Administration
Helen S. Lapham, Library
Thomas S. Litwin, Seatuck Research
Donald A. McCrimmon, Jr., Cooperative

Research Program
Charles R. Smith, Public Education

Administrative board

James W. Spencer, Chairman John D. Leggett, Jr.

Morton S. Adams
John Frederick Barry
Benjamin P. Burtt
William G. Conway
Alan Crawford, Jr.
Robert G. Engel
Paul J. Franz, Jr.
Kenneth E. Hill
Imogene P. Johnson
Hamilton E Kean
Josephine W. KixMiller
T. Spencer Knight

Harold Mayfield
Donald S. McChesney
G. Michael McHugh
Edwin H. Morgens
Olin Sewall Pettingill, Jr.
Chandler S. Robbins
Lester L. Short
Alexander Sprunt IV
R. Eliot Stauffer
Peter Stettenheim
Charles E. Treman, Jr.
Charles D. Webster

Charles Walcott, Ex Officio

The Living Bird Quarterly. ISSN 0732-9210, is published in January,
April, July, and October by the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell
University, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, New Yotk 14850.
Telephone: (607) 256-5056. The Living Bird Quarterly is free to members
of the Laboratoty. (Membership information on enclosed envelope.)

Reprints available on request. © 1982 Cornell University
Laboratory of Ornithology.

FRONT COVER. Outside—White ibis, Everglades, Florida, in
full breeding plumage. Photograph by Art Wolfe.

BACK COVER. Portrait of a black-crowned night heron.
Photography by Gary R. Zahm.

4 Untying the Enigma of the Red Knot

Brian A. Harrington and David C. Twichell

8 Homing with Map and Compass

Charles Walcott

12 Seeds & Shruhs: Two Strategies for Feeding Birds

Charles R. Smith

14 Turkey Watching

Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

16 Research & Review

Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

17 News & Notes

18 The Crow’s Nest

Selections from our bookshop

19 With a Little Bit of Luck

George H. Harrison

Dear Member:

Running a research project is like running a circus. Besides being a scientist, one has
to be a showman, entrepreneur, personnel manager, car mechanic, electronics techni'
dan, animal caretaker, and fund raiser.

Research on bird navigation wasn't always this complicated. In the 1950s, Donald
Griffin’s investigations at Cornell required merely a helper and a few pigeons. It was not
until 1 967, under the leadership of William Keeton, that avian navigation studies at
Cornell began to develop into an international enterprise. Bill foresaw that, in order to
understand the navigational system, one must do multiple experiments over many years
with thousands of pigeons. This meant technical assistants, vehicles, tons of pigeon food,
computer time, and money. That Bill's vision was correct is attested to by the major
scientific contributions he has made and by the constant support the project received from
the National Science Foundation.

When Bill died in 1980, he left a large legacy of experiments, many nearly completed,
some in need of additional investigation. In this issue of the Quarterly, I examine some
of the questions raised by the work of Bill and others and bring you up to date on what we
have learned about how birds migrate. We hope to continue our experiments and have
more results for you next year.

Charles Walcott, Executive Director

Brian Harrington and red knot.

Untying the Enigma
of the Red Knot

article by Brian A. Harrington
photographs by David C. Twichell

lEOPLE’S FASCINATION with
bird migration goes back to prehistoric
time. Since the Pleistocene, the chang¬
ing of the seasons has been correlated
with the migratory movement of birds.
Although information has accumu¬
lated indicating where birds go and
how they get there, little is known
about why they follow certain routes in
their travels between hemispheres. If
birds migrate to get away from winter s
cold weather, why don’t all northern
birds migrate south? And, considering
the great risks and energy expended
during migration, why don’t they re¬
main in the tropics instead of returning
to their northern breeding grounds
each year?

Learned and fanciful speculations
abound, but proven ideas elude bird
biologists. French ornithologist Jean
Dorst said that we may never solve the
riddle of bird migration, but it’s fun to
try. We at Manomet Bird Observatory
are definitely trying. Our quest has
taken us from the shores of Fiudson and
James Bay to the southern tip of South
America, with stops in between in
Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Flor¬
ida. It has involved an extensive band¬
ing and marking program, intensive
research into feeding habits, and a
network of over 300 volunteers in 28
states and 20 countries and common¬
wealths who have observed and re¬
ported shorebird movement. Our
study, although not yet complete, has
yielded some insights into the reasons
birds migrate.

Why Red Knots?

Shorebirds are one of nature’s most
spectacular long-distance travelers. Of
the 50 species that nest in North
America, over 25 spend the winter in
South America, some flying more than
6,000 miles to reach the tip of Argen¬
tina. Of these 25 species, we chose the
North American red knot, Calidris
canutus rufa, for our study. When mi¬
grating they are found on both the At¬
lantic and Pacific coasts of North
America. They breed principally on
the islands north and west of Hudson
Bay, and winter along the Argentine
coast, with one small group wintering
along the Gulf Coast of Florida. North
American red knots are one of the

4 The Living Bird Quarterly

stockiest and most colorful but least
understood arctic members of the
sandpiper family. However, they are
ideal for migration research because the
population is small, their wintering
range is limited, and their route is nar¬
row, making it possible for us to follow
and study them.

Migration Routes

Our first research goal was to map the
knots’ major migration routes. To do
this we relied upon our network of ob¬
servers in North and South America, a
banding program, and a large-scale ef¬
fort of marking knots with yellow dye.
We have banded more than 2,500
knots (including one which we have
handled three times on two conti¬
nents). Later, we searched through
flocks at migration stopovers and win¬
tering areas in the hopes of finding the
colored plastic bands. (We have
checked over 80,000 pairs of legs!) In
this way we have begun to piece to¬
gether a picture of the red knots’ migra¬
tion routes, and to estimate their world
population.

After three years of following long
cinnamon-colored trails of knots, we
believe that the main group of about
150,000 knots winters in southern
Argentina in a zone starting 800 miles
south of Buenos Aires and stretching to
Tierra del Fuego, which is only about
600 miles from the edge of Antarctica.
A smaller group of perhaps 10,000 birds
winters along the Florida west coast.

with a few splinter groups spending
that season elsewhere along the Gulf
and Texas shore. All told, the North
American red knot world population
may be less than 200,000.

In spring the Argentina knots start
northward somewhat later than most
North American shorebirds, moving
toward southern Brazil, where William
Belton, chairman of the Pan American
Section of the International Council
for Bird Preservation, found peak num¬
bers in late April and early May. From
there we lost track of the route, but
picked it up a week later on the coast of
the southeastern United States. Are
knots flying 5,000 miles non-stop from
southern Brazil to the Georgia and
Carolina coast?

Judge Herman Coolidge of Atlanta
describes a flight he witnessed at Was-
saw Island, Georgia, on May 22, 1971.

“On Saturday morning we rode the
beach in a jeep and quickly realized we
were seeing the largest flight of knots
we had ever seen. Wave after wave of
these birds in their reddish cinnamon-
colored plumage passed us. All were
moving northward at a leisurely rate,
stopping frequently to feed or rest. We
rode the beach for several hours in an
effort to estimate their numbers. I am
confident we did not exaggerate when
we concluded we had seen at least
12,000 birds.”

Coolidge apparently saw the last of
the 1971 knot flight in Georgia for our
work has shown that the mean date for
knot migration in that region is May 12.

From the southeast coast knots move
steadily northward, finally gathering at
a major feeding area along the Dela¬
ware Bay shore of New Jersey, with
numbers building until the last of May.
Their route turns north and inland at
this point and in non-stop flights they
move north in late May and early June
to James and Hudson Bays in Can¬
ada, and then to their arctic breed¬
ing grounds.

The itinerary for knots migrating
from Florida is less clear. The largest
flocks of 1,000 to 2,000 birds gather
between October and January on the
west coast between Clearwater and

Above: Bird in the hand: care is taken when
removing red knot from rocket net.

Below: A red knot parade marches down
the beach in Sarasota, Florida.

Charlotte Harbor. The main group is in
the St. Petersburg/Sarasota area until
February when it starts dispersing.
Marked birds then appear as far south as
Naples but, simultaneously, flocks of
several hundred also show up in the
Jacksonville area. By the end of March,
5,000 knots can be found near St. Au¬
gustine, apparently having flown across
Florida as they begin their gradual
northward migration to James Bay and
the arctic. Interestingly, this move¬
ment occurs at about the same time
knots in Argentina start their north¬
ward journey. The Florida and Argen¬
tina groups merge during early May
along the southeastern Atlantic coast,
before moving northward to the Dela¬
ware Bay area.

The annual spring gathering of knots
on the Delaware Bay shore is perhaps
the greatest shorebird spectacle in
North America. Linda Leddy, a Man-
omet shorebird researcher, wrote on
May 25:

“The scene is primeval... hundreds
of thousands of horseshoe crabs crawl
on the shore to lay their eggs on the
highest new or full moon tide in the last
half of May. The coast appears to be
paved with cobbles, each one a horse¬
shoe crab clambering to secure the
right spot for laying its eggs. Add to
this scene tens of thousands of gulls,
sandpipers, and dense flocks of knots,
all lined up along the shore to feast on
crab eggs. It’s amazing that the revolu¬
tion of the moon around the earth, the
reproduction of horseshoe crabs, and
the hemispheric migrations of shore-
birds are all so closely linked.”

By sunset, small groups of knots start
breaking away from the main flock and,
steadily gaining altitude, they head
toward their breeding grounds in the
far north.

A few days after arrival in their arctic
breeding zone, the knots form pairs and
establish territories. It is late May and
the ground is still covered with patch¬
es of snow. However, the melt fol¬
lows rapidly and as more insect prey
emerges, life becomes easier for arctic
nesters. Although the habits of nesting
red knots are not fully known, the
young probably start hatching in early
July. Leaving the males to care for the
still flightless young, the females begin
their long migration south. They are
followed by the males about two weeks
later, and a month after that by the
juveniles.

Charles Beier

In Massachusetts the first influx of
knots appears about mid-July, with
numbers peaking during the first week
in August. At Scituate, where we have
banded and observed thousands of
knots, we have seen individuals we
had banded several months earlier in
Argentina, as well as others we had
color marked in Florida and New
Jersey.

The duration of their stay on the
Massachusetts coast is about two
weeks, and during that time the
Argentina-bound knots feed vora¬
ciously, sometimes doubling their
weight. When they have acquired the
necessary fat and favorable weather ar¬

rives, they head out over the Atlantic
on the long non-stop flight to South
America. The exact point of their land¬
fall is not known, but it is probably near
Surinam or Guyana. After about a
month there, feeding and fattening,
our best guess is that they fly without
stopping across Amazonia, making an
Atlantic landfall somewhere south of
Buenos Aires.

Imagine the excitement of finding a
knot marked in Massachusetts on a re¬
mote tidal flat in the wilds of the cen¬
tral Argentina coast. Laura Payne, an
intern at Manomet who helped to band
and dye knots in Massachusetts, did
just that:

6 The Living Bird Quarterly

Knots captured by rocket net wait to be measured, weighed, banded, and released.

“ ... I have fantastic news. I did see
10 red knots yesterday and one of them
had a suspicious-looking yellow rump.
You can just imagine my surprise. 1
started jumping around the beach be¬
cause of a correlimos with yellow dye...
any onlooker would have been quite
shocked. I must add that I am positive
that it was a red knot and it had a
yellow rump and undertail coverts ...
Estoy exuberante! (I am exuberant.)”

Meanwhile, the knots that winter in
Florida have begun their seemingly less
rigorous southward migration, moving
slowly through Massachusetts during
July, down the United States Atlan¬
tic coast, until they arrive in the
Jacksonville/St. Augustine area in
early September. Only a few are seen
farther south on the Atlantic side.
However, large flocks appear on the
west coast in the Sarasota area at about
this same time.

It is interesting to note that knots
marked in Massachusetts and others
banded in New Jersey have been spot¬
ted in Florida, but no Argentina knots
have ever been detected there. Con¬
versely, no Florida knots have been
seen in Argentina. These observations,
plus the fact that banded knots return
to Florida year after year, show that
Florida knots are a discrete wintering
group. It is still a riddle why one group
chooses Florida and another Argentina
as its winter haven. We’re continuing
to look for the answer.

Food, a Knotty Problem

Knots fly and feed in tight flocks.
George Mackay, noted naturalist of the
last century, referred to these flocks as
“clouds” having “numbers so high that
estimates were useless.” This charac¬
teristic rendered them particularly vul¬
nerable to hunters, who not only shot
them in large numbers, but slaughtered
thousands by fire lighting, a method
used to collect knots by the barrel for
shipment to eastern city food mar¬
kets. By 1893 Mackay feared that they
had been reduced to the point of ex¬
tinction. In 1927, Massachusetts or¬
nithologist Edward Howe Forbush, re¬
ported that “most of my Massachusetts
correspondents never see the bird
now.” Fortunately, knot numbers are
much higher today, thanks in large
measure to the Migratory Bird Treaty
Act of 1918.

If flocking made knots vulnerable in
the past, it is this reason that they are
vulnerable today. Knots are specialized
feeders whose energy needs cause them
to seek concentrated, rich food re¬
sources which they find in small
bivalves, crustaceans, and marine
worms. In James Bay the main prey is
Macoma clams. In Florida it is small,
brightly colored Coquina clams, and in
Massachusetts and Argentina it is mus¬
sel spats which dot the sod banks and
mud flats of a few select New England
estuaries, or cluster on a unique Argen¬

tinean shoreline formation called
restinga.

The results of our banding and sur¬
veys suggest that the limited number of
locations where these food combina¬
tions exist is one problem to knots. But
also, when not feeding, they need a
nearby area to preen and rest while
having good visibility for early detec¬
tion of predators. The number of such
stopover places is small along the mi¬
gration route. Knots use a few sandy
beaches in Florida and Argentina, two
or three quiet harbors and estuaries in
New England, and two sites on the
New Jersey shore. These same spots
have become increasingly popular for
human recreational development,
threatening the special needs they ful¬
fill for knots. This predicament is just
as serious as the fire lighting of the
19th century.

If food is the knots’ weakness, it is also
the logical explanation of the migra¬
tion riddle. Our research shows that
knot migrations are hemispheric jour¬
neys from lunch table to lunch table;
the blush or peak of the Macoma,
Coquina, or mussel spat crop is predict¬
able. Year after year new crops of these
bivalves have a season when they ap¬
pear in extraordinary numbers and are
just the right size for knots to eat. It
can’t be an accident that the knots ap¬
pear in equally extraordinary numbers
just when this seasonal flourishing
reaches a peak. The patterns and tim¬
ing of knot migration from Tierra del
Fuego to the arctic reflect a coordina¬
tion that must have developed over the
eons on a remarkable geographic scale
of trial and error.

If stopover areas for knots and other
migratory shorebirds are lost, are there
others that can replace them? The an¬
swer appears to be no. The situation
needs the attention of all those in¬
terested in seeing flocks of these fine
birds continue to ply their way across
the hemispheres.

FURTHER READING

Bodsworth, F. The Last of the Curlew. Dodd,
Mead &. Mead, New York. 1955.

Griffin, D. R. Bird Migration. Dover Publica¬
tions, Inc. New York. 1974.

THE AUTHOR AND PHOTOGRAPHER

Brian A. Harrington is in charge of shorebird
research at Manomet Bird Observatory, Man-
omet, Massachusetts.

David C. Twichell is on the shorebird research
team at Manomet Bird Observatory.

The Living Bird Quarterly 7

Homing with Map & Compass

by Charles Walcott

o F ALL THE WORLD’S long-dis¬
tance animal migrants, birds are the
most famous. The Arctic tern is well
known for its ability to nest above the
Arctic Circle and then migrate south,
far below the tip of South America.
The Pacific golden plover performs an
even more spectacular journey, with its
wintering range some 10,000 miles
wide and about 8,800 miles south of its
arctic breeding grounds.

How do these birds find their way?
The answer seems to involve two dis¬
tinct yet interrelated systems. One is
the birds’ “compass” and the other is
their “map.” Together, these two pro¬
cesses may be the means birds use to
find home.

Suppose you are in a rubber raft in
the middle of the ocean and someone
gives you a compass. In which direction
would you paddle? The compass is use¬
less unless you know whether you are
on the Atlantic, Pacific, or Indian
Ocean; you need to know where you
are in relation to home. What you need
is a map of where you are so you can
position yourself correctly. Similarly,
birds have to know where they are and
where they are going.

We who explore bird migration have
taken a few divergent paths ourselves in
search of the solution to its mystery.
Many of my ornithological friends look
down their noses at pigeons, even hom-
ing pigeons. But we would be even
more lost without them. For the re¬
searcher they are convenient; they re¬
turn faithfully, bring the experimental
apparatus with them, and enjoy noth¬
ing as much as producing more pigeons.
In addition, they are desirable subjects
because they have been bred for their
ability to orient themselves, then find
their way home. This is a real advan¬
tage in the arduous tasks we put them
through.

Consider the puzzle a homing pigeon
faces: it is taken from its loft in a cov¬
ered basket and released at some total¬
ly unfamiliar place. It doesn’t know
where it is. It doesn’t know where

home is. What is it to do? First it must
answer the question—which direction
is home? Once it has determined that
home lies to the north, for example,
then it seems to use a compass to find
that direction. Pigeons may have not
one but two compass systems. They
seem to prefer the sun when it is visible
and the earth’s magnetic field when the
sun is not shining.

How do we. know this? Researchers
have performed experiments in which
pigeons were confined to a box where
the lights were out of phase with the
real day by six hours: the lights went on
at noon and off at midnight, resulting
in the birds’ internal clock falling be¬
hind real time by six hours. When it
was really noon, the pigeons thought it
was 6 a.m. When these “clock-shifted”
birds were released they flew off at 90
degrees away from the direction of
home. Why? Because they were using
the sun as a compass.

The sun rises in the east, is south at
noon, and sets in the west. Pigeons
apparently know this too, so when they
want to fly east in the morning they fly
toward the sun. Our experimental birds
were released at noon, but because they
were clock-shifted, they thought it was
6 a.m. and behaved appropriately by
flying 90 degrees off course. However,
this mistake occurred only when the
sun was shining. Under cloudy skies,
the clock-shifted birds flew straight
home. Clearly they were no longer
using the sun as their compass.

What were they using? We have long
suspected that birds use the earth’s
magnetic field and here at Cornell the
late William Keeton experimented
with pigeons under Ithaca’s frequent
and dense overcast. He glued small
magnets to the pigeons’ backs. When
the sun was not visible, the magnets
often disoriented them, indicating that
they couldn’t use the magnetic field
properly.

To test this point another way,
Robert Green from the State Univer¬
sity of New York at Stony Brook and I

put coils around the pigeons’ heads and
ran a small, harmless electric current
through the coils. That allowed us to
control the magnetic field around the
pigeons’ heads. By reversing the battery
in its holder, we could reverse the direc¬
tion of the current through the coils
and so reverse the direction of the
magnetic field. Thus the same coil
could either result in a magnetic field
that was a Nup (north up) or a Sup
(south up) depending on which way
the battery was connected.

Pigeons with Sup coils released
under overcast skies headed toward
home, but birds with Nup coils flew
away from home as long as the sun
wasn’t out. When the sun was shining
we couldn’t fool them. This is evidence
that pigeons can use two compass sys¬
tems, the sun when it is visible, or the
earth’s magnetic field when it is not.

Now that we are fairly certain of the
compass, we are trying to figure out the
birds’ mysterious map. Before a homing
pigeon can effectively use its compass,
it must decide which direction is home.
But how do pigeons know where they
are in relation to their loft?

Pigeons fitted with opaque contact
lenses had no trouble becoming
oriented and finding home. Pigeons re¬
leased over the ocean, out of sight of
land, also found their way without dif¬
ficulty. Both of these experiments indi¬
cate visual landmarks are not very im¬
portant. And the good orientation
often seen under overcast rules out the
sun or stars. What is left?

There are currently two major the¬
ories. A group in Italy, led by Floriano
Papi of the University of Pisa, and
Hans Wallraff in Germany, have pro¬
posed that pigeons use familiar odors to
find the loft. J. Gould at Princeton,
Bruce Moore at Dalhousie University
in Nova Scotia, W. Wiltschkos in
Germany, and A. Lednor and 1 at Cor¬
nell, think that the earth’s magnetic
field plays the key role.

Papi and his colleagues have per¬
formed many ingenious experiments

8 The Living Bird Quarterly

Blue 70 returns to the loft and prepares to go through the hanging “bobs” of the trap. The bobs keep the bird from leaving.

L. Snyder

C. Walcott

Above: A pigeon carries a radio transmitter and battery packs mounted on a small wire
and rubberband harness. With these, researchers can follow the bird’s direction.

Right: Walcott equips pigeon with a transmitter while Lee Snyder records information
about where the pigeons vanish into the horizon. The other pigeons watch with interest.

D. Smith

The Living Bird Quarterly 9

which support the idea that pigeons use
odors as the basis of their map. Papi’s
idea is that pigeons learn to correlate
the odors around their loft with the
directions of the wind. Sitting in the
loft the bird learns, for example, that a
chocolate factory lies to the north, the
sea to the south, an olive grove to the
east, and a Fiat plant to the west. In
this way the pigeons develop an olfac¬
tory map of their surroundings. When
released at a new location, they sample
the local odors, remember what wind
direction brought it to them at the
loft and then fly in the appropriate
direction.

At first this seems an improbable
theory, but three types of experiments

seem to support it: (1) Papi has inter¬
fered with the pigeons’ ability to use
their sense of smell, (2) he has manipu¬
lated odor cues during the pigeons’ trip
to the release site, and (3) he has al¬
tered the wind direction around the
home loft.

In each case Papi reports that the
results of the experiments support the
olfactory hypothesis. But a skeptic
looking at these experiments can fre¬
quently find other, non-olfactory, ex¬
planations. The earth’s magnetism, for
instance, could be producing some of
the results. Only one Italian tech¬
nique, the “deflector loft,’’ has had the
same effect in Italy, Germany and
Ithaca.

The deflector loft is a small slatted
aviary with four large panels that
deflect, by 90 degrees, the incoming
winds from all directions (see diagram).
For example, a wind from the north
hits a deflector panel and the pigeons in
the loft experience the wind as coming
from the west. A pigeon raised in such a
loft should have its olfactory map ro¬
tated by 90 degrees. And that seems to
be what happens. When released, pi¬
geons that have been raised in deflector
lofts vanished about 90 degrees away
from home, in exactly the direction
that the olfactory hypothesis would
predict.

However, further investigations
by Jerry Waldvogel and John Phillips

Right: Pigeons inside loft experience wind.

Diagram Top: Deflector loft experiment.
Control = red. Lofts with deflectors = blue
and black. Winds from the north presumably
carrying odor. “A,” enter control loft from the
north, but winds enter the other lofts from the
east and west because of the deflectors.

Bottom: Bearings of pigeons. Control birds
(red), which had experienced normal airflow,
oriented properly. By contrast, the birds which
had experienced “A” winds from the west
(blue) oriented more easterly, and the birds
which experienced “A” winds from the east
(black), oriented westerly. Each dot = vanish'
ing bearing. Dotted line is direction of home.

Bottom Right: Martin Michener tracks a
pigeon using radio telemetry.

C. Walcott

A. McD. Davis

10 The Living Bird Quarterly

Homing pigeons are bred for their ability to return home from great distances. For the researcher
they are convenient. They return faithfully and bring experimental apparatus back with them.

at Cornell showed that it was prob-
ably the deflector panels themselves
that were causing the effect. The
panels, made of plexiglas, not only de¬
flect wind, but also reflect sunlight. At
the moment, Waldvogel and Phillips
think that the deflector loft effect is, at
least in part, due to the reflection of
light which affects the pigeons’ sun
compass, not the deflection of wind
and the odors it carries.

All in all, it looks as if the olfactory
hypothesis is still very much an open
question.

If pigeons are not employing odors,
could they be constructing their map
using the earth’s magnetic field? As
mentioned before, there is some evi¬
dence that they use it for a compass. To
understand how birds could use the
earth’s magnetic field for orientation,
consider the earth to be a grapefruit
with a bar magnet poked through the
middle. If you remember from playing
with a bar magnet, thumbtacks and
paper clips are attracted to either end of
the bar, but not to the middle, an in¬
dication that the magnetic field is
strongest at the poles of the magnet.

The same is true of the earth. The

magnetic field is strongest at the north
and south poles and weakest at the
equator. Thus, information about one’s
position north and south could be de¬
rived from the strength of the earth’s
magnetic field if one were sensitive
enough to detect it. However, it is
hundreds of times weaker than what
your finger feels when placed between
the tips of a common horseshoe mag¬
net. It is hard to imagine that a pigeon
could sense infinitesimal changes in
the strength of the magnetic field as it
travels to its home. Yet, evidence is
mounting which shows that this may be
what is happening.

In the 1940s Henry Yeagley from
Pennsylvania State College reported
that pigeon races were often slower on
days following magnetic storms. Bruno
Schreiber from the University of
Milano in Italy recently reported simi¬
lar results.

Keeton and his colleagues did an
extensive series of pigeon releases in
which the same birds were set free at
the same site day after day for an entire
summer. When they examined the av¬
erage direction in which the pigeons
vanished into the horizon, they found

that this direction varied from day to
day, and that the variation correlated
with even slight changes in the earth’s
magnetic field.

In September, 1975, I gave a seminar
at Rhode Island College and Philip
Pearson of the biology department
asked whether pigeons were disturbed
when released at magnetic iron depos¬
its. The earth’s magnetic field should
be distorted in such areas and Dr. Pear¬
son suggested that if the birds are af¬
fected by magnetic storms, then they
might have trouble homing from mag¬
netic anomalies. Since Dr. Pearson
kindly furnished us with the location of
a huge magnetic anomaly. Iron Mine,
near Woonsocket, Rhode Island, we
released some pigeons there. The birds
were totally disoriented! Yet, once they
flew outside of the disturbed area, they
found their bearings and homed nor¬
mally. These surprising results led us to
release more pigeons at other anoma¬
lies both stronger and weaker than Iron
Mine.

What we found was that the stronger
the magnetic anomaly, the more dif¬
ficulty the pigeons had orienting
toward home, suggesting that the dis¬
turbed magnetic field caused their dis¬
orientation.

One more piece of evidence corrobo¬
rates the involvement of the earth’s
magnetic field in pigeon orientation.
My brother, Ben, and I have discovered
that pigeons’ heads contain iron-rich
tissue. Whether it is magnetic and
the receptor with which pigeons pick
up their magnetic information, re¬
mains to be seen, however, the finding
seems to point in that direction.

Only time and further experiments
will tell what information the homing
pigeon uses to find its way over hun¬
dreds of miles of unfamiliar territory.
And when we know more about pi¬
geons, perhaps it will help us to under¬
stand how a Manx shearwater, released
in Boston, found its way across the At¬
lantic Ocean to its home on the coast of
England in only 12 days.

FURTHER READING

Gould, J. L. “The Map Sense of Pigeons.” Na¬
ture, Vol. 296. March 18, 1982.

Schmidt'Koening, K. Avian Orientation and
Navigation. Academic Press, New York. 1979.

THE AUTHOR

Charles Walcott is executive director of the
Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology.

The Living Bird Quarterly 11

(

HE BEST REASON for feeding birds is the sheer
enjoyment of seeing them close up and observing them going
about their everyday lives. The degree to which the birds
themselves benefit from our efforts remains unclear. Al¬
though we would like to think that our feeding wild birds will
result in more of them surviving to nest and produce young,
this, in fact, is yet to be confirmed. On the other hand, there

is no conclusive evidence that feeding
is harmful, either. For those of
us who derive pleasure from
watching birds at the feeder,
we can easily concentrate
large numbers and varied
species by providing them
with proper food.

Until recently, there
was little carefully col¬
lected and evaluated in-
formation to guide us in our
selection of seeds to feed
“■ birds. Now, thanks to A. D.

Geis of the Patuxent Wildlife Re¬
search Center, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, we are better
informed.

One fact that Geis uncovered in his research is that
feeding preferences among various bird species can be strik¬
ingly different. As a result, it is difficult to find a single seed
mixture that would be suitable for all birds at all places and at

article by Charles R. Smith
artwork by Jack Lambert

all times. However, the birds Geis studied did
make definite choices which we can use to guide us
when we shop for seed.

Among the larger seed-eating birds, such as the
cardinal, sunflower seeds of various types were by far
the most favored food. That preference extends to some of
the smaller seed-eating birds too, including chickadees, tit¬
mice, and nuthatches. Of the types of sunflower seeds avail¬
able, the smaller, thin-shelled oilseed was the most attrac¬
tive. Other varieties of sunflower seeds tested and found to
be popular were gray-striped and black-striped versions. For
the smaller seed-eating species, such as many sparrows and
juncos, white proso millet was well received. Red millet and
milo, commonly found in commercial mixtures, were less
appealing. These “red seeds” are added to the mix because
they are less expensive than sunflower seeds and white proso
millet, so they keep the price low. But, since the birds did not
readily eat them, their value in the mix is questionable.

In Geis’s study, cracked corn was attractive to white-
throated sparrows, dark-eyed j uncos, cardinals, mourning
doves, and tree sparrows. Finely cracked corn was eaten
more readily than its coarsely cracked counterpart.

Thistle seed, also called niger seed, though expensive, is
excellent for attracting American goldfinches. It is also very
popular among siskins and redpolls. If thistle seed is too
costly, many of the small seed-eating birds will accept white
proso millet instead.

In choosing commercial seed mixes, look for those with a
high proportion of sunflower seeds and white proso millet,
along with finely cracked com. Avoid mixes with a lot of the
unpopular red millet and milo. Where available, the small,
black, oil-type sunflower seed is the best choice. Where it is
not on the market, the larger types of sunflower seeds are the
next best choice. You might want to purchase sunflower
seeds, white proso millet, and cracked com separately and
prepare the mixture yourself

«■

Black-crested Titmouse

V? ■ It

12 The Living Bird Quarterly

Jwo Strate^es for CPeedind Birds

Attracting birds to your yard with commercial seed mixes
and suet is fun, but can be expensive and time consuming. If
you do not own the property on which you live, it may be
your only option. But, if you are a property owner, I recom¬
mend that you invest in plantings that will provide a long¬
term source of food and shelter for the birds in your area. A
good planting scheme can be a continuing joy that will
return dividends on your investment.

Some general considerations apply to plantings for attract¬
ing birds no matter where you live. A good planting scheme
should integrate three types of plants: evergreens, perennial
herbs, and fruiting shrubs.

Evergreens, such as conifers, provide cover for birds all
year round. In cold weather, evergreens are especially valu¬
able as shelter from the sleet, snow, wind, and cold. I would
choose native wild plants in any landscaping plan designed
to benefit birds. Many native species already are adapted to
the local diseases, insect pests, and climate to which they
would be exposed, so they usually remain healthy and require
little care. Nurseries commonly carry a wide selection of
native species.

Perennial herbs in the composite family (which includes
sunflowers) produce an abundance of the small seeds favored
by many winter finches. You might consider encouraging the
growth of goldenrods and asters; in the northeast, fields of
these plants abound with siskins, goldfinches, and redpolls
during “invasion winters” when they feed on the tiny seeds
the plants produce.

In addition to evergreens and perennial herbs, shrubs of
different heights that offer birds an assortment of fruits can
be very successful. Recently, E. W. Stiles of Rutgers Univer¬

sity classified a number of fruiting shrubs according to the
quality of their fruit as food for birds. Among fall fruit-
producing shrubs, Stiles identified the following as high-
quality: alternate-leaf dogwood, Cornus altemifolia; silky
dogwood, Cornus amomum; flowering dogwood, Cornus
florida; red-panicle dogwood, Cornus racemosa; burn-
ingbush, Euonymus atropurpureus; running strawberry-bush,
Euonymus ohovatus; common spicebush, Lindera benzoin;
alderleaf buckthorn, Rhamnus alnifolia; and sassafras. Sassa¬
fras albidum. Incorporating these shrubs into your planting
scheme can provide a valuable source of high-energy food for
many species of migrating and resident birds in the fall. Also,
you might want to participate in the Backyard Wildlife
Habitat Program of the National Wildlife Federation. In this
you receive specific guidelines for certifying your property as
backyard wildlife habitat by the N. W. F. For details write to
N. W. F, 1412 16th Street, N.W, Washington, D.C. 20036.

A long-term project of growing bird-attracting plants on
your property, to complement your normal bird-feeding ef¬
forts, will not only enhance its beauty, it will be of value in a
more important way. As we continue to cut large tracts of
forest and further encroach on wildlands with urban de¬
velopment, all of our efforts to provide suitable habitat for
birds will be of increasing significance.

FURTHER READING

DeGraaf, R. M. and G. M. Winman. Trees, Shrubs and Vines for Attracting
Birds — A Manual for the Northeast. University of Massachusetts Press,
Amherst. 1979.

THE AUTHOR

Charles R. Smith is director of public education at the Cornell University
Laboratory of Ornithology.

THE ARTIST

Jack Lambert is professor of drawing in the College of Agriculture and Life
Sciences, Cornell University.

Red-panicle Dogwood, Comus racemosa

M ANY OF US THINK of turkey
primarily in terms of food. The ap¬
proaching Thanksgiving season espe¬
cially brings to mind thoughts of the
succulent bird served with all the
trimmings. Yet there is another side to
the turkey: the wild side. While our
domestic dinners repose on the table,
most of their wild cousins have escaped
a fate surrounded by cranberry sauce,
and are out in the woods where dedi¬
cated bird watchers can catch a glimpse
of them.

Viewing these wary birds in their
natural setting is no small feat. Their
woodsy habitat and keen senses com¬
bine to make turkey watching a real
challenge. However, knowing a bit
about their habits and location may
assist you in tracking them down.

The most exciting time to watch for
wild turkey, Meleagris gcdlopavo, is in
early April when increasing daylight
and warm temperatures send sex hor¬
mones coursing through the male tur¬
key’s blood. His ensuing courtship dis¬
plays, usually performed during clear,
warm mornings, are a breathtaking
sight. His head adornments fill with
blood and become crimson. Then,
with tail and wing feathers fanned and
wing tips pressed to the ground, he
struts back and forth gobbling loudly.

A RECEPTIVE HEN responds with
clucks or yelps. Sometimes she seeks
out the tom; sometimes he must go to
her. As morning progresses the male
may accumulate a harem of several
hens. Breeding continues through
spring, the harems slowly dwindling as
the bred hens leave to build nests.

Social interactions surrounding mat¬
ing differ among the various wild turkey
subspecies. In some, males are solitary
during the breeding season, although
two or more toms may breed the same
harem. In others, males travel in
flocks, and only the dominant male
displays and breeds the hens. While he
is mating, his flockmates defend the
harem from other males, and some¬
times fights occur.

During fall, after the rigors of mating
and raising young are past, turkeys
begin feeding voraciously and their
daily movements increase as food
supplies diminish.

Turkeys have been described as forest
vacuum cleaners because of their varied

Turkey Watching

by Richard E. Bonney, Jr.
painting by Roger Tory Peterson

''illuminated by a tentative
afternoon sun were two huge gobblers”

food habits. While meals depend on
the time of year and type of habitat,
turkeys primarily eat nuts, seeds, and
fruit, collectively called mast. Acorns
are favored in nearly all parts of the
country, but turkeys also eat grasses,
leaves, grapes, dogwood berries, sor¬
ghum, sumac berries, and various herbs
and grains. Animal food consists of
beetles, grasshoppers, crickets, and
many other insects as well as crayfish,
spiders, and snails. There are even rec¬
ords of turkeys eating salamanders.

WILD TURKEYS USUALLY have
no problem surviving snowy winters,
for they can scratch through several
inches of snow to reach buried food.
However, sleet or melting and refreez¬
ing conditions do cause problems if the
birds can’t break through the thick
crust. When this happens they feed
from trees, and when the weather is
very severe, they can survive without
food for a week.

Turkeys keep constant watch for
predators, and as long as they do, they
have little to fear, for their size and
speed place them beyond the reach of
most threats. They can run up to 18
miles per hour and when pressed, they
can fly at least one-half mile. They can
even swim.

Besides size, speed, and diverse
means of locomotion, wild turkeys
have another effective defense: keen
eyesight. Their eyesight is so sharp it
has been suggested that they can detect
the movement of the hour hand on a
clock. Bobcats, foxes, or coyotes can
occasionally get close enough to make a
meal of a turkey, but predation, except
on eggs and chicks, is not considered a
major factor in turkey mortality.

At night flocks of turkeys roost in
trees. This deters predators that can’t

climb. But even climbing predators
have a hard time approaching a roost¬
ing turkey, for sensory organs in the
bird’s legs detect movement of the
branch. Great horned owls, which
swoop swiftly and silently, are the only
significant nighttime predators.

Where can you find and observe wild
turkeys? You might be fortunate
enough to glimpse some crossing a road
or feeding in a large field. Usually,
though, you have to look for them, and
you must start with the proper habitat.

Turkeys are birds of the open forest.
They prefer areas with occasional clear¬
ings, which supply an abundance of
high-protein insects for chicks. The
best habitat includes a variety of gras¬
ses, clovers, nut and fruitbearing trees;
an assortment of food lessens the
chance of starvation from total crop
failure. Turkeys like sparse understory
where they can spot approaching pre¬
dators and make a quick getaway. Ag¬
ricultural land is also used, especially
where escape cover is nearby.

ROOST TREES ARE good places to
find turkeys since flocks use them for
several consecutive nights. Look for a
proliferation of droppings and feathers
scattered throughout a forested area.

One of the most conspicuous signs of
turkeys is their scratchings seen be¬
neath trees. The scratchings, which
appear as a large “V” in the soil, are
made by a turkey as it stands on one
foot, reaches ahead with the other, and
kicks leaves or other forest litter back
and to the side. The “V,” pointing in
the direction the turkey is facing, forms
as the bird repeats the process foot
by foot.

To see the tom’s thrilling courtship
display, you’ll need good luck or a blind
and a means of imitating the hen’s yelp

14 The Living Bird Quarterly

Courtesy of Mill Pond Press, Inc., Venice, Florida 33595

or the call of a rival tom. It’s best to
place your blind where turkeys have
been gobbling, and you should be in
the blind well before dawn. The tom
begins gobbling before the sun rises and
may leave the area if disturbed.

BEING IN THE PROPER habitat
and knowing what to look for won’t
help if you’re outside of the wild tur¬
key’s range. Originally, they were dis¬
tributed throughout much of the east¬
ern and southern portions of the
United States, extending into Mexico.
When early settlers reached America
the bird was in such abundance that
they could bring one home for dinner
any day of the year. Flocks numbering
in the thousands were reported. But, as
the country developed, turkey popula¬
tions suffered. Suitable habitat van¬
ished as the land was cleared for farms
and cities, and market hunting meant
wholesale slaughter with little thought
to the future. The bird became rare.

except in portions of the southeast.

In the late 1940s, concern for the
turkey resulted in the first attempts by
state fish and wildlife agencies to re¬
establish wild turkey populations. To¬
day, thanks to successful trap-and-
transfer programs, financed largely
by sales of hunting licenses and spe¬
cial turkey hunting permits, the birds
have been re-established in pockets
throughout many of their home states,
including New York, Massachusetts,
Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Pop¬
ulations also have been established in
states outside the ancestral range, in¬
cluding North Dakota, Montana,
Wyoming, and California.

LAST SPRING, at the close of an
annual bird count in the Massachusetts
Berkshires, my party was headed home
one bird short of our goal of 90 species.
The weather had been cold and rainy.
Suddenly the driver stopped and si¬
lently pointed across an open orchard.

There, illuminated by a tentative af¬
ternoon sun, were two huge gobblers
feeding in the grass. We watched them
work their way under the trees and to a
fence at the orchard’s edge. Moving
back for a running start, they hopped
the fence and disappeared into the
woods.

QUIETLY WE WATCHED them
go, thanking them for providing a
grand finale to an otherwise miserable
day. Despite the wild turkey’s close en¬
counter with extinction, sightings such
as ours should again become common
as the wild turkey resumes its rightful
place as king of our eastern forest birds.

THE AUTHOR

Richard Bonney is an environmental and natural
history writer and contributing editor of The Liv¬
ing Bird Quarterly.

THE ARTIST

Roger Tory Peterson is editor and illustrator of
The Peterson Field Guide Series.

The Living Bird Quarterly 15

EESEAKCH&REVIEW

by Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

A New Look
at Imprinting

Have you ever seen photographs of duck¬
lings or goslings parading after a toy train,
thinking that the strange object is their
mother? These odd attachments can be in¬
duced in laboratory situations by a process
known as “imprinting.”

Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz, often
called the father of modem ethology (the
study of animal behavior), was among the
first to study the phenomenon of imprint¬
ing. He discovered that the young of certain
precocial birds, that is, birds that leave the
nest almost immediately after hatching,
have a critical period soon after they are
born. During this time they “imprint” on,
or form an attachment to, the first object
they see. In the wild this normally would be
the mother. Attachment to the mother has
obvious survival value. Also, it has been
assumed that imprinting is the mechanism
by which birds learn to recognize other
members of their own species.

Imprinting has intrigued ethologists ever
since Lorenz popularized the phenomenon
in 1935. Consequently, it has been studied
often, and thousands of young ducks and
geese have been imprinted on scientists,
beach balls, and flashing bread boxes.

While the imprinting process has become
understood, certain questions have been
largely ignored. In particular, since imprint¬
ing studies have used artificial objects, it has
not been known whether the experiments
are studying the same biological processes
that occur in nature. Young birds do not
have to distinguish beach balls from other
birds. However, they must distinguish
members of their own species from those of
other species, similar in form and habit,
that live in the same place.

With this in mind, Timothy D. Johnston
and Gilbert Gottlieb of the North Carolina
Division of Mental Health devised some
experiments to investigate mallard duck
imprinting on “biologically relevant”
objects.

Their imprinting experiments were mod¬
eled after earlier ones, but they substituted
stuffed hens of various species of waterfowl
for the non-biological objects traditionally
used (“Development of visual species iden¬
tification in ducklings: what is the role of
imprinting?” Animal Behavior, vol. 29, pp.
1082-1099).

In the first of several experiments,
Johnston and Gottlieb exposed 122 one-
day-old mallard ducklings. Anas platyrhym
chos, to an adult female model of one of
/ three species of waterfowl: another mallard,
a pintail. Anas acuta, or a redhead, Aythya
americana. The models revolved around the
perimeter of a test arena and emitted a mal¬
lard maternal call. The researchers ex¬
pected that each duckling would imprint on
the model to which it was exposed, regard¬
less of the model’s species. Then the duck¬
lings, given a choice of following either the
familiar model or a model they had never
seen, should follow the familiar, or im¬
printed, model.

For example, a duckling trained with the
mallard and then given a choice between
following the mallard or the redhead should
follow the mallard; a duckling trained on
the redhead and then given a choice be¬
tween following the mallard or the redhead
should follow the redhead.

But when the researchers conducted
choice tests, the results were surprising.
Most of the supposedly imprinted ducklings
showed no preferences! In fact, the only
ducklings that behaved as expected were
those trained to the mallard and then given
a choice between the mallard or the pintail;
these ducklings followed the familiar mal¬
lard. Thus, few of the ducklings seemed to
be imprinting on the test models.

Johnston and Gottlieb wondered if their
results could have been caused by ineffec¬
tive experimental design. Perhaps some¬
thing was lacking in the test setup; perhaps
their procedures were different from those
of earlier researchers. To investigate these
possibilities, they tried imprinting 98 new
ducklings, this time on either the mallard
model or on a red striped box or a green ball,
objects similar to those used in previous
studies by other researchers. As in the first
experiment, all the models emitted mallard
maternal calls.

When the new ducklings were given
choice tests, they did follow the familiar
model — for example, ducklings trained to
the ball followed the ball rather than the
box; ducklings trained to the box followed
the box rather than the ball. It seemed,
therefore, that the ducklings imprinted on
artificial objects more readily than on
natural models. Why? The results do not
answer this question. Johnston and Gott¬
lieb speculate that perhaps the artificial ob¬
jects are more “perceptually salient,” that
is, easier to distinguish between than the
various duck species.

Next, Johnston and Gottlieb reconsid¬
ered the results of the first experiment, spe¬
cifically, the one case in which imprinting
may have occurred — i.e., those ducklings
that followed the familiar mallard rather
than the unfamiliar pintail. Could this,
they wondered, actually be due to a “naive
preference” for the mallard — a preference
not developed through learning?

To test this question, they again gave
choice tests, but this time to 121 new duck¬
lings that were not exposed to any models
before being tested. Some of these duck¬
lings had a choice of approaching either the
mallard or the pintail; others, the mallard or
the redhead. Again, the models emitted
mallard maternal calls. If these untrained
ducklings did have naive preferences for the
mallard, they would be expected to ap¬
proach the mallard. But the ducklings
showed no preferences. Instead, they ap¬
proached all models with about equal fre¬
quency. This seemed to indicate that, in the

Thanks to Gilbert Gottlieb

The five models used in the imprinting experiments. From left to right: Pintail, Mallard, Redhead, Red Striped Box, Green Ball.

16 The Living Bird Quarterly

first experiment, the ducklings had learned
the preferences shown for the mallard over
the pintail. Why did they not learn a prefer¬
ence for the mallard over the redhead?

One possibility was that the training
period was insufficient to permit the duck¬
lings to distinguish between mallard and
redhead models. So, the researchers at¬
tempted to simulate the normal experience
of the ducklings by “brooding” them with a
mallard model for 24 hours before the train¬
ing period. Then the ducklings were given
choice tests between the mallard and red¬
head models. Still there was no evidence of
imprinting. In fact, the ducklings showed a
slight preference for the redhead!

Perhaps, Johnston and Gottlieb surmise,
the mallard ducklings do not distinguish
between mallard and redhead models
because they do not need to in the wild.
Mallard ducklings may seldom encounter
redheads in natural situations, since their
nesting ecology is dissimilar. On the other
hand, mallards and pintails often nest close
together. This may explain why the duck¬

lings do develop a preference for the mallard
model over the pintail.

Johnston and Gottlieb feel that these
results raise doubts that imprinting
is the mechanism by which precocial
birds learn to recognize members of their
species. Unfortunately, the results do not
explain how species recognition is de¬
veloped. However, they clearly point to the
need for understanding the natural situa¬
tions in which birds learn to discriminate
between species. Apparently, natural set¬
tings are far more complex than laboratory
experiments of traditional imprinting
studies.

For example, researchers who have stud¬
ied duck broods in the field report that the
hen’s call is more important than her ap¬
pearance in controlling duckling behavior.
Perhaps species recognition and social at¬
tachments are developed through sound
rather than sight. Lorenz himself discovered
that mallard ducklings would accept him as
their mother only when he quacked loud
and long in his best approximation of a

NEWS&NOTE8

Sound recordist William W. H. Gunn re¬
ceived the 14th Arthur A. Allen Award for
his contribution to popular ornithology at
an award dinner in Ithaca, N.Y. earlier this
month. Presenting Dr. Gunn with the
medal was the first recipient of the award,
Roger Tory Peterson.

Cjunn has helped in the production of
television and radio programs for the Cana¬
dian Broadcasting Corporation, and has
published recordings of bird sounds, some
with Donald J. Borror.

The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology
established the award in 1966 in memory of

William Gunn

Arthur A. Allen, eminent ornithologist
and teacher at Cornell for nearly 50 years.

Les Line, editor of Audubon magazine, has
become consulting editor of The Living Bird
Quarterly.

The Laboratory has a new development
officer, Samuel A. Eliot. Prior to his ap¬
pointment, Dr. Eliot held the position of
vice president of the College of the Atlan¬
tic, Bar Harbor, Maine. He was also a foun¬
der of that college.

Gift certificates from The Crow's Nest
Bookshop are now available for everyone on
your holiday gift list. The Living Bird Quar¬
terly, too, would make an excellent present.

Peregrines’ Progress: the magnificent
falcon, rescued from extinction east of the
Mississippi by the Peregrine Fund, con¬
tinues to do well in the wild. Over 200
young were produced in captivity this sea¬
son and all but about a dozen were released.
Read more about the peregrines in The Per¬
egrine Fund Newsletter and in the next issue
of The Living Bird Quarterly.

A photographic safari to East Africa is
being sponsored by the Laboratory in Feb¬
ruary, 1983. The focus will be on the re¬
markable birdlife of Kenya’s Great Rift Val¬
ley. For further information write to Photo
Safari, Laboratory of Ornithology.

mother duck. Perhaps, in these experi¬
ments, the ducklings’ apparent failure to
imprint resulted from the fact that all the
test models emitted mallard maternal calls.

Does imprinting have significance in the
natural world? Or, as these results seem to
suggest, is imprinting—at least in the case of
mallards—an artifact of laboratory testing?
Only further experimentation and observa¬
tion can answer these questions. But
Johnston and Gottlieb strongly suggest that
researchers who investigate the imprinting
phenomenon look beyond traditional
studies to determine the importance of im¬
printing in nature. They feel that the true
role of imprinting will be determined only
when all of the ecological factors surround¬
ing the nesting biology of precocial birds are
understood.

V V

Song and
Reproduction

Many birds have a variety of song types. In
southern England, the male great tit, Parus
major, sings from one to eight distinct songs.
Researchers at the Edward Grey Institute of
Field Ornithology, Oxford, England, have
been studying this bird and its songs for
several years. Recently, they have related
song repertoires to the tit’s lifetime repro¬
ductive success (American Naturalist, vol.
118, pp. 149-159).

Over a six-year period, Peter McGregor,
John Krebs, and Christopher Perrins re¬
corded 152 male birds. They discovered
that males singing several song types pro¬
duced larger offspring, more offspring that
survived to breed, and were more likely to
survive and breed in a second year, than
males that sang only a few song types.

Does the larger repertoire actually cause
higher reproductive success? Probably the
relationship is indirect. The researchers feel
that a large song repertoire increases a
male’s success in competing for favored
nesting areas, and that reproductive success
is in turn influenced by high-quality
habitat. What is not clear is how the reper¬
toires develop. It is known that they are not
inherited. The researchers suggest that rep¬
ertoire size reflects differences in learning
opportunities, with the number of songs
heard at the beginning of the nesting season
influencing final repertoire size.

V V

DID YOU KNOW?

The tiniest feathered creature also has the fast¬
est wing-beat. The hummingbird’s wing-beat
may be as fast as 50 to 75 times per second.

The Living Bird Quarterly 17

Finally a comprehensive
study of the art of
Louis Agassiz Fuertes...

Above: Streak-backed Orioles
Right: Silvery-cheeked Homblll

A Celebration of Birds

The Life and Art of Louis Agassiz Fuertes

Robert McCracken Peck
Introduction by Roger Tory Peterson

A Celebration of Birds examines the essence of Fuertes's
genius and assesses his enormous influence in the worlds
of art and ornithology.

The book with 49 full-color plates and over 100
black-and-white illustrations, dramatically demonstrates
why he is acclaimed as unsurpassed in his ability to capture
the grace and beauty of birds.

Robert McCracken Peck, art historian and naturalist, has
written for Audubon magazine. Arts Magazine, American Art
Review, and other popular and scholarly publications.

Please send me-copies of A Celebration of Birds, The Life and Art of Louis

Agassiz Fuertes.

192 pages, paper, 1982, $30.00/25.50 Laboratory of Ornithology members.

Enclosed is a check or money order in U.S. funds, payabie to The Crow's best Bookshop.

$-Amount of order

$-(n.Y. state residents add 7% sales tax)

$-Postage and handling ($1.50 -f 500 each additional copy)

$-Total amount enclosed

name_

Address_

City-—-State_Zip_

Mail to: The Crow's Fiest Bookshop, Sapsucker Woods, Ithaca, new York 14850

Celebration accompanies a major
exhibit of Fuertes’s work, opening this
month in Philadelphia and prepared
under the auspices of the Academy of
Natural Sciences.

With a Little Bit of Luck

article and photographs hy George H. Harrison

H AVING PHOTOGRAPHED

birds for nearly 40 years, starting at age
seven, I was perplexed by the question
put to me by the Quarterly’s editors,
“What are your most outstanding bird
photographs?”

What did they mean by outstanding?
Is the outstanding quality of a bird
photograph determined by the diffi¬
culty endured to obtain it? By the rarity
of the species? By the artistic quality it
exemplifies? Or by the number of times
it has been published? My selection of
these photos was based on all of those
elements, as well as that elusive phan¬
tom, luck.

Luck was the overriding influence in
the cardinal photo made through the
living room window at our home in
Wisconsin. I had set up to photograph
birds on a feeder when the cardinal
posed, in the wind, a foot from the
feeder. By moving the camera blindly
in the bird’s direction and shooting,
without any real confidence that I
would get anything, I got it. The same
can be said for the lappet-faced vulture
photographed in Zambia. Had the bird
not eaten so much carrion elephant
meat, it would have been able to fly
away. As it was, the poor bird couldn’t
even walk. I shot that photo with a
135mm lens.

Difficulty and rarity as well as luck
played parts in the Cuban pygmy owl
photo made at the Bay of Pigs a few
years ago. It was sheer luck to spot this
rare red phase of the owl sitting about
12 feet above the ground, preening it¬
self after having finished some mamma¬
lian morsel. The difficulty came in get¬
ting into the Bay of Pigs to photograph

Lappet'faced vulture in Zambia.

The Living Bird Quarterly 19

Harrison photographed this catbird in a neighbor’s hedge nearly 40 years ago.

the owl. My wife, Kit, and I had been
invited there by the Cuban govern¬
ment to advise them on arranging
American bird watching trips, but
much delicate negotiating preceded
our visit.

Difficulty and beauty played major
roles in the photo of the mute swan,
shot on the bird’s native breeding
grounds at the Astrakhan Wildlife Pre¬
serve at the mouth of the Volga River in
the Soviet Union. The first American
ever to visit the preserve, I had to be
poled in a flatbottomed boat across the
shallow marsh by two Russian wildlife
biologists until we were close enough to
get this shot with my 400mm lens. I am
still the only American journalist who
has gone to the Soviet Union under the
terms of the Joint Agreement on Con¬
servation and Environment (detente).

The photo of the Siberian cranes re¬
quired 13 hours of sitting on a table top
inside a reed blind in the middle of a
marsh at the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary
in India. Although I had entered the
blind before daybreak and had all the
photos 1 needed within an hour, 1 re¬
mained in the blind until after dark in
order not to disturb the world’s only
known flock of wintering Siberians.

A good memory, dating back 30
years, helped me to obtain the bluebird
photo. 1 remembered helping my father
photograph bluebirds at my grand¬
father’s farm in western Pennsylvania
when 1 was a boy. Needing photographs
of bluebirds myself recently, 1 returned
to that same farm and was delighted to
find progeny still thriving there. It was
then simply a matter of setting up a
blind near the nesting box to get the
photo.

One advantage 1 have as a bird
photographer is having a great teacher.
My father is Hal H. Harrison, author of
two field guides to birds’ nests. He was
one of the pioneers in the field of na¬
ture photography, specializing in birds.
At age 76, he is still very active, and is
currently putting the finishing touches
on his life’s work, a book on the wood
warblers of North America.

Since the days when Dad helped me
with my first setup on a catbird’s nest
in a neighbor’s hedge, photographic
equipment has come a long way. In
fact, it has been improved to the point
where anyone with the desire, pa¬
tience, and some knowledge of the sub¬
ject can take excellent bird photo¬
graphs. Today, camera equipment is
much more reliable, portable, easier to
obtain and to operate than it was 40
years ago. Most important, today’s
equipment produces far better results.

To get all of these photographs I used
one of two kinds of cameras and several
lenses. Some were made with Leicaflex
cameras while more recent takes were
made with Olympus OM2 cameras.
Regardless, nearly all were shot
through the Leica 400mm lens which I
have had adapted for use on both
cameras. I believe it is the finest piece
of glass ever made for any camera.

The OM2’s are equipped with auto¬
matic winders which allow the use of a
remote-control wire with a push but¬
ton. The automatic metering system in
the OM2, the winder, and remote con¬
trol, allow me to shoot a 36-exposure
roll of film without getting out of my
blind or otherwise disturbing the sub¬
ject. This is a far cry from the 4x5
Speed Graphic, sheet film, blue bulbs.

Above: Rare Siberian cranes on their winter¬
ing grounds, Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary, India.

Right: Cardinal in the wind: a lucky shot.

and homemade dry cell battery remote
control system I borrowed from my dad
for the catbird shot.

One thing has not changed, how¬
ever, and that is the need to use a tri¬
pod whenever possible. Though my
400mm Leica lens comes equipped
with a shoulder brace, it is far better to
use it from a sturdy tripod, and with a
cable release. That way the camera
cannot move and photographs should
be sharp. The tripod also permits me to
slow down the shutter speed and thus
“stop down” the aperture, giving me
more depth of field, and a still sharper
photograph.

Film is very important when shoot¬
ing for magazine reproduction. Most
leading color magazines now insist on
Kodachrome. That means only 35mm
and ASA speeds of 25 and 64. The
reason for this is that Kodachrome has
virtually no grain in the composition of
the film, thereby permitting enlarge-

20 The Living Bird Quarterly

The Living Bird Quarterly 21

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

merit of a small part of a Kodachrome
transparency with little or no deteriora¬
tion of the image. Ektachrome and
other color films have noticeable grain
patterns which make the enlarging of a
photo to page size more difficult with¬
out loss of quality.

The importance of this sort of tech¬
nical information depends upon what
the photographer intends to do with his
or her bird pictures. If they are taken
merely for fun, then it doesn’t really
matter what kind of film or camera is
used. For amateur photographers, to¬
day’s films and cameras are all of the
highest quality and good bird photo¬
graphs can now he made with the
simplest of equipment, Instamatics in¬
cluded. Kit and 1 have juried the Na¬
tional Wildlife magazine photo contest
every year since its inception and are
amazed at the high-quality photog¬
raphy coming from the simplest
equipment.

One important fact that 1 have
learned after painful experiences in
bird blinds is that many fine bird
photographs can be made from the
comfort of one’s own living room. A
few years ago we built an addition to
our home in which large thermopane
windows were installed close to our bird
feeding station. The quality of the glass

is so good that I can shoot photographs
through it without any apparent loss of
quality, even at severe angles. This
luxury allows me to set up my equip¬
ment and leave it in the living room
until the light and other conditions are
perfect. No more long periods of wait¬
ing in blinds, in cramped conditions, in
all kinds of weather to get photos of
backyard birds. 1 simply wait until
everything is right while 1 work on
other projects. The cardinal photo¬
graph is an example of through-the-
glass photography.

The essential point to remember,
however, is to enjoy taking pictures.
Bird photography can be much fun,
though very challenging at times. Birds
are among the most visible and fas¬
cinating of all wild creatures. Photo¬
graphing them in their natural habitat
can be one of the most rewarding ex¬
periences one can have in the out¬
doors. A little luck doesn’t hurt either.

FURTHER READING

Harrison, George H. The Backyard Bird Watcher.
Simon and Schuster, New York. 1979.

THE AUTHOR

George H. Harrison is field editor of National
Wildlife magazine and a contributor to the Labo¬
ratory of Ornithology’s Home Study Course in Bird
Photography.

Above; Cuban pygmy owl in rare red phase.

Right: Harrison returned to his family's farm
in western Pennsylvania after 30 years to find
the bluebirds still nesting there.

Below: Harrison photographed this mute
swan in its native habitat at Astrakhan Wildlife
Preserve in the Soviet Union.

22 The Living Bird Quarterly

• r-'

LABORATORY OF ORNITHOLOGY
CORNELL UNIVERSITY

159 Sapsucker Woods Road
Ithaca, New York 14850

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Discover Bird Biology

HERE IN NINE LESSONS is a college-level course in ornithology to be studied at
home, at your own pace. In a readable style, the course gives you background for
the enjoyment and appreciation of birds and encourages you to undertake studies
of your own.

The seminars are written by leading ornithologists and lavishly illustrated by
well-known bird artists.

Your progress through the course is aided by question sheets at the end of each
lesson. An instructor at the Laboratory of Ornithology corrects your question
sheets and answers any queries you may have. References and suggested
readings are also included.

LEARN ABOUT

□ The external bird

□ Birds on the move

□ The internal bird

□ Behavior of birds

□ From nest to flight

□ Man and birds

UPON COMPLETION of eight
seminars, you receive a certificate
signed by the executive director
of the Laboratory of Ornithology
acknowledging your successful
participation in Seminars in
Ornithology.

CONTACT US FOR DETAILS
Laboratory of Ornithology —BB
Cornell University
Sapsucker Woods
Ithaca, New York 14850
(607) 256-4017

Winter/1983

Volume 2 Number 1

THE LIVING BIRD

QUARTERLY

Editorial Staff

Jill Crane, Editor
Linda G. Hooper, Art Director
Charles R. Smith, Technical Editor
Les Line, Consulting Editor
Donna J. P. Crossman, Editorial Assistant
Lynne H. McKeon, Editorial Assistant
Richard E. Bonney, Jr., Contributing Editor

Laboratory Staff

4 From Persecution to Propagation

Walter R. Spofford

Man has decimated birds of prey until the existence of
whole species has been jeopardized. Today, researchers are
trying to save dwindling populations.

6 Renaissance of the Peregrine Falcon

Tom J. Cade

Biologists were surprised when they discovered peregrine
populations disappearing. After a decade of intense effort,
the swiftest of all raptors is slowly returning.

Charles Walcott, Executive Director
TomJ. Cade, Director, Raptor Research
Jill Crane, The Living Bird Quarterly
Donna J. P. Crossman, Library
Samuel A. Eliot, Public Affairs
James L. Gulledge, Library of
Natural Sounds
Linda G. Hooper, Art Programs
Thomas S. Litwin, Seatuck Research
Donald A. McCrimmon, Jr., Cooperative

Research Program
Charles R. Smith, Public Education
Jane Hance Wood, Administration

10 More Than Just a Pretty Face

Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

A collection of photographs of the multifarious owl
family—short-eared, bam, screech, and saw-whet.

14 A Big Owl Watches

the Hand that Portrays It

George Miksch Sutton

16 Return of the Natives

Peter E. Nye and Michael L. Allen
Using the last pair of nesting bald eagles in New York
State as foster parents, New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation biologists ate working to
restore the bald eagle to the state.

Administrative Board

James W. Spencer, Chairman John D. Leggett, Jr.

Harold Mayfield
Donald S. McChesney
G. Michael McHugh
Edwin H. Morgens
Olin Sewall Pettingill, Jr.
Chandler S. Robbins
Lester L. Short
Alexander SpruntIV
R. Eliot Stauffet
Peter Stettenheim
Charles E. Treman, Jr.
Charles D. Webster

Charles Walcott, Ex Officio

l>. 16

20 To Save the Condor

Stanley A. Temple

By studying Andean condors, researchers are developing
techniques for saving the endangered California condor.

24 Out on a Limh

High in the tropical forests of the Philippines
lives one of the rarest eagles in the world.

26 Research & Review

Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

28 News & Notes

The Liung Bird Quarterly, ISSN 0732-9210. is published in January,
April, July, and October by the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell
University, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, New York 14850.
Telephone: (607) 256-5056. The Living Bird Quarterly is free to members
of the Laboratory. Reprints available on request. 0 1983 Q)rnell
University Laboratory of Ornithology.

FRONT COVER. Great gray owls, Amherst Island, Lake Ontario.
Photograph by Gary Meszaros.

BACK COVER, Burrowing owl. Photograph by Paul H. Rosenfeld.

29 The Crow’s Nest

Selections from The Crow’s Nest Bookshop

30 Seatuck, a Haven for Birds

Linda G. Hooper

On Long Island, the Laboratory of Ornithology, in
cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
is studying ways to encourage birds to multiply and
prosper in that heavily populated area.

Great hr^rneti (m'i

M AN HAS ALWAYS had strong feelings toward birds
of prey. In primitive cultures they were seen as the epitome of
strength, power, and courage to be worshiped and feared.
American Indians admired predators for their skill and cun¬
ning in capturing prey and worshiped them in the hopes of
gaining those qualities for themselves.

Early European settlers in America found themselves in a
wild and foreboding land. Survival depended on conquering
the wilderness. Although some settlers adopted the Indians’
admiration for predators, the more common feelings were
fear and hatred. Legends about predators became part of
American folklore, and ignorance of their role in nature was
widespread and profound.

The summit of this ignorance could be found during the
late 19th century along the crest of eastern Pennsylvania’s
Kittatinny Ridge. There, men armed with shotguns waited
for the annual fall migration of hawks and destroyed any
hawk that crossed their gunsight. It was not uncommon for
thousands of birds to be shot in a given season.

But, at the same time, attempts to counter the slaughter
and to preserve our natural heritage were being realized, and

From Persecution

article by Walter R. Spofford

a growing campaign to protect and conserve wildlife was
taking root. By 1932, the world’s first sanctuary for the
protection of migrating birds of prey was born on the very
site of earlier hawk massacres. By the end of that decade a few
gunners still crept to the edge of Hawk Mountain to take a
shot at a passing Cooper’s hawk, but more and more people
were stopping simply to watch the spectacular autumn
flights.

Around this time, too, studies of raptor populations were
beginning. Scientists were looking for basic information
with no thought of the usefulness of the results. They were
not aware that the birds they were studying would soon face
unexpected and drastic reductions in their populations.

Peregrine Tragedy. Joseph J. Hickey was conducting
intensive research on peregrine falcons nesting in New York
City and a more general study of their populations east of the
Rocky Mountains. Hickey’s studies were not only extensive
geographically, they reached backward in time; his center
was near the American Museum of Natural History, so few
records escaped his appraisal. With the exception of some
eyries lost to city encroachment, he found the eastern pere¬
grine population to be relatively stable. TTiere was a slow
decline over the decades, but populations had withstood
the onslaught of egg collectors and predators for a century.
Most eyries were active each year, many fledging two to four
young.

Real discovery that the peregrine was in trouble came in
1961 when an investigation by Derek Ratcliffe in Great
Britain found that many English eyries were abandoned, and
the active nests had fewer eggs and fledged fewer young. A
decade earlier Ratcliffe had found broken eggs at one eyrie
and at another the female was eating her own egg. Later he
showed that the broken eggs had thinner shells than unbro¬
ken ones, and a multitude of research projects soon estab¬
lished that DDT, first released in 1946, was the cause of
eggshell thinning. By weighing museum-collected sets of
peregrine eggs, Ratcliffe found that a major change had
taken place in 1947; after that date, most eggshells were
20 percent lighter and so thin they broke while under incu¬
bation.

Hickey found the same story with peregrine eggs in this
country, and soon pesticides were appreciated as the causa¬
tive agent in the widespread American population declines.
Indeed, the whole eastern population of the peregrine was
extirpated. The last nesting of this subspecies occurred in the
late 1950s, and by 1964, no bird was found at any eyrie in the
eastern United States. The peregrine had disappeared before
anyone realized.

Bald Eagle Debacle. It was 1939 when Charles Broley,
then 60 years old and newly retired from a banking career in
Canada, stood in western Florida gazing up the huge trunk of
his first “eagle tree.’’ In his pocket were four eagle bands;
Richard Bough had assured him of a few more should he need
them. Eight years and 814 banded eaglets later, Broley pub-

4 The Living Bird Quarterly

to Propagation

paintings by Louis Agassiz Fuertes

lished the results of his study of Florida eagles in The Wilson
Bulletin. It is hard to overestimate his contribution to our
knowledge of the bald eagle. His study included 140 nests,
with detailed summaries of 49. During this period, Broley
worked with the west Florida eagle populations each winter,
climbing over 1,000 trees. The rest of each year he studied
and banded eagles in Ontario and the eastern United States.

His findings were astonishing. The eagles nested in
Florida during winter, but, as his band recoveries showed,
the young moved north after fledging, soon arriving in
Canada—from New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island all
the way to Lake Winnipeg! Few adult eagles remained in
Florida during the summer, and Broley suggested that the
September flight of bald eagles at Hawk Mountain was of
Florida birds returning south to nest. That southern Canada
eagle populations included Florida eagles was an arresting
discovery and required some re-thinking of subspecies
boundaries and definitions.

Perhaps Broley s most important finding was the high
nesting success of the Florida eagles. Cf the 49 nests sum¬
marized in his 1947 paper, most fledged two young, some of
them year after year. Cne nest fledged 19 young during the
eight-year study.

Then the bottom fell out. By 1950, the number of active,
successful nests had dropped alarmingly and Broley entitled
an article in Audubon magazine, “The Plight of the Florida
Bald Eagle.” Like the peregrine, the bald eagle’s problem was
eggshell thinning resulting from chemical contamination of
the birds’ food supply.

Different populations were variously hit by the contami¬
nation. Curiously, three pairs in northwestern Pennsylvania
managed to carry on throughout the years while the nearby
New York State population disappeared, except for one
“hang-on” pair. By comparison, 25 years ago pairs were
nesting at Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge at the head
of Cayuga Lake in central New York.

Condor Catastrophe. When Karl Koford began his con¬
dor study in 1939, there was much less known about Ameri¬
ca’s largest raptor than of the peregrine and the bald eagle.
For two years Koford spent his time in remote canyons and
mountains in the condor range and, after the war, he re¬
turned for more field study until his monograph was pub¬
lished in 1953.

He accumulated more than 3,500 pages of field notes and
his observations were so extensive and varied they defy
summary. But he did conclude that the population was rela¬
tively stable and comprised 60 birds. That population size,
even of so few birds, did not cause great alarm.

Whatever changes took place in the condor population
occurred so slowly and inconspicuously that they were hard
to detect. But, as Koford pointed out in his appraisal of the
population, the exceedingly slow breeding with such re¬
stricted breeding potential indicated that the failure of a
single nest could alter the future of the entire population.

Ten years after Koford’s study things had changed drasti¬
cally. Ian and Eben McMillan, ecology-minded ranchers
who had watched California condors for nearly 50 years,
found only 40 birds. Ian McMillan noted that careless or
deliberate shooting of as few as one bird a year would severely
affect the population. By the 1970s this, combined with
agricultural poisoning, habitat alteration, eggshell thinning,
and the condors’ inability to cope with human disturbances,
had brought the population down to about 30 birds.

Recovery. The efforts of Tom Cade, Stanley Temple,
Peter Nye, and Michael Allen are firsts in raptor manage¬
ment. In a sense, it was our failure to monitor hawk popula¬
tions that allowed drastic die-offs before we even became
aware of the problem. Charles Broley noticed a decline in
bald eagles, and right when it began in the late 1940s. But
having to resort to captive breeding was unthought of

The success of these projects has come about only after
countless hours of laboratory and field work, and the field
work in particular has called for devoted and continuous
work in difficult conditions in remote locations by enthusias¬
tic raptorphiles. Such a dedicated group was unheard of a few
decades ago.

While raptor management has become a necessary tool, it
is not a cure. Today we are watching raptor populations and
we know that some are still declining despite reduced en¬
vironmental levels of DDT. Other chemicals, some more
toxic, have taken its place and destruction of raptor habitat
continues unabated. The ultimate conservation of raptor
populations—indeed of all predators — will depend on the
preservation of wildlife habitat and on the wise and discrimi¬
nate use of chemicals in forestry and agriculture.

THE AUTHOR AND ARTIST

Walter Spofford, now retired, taught neuro-anatomy at Upstate Medical
Center, SUNY, Syracuse, New York. His major life interest has been the
study of birds of prey.

Louis Agassiz Fuertes (1874—1927) reached national prominence for his
sensitive and realistic portrayal of birds. Art on loan from David G. Allen.

Courtesy of The Peregrine Fund

Renaissance of the
Peregrine Falcon

by Tom J. Cade

Below: Researcher Jim Weaver with young
peregrine at eyrie, Royal Gorge, Colo.

Right: Eyrie, northern coast range, Calif.

“The peregrine falcon is, perhaps, the
most highly specialized and superla'
tively well developed flying organism on
our planet today, combining the highest
powers of speed and aerial adroitness with
massive, warlike strength. A powerful,
wild, majestic, independent bird, living on
the choicest of clean, carnal food, plucked
fresh from the air or the surface of the
waters, rearing its young in the nooks of
dangerous mountain cliffs, claiming all the
atmosphere as its domain and fearing
neither beast that walks nor bird that flies.
It has its legitimate and important place in
the great scheme of things, and by its ex¬
tinction, if that should ever come, the
whole world would be impoverished and
dulled.

In 1904, G. H. Thayer described the
peregrine falcon with these poetic
words in Bird-Lore, forerunner of Au-
dubon magazine. He was not the first to

marvel at the aerobatics and noble
bearing of this bird. For centuries
naturalists, bird watchers, and falcon-
ers have extolled the peregrine because
of its consummate skill in the air,
swooping for prey at speeds of 200 miles
per hour.

It is curious that at the turn of the
century Thayer should have expressed
concern about the extinction of the
peregrine. Although sparse in number
compared to many other raptors, the
peregrine enjoyed the widest natural
distribution of any bird, nesting on all
continents except Antarctica. Also, its
breeding populations had been con¬
stant for centuries. Such a species was
not a likely candidate for extinction.

It came as a distinct surprise some 50
years after Thayer’s remarks when
biologists discovered that peregrine
populations were suddenly and mys¬
teriously disappearing in many parts of
the world. Another 10 years passed be¬
fore researchers proved that persistent
pesticides such as DDT were responsi¬
ble for the losses.

The peregrines were contaminated
by feeding on small birds—jays, swal¬
lows, pigeons—that had themselves fed
upon poisoned insects. Even after the
use of DDT was greatly restricted in this
country in 1972 and the concentration
of the pesticide decreased, the effects
on peregrines continued. Female fal¬
cons were unable to assimilate calcium
properly for construction of eggshells.
The thinner shells were easily crushed
under the weight of an incubating bird.

In the 1930s and 40s, before the
DDT debacle, around 350 pairs of
peregrines bred from the Mississippi
River to the Atlantic coast. By the
1960s no pairs were known to be nest¬
ing anywhere east of the Mississippi. In
1969, the peregrine falcon was offi¬
cially listed as an endangered species in
the United States.

Responding to public concern, we at
the Laboratory of Ornithology and the
Division of Biological Sciences at Cor¬
nell University began a program to de¬
velop methods of raising peregrines in
captivity and later releasing them into
areas where they had disappeared. At
the same time we started The Peregrine
Fund for receiving contributions in
support of the work.

In 1974, The Peregrine Fund began a
second breeding program in coopera¬
tion with the Colorado Division of
Wildlife at Fort Collins. Its purpose was

6 The Living Bird Quarterly

Tupper Ansel Blake

J. Sherwood Chalmers

to increase the density and extend the
geographic distribution of the greatly
reduced nesting population of pere¬
grines in the Rocky Mountains and ad¬
jacent western regions. Since 1977 a
third operation, organized by the Santa
Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group,
has been under way, with the same ob¬
jective in California and the rest of the
west coast. It has recently joined The
Peregrine Fund, giving us three recov¬
ery programs.

These breeding facilities, modeled
after the 40-chamber “hawk bam” in
Ithaca, New York, were designed to
allow captive pairs of falcons to mate
undisturbed while being monitored by
researchers. From long, dark corridors
outside each compartment, workers
watch the falcons through one-way
windows. Falconers donated some of
the first birds we used as breeding stock;
others were taken as nestlings from
remnant populations. Some people
were skeptical about whether we could
breed peregrines in captivity, saying
they were too wild. We realized,
though, that drastic measures were
necessary if we were ever again to see

wild peregrines east of the Mississippi.

Our first task was to increase the
number of young produced by each of
our captive pairs. We experimented
with a technique known as double
clutching. A female peregrine nor¬
mally lays a clutch of four eggs. To
encourage her to lay more, we remove
the clutch and place it in an incubator.
Sixteen days later, the females lay a
second set of eggs and sometimes even a
third.

After they are made fertile, either
through mating or artificial insemina¬
tion, the eggs are placed in an in¬
cubator where they are kept at the
proper temperature and humidity.
About a month after that, the chick
inside begins to chip away at the shell.
Fifty to 60 hours later, it is finally free.
Within a few hours the down has dried,
and a fluffy white chick is begging for
food. Human caretakers feed ground
quail or chicken to the newly hatched
peregrine for its first 10 days, then the
parents take over.

In addition to barn-produced eggs,
we collected eggs from the very few
eyries that still exist in the west. We

Left: Caretaker Michele Barclay feeds chicks
hatched at Cornell hawk barn. As yet they are
too young to associate humans with food.

Right: Tom Cade feeds imprinted male.

substituted plastic eggs for the thin-
shelled natural ones and brought them
to the breeding station where their
chance of successful incubation is far
greater. When the chicks hatch they
are returned to their parents who sud¬
denly find plastic eggs replaced by hun¬
gry chicks. No matter. The parental
response is strong, and the adults soon
are hunting for their brood’s meal.

By 1973, 20 young peregrines had
been produced in the hawk barn, a
clear indication that the raptor could
be bred in captivity. Each breeding sea¬
son the number of young increased. By
1975, we had produced enough falcons
in our Cornell facility to take the next
step — to release the young peregrines
into the wild. This we did with a pro¬
cess borrowed from falconry known as
hacking.

In hacking, we put the month old
falcons in a nest box, and place it on a
mountain cliff, a man-made platform in
a natural setting, or a city where the tall
buildings provide shelter and the pi¬
geons provide food. The young birds in
the hackbox receive daily rations from
human caretakers, hut in a way that
prevents the birds from associating food
with humans. Meanwhile, the con¬
fined birds have time to look over the
terrain. Once they are large enough to
try their wings, the box is opened.
While they are learning to fly, the
young are sustained on delivered food,
but as soon as they can hunt and kill,
the deliveries stop. They are then on
their own.

Hacked peregrines meet death in di¬
verse and sometimes bizarre ways. In
wilderness settings the great horned
owl is the single most important factor,
accounting for about 50 percent of all
losses. In cities the young fall into
chimneys and air vents, fly into plate
glass windows, or get electrocuted on
wires. Recently, we learned that a pere¬
grine flew into the glass front of a
gambling casino in Atlantic City.

One peregrine that has managed to
escape the hazards of city living is Scar¬
lett. She has been residing on the win¬
dow ledge outside the 33rd floor of the
U. S. Fidelity & Guaranty Insurance
Company in Baltimore since 1978.
Scarlett hatched in the Cornell hawk

8 The Living Bird Quarterly

Universitatsbibliothek Heidelberg. Codex Manessa. Zurich, early 14th centur>'.

barn and was hacked on Carroll Island,
30 miles from Baltimore.

Since 1980, we have been trying to
find a compatible male for Scarlett so
that she can start producing, but things
have not worked out. Two males. Blue
Meanie and Misha, flew away and a
third, Rhett, died of strychnine poison-
ing after eating a contaminated pigeon.

We do have hopes for Ashley, Scar¬
lett’s latest suitor. He was two years old
during the last breeding season and not
ready to mate. However, when we re¬
leased him in Baltimore, he stayed in
the area. Slowly he approached Scar¬
lett’s ledge and then the nest itself
Scarlett was aggressive toward him at
first, but he held his ground. If he sur¬
vives the winter, we think they will
mate in spring. Meanwhile, Scarlett
has been laying infertile eggs which we
replace with barn-hatched chicks that
she willingly raises.

Unlike the situation east of the Mis¬
sissippi, about 20 percent of the wild
peregrine population still nests in the
Rocky Mountains, although breeding
pairs continue to experience reproduc¬
tive problems from high DDT residues
in prey and their own bodies.

Here the strategy for augmenting low
productivity is not unlike the one we

F ALCONeKS’

xreKMS

The medieval art ot falconry has a
vocabulary all its own. Although
most of the terms have become ob¬
solete, a few are still used by scien¬
tists today. Here are some of them.

♦ Aerie, Eyrie—The nest or nesting
ledge of any of the raptors.

♦ Brancher—A young hawk which
has left the nest or eyrie, but has not
yet left the immediate vicinity.

♦ Casting—The indigestible por¬
tions of the last meal of a raptorial
bird, usually bones and feathers that
are formed into a compact pellet and
disgorged through the mouth.

♦ Eyass, Eyas, or Eyess—A trained
raptor of any age or species that was
originally obtained as a nestling.

Also applied to the young of raptors
while they are still in the nest.

♦ Hack—A place out ot doors
where a young hawk is fed and is al¬
lowed liberty.

♦ Rouse—An action common to all
birds in which all the feathers are
slowly erected, the bird shakes itself,
and the feathers then slowly settle
back into place.

♦ Stoop—The head-first dive of a
falcon from a height.

FURTHER READING

Cade, T. J. The Falcons of the World. Cornell
University Press, Ithaca, N.Y. 1982.

Hickey, J. J. Peregrine Falcon Populations, Their
Biology and Decline. University of Wisconsin
Press, Madison. 1969.

THE AUTHOR

Tom Cade is professor of ornithology. Section of
Ecology and Systematics, Division of Biological
Sciences, Cornell University.

Most of the recovery work on the
Pacific coast has taken place in
California where there are only 40 to
50 eyries. In 1977, The Peregrine
Fund, working with the Santa Cruz
Predatory Bird Research Group, fos¬
tered the first two captive-produced
peregrines at Morro Rock near Santa
Barbara. By the end of the 1981 season,
27 nestlings had been successfully fos¬
tered or hacked, accounting for most of
the young in the region. In 1982, a
minor population explosion occurred,
with 10 pairs back at historical sites.

When we began our work in 1970,
most people said it was impossible to
produce large numbers of peregrines in
captivity. The three facilities of The
Peregrine Fund now raise more than
200 young a year and, together with our
Canadian colleagues and private
breeders, we have introduced over
1,000 peregrine falcons to North
America since 1975.

Some of our released birds are now
nesting and raising their own young in
the wild. It is just a matter of time
before human manipulation will no
longer he needed, and the peregrine
will have returned to the United States
from the brink of extinction.

use with Scarlett: we add captive-raised
young to the nests of wild pairs, some
situated at abandoned historical eyries,
others at new locations. Since 1974,
our workers at the Fort Collins facility
have released 334 peregrines. More
than 74 percent fledged successfully
and dispersed. Productivity at the re¬
maining active eyries in Colorado has
dramatically increased during the past
five years. We feel we have recruited a
significant number of new breeders and
have prevented further decline in the
breeding population in Colorado.

The Living Bird Quarterly 9

More Than Just a Pretty Face

by Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

'X.

M OST OWLS ARE drab, secre¬
tive creatures that are active while bird
watchers are asleep. Yet even a brief
look at these nocturnal birds of prey
reveals fascinating adaptations that
enable them to fulfill their ecological
role as night-flying mousetraps.

Some of their adaptations are shared
with diurnal birds of prey — hawks,
eagles, ospreys, and falcons. These in¬
clude large feet with long, sharp talons
for killing and grasping prey, and large,
strong hooked beaks for tearing prey
into manageable pieces. But unlike
hawks, owls have evolved to hunt in
the dark.

For instance, they have highly de¬
veloped eyes. While a hawk’s eyesight
is indisputably superb, an owl’s is down- '
right amazing. It has been demon¬
strated that some owls can see at light
intensities equivalent to one ordinary
candle placed nearly 1,000 feet away.
Such remarkable eyesight is possible
because of the large size of the eyes, a
large concentration of light-sensitive
cells, and pupils that can open very
wide. The pupils can be closed to a
pinpoint so that owls can see well dur¬
ing the day.

The owl’s extraordinary vision is
supplemented hy extremely keen hear¬
ing. The facial disk that encircles the
eyes and beak channels sound toward
the huge ear openings which, hy the
way, are not the ear tufts conspicuous
on some owls. In addition, some owls
have asymmetrically placed ears. This
helps them to locate the origin of a
sound hy triangulation, the same
method a dog uses when it cocks its
head to listen. Experiments have
shown that owls can hunt by sound
alone; this may explain why hunting
success improves in dry weather when
prey can he heard rustling leaves.

Finally, these eyes and ears are at¬

tached to a creature that can fly nearly
silently. The owl’s flight feathers have
downy edges, eliminating the whirring
sound caused by the stiff flight feathers
characteristic of most other birds. A
flying owl can hear its prey, hut, prey
can’t hear the owl.

Other owl characteristics are related
to life in the dark. The owl’s head is
large, wide and rounded to accommo¬
date the huge eyes. Drab plumage lets
the bird blend into its surroundings
during the day while it roosts. Court¬
ship activities are normally less than
spectacular since elaborate visual dis¬
plays are of little value at night. Most
owls rely upon vocalizations to initiate
courtship and to mark territory
boundaries.

There are exceptions to every
generalization and among owls, the
short-eared owl is something of an
anomaly. It is the only diurnal owl
commonly found south of the arctic,
and is hawk-like in appearance and be¬
havior. When perched, often on the
ground, this owl leans forward in the
manner of a hawk. In flight, the wings
appear long, narrow, and pointed, not
broad and rounded like the wings of

most owls. It frequently hunts over
open country and, in fact, from a dis¬
tance it may be more easily confused
with a northern harrier than with any
other owl.

The short-eared owl is a quiet bird
except during its breeding season
when, high above a meadow, marsh or
field, the male engages in a spectacular
courtship display of “wing clapping.”
While diving toward the ground he
rapidly brings his wings together below
his body, creating a fluttering sound.
While flying, he emits a long, rapidly
repeated series of toots that seem to
come from everywhere at once.

The short-eared owl is one of the few
owls that nests on the ground. Often
the nest is merely a scooped-out depres¬
sion lined with fine grasses and a few
feathers, but it may be built up with
heavy grasses, weed stalks, or sticks.

Most owls are sedentary and solitary
outside of the breeding season. In con¬
trast, short-eared owls have a regular
migration involving many individuals
and, as they move south, they may
congregate in areas of high prey den¬
sity. Groups of 100 or more have been
observed at a single roost site.

Short-eared oudets

The Living Bird Quarterly 11

Art Wolfe

Ron Austing

The SCREECH OWL really is

misnamed. A better name would
be whistling owl since this more
accurately describes the owl’s
quavering, tremulous call, a series of
hollow notes running into a tremolo.

This common woodland owl may
be found in parks, orchards or small
woodlots, sometimes close to towns
and villages. In fact, in the spring of
1980, a pair nested on the Cornell
University campus where, from their
tree hollow, the birds peered at
passing students.

By day these birds hide in tree
cavities or among thick foliage, and
when startled, they may stretch tall
and hold their wings close to their
back, simulating dead stubs of tree
branches.

Screech owls occur in two distinct
color phases—red and gray—which
apparently are not related to sex, age
or season. Both phases may occur
among young in the same nest.

These small but aggressive owls
feed upon a wide variety of mammals,
birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish,
crustaceans, and insects. They can
capture and kill prey larger than
themselves, and in turn, can fall prey
to larger owls or hawks.

Art Wolfe

Gary Maszaros

Barn owls are pale white

owls that often nest in abandoned
buildings and doubtless have given
rise to tales of phantoms in haunted
houses. Their ghostlike appearance
and unearthly shrieks, howls, and
moans have certainly contributed to
the age-old association between owls
and the unknown.

This owl prefers to hunt open
country and often is seen near fields,
farmyards, and woodland edges. It
also takes advantage of mice and rats
in bams, church steeples, factory
attics, and warehouses. The nocturnal
nature of this species prevails even
when it is pressed for food.

Bam owls may nest in tree cavities
or hollows in the ground, and under
these conditions, nests are no more
than a few feathers mixed with
incidental materials found in the
hollow. In buildings, nests are
composed mainly of rubbish.

When approached or surprised,
bam owls express warning by lowering
the head and swinging it to and fro
close to the ground, or by stretching
forward, dropping the wings, hissing
and snapping the bill.

Like short-eared owls, bam owls may
be gregarious outside of the breeding
season. In the fall, numbers of barn
owls in southern areas increase,
suggesting a partial migration.

◄

Saw-whet owls spend most of

the day quietly roosting in the thick
foliage close to the ground. They
often are found in dark coniferous
forests or moist or swampy woodlands.

The name saw-whet derives from
one of the owl’s calls, a series of
two-syllable notes that sound like the
rasping of a file sharpening a saw.

Unlike many other owls, adult and
immature saw-whet owls are strikingly
dissimilar in appearance. The adult
has a dark brown back with white
mottling, and underparts that are
white with wide, vertical, reddish-
brown stripes. The immature bird is a
nearly solid chocolate brown, with
white eyebrows.

Saw-whet owls feed primarily on
mice, but will eat other small
mammals and a few birds, including
some that are larger than themselves. ►

Art Wolft

The Living Bird Quarterly 1 3

Gary Maszaros

W HILE A “GRAD” and faculty member at Cornell
50 years ago 1 heard many versions of a charming story
about the great bird artist, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, and a
farmer who had caught a great homed owl, Bubo vir^
ginianus, red-handed in a henhouse. My version of the
story is entertaining but it’s probably not as authorita¬
tive as that of the late Hugh Breckenridge, a close
friend of the Fuertes family. The Breckenridge version,
as published in Mary Fuertes Boynton’s book Louis
Agassiz Fuertes His Life Briefly Told and His Correspon¬
dence Edited (1956, Oxford University Press, New
York, pp. 195—196) goes thus:

“One time when Uncle Louis went to the phone... a
country voice said: ‘Say, Professor, I got one of them big
old-fashUned hoot owls and 1 want you to take a look at
him.’L.A.F: ‘Where is he?’Country Voice: ‘1 got him
down here to Higgins Feed Store in the winder. ’ L. A. F.:
‘Well, 1 wasn’t planning to go downtown to-day, but if 1
do I’ll stop and see him. (After discussing the tremen¬
dous size of owl...) Good-bye.’ Later Uncle Louis had
some business downtown and went to the feed store,
and there was a male great homed owl in the window
and a rustic in a mackinaw standing by outside with a
proprietary air. As Louis looked at the owl the coun¬
tryman sidled up and said: ‘Big one, ain’t he?’ Louis
said: ‘Yes, and if it were a female, it would be even
bigger.’ The man bridled. ‘Is that so? Well, let me tell
you something, mister. Per-fessor Fuertes was here and
seen him and he said it was the biggest one he ever see.’
Louis slunk away.”

It’s an interesting fact that as a hoy in Nebraska,
Minnesota, and Oregon 1 never saw a living great horn
in the wilds. In Albert Lano’s fine collection of
birdskins in Aitkin, Minnesota there were several
specimens of the handsome bird, and these I handled
with a feeling close to awe. Those curved, steel-hard,
needle-sharp claws! My copy of Frank Chapman’s
Bird-Life told me that the great horn lived “only in the
wilder, more heavily wooded parts of the country,” a
statement that didn’t help much. Indeed what I knew
about great horns could be summed up tersely: they
were killers. In Ernest Thompson Seton’s Wild Animals
I Have Known, it was a great horn that ended the life of
poor Redruff, the “partridge” of the Don Valley. In
those days I didn’t know that the ruffed grouse, Bonasa
urnbellus, was known as the partridge in some parts of its
wide range.

It was in West Virginia, very early one spring, that I
came face to face at last with a wild great horn. An inch
of snow covered the ground. Near the mouth of Jordan
Run, a tributary to Buffalo Creek, I happened upon a
ragged old nest—probably a squirrel’s—over the edge of
which peered down a creature that looked like a cat. I
knew at once that it was a great horn. When I started to
climb the tree the owl flew off, scattering in all direc¬
tions the snow that had gathered on its back. There

A Big Owl
Watches the Hand
That Portrays It

by George Miksch Sutton

were two eggs, white, almost spherical, incredibly
beautiful. What a day to remember! The eggs hatched.
The chicks grew larger daily. In due season they
fledged, faced with the problem of catching rats, cot¬
tontails, and squirrels on their own.

In West Virginia someone gave me a young great
horn that I raised as a “pet.” It was never very tame, but
it swallowed great numbers of rats and mice that kids of
the neighborhood brought it. I was glad when it be¬
came old enough to obtain its own food. I liberated it a
long way from town, hoping that I’d never see it again.

As state ornithologist of Pennsylvania (1924—1929)
I saw little of the great horn in the wilds but was deeply
interested in examining the stomachs of the scores of
owls that were sent to the game commission’s office for
bounty payment. What my assistant, Leo Luttringer,
and I found was about what we expected, namely, proof
that there was some justification for the great horn’s
unpopularity. It was, indeed, a destroyer of game and
poultry. One owl that I was told about was so persistent
in stealing chickens that it was caught twice in steel
traps set on fenceposts. Caught the first time, it pulled
itself free, trap and all. The following night it was
caught again—with a trap on each foot.

Through year after year of dealing with the great
horn I never felt the urge to draw one from life. I have
often wondered why. Then, at the University of
Michigan one day, someone brought in a great horn
that had appeal. It was big, beautifully feathered, and
docile. After being talked to a bit it submitted to
having its feathered toes stroked. It gave up popping its
bill unless startled by the slamming of a door. I settled
down with pencil, eraser, brushes, and the old Fuertes
paintbox, and did a portrait of the owl’s head. While I
worked, my model never looked at my face. What it
watched was my right hand. That hand seemed to
fascinate it. Its facial expression was at times a bit
frightening. What, I thought, if that owl should decide
to pounce on one of those fingers? For all I knew they
might look like weasels to the owl!

THE AUTHOR AND ARTIST

George Miksch Sutton (1898—1982) was an artist, author, and lecturer
and George Lynn Cross research professor of Zoology Emeritus and
Curator of Birds, Stovall Museum of Science and History, University
of Oklahoma.

14 The Living Bird Quarterly

0 \ W (

C^L«. ^ f ' ‘ ■ y*'

|0f tT. .

'l s <^1

Return of the Natives

by Peter E. Nye and Michael L. Allen

The last pair of nesting bald eagles
in New York State become foster parents.

Peter Nye

IN A WAY, they were lucky. Despite
intense competition with humans for
preferred lakeshore habitat, indis¬
criminate killing by irresponsible gun¬
men, and environmental contamina¬
tion from DDT, they had survived to
become the last pair of native nesting
bald eagles in New York State.

However, they were not really lucky
at all. Although they steadfastly clung
to their territory and acted like other
bald eagles, they were unable to per¬
form one key function: they could not
produce young. That meant that after
their deaths, bald eagles would nest in
New York no longer.

That’s the bad news. The good news
is that in 1976 our agency. New York
State Department of Environmental

Michael Allen prepares eaglet for ascent to
nest. Eagles on protected Adak Island,
Alaska have no trouble nesting on their own.

Conservation, made a commitment to
restore endangered species in the state,
beginning with the bald eagle. Slowly,
carefully, and with precious little
knowledge, we decided to fight to bring
back the disappearing bald eagle popu¬
lation to New York.

We knew a few things when we be¬
gan. This last resident pair of bald
eagles had nested in the same tree in
western New York for over 20 years.
The nest itself, 85 feet above the
ground, is a carefully constructed pile
of sticks. Each year the pair adds to the
pile so that now it is eight feet deep and
six feet across at the top. Only once
since 1965 have they successfully
fledged young, and then just one. In
the past, at least 72 bald eagle nesting
sites are known to have been active in
New York State.

The ills that have befallen our na¬
tional symbol have been caused by
man. Besides the chronic problem of
loss of living and feeding space, we

know that the acute culprit was DDT.
Considered a boon in the 1950s and
60s, this pesticide affected the repro¬
ductive system of birds of prey, result¬
ing in eggs with shells so thin they
broke during incubation. Production of
bald eagles, peregrine falcons and os¬
preys took a nose dive during the 1960s
and 70s, particularly in the eastern
United States.

Our objective with this last remain¬
ing pair was twofold: first, to attempt to
fledge eagle chicks from this site again;
second, to keep the adults from aban¬
doning this site and territory. We knew
that the female was laying contami¬
nated eggs, with shells nearly one-third
thinner than normal and that they
broke before hatching. However, these
birds were of great importance to us
since they could serve as foster parents,
raising chicks other than their own.

Our first task in making the pair fos¬
ter parents was to learn everything we
could about them; their habits and be¬

havior were critical to successful par¬
enting. In the spring of 1976 we began
monitoring the nest continuously and
keeping a detailed account of the ac¬
tivities of these sensitive birds. From
our observations we concluded that the
eagles were carrying out the initial re¬
productive process leading to egg lay¬
ing, but then the eggs broke and the
pair abandoned the site for the remain¬
der of the breeding season.

Our course was clear: somehow,
prior to the eggs breaking, remove
them and substitute either normal eggs
or young and thereby “trick” the adults
into “thinking” they were raising their
own offspring.

This seemingly simple approach
raised many questions. How would the
adult eagles react to our tampering with
the nest? If we inserted young into it,
would the pair care for them or kill
them? The 1977 nesting season was our
first chance to test the pair’s reaction to
our disturbances.

16 The Living Bird Quarterly

The Living Bird Quarterly 17

Stephen J. Krasemann/DRK Photo

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

March, 1977. Observations re¬
vealed that the male and female eagles
had come back to the site from the
south and were rebuilding their nest.
On March 19 the female laid an addled
egg and began incubating it. Seven
days later we removed the egg and re¬
placed it with two viable red-tailed
hawk eggs (rather than risk real eagle
eggs), and one “dummy” egg contain¬
ing a radio transmitter. The heat- and
light-sensitive telemetric egg provided
us with information on the pair’s incu¬
bation activity. We hoped that the
red-tailed hawk eggs might hatch under
the adults, he accepted and reared.

During the transfer both adults were
at the site but they left shortly after and
did not return for three days. Upon
their arrival back to the nest they set¬
tled into an incubation posture and
maintained it for the normal period of
34 days. (The telemetric egg, notice¬
ably smaller than the others and with a
visible seam, was accepted along with
the real eggs.) Since the red-tailed
hawk eggs did not hatch at the end of
that time, we decided to substitute
chicks for the eggs. So we placed two
five day old red-tailed chicks in the nest
and, although the adults were nearby
during the exchange, they left the area
and did not return for the remainder of
the season.

Why the pair did not accept the
chicks is open to speculation. Perhaps
they were too small or too young.
Perhaps the pair had been disturbed too
often during the nesting period. Al¬
though we had failed during our 1977
fostering attempt, we had learned that
the pair would accept an intrusion and
egg replacement.

Based on that knowledge, we made
two important changes in our strategy
for 1978. First, we would disturb the
pair only once during the nesting pro¬
cess, and second, we would use a bald
eagle chick rather than a red-tailed
hawk. Timing was crucial; the adults
had to incubate their own egg long
enough to hold them to the nesting
process. However, if they incubated too
long the egg would he broken and the
nest abandoned for the season.

March, 1978. Incubation began
and was sincere and continuous. After
26 days we removed the pair’s egg and
replaced it with a two-and-a-half week
old eaglet hatched by captive parents at
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s

Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in
Maryland.

The adult eagles returned to the nest
five minutes after the crew left the tree
and accepted the foster chick immedi¬
ately. Once accepted, we were confi¬
dent that normal rearing would take
place. And so it did. The eaglet went
on to fledge in late June, marking the
first eagle fledged from a wild nest in
New York in five years.

The fact that we had disturbed the
pair only once during the 1978 attempt
may have contributed to our success.
Also, the attractiveness of a larger,
older chick and our improved tech¬
nique for approaching the nest, indi¬
rectly yet in full view of the adults, may
have helped.

AprU, 1979. After our success in
1978, we felt we had a workable tech¬
nique and we knew this adult pair was
capable of raising young. Unfortu¬
nately, during early observations we
began noticing problems. Although
the pair returned to the territory on
schedule, decorated the nest with
sticks, and copulated, incubation was
sporadic. To our surprise, upon reach¬
ing the nest, we discovered no egg;
rather, the pair had been incubating a
damp clump of vegetation. We found
no evidence of an egg, such as eggshell
fragments. This would explain the
pair’s seemingly inattentive incubation
behavior. In light of this, we decided to
attempt a chick transfer as soon as
possible.

Eaglet arrives from Patuxent and is placed in
nest. Thimshelled natural egg is removed.

Two eaglets from Patuxent were
flown to the nest and left there for eight
hours. The adults soared near the nest
all day, but they did not return. Nesting
activities at the site then ceased for the
remainder of the season and the eaglets
were sent back to Maryland.

February, 1980. This season we had
the new problem that the pair again
might not have their own egg, the most
important element in stimulating nor¬
mal incubation and in setting the stage
for chick implant and acceptance.

Our observations at the site
throughout March indicated that, in
fact, the pair did not have an egg. If we
allowed them to continue this way they
would abandon the nesting attempt for
the season. Thus in early April we
climbed to the nest and placed the
telemetric egg into it. As predicted, no

Dept, of Environmental Conservation

18 The Living Bird Quarterly

Stephen J. Krasemann/DRK Photo

natural egg was present. Both adults
left the nesting area with this intrusion
and did not return for four days, this
behavior being similar to their three-
day disappearance during the 1977 egg
implant. Upon their return, however,
incubation of the telemetric egg began
immediately and continued for three
weeks. Meanwhile we made plans with
Patuxent to secure an eaglet of the re¬
quired age, and on April 26 a three
week old chick dubbed “Shazam” was
placed into the nest in exchange for the
artificial egg.

For the first time since manipula¬
tions began, the female remained in
the vicinity during our activity. Five
minutes after Shazam was placed in the
nest the female returned and began
brooding. The male returned an hour
later. The pair displayed excellent pa¬
rental qualities, never leaving the
youngster hungry, and to our delight
the eaglet fledged around June 20. We
were pleased to conclude that the tele¬
metric egg worked in inducing and
holding the adults in incubation. We
had tricked this resident pair into
maintaining their nesting activity and
had fledged another young eagle into
New York’s skies.

January, 1981. All was going well
when we were first shocked and then
depressed to hear that an adult eagle

had been found dead less than a mile
from the nest site. A post-mortem
examination revealed that it was a male
and that it had been shot. Since our
nesting birds had not been banded or
marked, we could not be certain that
this was our resident male, but we were
worried. Our fears worsened in late
February when the female eagle did not
return to the eyrie as she had around
February 20 for the past 20 years. Al¬
though we searched for ideas to keep
the site active, including tethering
another potential mate near the nest,
we were beginning to think the situa¬
tion was hopeless.

On March 13, however, we were
again shocked but this time elated to
see the female back at the nest.
Miraculously, she was accompanied by
a new mate! What was more rewarding
was that this new male had been re¬
leased by our department as part of
another restoration program. We knew
from the wing marker that he had
fledged from a site 54 miles east of
this nest.

Although the new pair appeared
conscientious and went through typical
courtship activities, we had no reason
to believe that our old, polluted female
would lay an egg. (The male does not
contribute to egg contamination.) So
on April 23 we introduced two eaglets

to the nest following the usual accept¬
ance and incubation of our artificial
egg. The eaglets were accepted imme¬
diately and both went on to fledge in
late June. Our new male had performed
admirably in his role as foster parent,
and thus we had again achieved con¬
tinuity of this nesting territory. We
concluded also that eagles can’t count,
since two chicks were accepted for a
single egg.

We do not know why the female
stopped laying eggs in 1979, but she
had indeed stopped since we found no
eggs in 1980 and 1981. We are fairly
certain we are dealing with the same
female each year, and she may be 25
years old. Whether she is too old to lay
(although some biologists suggest birds
lay eggs until they die), or too con¬
taminated, or both, is unknown. We
do know that to keep the site active
with this female we must insert a
dummy egg into the nest early each
nesting season.

April, 1982. The season went
well and the new male and the old
female fledged two more foster chicks
from Patuxent.

While we don’t want to get too com¬
fortable, it appears that the female tol¬
erates our intrusions and accepts the
egg, then chicks, more readily each
year. With the help of our pair we have
fledged a total of six young eagles, the
largest number in New York since
1950. Without intervention the eagles
never would have had the chance to
continue their kind here.

We are encouraged by our success
and have allowed ourselves to think
about the spring when our old female
will not return. We hope our male will
then secure a new, uncontaminated
mate, bringing the process full circle.
Perhaps, by clinging to what we have
left and assisting in any way we can, we
may one day right the wrongs we have
perpetrated against our fellow life forms
such as the bald eagle.

FURTHER READING

Nye, P. “Restoring the Bald Eagle to New York.”
The Conservationist, July—August, 1982.

Temple, S. A. Endangered Birds, Managernetit
Techniques for Preserving Threatened Species. Uni¬
versity of Wisconsin Press, Madison. 1978.

THE AUTHORS

Peter Nye and Michael Allen are researchers at
the New York State Department of Environmen¬
tal Conservation.

The Living Bird Quarterly 19

Kenneth W. Fink (Bruce Coleman, Inc.)

To Save the Condor

by Stanley A. Temple

A N INDIAN SHEEPHERDER

tending his flock in the Peruvian
Andes pauses to watch the flight of a
huge Andean condor soaring over'
head. Unknown to the herder, other
men a hundred miles away are also trac¬
ing this particular condor’s flight. They
are scientists who have been tracking
the bird’s movements for two years by
monitoring signals generated by a
solar-powered miniature radio trans¬
mitter mounted on the condor’s wing.

Although the herder will note noth¬
ing unusual about this bird, it is no
ordinary condor. Its parents, which it
has never seen, live in a cage at the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s
Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in
Maryland; it hatched in an incubator at
the New York Zoological Society’s
Bronx Zoo, and it was hand-reared by
University of Wisconsin biologists be¬
fore being released into the wilds of
Peru. This Andean condor has taken
on special significance to conser¬
vationists around the world because
someday it may play a crucial role in
saving the endangered California con¬
dor from extinction.

With a population of only 20 to 30
individuals and a loss of about two birds
a year, the California condor needs
whatever help we can offer and it needs
it soon. To ensure that our attempts to
save the California condor have the
best possible chance of succeeding, we
have been working with the best possi¬
ble surrogate, the Andean condor.

Plans for rescuing the California
condor include three procedures: cap¬
tive breeding, release of captive-reared
birds into the wild, arid studying wild
condors with the aid of radio tracking.
These techniques have never been used

on the California condor, so we first
tested them on the Andean condor.

Because of the high risk of leaving
California condors to their own devices
in the wild where they continue to de¬
cline, captive breeding offers some at¬
tractive features. Well-managed cap¬
tive birds often live longer and are more
productive than wild birds; at best
these birds in the wild are able to raise
one young every second year. Hoping
that captive condors might breed at a
higher rate and live longer, the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service began ex¬
perimental propagation of Andean
condors in 1966. Initially, nine imma¬
ture birds were trapped in Argentina
and shipped to Patuxent. After trading
with zoos to get a balanced sex ratio and
waiting for the birds to reach sexual
maturity, four breeding pairs were
formed. The first egg was laid in 1971
and the first chick hatched in 1973. By
1978 all four pairs were productive.
Meanwhile, several zoos also had been
successful at breeding condors.

After establishing that condors
could be bred in captivity, the next step
was to increase their reproductive rate.
Like California condors, wild Andean
condors nest only once every other
year. However, in captivity we can in¬
duce the birds to breed every year by
removing the previous year’s youngster
before its presence inhibits the adults’
subsequent breeding. Pushing the birds
even further, researchers at the Bronx
Zoo have found they can get their cap¬
tive condors to lay more than one egg
each year. Removal of the condor’s first
egg leads to the laying of a second re¬
placement egg. If the second egg is re¬
moved, some condor pairs have laid
even a third egg. By hatching these
eggs in an incubator it has been possible
to induce a pair of captive Andean
condors to produce six young during
the same two-year period in which a
wild pair could produce only one. Such
an increase in reproduction is what is
needed to bolster the precariously small
population of California condors.

Left: Captive male California condor.

Right: California condor chick in nest cave. In
nature, a chick hatches every other year.

The Living Bird Quarterly 21

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service/Tupper Ansel Blake

Most captive Andean condors kept
in adequate breeding cages have repro¬
duced, and the prognosis for using this
method with California condors is ex¬
cellent. If they breed in captivity as
well as their South American relatives,
they could reach a safe population size
in a few decades.

As promising as captive breeding
seems to be, most conservationists
would prefer that condors reside in the
wild rather than in cages. Condors
raised in captivity would have to be
released to the wild and this presents
many challenges. Unlike smaller birds
that mature quickly and become inde¬
pendent of their parents, the larger
condors do not reach maturity until the
age of about 10 years. A young bird
remains with its parents for almost a
year before striking out on its own.
Birds produced in captivity would not
have the benefit of this long period of
parental care; once released they would
have to adjust to natural conditions
without parents to serve as role models.

One of my graduate students,
Michael P. Wallace, and I undertook
the task of developing procedures for
returning captive-produced condors to
the wild. We began our work in 1978
with preliminary experiments on tur¬
key vultures and black vultures, both
smaller and more abundant relatives of
condors. We found that, with special
attention, these birds could be released
using a modification of the hacking
process that has proven successful in
the peregrine falcon recovery program.

Our follow-up observations have
shown that these hand-rearing and re¬
leasing procedures have resulted in ap¬
parently normal, wild individuals.

Encouraged by this success, we pre¬
pared to use the best of the tested tech¬
niques on the Andean condors. By
1980 enough young Andean condors
had been produced in captivity to pro¬
vide an adequate number of birds for
release experiments. We selected an
area on the Sechura Peninsula in the
remote coastal desert of northern Peru.
It is frequented by wild condors and has
the rugged topography and natural food
supply required by the birds. The area
also has minimal human disturbance.

In July, 1980 the first group of six
captive-reared condors was shipped to
Peru and released on the Sechura
Peninsula a month later. These birds
were at least one year old, and soon
they began ranging about the peninsula
in search of animal carcasses that we
moved from place to place to encourage
the birds to expand their foraging area.
Gradually they became capable of find¬
ing natural food and behaved more and
more like wild condors. In December,
1980, five birds were added, these
being less than one year old.

We continued to monitor the birds
through August, 1982, and we were
pleased with their progress. Seven of
the 11 birds made a successful transi¬
tion to life in the wild, and by the time
we left them they were indistinguish¬
able from wild birds of similar age. The
four birds that died taught us much

about the perils of being a young con¬
dor. Two of the released birds became
sick and died soon after they fed on the
carcasses of dead seabirds along the
coast. We suspect that the condors,
which had been fed a relatively sanitary
diet in captivity, had problems coping
with the microorganisms they encoun¬
tered in putrid carcasses. Just as human
travelers suffer from intestinal prob¬
lems when they visit a strange land and
eat unusual foods, so our released con¬
dors apparently suffered. This experi¬
ence taught us that we should prepare
captive birds for the types of food they
will eat in the wild.

A third released bird died of starva¬
tion when inclement weather forced it
down among a group of wild adult con¬
dors. When food is short, adults have
primary access to it, and younger con¬
dors, like this released bird, are the
ones that suffer. The fourth unsuccess¬
ful condor apparently died of injuries
resulting from either a fall off a roosting
ledge on a cliff or a collision with the
face of a cliff. All in all, though, seven
out of 11 is a very high success rate in
comparison with mortality rates of 50
percent or more that seems typical of
wild vultures during their first year of
life. At this point we think returning
captive-hred condors to the wild pre¬
sents no insurmountable hurdles.

JL jLs part of our work with Andean
condors in Peru, we perfected a method
of attaching two-ounce radio transmit¬
ters to the top of a condor’s wing. These
tell us the wearer’s precise location and
behavior. Condors search for food over
a huge range; in Peru they traverse daily
more than 100 miles of some of the
most rugged terrain on earth. This
combination of great mobility and rug¬
ged landscape means that traditional
observation techniques are ineffective.
With binoculars or spotting scopes we
would be lucky to keep a foraging bird
in sight for even a brief portion of its
daily routine before it vanished behind
a mountain peak.

Radio tracking is an important key to
our understanding of condor biology.
Trying to study the California condor
using traditional techniques has left
many questions unanswered, some cru¬
cial to the recovery and management of
the bird. We do not know where most
of the California condors are at any

Adult Andean condors and tagged subadult, turkey vultures, black vultures at bait site in Peru.

22 The Living Bird Quarterly

time, or where they get their food, or
the types of habitats they use for nest¬
ing and roosting. We do not know why
. condors die.

Some conservationists are justifiably
nervous about the use of radio tele¬
metry because the birds must be cap¬
tured and fitted with the apparatus. But
our experience with wild Andean con¬
dors in Peru should allay apprehen¬
sions. We radioed 58 condors for up to
two years, and they showed no adverse
reactions. In several instances the
tracking information helped to rescue
birds that might have died. Two of our
captive-reared and released birds
bathed in a pool containing oil run-off
from a petroleum pipeline. We were
able to find them and clean their feath¬
ers. Without the tracking data these
birds probably would have died. We
radio tracked wild condors into an area
of the Andes where a sheepherder had
placed poison bait for mountain lions
that were killing his sheep. The
poisoned carcasses also attracted our
condors. We contacted the herder and
warned him of the risks. J

Radio tracking has tremendous po- I
tential for helping the California con- J
dor recovery program. This infor- |
mation will be invaluable if captive
breeding of California condors suc¬
ceeds and the day comes for releasing
progeny into the wild. In the mean¬
time, radio tracking may reveal prob¬
lems in the wild population that can be
corrected. Recently, in fact, two wild,
immature California condors were
trapped, fitted with radio transmitters,
and released. Already the tracking re¬
sults are telling us things we did not
know.

Without the success of all three parts
of the proposed program—radio track¬
ing, captive breeding, and restock¬
ing— the future of the California con¬
dor must be judged bleak. Work with
Andean condors has shown that these
recovery techniques can work. Still, it
remains unclear if even these advanced
conservation procedures have come in
time to save the California condor.

FURTHER READING

Ricklefs, R., et al. Report of the advisory panel
on the California condor. Audubon Conservation
Report. 1978.

THE AUTHOR

Stanley Temple is the Beers-Bascom Professor in
Conservation, Department of Wildlife Ecology,
University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Michael Wallace

Top: Andean condor, produced in the
U. S ., is weighed before released in Peru.
Left: Wing tags help identify freed birds.
Right: One of the few known breeding
California condors is fitted with transmitter.

•D

The Living Bird Quarterly 23

Neil Rettig

Out on
a Limb

The Philippine eagle, found exclusively on the islands of Luzon, Samar, Leyte,

and Mindanao in the Philippine Islands, is the world’s second largest

eagle and one of the rarest. Its nest is a huge platform of sticks built high in the

binuang, tangile, and lauan trees of the rain forest. The Philippine

eagle is distinctive for its crest of long, tapered feathers, blue-gray eyes, and

size—it measures up to three-and-a-half feet in length. Its former

name, monkey-eating” eagle has been changed, monkeys being but a small

part of the bird’s diet.

24 The Living Bird Quarterly

RESRARCHOiLKKVTEW

by Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

Pesticide Threat

A pesticide known as endrin made the news
in the spring of 1981 when it was sprayed on
330,000 acres of wheat in Montana and
neighboring states. This one-time spraying
was an effort to control pale western (army)
cutworms. By late summer, Montana
wildlife officials discovered that some wa¬
terfowl, which apparently had fed on con¬
taminated wheat, contained endrin con¬
centrations equivalent to three times the
amount considered safe to humans by the
U. S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA).

Concern for the health of those who
might eat the contaminated birds nearly
resulted in cancellation of waterfowl hunt¬
ing seasons in Montana and 16 other states
over which the birds migrate. While the
seasons were not closed, hunters were ad¬
vised of the health risks.

Endrin is related to the strictly controlled
pesticide, DDT. Studies where pesticides
were fed to mallard ducklings, though, have
suggested that endrin is 80 times more toxic
than DDT. It is known that endrin, when
ingested in sufficient quantity, can cause
birds to die of poisoning. Less known are the
potential effects of endrin on avian repro¬
duction which in the long run may be even
more significant.

Three U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service
researchers have recently investigated the
effects of dietary endrin on screech owl re¬
production (“Endrin decreases screech owl
productivity,” Journal of Wildlife Manage¬
ment, vol. 46, pp. 462-468).

W. James Fleming, M. Anne Ross
McLane, and Eugene Cromartie worked
with 30 breeding pairs of screech owls from
a colony at the Patuxent Wildlife Research
Center in Maryland. Half of the birds were
randomly chosen to receive endrin in their
food. The amount of endrin fed to these
birds (.75 parts per million) was a concen¬
tration that may occur in prey items after a
spraying. The other 15 owl pairs served as
controls. They were fed no endrin.

The researchers found that the endrin-
fed owls laid fewer eggs, hatched fewer eggs
per clutch, and overall produced 43 percent
fewer fledglings than the control birds.
Also, endrin residue was found in eggs from
the endrin-treated group, whereas no en¬
drin residue was found in eggs from the
control group (although most eggs from
both groups contained residues of a DDT
derivative and PCB).

Fleming and his colleagues noted that
endrin did not affect eggshell thickness,
thus the decline in screech owl hatching
success must have been caused by some
other factor. (The eggshell thinning
phenomenon associated with DDT has en¬
dangered such birds as the bald eagle and
peregrine falcon.) Exactly how endrin af¬
fects breeding success is not yet known.
Apparently, survival of the screech owls
that did hatch was not affected by the en¬
drin treatment of their parents.

The use of endrin is now forbidden in the
eastern United States but still may be used
under certain circumstances in the west. Yet
one U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service
biologist has referred to endrin as “stone-
age pest control,” noting that alternative
pesticides exist that are more selective and
less poisonous. Many environmental or¬
ganizations have requested the EPA to ban
all endrin. Given that the waterfowl af¬
fected by the spraying are an important part
of the hunting industry, maybe such a ban
will become a reality.

optimal Foraging

In the animal world, survival requires a
never-ending quest for food. Almost every¬
thing a bird does relates to obtaining food;
territories are defended to ensure exclusive
food supplies, migrations are undertaken to
areas of greater food abundance, behavioral
and structural adaptations evolve to aid in
the capture or handling of food.

The quest for food is really a quest for
energy. From ingested food comes the
energy that fuels cellular processes that in
turn enable survival, growth, and reproduc¬
tion. Yet, the amount of energy a bird gets
from food is not equal to the amount of food
it eats. Energy is gained only when the
energy value of ingested food is greater than
the energy expended in finding, eating, and
digesting the food.

Logically, a foraging bird should attempt
to capture a large amount of prey while
expending a small amount of energy,
thereby maximizing its energy gain. This
idea is known as “optimal foraging theory,”
and it raises the question—shouldn’t a bird
hunt in areas where its preferred foods are in
greatest abundance?

This question has been examined re¬
cently by two independent studies, both of
which deal with relationships between prey
abundance and feeding sites. The studies
differed in intent and approach, but the
findings and conclusions are similar.

In the first study, James Baker and Ronald
Brooks of the University of Guelph, On¬
tario, investigated the number of wintering
red-tailed hawks and rough-legged hawks
on six different types of habitats at the To¬
ronto International Airport (“Distribution
patterns of raptors in relation to density of
meadow voles,” The Condor, vol. 83, pp.
42—47). Each habitat type supported differ¬
ing densities of meadow vole, a small mouse
constituting about 85 percent of the diet of
both red-tailed and rough-legged hawks at
the airport.

The habitats were as follows: shortgrass,
dominated by mowed hluegrass; old fields,
largely abandoned farm fields; straw, har¬
vested winter wheat that was left in the
fields over winter; pasture, grazed by cattle
and having very little vegetation; plowed
fields, plowed in early fall and left fallow
over winter; and winter wheat, sown in
September and offering very little winter
cover.

The two-year study consisted of three
parts. First, the researchers estimated the
number of voles on each habitat. Second,
they determined the number of hawks using
each habitat. Third, they examined the re¬
lationships between vole densities and
hawk densities for each habitat.

Vole densities differed markedly among
the habitats. The straw supported the
greatest number of voles, from 125 to 360
voles per hectare (2.5 acres), depending on
the month. Shortgrass and old field habitats
also supported high vole densities, from 10
to 340 voles per hectare. Shortgrass usually
supported higher densities than old fields.
Pastures had very few voles, probably fewer
than four per hectare, and no voles ever
were seen on plowed fields or fields of winter
wheat.

If the hawks were feeding in habitats sole¬
ly on the basis of prey abundance, then they
should have been found at highest densities
in straw, followed by shortgrass, old fields,
and pasture. No hawks should have occurred
over plowed fields or winter wheat.

Yet this is not what Baker and Brooks
discovered. The red-tails did concentrate
on shortgrass and old fields, both of which
had high vole densities. However, they
were found in pastures, with low vole densi-

26 The Living Bird Quarterly

ties, more than straw, which supported the
highest vole density of all. They were seen
even in the plowed fields and winter wheat,
which apparently were devoid of prey.

As for the rough-legs, they too were
found in shortgrass more than straw, al¬
though they were found in straw more than
in old fields. They also hunted the winter
wheat and plowed fields to a surprising
degree.

Baker and Brooks concluded that the
hawks were not using the habitats strictly
on the basis of vole density. In particular,
the straw habitat was used much less than
expected. The researchers feel this discrep¬
ancy exists because each habitat offers dif¬
fering opportunities for prey concealment.
The straw habitat, while having the
greatest number of voles, also provided tall,
dense prey cover. Conversely, the plowed
field and winter wheat habitats, which ap¬
parently harbored few if any voles, sup¬
ported the least cover. Thus, the few voles
that might appear would be easy targets.

There is further although indirect sup¬
port for the idea that cover affected the
hawks’ hunting opportunities; the fact that
rough-legs hunted the straw more than red-
tails. Red-tails hunt mainly from perches,
whereas rough-legs often hunt by hovering.
A vole in straw becomes vulnerable to pre¬
dation only when it moves into an open
space between the rows. A hovering hawk
would have a greater chance of capturing
the vole than would a hawk perched some
distance away.

The second study, by Marc Bechard,
Marshall University, Toronto, also exam¬
ined prey abundance and hawk foraging in
different types of habitat (“Effect of vegeta¬
tive cover on foraging site selection by
Swainson’shawk,” The Condor, vol. 84, pp.
153—159). Working over two nesting sea¬
sons in southeastern Washington, Bechard
observed four male Swainson’s hawks that
were providing food for themselves, their
brooding mates, and young. Using radio
telemetry equipment, he followed the birds
to observe their foraging frequencies in four
cultivated habitat types: fallow fields,
wheat fields, pea fields, and mustard fields,
and two uncultivated types: pasture and
“eyebrows” (a local term for narrow patches
of unplowed land on steep hillsides).

Bechard discovered that early in the nest¬
ing season the birds spent the greatest
amount of time hunting uncultivated land
—the pasture and eyebrows. But, once har¬
vest began, the hawks concentrated on
hunting the cultivated land. When the pea
harvest started, the foraging hawks moved
into the harvested pea fields; later, wheat
harvest started and the birds hunted the
harvested wheat fields.

Bechard knew that the hawks’ prey were
northern pocket gophers, deer mice, and
voles. So, to correlate foraging patterns
with prey abundance, he estimated the
gopher, mouse and vole populations within
each habitat. Then, he compared the forag¬
ing use of each habitat with the amount of
prey in the habitat.

As in the first study, these factors were
not always directly related. Pasture sup¬
ported the greatest amount of prey through¬
out the season, yet was hunted only during
the early part of it. When the hawks later
shifted their hunting to harvested cropland,
they selected habitats with less food!

Yet there was a factor that did correlate
with foraging site selection; the amount of
vegetative cover on the sites. Bechard
found that, during the early part of the
season, cover was least in the uncultivated
fields where the birds spent most of their
time hunting and greatest in the cultivated
fields they avoided. After harvest, though,
when the hawks moved into the cultivated
fields, cover in those fields was much re¬
duced. These hawks—like those in the first
study — seemed to be hunting not in the
areas with the largest amount of prey, but
with the least cover.

These two studies reached the same con¬
clusion independently; prey abundance is
not the only factor that detetmines the
selection of hunting areas by certain for¬
aging hawks. Apparently, these hawks
maximize energy gain by selecting areas of
greatest prey availability — which is de¬
termined by both prey abundance and
accessibility.

Other factors also enter into a predator’s
selection of a feeding location, including
the amount of competition with other pred¬
ators, the different types of prey on the site,
topography, and weather. How do predators
determine the best sites? Perhaps they learn
to concentrate search efforts on the basis of
initial, successful searches.

Birds and Wildfire

The effects of forest fire on bird populations
have not been studied much. Conse¬
quently, after a wildfire burned an inten¬
sively studied wilderness area in Minnesota,
Steven Apfelbaum and Alan Haney seized
the opportunity to recensus the area to as¬
sess the fire’s impact (“Bird populations
before and after wildfire in a Great Lakes
pine forest,” The Condor, vol. 83,

pp. 347-354).

The fire burned in August and the inves¬
tigators returned the following May. They
discovered numerous changes in the area’s
vegetation and in the numbers and species
of birds present.

Before the fire, the six-hectare (15 acres)
study site consisted primarily of jack pine
forest with sparse understory, and hosted 12
bird species. These were three species of
ground-bush foragers: hermit thrush, oven-
bird, and winter wren; two species of trunk
foragers: brown creeper and red-breasted
nuthatch; and seven species of tree foliage
feeders: boreal chickadee, ruby-crowned
kinglet, red-eyed and solitary vireos, and
three species of warblers.

Vole becomes vulnerable to predation when it
moves from cover into an open space.

The Living Bird Quarterly 27

After the fire, tree cover was reduced
severely, but vegetation near the ground-
herbs and small woody plants—substantially
increased. The number of bird species also
increased—from 12 to 14, and many were
different. The three ground foragers present
before the fire disappeared, and six new
ones took their place: purple finch, dark-
eyed junco, white-throated sparrow, and
three species cT thrushes. The number of
trunk foragers remained the same, hut the
nuthatch was replaced by the black-backed
three-toed woodpecker. Tree foliage feeders
were reduced from seven species to five—
both species of vireo disappeared. Finally,

an aerial forager, the olive-sided flycatcher,
was added.

While the number of bird species in¬
creased after the fire, the total number of
birds decreased hy more than one half, ap¬
parently because the fire reduced the
amount of food available to birds. But why
did the number of species increase? And
why did the species composition change?

After the burn, some of the old plants
died and new and different ones took their
place. Apfelbaum and Haney concluded
that the increased diversity of food, espe¬
cially near the ground, resulted in a greater
number of bird species.

NEWS&NOTES

We are sorry to report the death of George
Miksch Sutton (1898-1982). Born in Ne¬
braska, he grew up in Minnesota, Oregon,
Illinois, Texas, and West Virginia. He
graduated from Bethany College in West
Virginia. After college, he served on the
staff of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh
and as state ornithologist for the Pennsyl¬
vania Game Commission. In 1929 he
undertook a year’s solo expedition to the far
north. The following year he came to Cor¬
nell, first to take his doctorate and later to
serve as curator of birds. From 1945 to 1952
he was on the staff of the University of
Michigan’s Museum of Zoology. His last
post was George Lynn Cross research pro¬
fessor of Zoology Emeritus and Curator of
Birds at the Stovall Museum of Science and
History at the University of Oklahoma.

His direct-from-life stories and sketches
have appeared in many hooks and periodi¬
cals including The Living Bird and The Liv¬
ing Bird Quarterly. Throughout the years.

the Laboratory has benefited immeasurably
from Doc Sutton’s advice and support. He
will be missed.

The Laboratory’s Cooperative Research
Program is a vast base of information on the
nesting habits and reproductive success of
all birds in North America. These hundreds
of thousands of records, contributed hy
thousands of volunteers throughout the
continent, are used to assess changes in bird
pt:>pulations.

We are particularly interested in develop¬
ing a national research program to study the
reproductive success of eastern, western,
and mountain bluebirds. We also have been
looking closely at the distribution, abun¬
dance, and habitat preferences of wading
birds, gulls, and terns in Florida and along
the North Carolina coast. These studies
follow a recently completed look at the
status of the great blue heron in New York.

Dear Member:

We who like birds have a lot to worry about. Loss of wild habitat, continued industrialization,
pollution of every description, have reduced the numbers of birds and endangered whole species.

We all are familiar with the ominous forecasts of impending doom. But there is much we can do
besides worrying. Note a few of the successes: the reintroduction of the peregrine falcon to the
eastern United States, recolonization of Maine islands by puffins, the work of the International
Crane Foundation.

Undoubtedly, a great deal more needs to be done, but, instead of dwelling on the disasters, we
would like to emphasize in the Quarterly the positive stories and promising signs around us. Our
hope is that, instead of giving up in despair, you will be encouraged to join the effort.

Ornithology is one of the few remaining sciences where amateurs make significant contribu¬
tions. Thousands of individuals contribute time and expertise to the annual Christmas Bird
Count, and the Breeding Bird Survey of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, bird-banding efforts,
and to the Cooperative Research Program based here at the Laboratory. Much of what is known
about distributions and abundances of North American birds is the result of efforts by volunteers.

Your participation in programs that foster environmental understanding and preservation is
more important now than ever. By working together, we can bring about more success stories,
which we hope someday will outnumber the failures.

_ Charles Walcott, Executive Director

We hope to extend our survey of great blue
herons to other states as well.

We encourage members of the Labora¬
tory to participate in the Cooperative Re¬
search Program. For details, please write to
Cooperative Research Program, Laboratory
of Ornithology, Sapsucker Woods, Ithaca,
N.Y. 14850.

The Canadian Wildlife Service, Ontario
Region, is continuing its program of color
marking common terns at two colonies in
the lower Great Lakes to determine their
post-hreeding dispersal, migration routes
and winter range.

In 1982 bright blue wing tags (with black
lettering) were put on adult common terns,
and black tags (with yellow lettering) on
chicks just prior to fledging. Tags contain
number/letter combinations and were
placed on both wings of all birds. If you
observe a tagged tern, please report the
date, location, color of the tag, and
number/letter combination to: Banding
Office, Canadian Wildlife Service, Head¬
quarters, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Two hundred paintings hy Louis Agassiz
Fuertes will be displayed during a special
exhibition of the artist’s work. “A Celebra¬
tion of Birds: Louis Agassiz Fuertes and his
Art” is touring the country and will be at
these locations: Feh. 5-April 3, New Brit¬
ain Museum of Art, New Britain, Conn.,
April 30—June 26, Field Museum of Natural
History, Chicago. The exhibit was prepared
under the auspices of the Academy of
Natural Sciences, Philadelphia.

1983 is the third summer of data collection
for the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas. Birders
visiting the province are invited to partici¬
pate. Free airplane flights will be arranged
for atlas volunteers who will he traveling
from northern Ontario to remote areas of
boreal forest, muskeg and tundra. To be
eligible for these flights you should be an
experienced birder with some wilderness
survival expertise and at least two weeks to
spare in June or July. For more information,
contact Mike Cadman, Ontario Breeding
Bird Atlas, FON Conservation Center, 355
Lesmill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, M3B
2W8, Canada.

The editors cT The Living Bird Quarterly
invite yttu to write to us expressing your
views on our content or other issues involv¬
ing birds and the environment.

We reserve the right to edit your letters
for style and to use your name unless other¬
wise requested. Our goal is to establish
a forum for your ideas and to address the
topics that concern us all.

28 The Living Bird Quarterly

Feed Winter Birds at Discount Prices

Suet Holders

Suet is one of the best sources of energy for birds in winter.
These feeders will attract a variety of woodpeckers, chick¬
adees, nuthatches and more.

Durable vinyl-covered wire construction available in two
sizes:

Small-3'' X 4" x 2" $4.95/4.20 members

Large—5" x 6'' x 3" $6.95/5.90 members

Heavy-duty vinyl netting with drawstring. Holds three
pounds. $2.00/1.70 members

Big Top

Your whole family and a wide variety of birds will love this
handsome and indestructible feeder. The steep 15" dome
baffles squirrels and adjusts up or down for bird size
selection, with eight feeding ports for clinging birds.

$39.95/33.95 members

Squirrel Baffle

Similar to Big Top but without additional feeding ports.

$19.95/16.95 members

Cylinder Supeifeeder

A favorite of small songbirds. Six feeding ports in this
durable large feeder attract many species.

$39.95/33.95 members
Optional seed saving tray. $6.00/5.10 members

Seed Silo and Catcher

Universal tube feeder with four feeding ports and attached
seedtray. $15.95/13.55 members

Enclosed is a check or money order in G.S. funds, payable to
The Crow s Nest Bookshop.

Item Title

Qty.

Price

Amount of order
IN.Y. State residents add 7% sales tax
Postage and handling, $2.00 1st item
50^ each additional item
Total amount enclosed

2.00

Form of payment:

□ Check □ Money Order □ VISA □ MasterCard

Card #---Expir. Date

Signature_

Name ^_

Address _

Bird Feeding Manual

Stephen Kress

Feeding birds can be a mutually satisfying
experience, providing birds with nourish¬
ment while delighting bird watchers. This
guide describes feeding and feeding sta¬
tions. 1973, paper, 47 pages.

$2.25/1.90 members

My Recipes Are for the Birds

Irene Cosgrove

These recipes will attract and delight the'
guests at your feeder and provide energy
needed during the cold winter months.
1975, paper, unpaged.

$4.50/3.85 members

Enhancement of Wildlife Habitat
on Private Lands

Daniel J. Decker and John W. Kelley

Have you wondered what you can do to
help your local wildlife? This book will aid
you, the landowner, in efforts to improve
wildlife habitat with projects designed to
• encourage a variety of birds and mammals.
1982, paper, 40 pages.

$3.95/3.35 members

A Complete Guide to Bird
Feeding

John Y Dennis

If you enjoy the comings and goings of
birds in the wintertime and want to know
more about attracting them to your home,
then this richly illustrated guide is for you!
1975, cloth, 290 pages.

$ 12.95/11.00 members

Photograph by David Blanton

A. Cruickshank/VIREO

Osprey

VV illiam Cowper was describing
the disappearance of London coun¬
tryside when he wrote this mocking
verse in 1782. Certainly the trend has
continued. Today, in this country, city
planners predict a Washington,
D.C./New York/Boston megalopolis
by the year 2000. This could leave the
northeastern seaboard with far fewer of
its native plants and animals.

As more and more natural area is
converted into highways and shopping
centers, wildlife habitat becomes frag¬
mented and homogeneous. Many
indigenous birds flee or die, and are
replaced by more adaptable species
—house sparrows, starlings, and pi¬
geons. However, with the proper plan¬
ning, birds can live and prosper
alongside human development. The
Seatuck Research Program, a coopera¬
tive effort between Cornell’s Labora¬
tory of Ornithology and the U. S. Fish
and Wildlife Service, was recently es¬
tablished to study ways to create better
habitats for wildlife on the heavily
populated south shore of Long Island.

Seatuck National Wildlife Refuge
consists of 200 acres of protected wood¬
land, pasture, shrubland, and tidal
marsh. When Thomas Litwin, direc¬
tor, and David Peterson, wildlife
biologist, began their research in Feb¬
ruary, 1982, they asked themselves how
they could best use this land to benefit
the largest number of species.

“The first thing we needed to do,”
said Litwin, “was to figure out what is

Seatuck: A Haven for Birds

by Linda G. Hooper

“Suburban villas, highway-side retreats,

That dread the encroachment of our growing streets.

Tight boxes, neatly sash’d, and in a Maze
With all a July sun’s collected rays.

Delight the citizen, who, gasping there.

Breathes clouds of dust, and calls it country air. ’’

—William Cowper, Victorian Suburb

on the refuge and what species we want
to encourage here. We then have to
make it easy for these species to find
food and nesting sites. If they repro¬
duce, it increases the likelihood that
they will stay.”

Litwin explained how he and the
Seatuck staff censused the area. “Our
biologists went out at dawn once a day
during the breeding season. May
through July. We first placed metal
markers every 164 feet over the 200
acres. On each subsequent trip we
stopped at every marker, listened, ob¬
served, and wrote down the birds we
heard or saw. By the end of the season
we had a pretty good idea of what was
out there. And what wasn’t.”

Now that the inhabitants of Seatuck
are known, the next task is to manipu¬
late the environment so that species
will be attracted to the refuge.

“Land is constantly changing. If Sea¬
tuck is left alone, in 100 years it will all
be forest. This will eliminate many of
the bird species once found in the re¬
gion because a diversity of plant life
supports a greater variety of birds. And
as development continues many types
of habitat —woodlands, marshes, pas¬
tures — are eliminated. If we want to
preserve different kinds of birds, Sea¬
tuck should become a microcosm of the
once larger natural system. To ac¬
complish this, next year we are plan¬
ning to mow, thin undergrowth, and
leave other areas untouched.

“We need to make plants grow, pref¬
erably faster and denser than they
would normally. We will be experi¬
menting with a technique known as
hydroseeding — spraying water and a
mixture of aster and goldenrod over
three to four acres at one time. We
hope to attract eastern meadowlarks
and bobolinks which would have
otherwise stayed away. Without this
procedure it could easily take 10 years

for the plants to establish themselves,”
Litwin said.

Besides diversification of the land,
Litwin is trying to attract birds to Sea¬
tuck by creating nesting sites.

“To entice ospreys, we erected nest¬
ing platforms on 35-foot poles early in
the spring. By mid-June, we were ex¬
cited to find that a pair of immature
ospreys had arrived at the site and had
begun frustration nesting. This is a
behavior seen in birds that are not
mature enough to lay eggs and raise
young. These immatures brought sticks
back to the nest and exhibited court¬
ship feeding and flight. This may
mean actual nesting will take place
next year. ”

In cooperation with the New York
State Department of Environmental
Conservation, Seatuck is monitoring
the populations of colonial nesting
birds on the barrier beach from Jones
Beach to Fire Island Inlet. Some birds
nest where people swim, picnic, and
drive dune buggies. As a result, snowy
egrets, Louisiana herons, common
terns, least terns, and black skimmers
are potentially in conflict with these
activities.

Litwin explained, “we have concen¬
trated on least terns, since they nest on
open beaches which are popular with
bathers. The birds would be safer if we
could lure them to areas where they
don’t have to compete with humans.
Last summer we cleared vegetation
from the part of the refuge that fronts
on the beach. We also set out decoys
and played recordings of tern sounds.
We observed the terns’ courtship feed¬
ing and nest scraping activities this
summer and I’m hopeful that they will
breed here next year.

“Of course, all these plans are con¬
tingent on one thing—people. If people
don’t care, all the research in the world
won’t make any difference.”

30 The Living Bird Quarterly

mwm

Spring/1983
Volume 2 Number 2

THE LIVING BIRD

QUARTERLY

Editorial Staff

Jill Crane, Editor
Linda G. Hooper, Art Director
Charles R. Smith, Technical Editor
Les Line, Consulting Editor
Donna J. R Crossman, Editorial Assistant
Lynne H. McKeon, Editorial Assistant
Richard E. Bonney, Jr., Contributing Editor

Laboratory Staff

Charles Walcott, Executive Director
Tom J. Cade, Director, Raptor Research
Jill Crane, The Living Bird Quarterly
Donna J. R Crossman, Library
Samuel A. Eliot, Public Affairs
James L. Gulledge, Library of
Natural Sounds
Linda G. Hooper, Art Programs
Thomas S. Litwin, Seatuck Research
Donald A. McCrimmon, Jr., Cooperative

Research Program
Charles R. Smith, Public Education
Jane Hance Wood, Administration

Administrative Board

James W. Spencer, Chairman John D. Leggett, Jr.

Morton S. Adams
John Frederick Barry
Benjamin P. Burtt
William G. Conway
Alan Crawford, Jr.
Robert G. Engel
Paul J. Franz, Jr.
Kenneth E. Hill
Imogene P. Johnson
Hamilton F. Kean
Josephine W. KixMiller
T. Spencer Knight

Harold Mayfield
Ebnald S. McChesney
G. Michael McHugh
Edwin H. Morgens
Olin Sewall Pettingill, Jr.
Chandler S. Robbins
Lester L. Short
Alexander Sprunt IV
R. Eliot Stauffer
Peter Stettenheim
Charles E. Treman, Jr.
Charles D. Webster

Charles Walcott, Ex Officio

4 Sounds We Call Songs

James L. Gulledge

Bird song is more than music we enjoy on spring
mornings. It is the means by which birds transmit
vital information to one another.

9 A Bird Sanctuary in Perpetuity

Sally Hoyt Spofford

The author knew the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology
when it was still a dream. On the occasion of its
26th anniversary, Sally Spofford recalls the early days.

14 Why Share a Mate?

John Faaborg

Only three out of nearly 9,000 bird species are known
to practice cooperative polyandry. Unusual conditions
must exist for it to work for the Galapagos hawk.

18 So Keep on Looking for the Bluebird

Lawrence Zeleny

With the eastern bluebird population down 90 percent
over the past 50 years, the species needs help. Properly
designed, placed, and monitored nesting boxes have
restored some populations within a few years.

23 The Crowd’s Nest Bookshop

24 The Case of the Common Tern

Lucia Severinghaus

Common terns on Oneida Lake in New York State
have been the target of numerous disturbances. A three-
part management program may be needed to help them.

27 Research & Review

Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

The Living Bird Quarterly, ISSN 0732-9210, i-s published in January,
April, July, and October by the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell
University, 159 Sapsucket Woods Road, Ithaca, New York 14850.
Telephone: (607) 256-5056. The Living Bird Quarterly is free to members
of the Laboratory. Reprints available on request. © 1983 Cornell
University Laboratory of Ornithology.
Printing by Btodock Press Inc., Utica, N.Y.
Typography by Partners Composition, Utica, N.Y.

FRONT COVER. Outside—Eared grebe on nest.

Photograph by Tim Fitzharris©.

Inside—Green heron by Pedro Gonzales.

BACK COVER. Female American robin on nest with young.
Photograph by Tim Fitzharris©.

29 News & Notes

30 George Miksch Sutton:

A Bird Artist’s Bird Artist

Robert M. Mengel
A protege remembers his mentor.

Sounds We Call Songs

by James L. GuUedge

In the first of a series of articles on bird communication,
examine the complex sounds birds use to communicate
then hear them on The Living Bird Quarterly soundsheet.

In late winter, March in

Ithaca, the hours of daylight begin to
increase noticeably. The silence of
early morning, characteristic for what
seems like a very long time, is now
occasionally broken by bird song. The
cardinals, black-capped chickadees,
and titmice that have been attending
bird feeders are preparing for a new
season of nest building and rearing of
young. Song, a primary means by
which birds communicate, signals the
imminent change of season.

Although little that we call song has
been heard all winter, the birds have
not been silent. This is especially true
of various flocking species such as chick¬
adees, starlings, crows, and others.
However, the sounds they make in
winter are different from those that are
now beginning to be heard. Where
wintertime bird sounds may be harsh
and noisy, the sounds that herald spring
tend to be musical.

Black-capped chickadees are good
examples. Their wintertime flock
sounds consist largely of “chickadee-
dee-dee” calls. Playback experiments
conducted by Stephen Nowicki at
Cornell University have shown that
the complex “dee-dee-dee” portion of
the call allows the birds not only to
identify each other individually, but it
also allows them to recognize particu¬
lar flocks.

In late winter and early spring, a
quite different sound enters the black-
capped chickadee vocabulary. It con¬
sists of two or three pure notes, the first
higher in pitch. This song will become
more and more common as the chick¬
adee winter flocks break up and pairs
begin to establish breeding territories.

As winter continues to fade, other
species sound forth with their spring
and summer songs. The woods begin to
fill with migrants passing through to
even more northerly regions as well as

Yelloui'headed blackbird sings from cattail.
Camera catches song of Hensbiv’s sparrow.

with the dozens of species that will
breed and nest locally. Males will be
singing their characteristic songs which
in concert make the central New York
woodlands resound from May until
July. The most dramatic time to hear
them is at dawn when every individual
joins in an exuberant dawn chorus.
Side 1 of the accompanying soundsheet
captures a little of such a chorus.

As late spring becomes summer,
young fledge, and adults begin to
moult, the breeding season concerts
diminish. By late summer call notes of
various kinds will again make up the
majority of avian sounds.

Why Musical Songs?

The avian sounds we call song are of a
very specific nature and have quite
specific functions in the social biology
of the species. These sounds are the
functional elements of long-distance

communication systems. They are the
signals a bird uses to transmit informa¬
tion to other birds over relatively long
distances. In fact, we refer to them as
“advertising” or “territorial” songs.
The spring song of the black-capped
chickadee is an example.

In order for a bird to communicate
effectively over long distances, its song
consists of sounds in which the energy
at a given moment is concentrated on a
single frequency. What we hear are the
pure whistled tones typical of so much
bird song. Since we find the acousti¬
cally similar sounds of flutes and related
instruments musically pleasing, we like
to think of bird song as musical.

Studies by Robert Bowman of San
Francisco State University have shown
that the range of frequencies used by a
particular species—indeed, by different
populations within a species—are those
that transmit best in the birds’ habitats.

Gary Meszaros

A mockingbird’s identity is seldom in doubt even
when it sings a replica of another bird’s song.

Figure 1 illustrates this for different
populations of the large cactus finch,
Geospiza conirostris, which lives on
Isla Espahola and Isla Genovesa in
the Galapagos archipelago, each with
slightly different habitats. The
contour-like lines reflect the degree to
which various frequencies are absorbed
by the habitat. The further the lines are
shifted to the right, the greater the ab¬
sorption of the respective sound fre¬
quency. To the left of the sound absorp¬
tion curves are histograms of the
amount of sound energy found at each
frequency, measured in samples of
songs from the respective populations.

On average, the birds put more
energy into sounds at frequencies that
are least absorbed by the habitat in
which they are singing.

To Make a Bird Song

The vocal sounds birds make are pro¬
duced by a special structure known as
the syrinx. Whereas the larynx (figure
2), the sound-producing structure of
mammals, is found at the upper end of
the trachea, the syrinx of birds is found

AMPLITUDE SOUND TRANSMISSION

DISTRIBUTION ISOPLETH

PERCENT 10 DISTANCE FROM SOUND SOURCE

ffl

Figure 1

at the lower end where it splits into the
two bronchi which lead to the lungs.
Here the normally soft supporting ele¬
ments of the tracheal and bronchial
tubes have become rigid and form a
cartilaginous box.

Inside the syrinx are several struc¬
tures and membranes. The most impor¬
tant in the generation of sound are the
two internal tympaniform membranes
located in the anterior end of each
bronchial tube. When these mem¬
branes are stretched, the passage of air
over their surfaces causes them to vi¬
brate. The vibrations are transferred to
the moving air, thus producing sound.

Surrounding the syrinx is a complex
system of muscles. These muscles allow
the bird to control precisely the tension
on the two internal tympaniform
membranes thereby changing the rate
at which they vibrate. Since the rate of
vibration determines the frequency
(pitch) of the sounds produced, the
bird can control the tonal range within
which it sings.

Complexity

Since many birds of many species are
often singing at once, broadcasting
pure tones—even of different pitches—
would not allow species and individuals
to recognize one another. Effective
communication would not be possible.
Somehow the “information content” of
the signals must be increased. This can
be done by increasing the complexity of
the sounds and their patterns.

A bird has several means at its dis¬
posal to achieve complexity in its
sounds and songs. At the most funda¬
mental level the bird can impose pat¬
terns of shifting frequency and
amplitude of each note. Next, different
combinations of notes can be organized
into phrases. Finally, phrases can be
organized into songs.

Making bird song potentially more
complicated is a bird’s capacity to set
tension independently on the two in¬
ternal tympaniform membranes result¬
ing in two simultaneous but different
tones The two tones do not even have to
be harmonically related, explaining
why some bird sounds are dissonant.

By carrying out detailed analyses of
the sounds made by many species,
Grawford Greenewalt documented in
Bird Song: Acoustics and Physiology that
birds can and do use both of their sound
generators during the course of vocaliz¬
ing. Examples of the results of these

6 The iJving Bird Quarterly

The Living Bird Quarterly

Spring/1983 Vol. 2 No. 2

Side X

A May Morning
in Central New York

The Living Bird Quarterly

Spring/1983 Vol. 2 No. 2

001/3

OOrpm

MONAURAL

1. Songs of Five North American Thrushes
at normal and % normal speed

2. The Two Voices of the Wood Thrush
(Courtesy of Crawford H. Greenewalt)

Laura Riley (Bruce Coleman Inc.)

A bird not only sings, it squawks, calls and, like this blue jay chick, begs for food.

Birds

Mammals

syrinx

epiglottis

vocal folds

trachea

syringeal

muscles

pessulus

external
tympaniform
membrane
internal
tympaniform
membrane

bronchi

Figure 2

studies are illustrated on side 2, band 2
of the accompanying soundsheet.

Patterns are imposed on the pure
tones generated by the internal tym-
paniform membranes by controlling
two aspects of sound — frequency
(pitch) and amplitude (loudness). The
imposition of frequency patterns onto a
pure tone is called frequency modula¬
tion. This is what a musician, either
singer or instrumentalist, does with
vibrato. The basic tone is shifted ever
so slightly up and down. To our ears the
most pleasing rate for this is about 10 to
12 times per second.

In imposing frequency modulation
patterns onto the basic pitch of their
songs, birds use rates ranging from less
than one time per second to more than
200 times per second. If the change is
slow and over a relatively large range of
frequencies, we hear a glissando as in
the slurred notes of the cardinal. If the
change is rapid, we can no longer hear
the pattern of change itself Instead we
hear a huzzy sound at the basic pitch of
the bird’s song. The song of the golden-
winged warbler is a good example.

The most complex patterns of fre¬
quency modulation are produced by

About the Soundsheet

Side 1

The first side of the soundsheet in¬
cluded in this issue of The Living Bird
Quarterly was recorded one May morn¬
ing in central New York. See if you can
identify the singers; some are listed here
in taxonomic order.

wood duck (flight call)
mourning dove
great crested flycatcher
American crow
house wren
gray catbird
American robin
wood thrush
veery

red-eyed vireo
common yellowthroat
Canada warbler
northern oriole
brown-headed cowbird
scarlet tanager
rose-breasted grosbeak
rufous-sided towhee
chipping sparrow
white-throated sparrow
red squirrel

Side 2, Band 1

In this selection you will hear five
North American thrushes: wood thrush,
veery, hermit thrush, gray-cheeked
thrush, and Swainson’s thrush. First,
you will hear the songs at normal speed.
Then you will hear them repeated at
one-quarter speed. The complexity of
the thrushes’ songs is particularly dis¬
cernible when they are slowed down.
Also, you can hear the two independent
sound sources, clearly apparent in dis¬
sonant portions of the songs.

Side 2, Band 2

In this selection you will hear the
terminal phrases from two wood
thrushes; first at normal speed, then
slowed to one-eighth normal speed,
then filtered to emphasize the low voice,
then filtered to emphasize the high
voice. Finally, you will hear both voices
again, at one-eighth speed.

songbirds. To accomplish this, these
birds have the most complex system of
syringeal muscles of all birds. They
don’t always use their capabilities,
however. For example, the structural
elements found in the syrinx of the
white-throated sparrow and wood
thrush are the same. But the white-
throated sparrow sings simple songs of a
few pure tones whereas the wood
thrush is renowned for the complexity
of its songs.

Changes in amplitude also can be
imposed on the basic tone. A simple
way to demonstrate amplitude modula-

The Living Bird Quarterly 7

tion is to rhythmically turn the loud¬
ness control on a radio up and down.
An example of a bird song in which
amplitude variation is the primary
means of imposing pattern on the basic
tone is the tremulous “whinny” call of
the screech owl.

Research with doves, carried on at
Ohio State University by Abbot and
Sandra Gaunt suggests that amplitude
modulation in avian sounds is ac¬
complished primarily by the action of
abdominal muscles acting to impose
rhythmic contractions on the air-
filled cavities in which the syrinx and
lungs lie. This causes small changes in
the rate of air flow over the vibrating
membranes in the syrinx. These small
changes are reflected as variations in
loudness of the tone.

By simultaneously changing the
pitch and loudness of the fundamental
frequencies being produced by their
two tympaniform membranes, birds are
able to create a nearly limitless variety
of different notes.

However, even these sources of vari¬
ation seem not to be enough. The indi¬
vidual notes are assembled into phrases
and the phrases into songs. At each
level there is room for variety in the
way the individual notes are grouped.
Usually a given species will have
characteristic patterns of repetition for
the components of the phrases and for
the phrases of songs.

The species-specific nature of such
large-scale organization is clear when
we hear a northern mockingbird imitat¬
ing the song of another species. Al¬
though the mockingbird may sing a
nearly identical replica of components

of another bird’s song, there is seldom
any doubt as to the real identity of the
singer because the mimicked songs are
not organized properly. The mocking¬
bird puts them together in its fash¬
ion, not in that of the species it is
mimicking.

Thrushes, for Example

Some of the complexities of richly
structured bird songs can be best ap¬
preciated when they are slowed down.
This has been done on the accompany¬
ing soundsheet for five species of North
American thrushes.

The sound spectrogram is one of the
most useful tools for studying bird song.
It is a diagrammatic “picture” of sound.
Figure 3 is an audiospectrogram (Sona-
gram) of the first wood thrush song
heard on side 2, band 1 of the sound-
sheet. Think of it as a musical staff on
which the notes are diagrammed rather
than represented by musical symbols.
Loudness is represented by the darkness
of the diagram at a given point. High-
pitched tones are at the top. The range
of tones is from about two octaves
below to four octaves above a piano’s
middle C. Time increases along the
horizontal axis from left to right.

After several introductory notes, the
first phrase of the wood thrush’s song
typically consists of several pure whis¬
tled tones, each held steady with little
or no frequency or amplitude pattern¬
ing. The next phrase is more complex
and in the song illustrated here the
bird’s two voices are alternating on two
notes. The final section of the song is
equally complex and is best heard
rather than described.

It seems likely that the sections of
the wood thrush’s song are structured to
communicate different information
over different distances. The long pure
tones of the first phrase are typical
long-distance signals. If one is rela¬
tively far from the bird, these and a bit
of the second phrase are all that is heard
clearly. The last phrase at any distance
at all is practically inaudible. This
complex phrase seems more likely to be
used in close-range communication
with neighbors or mate. Only if one is
relatively close to the singing bird can
the details of this complex froth of
notes be distinguished.

Bird song, then, is more than a col¬
lection of aesthetically pleasing sounds
that we enjoy each spring. It is a fun¬
damentally important means by which
birds transmit information to one
another. The songs we hear are the
result of particular breeding season so¬
cial systems and the kinds of habitats in
which birds live. The characteristics of
the songs of each species have been
molded by the need to communicate
different kinds and amounts of in¬
formation over different distances in
different habitats. Fortunately for us,
the sounds that serve songbirds best in
spring have characteristics that we find
most pleasing to the ear.

FURTHER READING

Jellis, R. Bird Sounds and Their Meaning. British
Broadcasting Corp., London. 1978.

THE AUTHOR

James Gulledge is director and curator of the
Laboratory’s Library of Natural Sounds.

8 The Living Bird Quarterly

A Bird Sanctuary in Perpetuity

by Sally Hoyt Spofford

Last summer i walked into

the Laboratory of Ornithology’s Stuart
Observatory as I do once each year
when 1 return east from Arizona. As I
stood in the foyer, its walls covered
with original paintings, the large ob¬
servatory windows looking out over the
sanctuary pond, my thoughts flashed
back to that December day in 1956
when Arthur A. Allen, co-founder of
the Laboratory with Peter Paul Kel¬
logg, moved his office from Fernow
Hall on the Cornell University campus
into the new unnamed building. As Dr.
Allen’s assistant, and bookkeeper for
the Cornell Trust for Ornithology
which funded the Laboratory, 1 was
moving too. The building, though
barely furnished, was beautiful. Today
it is even lovelier and certainly in De¬
cember of ’56 no one could have

dreamed of the changes that would take
place over the next 25 years.

In June, 1955 the Laboratory only
recently had been recognized by the
University as a separate administrative
unit attached to no particular college
and responsible directly to the presi¬
dent. It had been associated with sev¬
eral other university departments since
its founding in 1915. At last it had
its own building and staff and Sap-
sucker Woods as a permanent sanc¬
tuary. Much of this had been made pos¬
sible by the Lyman K. Stuart family,
Arcadia Foundation, and many gener¬
ous contributions.

Allen and Kellogg were co-directors.
William C. Dilger was the R. T. French
Professor of Ornithology and assistant
director in charge of research. Shortly
thereafter he began directing graduate

research. Bill had already moved into
the building so that he could properly
care for his African lovebirds which
had been housed in his garage for sev¬
eral months. Byrl Kellogg as volunteer
sound librarian, Elsa Allen as volunteer
librarian, David Allen as refuge man¬
ager, and I completed the staff.

On May 18, 1957 the building was
dedicated, though still unnamed. In¬
vitations were sent to ornithology
alumni, friends of the Laboratory, dis¬
tinguished ornithologists, institutions
and bird clubs. The days before the big
event were filled with activity for the
staff—setting up exhibits, cleaning and
polishing, arranging for parking, (cars
lined the road for a mile on May 18)
and preparing food for the reception.
After the dedication ceremony, small
groups toured the sanctuary. In the

Sapsucker Woods

evening, Crawford Greenewalt showed
ultra high-speed films of humming¬
birds.

One of the first special events held in
the building was a meeting of the
executive committee of the Cornell
Board of Trustees. We were all nervous
about the scrutiny we knew would be
given the new facility, and my favorite
memory is of Elsa Allen discovering,
just as the group arrived, that the stain¬
less steel water fountain looked spotty.
She hastily poured about half a bot¬
tle of detergent on it, scoured quickly,
and went off to greet the guests. Shortly
thereafter I was summoned by the
chairman of the executive committee.
He pointed to the mountain of suds
emerging from the fountain and pour¬
ing all over the floor. “Is it rabid?” he
asked.

It is hard to believe now that the
Brewster wing, housing Frederick
Brewster’s study and the Louis Agassiz
Fuertes paintings, has not always been
there. In 1958 Cornell received word of
the bequest by Mr. Brewster of the
paneled study in his home in New Ha¬
ven, Connecticut, which housed mu¬
rals done by Fuertes. Final note of the
bequest came after the death of Mrs.
Brewster; ground was broken and con¬
struction began in 1967.

When all the building materials were
piled on the front lawn we were sur¬
prised to discover that a mallard had
chosen a protected area under a pile of
boards to lay her eggs. Workmen, staff,
and visitors kept close tabs, and some¬
one erected a sign: “Nursery, Quiet
Please.” When the boards had to be
used in the construction work, the
workmen erected a small A-frame over
the nest. The eggs hatched and the
ducklings were safely led around the
building to the pond.

Through gifts the Laboratory was
constantly adding to its collection of
Fuertes’s art. In the fall of 1959, a par¬
ticularly fine collection came from the
estate of Dr. Donald Guthrie, then
head of the Guthrie Clinic in Sayre,
Pennsylvania and a good friend of Paul
Kellogg. It included a mural of a pere¬
grine stooping for a pheasant. An at¬
tempt was made to acquire a copy of
every publication Fuertes had illus¬
trated. There were gifts of scraps of
paper, even napkins, on which Fuertes
had made sketches for friends, or to
illustrate a point. I remember a lovely
shelf fungus in the collection which

shows a sketch of a skunk.

What is now Sapsucker Woods
Sanctuary was first noted as a fine bird-
ing area in the early 1900s by Doc
Allen and Fuertes, among others. In
1909 they, along with friends James
Outsell and Francis Harper, found a
yellow-bellied sapsucker nesting in the
cool, damp woodlot—the only nesting
spot then known in that part of New
York State. After that, they referred
to this woodlot as “the Sapsucker
Woods,” and the name stuck. Univer¬
sity classes in zoology went there for
field trips, and several graduate theses
were based on studies in the woods.

Housing began to creep up in all
directions and the woodlot became
threatened, not just by encroaching

'7 remember the
question: 'When the
birds fly through Ithaca
are they coming
or going?'''

development, but by lumbering. Res¬
cue came at the last moment when
Lyman Stuart purchased various sec¬
tions amounting to about 110 acres and
gave them to the University to be a
sanctuary “in perpetuity.” The Univer¬
sity added about 20 acres, the Walter
Heasleys deeded their 20 acres, and Art
Lane, who lived adjacent to the woods,
gave his remaining acres.

The pond was dug before the founda¬
tion for the building was laid, and I
remember that in August of 1954, the
Federation of New York State Bird
Clubs had a field trip, led by Allen and
Kellogg, to inspect the hole in the
ground. In October, 1955 there was a
small amount of water for the first time.
The dike caused some problems, or
rather muskrats burrowing into it did.
We had a critical time at one point
when we found the pond slowly drain¬
ing through a large hole into the ad¬
joining field.

The sanctuary was fenced in 1955—
56, and then came the work of laying
trails. Since I was familiar with the
woods, I was invited to work with the
Allens and the Stuarts in determining
the layout. Doc knew the places he
wanted to include, and we followed

along behind him as he put up white
rags (we all donated old sheets) for the
bulldozers to follow. That summer was a
dry one, and the next year we found
portions of the trails under water; so
began the placing of catwalks over the
wettest spots.

After a seven-ton boulder with the
sanctuary plaque was brought in by
flatbed truck, and wildflowers, ferns
and hemlock trees had been planted,
the sanctuary was dedicated on June
10, 1956 before an appreciative
audience.

In the mid-50s, the co-directors de¬
cided we should have a membership,
entirely honorary, to be kept informed
of our activities. The first invitations
were sent to alumni, friends, and or¬
nithologists around the country. The
names of those who accepted the invi¬
tation were presented to the president
of the University who, along with the
co-directors, signed the membership
cards. Many of these members still trea¬
sure those first cards. When in the
early ’60s it was decided to have a
dues-paying category to help support
the Laboratory, the honorary members
were assured that no dues were required
from them, but that it was hoped that
they would wish to become paying
members.

InJ une of 1956, the first laboratory
newsletter was sent out to its members.
The early numbers make fascinating
reading now — with Dr. Allen’s chatty
reports of what was going on in the
sanctuary and with staff members, an¬
nouncements of events, and homespun
pleas for gifts. Dr. Kellogg contributed
news of sound-recording activities and
additions to the Library of Natural
Sounds.

At a board meeting around 1960 the
idea of an annual publication was first
discussed. Roger Tory Peterson, on the
board at the time, was anxious for a
journal which would appeal to a lay
audience as well as professional or¬
nithologists. It was he who proposed
the name The Living Bird. It turned out
to be a very successful journal and early
issues are now collector’s items.

Shortly after the building opened, an
article about it appeared in Audubon
magazine, written by Professor Richard
B. Fischer of Cornell. It brought more
visitors to the Laboratory. However, a
real increase in numbers came follow¬
ing the publication of an article by Dr.
Allen in National Geographic in April,

10 The Living Bird Quarterly

Above: David and Doc Allen placed catwalks over the wetter
parts of the trails. Right and below: Mallard dubbed Mrs.
Twitched developed a nervous disorder after this brush with a
goshawk, however, she did appear one day in June with a large
brood of ducklings.

Arthur A. Allen Papers. Cornell University Libraries, Manuscripts and Archives

The Living Bird Quarterly 11

Richard B. Fischer

1962 entitled “Cornell University’s
Exciting New Bird Sanctuary,” illus¬
trated mainly by his own photographs.
There was mention of the bird song
recordings, and the fact that a cata¬
logue was available. Descriptions and
prices were given, and we could not
believe the flood of mail that began
arriving. We filled about 1,000 orders
the first month following publication,
compared with the usual 30 to 50.

Publication by the Laboratory of the
booklet “Enjoying Birds in Upstate
New York” added some income; a re¬
view by John Brown in a Rochester
newspaper brought 90 orders in a few
days. In 1962 the first sets of postcards
“Birds of Sapsucker Woods,” were mar¬
keted, and the second set, gamebirds by
Louis Fuertes, made a great hit.

With our popularity came new tasks.
One summer the Burpee Seed Com¬
pany financed the purchase of a mynah
bird, to be trained by the Laboratory to
speak Burpee’s slogan, and to greet vis¬
itors with: “Hello, hello, Burpee seeds
grow. ” We trained it with a tape record¬
ing, and after Dr. Allen became bored
with the tape and the bird in his office,
he put them in the graduate students’
office. It was remarked later that while
the bird was fairly slow in learning its
lessons, some graduate students could
certainly tell everyone that “Burpee

seeds grow.” As a surprise bonus, the
bird learned to whistle the first bars of
“Far above Cayuga’s Waters.”

Later, I brought to the Laboratory a
mynah which had learned several in¬
teresting phrases. It managed to give a
scare to the university patrolman who
checked the observatory the first night
the mynah was there. Who would pos¬
sibly greet the Safety Patrol with “Hi
Sweetie!”?

Another attraction for visitors was
Dr. Allen’s photographs. Some fea¬
tured a recent trip, but often they were
of events in the sanctuary. Doc’s titles
under the pictures were classics. A fav¬
orite concerned the covey of bobwhite
quail which had been released at the
sanctuary with the hope that the birds
would take hold and increase. (Bob-
white had vanished from Tompkins
County some years earlier.) I remember
one morning when he came in, a quiet
smile on his face and a piece of toast in
his hand. “You’ve heard of quail on
toast, haven’t you?” was his query. Out
on the feeder went the toast, and in no
time Doc had his picture “Quail on
Toast.”

We were very proud that we were on
the area list of interesting places, but
we had a slight setback when a woman
remarked: “This is where we bring our
houseguests when we don’t want to

spend any money on them.”

Monday Night Seminars, part of the
Laboratory since its beginning, were
not only free but educational. After the
Brewster wing was complete they were
held in the Fuertes room. In the first
years we often had problems getting
speakers, and relied mostly on staff,
faculty in related departments, gradu¬
ate students, out-of-town visitors, and
films from our library. In recent years,
however, there has been no problem
filling the program.

Visitors to the Laboratory also could
enjoy watching the waterfowl on the
pond, especially at feeding time. In the
first few years after the pond filled, the
wintering wild ducks that joined the
captive ducks and geese numbered
fewer than 100, but then word got out
and many of the dabbling ducks that
wintered on Cayuga Lake flew into the
pond in the morning, remained for the
two daily handouts, and departed for
the lake near sunset. By the early ’60s
we estimated about 1,000 ducks a day
in winter.

In the earlier years we had species
other than the resident mallards and
blacks: pintails, wigeons, teals, shov-
elers, redheads, canvasbacks and
others, including a redhead-shoveler
hybrid that wanted to come out on land
to feed, but constantly fell forward be-

12 The Living Bird Quarterly

Three photos by Sally H. Spofford

cause of the position of its legs on the
long shoveler-type body.

For a few years a familiar sight
on the pond was Stevie, the one-
winged whistling swan which had been
brought to us by graduate student Steve
Eaton. Twice we tried to acquire a mate
for Stevie, but without success. In fact,
the first one, shipped by train from
Philadelphia, escaped from its cage in a
station en route, was hit by a taxi and
eaten by the driver who called it “the
toughest goose I ever ate.”

Another famous resident of the pond
was a trumpeter swan. The day it was
delivered, the shipping crate was
placed outside the observatory window
near the water. Fred Truslow, a friend of
the Laboratory well known for his Na¬
tional Geographic articles, was there
at the time. Although Fred was busy
with his camera, he helped unload the
swan. Huge bird that it was, it objected
to being man-handled and struck out at

Twice a day Doc Allen took a bucket of com
outside and scattered it for the waterfowl
which swarmed toward him. For a few years
Stevie, a one-winged whistling swan, was a
familiar sight on the sanctuary pond.

the closest target — Fred. Fred, forget¬
ting the outside microphones which
brought bird songs into the observa¬
tory, expressed his pain and indignation
in no uncertain terms—to the amuse¬
ment of those hearing him inside.

We were always getting calls to care
for some specimen, injured or ill. One
of the strangest patients was a peacock
from the local zoo. The bird, against
advice, had been left in an outside pen
during a cold snap, and was found in
the morning, seemingly frozen to
death. It was brought to the observa¬
tory where Bill Dilger detected a pulse.
I remember Bill and two or three staff
members on their knees in the front
lobby, the peacock wrapped in warm
towels. Bill giving it artificial respira¬
tion. For the next few days he labored
over it, and was rewarded when the
peacock was finally strutting around his
aviary, in fine fettle.

I was the staff member who fielded
questions over the counter or by phone
or mail. I kept a written record of some
of the questions, comments, and con¬
versations overheard, and mimeo¬
graphed it for the amusement of future
question takers. It is entitled, “The
Lighter Side of Working at the Front
Desk.” I remember the question;
“When birds fly through Ithaca are
they coming or going?” When the rec¬
ord of Sapsucker Woods bird songs was
being played in the observatory, I over¬
heard, “I wonder how they get the birds
to fly by the window in that order.”

And one winter: “How do you get the
pond to freeze like that?”

With Dr. Allen’s sharp eyes, and bird
watchers in the observatory most of the
day, it was natural that rarities were
seen, such as the area’s first western
kingbird. A goshawk took up residence
one cold week, perching at the edge of
the woods beside the pond. The wa¬
terfowl were concentrated in a small
patch on the bank when the goshawk
made his plunge into their midst. They
headed for the water, but the big accipi-
ter managed to grab one female mal¬
lard. She struggled hard, succeeded in
loosening the bird’s grasp, and escaped,
but with obvious injuries. After that we
could always recognize her; her wing
dragged and an injury to her nervous
system made her constantly shake and
shrug. Doc named her Mrs. Twitchell,
and we were pleased to find that she
was not unattractive to the drakes, for
she appeared one day in June with a
large brood of ducklings.

The death of Arthur Allen in Janu¬
ary, 1964 was followed in a few months
by that of his friend and laboratory ben¬
efactor Lyman K. Stuart. In May of
1965, the observatory was fittingly
named the Lyman K. Stuart Observa¬
tory at a dedication service in front of
the building.

Funds were contributed by many
people for a memorial to Arthur A.
Allen, and the board decided that one
appropriate way to honor his memory
was by giving an Allen award each
year to someone who had made a signif¬
icant contribution to the populariza¬
tion of ornithology. The first recipient,
in 1967, was Roger Tory Peterson.
Fourteen of these awards have now
been given.

My reminiscences could go on much
longer. Perhaps they serve to show a
few of the changes that have taken
place over the years. The early, inti¬
mate atmosphere is gone, but today the
Laboratory has won worldwide recogni¬
tion for its programs, and has many
new, exciting ones as well, all of which
promise to make the next 25 years
dynamic and meaningful.

FURTHER READING

The LivingBird, No. 1. Laboratory of Ornithology
at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. 1962.

THE AUTHOR

Sally Spofford retired from the Laboratory in
1969 and now lives in Arizona.

The Living Bird Quarterly 1 3

Tui A. DeRoy Moore (Bruce Coleman Inc.)

Above: Galapagos hawk looks out over
volcanic crater on the island of Fernandina.

Right: John Faaborg, with Galapagos hawk
captured at campsite at Sullivan, Santiago.

O NE CANNOT MENTION the
Galapagos Islands without thinking of
Charles Darwin and the theory of
evolution, so integral are they to his
ideas. Thus it was with trepidation that
I approached these tropical islands with
a question that seemed to challenge
Darwin’s evolutionary tenets.

My students and I went to the birth¬
place of evolution to study cooperative
polyandry, a mating system which oc¬
curs in the Galapagos hawk, Buteo
galapagoensis. Ninety percent of all bird
species practice monogamy, one male
and one female mate and raise a brood
of young. In the Galapagos hawk, two
to four males mate with one female.

and together they raise the offspring.

Evolution is in many ways a selfish
system. It favors individuals that look
out for themselves, adapt to their envi¬
ronment, and contribute genes to fu¬
ture generations. This being the case,
why should a male Galapagos hawk
share his mate with three other males,
thereby reducing his chances of con¬
tributing to the gene pool to a frac¬
tion of what it might be if he were
monogamous?

Before setting out for the Galapagos
to answer this question, we searched
the literature for clues that might ex¬
plain cooperative polyandry. We found
that only two other bird species show

Why Share a Mate?

by John Faaborg

The Galapagos hawk is one of only three
species known to practice the breeding
behavior of cooperative polyandry

this behavior. One is Harris’ hawk,
Parabuteo unicinctus, a wide-ranging
raptor that uses this mating system in
Arizona and New Mexico; the other is
the Tasmanian native hen, Tribonyx
mortierii, a coot-like forest dweller of
that island. Trios of two males and a
female occur regularly in these species,
but no good explanation for them has
been offered.

The fact that only three out of nearly
9,000 bird species in the world are
known to practice cooperative polyan¬
dry suggests that unusual conditions
must be present for it to occur. We left
for the Galapagos assuming that we
would find these conditions and that
evolution was hard at work. We had to
admit, though, that it was not obvious
why cooperative polyandry was a bet¬
ter system than monogamy for the
Galapagos hawk.

Once we arrived in the Galapagos we
temporarily forgot about theories and
focused on day-to-day existence. We
coordinated our activities at the
Gharles Darwin Research Station
(CDRS) on Isla Santa Cruz. This in¬
ternational facility was immeasurably
useful in arranging logistics and in help¬
ing us with the necessities. For one
thing, the islands have little fresh
water, and just hauling drinking water
was a major chore made easier by
the CDRS.

After surviving the long ocean voy¬
age we tried to adjust to the distinctive
quality of the islands. The tameness of
Galapagos animals, for example, is
quaint when it means a Darwin’s finch
landing on your plate to peck at your
pancake, a lava lizard climbing up your
pantleg, or a snake gliding across your
boot. It’s not even bad when the native

rice rats, with their Mickey Mouse ears,
peek out from the bushes at dusk. But
when they swarm into your tent and
gnaw the backpacks, it’s not cute any¬
more. Almost compensating for this
were the short-eared owls that were
attracted to our camp by the rats. In
addition to aerial attacks, these tame
predators would chase the rats on foot
under the bushes. With the owls, the
rats, and the incessant barking of sea
lions, camping on the Galapagos was
definitely different.

Walking on the Galapagos Islands
was also an adventure. Besides the

14 The Living Bird Quarterly

The Living Bird Quarterly 15

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

giant cacti and vast stretches of dry
scrub, I was intrigued by the old craters
and cones and the more recent lava
flows. At our Sullivan Bay, Santiago
campsite, some of these flows stretched
for miles, capturing the feel of sea
swells in hard, black rock decorated
with swirls like chocolate pudding.
Usually the lava was easy walking, but
in some spots it was cracked and splin¬
tered and tore boots to shreds.

Our field work concentrated on ob¬
serving the behavior of adults at the
nest, recording nest success, and band¬
ing and color marking. By banding the
territorial adults we found that they
stayed on the same territory from year
to year. We banded nestlings and fledg¬
lings for information about the mortal¬
ity of the young birds and to see if they
returned home in later life. Finally, we
banded birds that did not appear to be
attached to any area to see how many
there were and how they moved into
the breeding population.

Our field studies were aided by the
tameness of the hawks. This is not to
say they did not defend their nests with
a vengeance. Having been clobbered
on the head, I can personally attest to

Right: This nestling stands on its nest which
is simply placed on lava. Below: Galapagos
hawks hunt using standard Buteo techniques.

their seriousness. Getting caught in the
open by three or four male hawks al¬
ways provided a fearful moment for the
victim and a few laughs for the spec¬
tators. Fortunately, these attacks did
not last long and if we sat quietly
near the nest, the hawks soon would
settle down.

Outside of polyandry, the Galapagos
hawk is much like any other hawk. It
takes about three years for the buff-
colored immature to attain the dark
adult plumage. The birds use standard
Buteo techniques to catch live animals

on the islands, and they scavenge both
natural (sea lion placentae) and intro¬
duced (goat and pig) foods. As in most
hawks, the female is larger than the
male and monopolizes incubation,
feeding, and brooding the young. She
usually lays two eggs. Both the incuba¬
tion period (38—40 days) and the fledg¬
ing period (50—60 days) are similar to
other hawks. The fledgling is chased
out of the territory two to three months
after leaving the nest.

The big difference between this and
other hawks is that a group of males fills

Robert I. Bowman Jo*’" Faaborg

in where one usually suffices. No one
watching groups of males has seen one
male dominate the rest. Instead the
males are equals and share in copulat¬
ing with the female, defending the ter¬
ritory, incubating, and feeding the
young. Only one male fathers each
offspring, but we know of no way the
males know which of them is the father.

We expected the territory to be de¬
fended all year, but we were surprised to
find that once a group of males has
taken possession of a territory, no new
group members are added during the
lifetimes of those males. Rather, group
size diminishes with time and what we
first thought of as a monogamous pair
may have been a female with the last
survivor of a male group.

We also discovered that polyandrous
females were somewhat ahead of mo¬
nogamous females in the number of
young produced. Groups out-produced
pairs to the advantage of group¬
breeding females, but not by a factor
related to the number of males. Even in
the most fruitful years the average
polyandrous male produced only about
two-thirds as many young as the aver¬
age monogamous male. In poorer years,
group males did even worse. How
could this be the best evolutionary
adaptation?

We think our data on death rates
have given us the answer. Our banding
studies show that polyandrous birds on
territories survive at a rate of over 90
percent per year, while nonterritorial
birds show a yearly rate of 50 percent or
less. Joining a group reduces a male’s
chance of breeding each season but in¬
creases the likelihood that he will have
more opportunities to father young. A
male “choosing” monogamy would
have to wait years to find an open terri¬
tory and may die in the interim. Since
the average male in a polyandrous
group apparently produces more off¬
spring in his lifetime than the average
monogamous male, evolution has fa¬
vored cooperative polyandry.

As I had noticed on my walks around
the islands, those long-lived Galapagos
hawks suffer from a space problem. On
Sante Fe, territories encompass nearly
the whole island. Immature birds, not
having reached the breeding age of
three years old, are pushed to marginal

In the Galapagos hawk a group of males
fills in where one usually suffices.

habitats and few survive. The rate of
polyandry here is less than 50 percent.

The island of Santiago has more
space not used for breeding, but it also
has more birds desiring breeding areas.
The polyandry rate is 85 percent; since
the good habitats are used for breed¬
ing, birds are “eager and willing” to
compromise to get in a territory and
stay alive.

Although this is a twist on most mat¬
ing systems, we find this explanation
similar to others that deal with
cooperative breeding in birds. For
example, the young of the Florida scrub
jay, which also has a limited range and
habitat, remain on their parents’ ter¬
ritories long after they have become
capable of leaving and breeding. De¬
spite apparent losses, a young bird gains
a long stay on a safe, established terri¬
tory and, ultimately, the territory itself.
Researchers have found that Florida

scrub jays that stay on the parental ter¬
ritory produce more young in their
lifetimes than those that attempt to
disperse and breed early in life.

In a similar way, we think the
Galapagos hawk has evolved polyan¬
dry to trade short-term reproductive
success for a higher rate of survival
and eventual reproductive rewards.
It seems clear that sharing a mate
and a territory is better than not breed¬
ing at all, and that Darwinian evolu¬
tion is working quite nicely on the
home front.

FURTHER READING

Wilson, Edward O. Sociobiology: The New Syw
thesis. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1975.

THE AUTHOR

John Faaborg is an associate professor in the Divi¬
sion of Biological Sciences, University of
M issouri-Columbia.

The Living Bird Quarterly 1 7

Robert 1. Bowman

So Keep on Looking
for the Bluebird...

by Lawrence Zeleny

W HEN DID YOU LAST SEE a

bluebird? Most people under 30 years of
age would answer that they have never
seen one, or they might assume that the
questioner was referring to a blue jay or
indigo bunting. Or they might reply
that there is no such thing as a
bluebird, that it is only a mythical bird
dreamed up by poets and songwriters as
a symbol of love and happiness. TTie
bluebird is best known now as an
adornment on valentines and greeting
cards and in their sentimental verses.

Yet when I was growing up in the early
years of the century nearly everyone
knew the bluebird and in the north
looked forward to its arrival in March as
the harbinger of spring.

No one can say accurately to what
extent the bluebird population has de¬
clined, but observers who have known
the bird well for the past 50 years will
agree that the population of the eastern
bluebird has probably declined by as
much as 90 percent during that period.
If a similar rate of decline should con¬

tinue for another 50 years this bird
could disappear from the face of
the earth.

The two western species, the moun¬
tain bluebird, and the western
bluebird, have fared somewhat better
than their eastern cousin. But they too
are gradually yielding to the pressures
that have been so destructive to
bluebirds in the east. Bluebirds of at
least one of the three species still breed
in every state except Hawaii, in every
Canadian province except Newfound¬
land, and in parts of Mexico and Cen¬
tral America. Bluebirds are found only
in North America, except for a small
population on the islands of Bermuda.
The causes of the bluehird population
decline are not fully understood but the
major ones appear to be known.

Unusually severe winter weather
often takes a heavy toll on the bluebird
population, especially in the northern
parts of their winter range. This is par¬
ticularly true when freezing rains coat
the birds’ food supply of wild berries.
The record-breaking winters of 1977
and 1978 almost wiped out the blue¬
birds in large parts of Indiana and Il¬
linois. Catastrophes of this kind, how¬
ever, have no doubt occurred many
times throughout history, and bluebirds
have usually recovered these losses
within a few years.

The widespread use of pesticides has
affected the bluebird population as it
has that of so many other species. Or¬
chards were once among the favorite
haunts of bluebirds. There they helped

Bluebirds usually have two broods, sometimes
three during nesting season, but they chj not
use the same nest mcrre than once.

Michael L. Smith

18 The Living Bird Quarterly

Michael L. Smith

• • • and Listening for Its Song.

Greeting card design courtesy Hallmark Cards, Inc.

.d'-'

/ Hark! I hear a Bluebird sing!
His voice rings through the purple air,
And tells me that the hand of spring
Is weaving garlands fresh and fair,

In mossy dell, or frowning fell.

And strewing blossoms everywhere.

—from “The First Bluebird of Spring’’
by Gilbert S. Everhart

control insects and found nesting sites
in cavities in trunks and large branches
of older fruit trees. Modern orchards
are usually so saturated with insec¬
ticides that few birds of any kind can
live in them.

Loss of habitat is an important factor
in the decline of most species of wildlife
and bluebirds are no exception. The
decline in small farms with their or¬
chards, woodlots, and hedgerows in
favor of huge farms has made life more
difficult for bluebirds and many other
songbirds.

The most serious causes of the
bluebirds’ troubles are related to their
cavity-nesting habit. Throughout the
long course of evolution bluebirds “dis¬
covered” that their nesting success was
greater when they built their nests and
raised their young in enclosures that
would protect against predators and
adverse weather. Natural cavities in
dead trees or branches and deserted
woodpecker holes became favorite
nesting sites. This habit is so ingrained
that now bluebirds will almost never
nest anywhere other than in an enclo¬
sure of some kind.

In recent times the supply of natural
cavities suitable for bluebirds has di¬
minished substantially. Dead trees and
branches are now removed. The mod¬
em chain saw makes this task easy.
High cost of heating fuel has increased
the demand for firewood and thus ac¬
celerated the removal of dead wood. In
addition, the old wooden fenceposts
which rotted out to make bluebird
nesting sites are being replaced by
metal posts.

Introduction of the house sparrow
and the European starling into North
America from Europe in 1851 and
1890, respectively, was a major ecolog¬
ical blunder as far as the bluebird was
concerned. Both species found North
America to their liking and spread with
remarkable rapidity from coast to coast
and from Canada well into Mexico.
Both are cavity nesters, but if cavities
are not available they will nest else¬
where. Thus, shortages of natural
cavities have little effect on their abil¬
ity to proliferate.

Both of these foreign birds are more
aggressive than the bluebird, so they
compete violently with bluebirds for
nesting sites. Bluebirds can sometimes

The bluebird is more than a symbol. It is a
beneficial species whose loss would be tragic.

20 The Living Bird Quarterly

Lawrence Zeleny

defend a cavity or nesting box against
marauding sparrows but not against
starlings if the opening is large enough.
So, where starlings are abundant
bluebirds tend to disappear if no human
intervention is forthcoming.

What can be done to halt the disap¬
pearance of bluebirds? Practical mea¬
sures can be taken to help this troubled
species.

Most eastern bluebirds spend the
winter in the southern half or two-
thirds of the United States. In the
northern section of their winter range
they frequently perish from severe cold
and starvation, although they can usu¬
ally withstand cold if sufficient food is
available. These bluebirds depend
largely on wild and ornamental berries
for sustenance during the winter
months. Thus, liberal plantings of
berry-bearing trees, shrubs, and vines
which retain their fruit throughout the
winter, are a great help to bluebirds and
other species.

The American holly is valuable as a
source of winter bluebird food for two
reasons. First, its berries do not appeal
to starlings. Second, the berries are so
hard during the autumn and early
winter that few are eaten. But, after
repeated freezing and thawing, the ber¬
ries soften and become palatable by the
time the supply of other berries may be
nearly exhausted.

The multiflora rose, often used for
impenetrable hedges, is a valuable
planting. Starlings sometimes consume
the berries or “hips” from the outer
branches of this large shrub but refrain
from entering the dense thorny interi¬
or. Bluebirds, however, will cautiously
work their way through the thorns to
the supply of rose hips which may help
sustain them through the winter.

Other especially good berry-bearing
plantings for bluebirds include moun¬
tain ash, Washington hawthorn, bit¬
tersweet, pyracantha, staghorn sumac,
and autumn olive. Nurseries can offer
advice concerning the varieties of
plantings best suited to particular lo¬
calities.

By far the most urgent need of
bluebirds is for nesting sites to supple¬
ment the dwindling supply of natural
cavities. Bluebirds will accept nesting
boxes if they are properly designed and
mounted in suitable habitat in a man¬
ner that will afford them protection.
Efforts to help bluebirds by providing
and monitoring nesting boxes have

often resulted in the local restoration of
the population to normal levels within
a few years.

Bluebird nesting boxes are best made
of wood at least % of an inch thick.
Cedar, cypress, redwood, and exterior
grade plywood are excellent since they
last for years without painting. Chemi¬
cal wood preservatives and “treated”
lumber are not recommended.

Nesting boxes should be from six to
eight inches deep measured from the
bottom of the entrance hole to the floor
inside the box. The floor itself should
be at least 16 square inches. Drainage
holes near the comers of the floor and a
few small openings under the roof will
help keep the box dry and cool. The
box should be designed so that the top,
one side, or the front can be opened
easily for inspection and cleaning.

The size of the entrance hole is the
most critical dimension of the nesting
box. The hole should be 1 Vz inches in
diameter with a tolerance of not more
than 1/16 of an inch. Smaller holes can
be used by bluebirds only with diffi¬
culty. Larger holes will admit starlings

Increased demand for fireivood has accelerated
the removal of trees, however, natural
cavities can be supplemented ivith nesting boxes.

Build Your Own Bluebird Nesting Box

Dowel and cleat help
position removable top,
which is secured by IVz-inch
wood screw with washer

Use y4-inch
boards

Entrance
hole:
precisely
IV 2 inches
in diameter,

IVs inches
from top

Sides
4 X 10%
inches
(back edge)
and 9%
inches
(front edge)

Front:

SVz X 9% inches

Cut comers off
bottom for drainage;
recess bottom Va inch.

Space

between

top and

sides

allows

ventilation

Back:

5V2 X 161/2

inches

Use iy4-inch
galvanized
siding nails
or aluminum
nails

Bottom:
4x4 inches

The Living Bird Quarterly 21

Courtesy National Geographic Society Michael L. Smith

Michael L. Smith

Nowadays orchards are usually so saturated with insecticides that few birds can live in them.

which will almost surely prevent
bluebirds from using the box. A perch
under the entrance hole is not needed
and it makes the box more attractive to
house sparrows.

Recent evidence indicates that
mountain bluebirds in certain far west-
ern areas may need entrance holes
slightly larger than IV 2 inches in
diameter. A 1 9/16 inch hole probably
would be adequate in any such area
and would still prevent starling
interference.

The location of the bluebird nesting
box is even more important than its
design. Bluebirds rarely nest in cities or
large towns except on the outermost
fringes. Neither will they nest in heav¬
ily wooded areas. They like relatively
open rural areas with scattered trees
where the undergrowth is sparse or kept
short. Pastures, large lawns, golf
courses, country cemeteries, aban¬
doned orchards, country roadsides, and
open wastelands provide ideal bluebird
habitat.

Bluebird nesting boxes are best
mounted on smooth metal poles such as
pieces of galvanized pipe. Wooden
posts may also be used although with¬
out protection they are more easily
climbed by predators. The trunks of
isolated trees may also be used in areas
where climbing predators are not a
problem.

Nesting boxes may be mounted at
any height over a foot. Very low mount¬
ing helps to discourage house sparrows
but increases the danger from ground
predators. High mounting makes it dif¬
ficult to monitor the boxes. I prefer to
mount my boxes from three to six feet
above the ground.

It is desirable to face each box toward
and within about 50 feet of a tree,
shrub, or fence. That way when the
young birds leave the nest they will
have a place to alight on their first
flight. Instinct directs them to fly to a
nearby perch and to stay off the ground
until they have gained strength and
perfected their flying skill. Not much

can be gained by mounting the nesting
boxes closer together than about 100
yards because of the territorial behavior
of bluebirds during the nesting season.

Nesting boxes should be monitored
at least weekly during the nesting sea¬
son to remove house sparrow nests and
used bluebird nests as soon as the young
birds have flown. Bluebirds usually
have two broods during the season but
they do not use the same nest more
than once. Boxes also should be moni¬
tored in late winter or early spring to
remove any material that may have ac¬
cumulated in them during the winter.

Bluebird trails consisting of many
nesting boxes placed in suitable
bluebird habitat are being established
in parts of the United States and
Canada. The largest and probably most
productive one is located in western
Canada. This trail extends from the
vicinity of Winnipeg, Manitoba west¬
ward beyond Saskatoon, Saskatche¬
wan. Together with numerous side
trails it covers well over 2,000 miles.
Most of the nesting boxes are mounted
on fenceposts 100 yards or more apart,
and several thousand bluebirds and tree
swallows are produced annually. Prop¬
erly managed bluebird trails through¬
out the continent offer the greatest
hope for the bluebirds’ continued
survival.

Thousands of people across North
America are concerned about the
plight of our wildlife. Many would like
to help some troubled species. Bluebird
conservation fills this need for those
who have access to rural or semi-rural
property. Hundreds of people have
written to tell me of the satisfaction
they felt from watching bluebirds use
their nesting boxes and from the reali¬
zation that they are doing something
tangible to help bluebirds survive in an
increasingly hostile environment.

FURTHER READING

Zeleny, Lawrence. The Bluebird—How You Can
Help Its Fight for Survival. Indiana University
Press, Bloomington. 1976.

For further information write to the North
American Bluebird Society, Box 6295, Silver
Spring, Maryland 20906.

THE AUTHOR

Lawrence Zeleny is the founder of the North
American Bluebird Society and a past president
of the Maryland Ornithological Society.

22 The Living Bird Quarterly

Newly revised edition!

VOICES OF THE NIGHT

... from the Laboratory of Ornitholosy. From early sprins into
summer the sisnalins of various species of fross and toads can be
heard from dusk until dawn, and sometimes into daylisht hours. In
this recordins you will hear the characteristic calls of 36 eastern
North American fross and toads, and become acquainted with
Seosraphic distribution and breedins habits of each.

voices

OF
the
night

VOWS'

$8*95/$8*06 members

.i-jhS

These four albums comprise "concerts” of bird voices anc
are unique amons bird recordinss. Jean Claude Roche, one
of the world’s foremost field recordists, has constructed a
stereophonic composite from a variety of habitats. The
sonss are played and then identified in French. Notations
are in French with accompanyins scientific names.

Enclosed is a check or money order in U.S. funds, payable to
The Crow’s Nest Bookshop, Sapsucker Woods, Ithaca, N.Y 14850

Item Title

Qty.

Price

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N.Y State residents add 7% sales tax
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OISEAUX DU CANADA

Side 1: Marshes and lakes
Side 2: Forests

OISEAUX D’ASIE

Side 1: Mornins in Taman Negara Park, Malaysia
Evening in Taman Negara Park
Side 2: Kao Yai Park, Thailand

OISEAUX D’AUSTRALIE

Side 1: Alice Springs
Canberra

Mount Tambourine
Lake Barrine

Side 2: Species identified

OISEAUX DU VENEZUELA

Side 1: Ocumare region, the north coast

Forest of the Grand Savana in Amazonas
Side 2: Mountain and cloud forests at Rancho Grande National Park
Palmar region in Amazonas
Guanare/Barinas region, foot of the Andes

The Case of the
Common Tern

by Lucia Severinghaus

It’S a quiet dawn. The surface

of Oneida Lake in New York State has
hardly a ripple. The only sound is my
motorboat as I roar across the lake. At
my approach about 30 common terns
fly up from the colony, a mere fifth of
what was here yesterday. Looking for an
explanation, I notice that almost all
the nests are empty. What has hap¬
pened to the eggs I saw only 12 hours
earlier? Where are the adults?

Catching sight of a boulder littered
with broken eggshells and dead em¬
bryos, I realize that someone has been
practicing target shooting with tern
eggs. In a few hours an entire tern col¬
ony has been demolished.

This is but one common tern col¬
ony that is faced with serious prob¬
lems. Many others in New York State
and elsewhere have been scattered
or fragmented in recent years, some
traditional sites being abandoned
altogether.

For the past three years I have been
studying the breeding ecology of com¬
mon terns on Oneida Lake. Each spring
I arrive just before the birds return
from their wintering grounds. Besides
monitoring population trends and re¬
productive success of individual pairs, I
am interested in learning why common
terns nest on some islands while other
seemingly suitable ones are not used.
Within an island, nest distribution is
patchy. Some areas have many nests
while similar areas remain unoccupied.
My hope is that my research will lead to
better tern management which may
improve the common tern’s tenuous
hold on its environment.

Common terns are long-lived, first
nesting at three years of age or older,
and sometimes living for more than 20
years. They winter south of the Gulf

Coast to the northern part of South
America. They come to the temperate
regions of North America to breed,
usually arriving at the site in late April
and departing by mid-September.

When terns first arrive in a colony
they are busy forming pairs. Feeding is
an important component of courtship.
They are fish eaters and, in the early
phase of courtship, a male often dis¬
plays his fishing skill by holding a fish
across his beak and flying back and
forth over the colony, uttering a “fish”
call. When he is joined by a female,
they fly in parallel, banking and turn¬
ing in synchrony, often soaring to great
heights.

Common terns are ground nesters
and a normal clutch is three eggs.
Often nests are only two to three feet
apart; a crowded colony looks like an
airfield neatly lined with little air¬
planes. Incubation takes about 24 days,
then a tiny wet chick emerges. Young
terns are black speckled and light
brown in color, giving them an excel¬
lent camouflage. When motionless
they look like fuzzy rocks and are not
seen easily by predators.

Common terns became almost ex¬
tinct in the late 19th century when
their eggs were exploited for food and
their feathers for the millinery trade.
The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918
provided protection for terns and other
migratory birds, thus allowing them to
recover their numbers. Common tern
populations along the New England
coast peaked between 1920 and 1945,
then started to decline again. The
trend continued not only along the
coast but in inland colonies in many
parts of the species’s breeding range.
The large common tern colony on Gull
Island, Lake Ontario, for example.

dwindled from more than 1,000 pairs in
1972 to zero by 1981. Many other tradi¬
tional colony sites such as Onondaga
Lake and Sandy Pond in New York
State no longer contain nesting com¬
mon terns.

Some populations have fragmented
onto small, near-shore islands, dredge
islands, or man-made dikes. Other
populations have combined to form a
few large colonies offshore. In either
case, terns are more susceptible to
breeding failure — near-shore colonies
are more accessible to human and pred¬
ator disturbances, while large concen¬
trations of birds are vulnerable because
a single disturbance can affect a major
part of the total population.

Gommon terns have been known to
breed on Oneida Lake since 1928. The
Oneida Lake population of 500 pairs is
one of the last viable inland popula¬
tions in the state. In 1974, John Bull
listed 18 inland colonies in Birds of
New York State. At present, there are
only five colonies.

What is happening to the common
tern? Let’s take Oneida Lake as an
example.

Gommon terns need to nest in quiet
places near water. Unfortunately for
terns, these areas are also popular rec¬

reation and boating spots. In 1981, the
residents of the four counties around
Oneida Lake registered over 35,000
boats. Even if these are used only a few
times a year, the disturbance to terns
nesting on the lake is more than
negligible.

Real estate encroachment not only
causes loss of tern habitat, but also
brings children, pets, and an increase
in urban wildlife (raccoons, rats) which
feed on tern eggs and chicks. In addi¬
tion, a colony site may lose its isolation
through landfills, or may become use¬
less to terns because of water pollution
and the elimination of fish. Also
dangerous to terns is the dumping of
dredge material on top of active
colonies.

Besides the human threat to terns,
gulls present a growing concern. Many
species of gulls are undergoing popula¬
tion expansion in North America as a
result of legal protection, the availabil¬
ity of food at garbage dumps, and open
water maintained for winter naviga¬
tion. Terns, however, have more spe¬
cific food requirements than gulls,
hence they have not benefited from
human debris.

Gulls and terns use similar colony
sites; the limited amount of good nest-

Top: Early in the nesting season, ring'billed gulls
begin to incubate eggs at Long Island on Oneida Lake.
Center: Newly fledged young on rock are fed offshore.
Right: Research assistant Susan Moore weighs egg.

24 The Living Bird Quarterly

The Living Bird Quarterly 25

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

Lucia Severinghaus

ing habitat coupled with increasing
numbers of ^ulls have pushed the gulls
into many traditional common tern
colony sites. Even though the number
of common tern nests in the past three
years at Oneida Lake has remained sta¬
ble, the areas they use have shifted
from safer ground to peripheral, less
desirable regions. Common terns,
one-fourth the weight of ring-billed
gulls and one-eighth that of herring
gulls, are sometimes forced to use areas

Above: When motionless, tern chicks resemble
fuzzy rocks. Below: A mated pair defends
its territory in a squabble with neighbor.

that flood when the lake level rises.
Furthermore, gulls prey on tern eggs
and chicks, making it impossible for
terns to nest successfully among gulls.

Because of the precarious situation of
common terns on Oneida Lake, human
intervention and the management of
the area are swiftly becoming necessary
if terns are to continue to breed there.
Proper management of this population
needs to cover three aspects: control of
human activities, control of gull popu¬
lations, and water-level management.

One way to minimize human traffic
around the breeding islands is to desig¬
nate them as migratory bird breeding
sanctuaries.

Can we enforce planned parenthood
on ring-billed gulls? For the past 30
years, gull control programs have been
implemented in the British Isles,
Canada, New England and Ohio. Cur¬
rently, Monomoy National Wildlife
Refuge in Massachusetts is in its fourth
year of an active gull control program.
At Oneida Lake, gull control would
not eliminate the species, but rather,
curb the size of the population so that
nesting grounds are also available
to terns.

If water-level management can pre¬
vent flooding in low lying areas, or if

the islands could be built up through
the deposition of dredge or other mate¬
rials, and if the vegetation could be
altered to provide the right combina¬
tion of cover and open space, there
might be enough area to continue to
support the existing tern population.

Modern resource management is
complex at best. It requires an under¬
standing of the birds and their needs,
and cooperation among people and
management agencies. Carrying out all
three management recommendations
simultaneously seems essential. Even if
we provide human-free habitat, terns
still need to be protected from gulls.
And without flood control, whole col¬
onies can be wiped out by one sudden
act of nature. None of these steps is
easy, but if we are to secure our rich
natural heritage for future generations,
we must start now.

FURTHER READING

Harwood, Michael. The View from Great GuU.
E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York. 1976.

Massey, Barbara. “A Least Tern Makes a Right
Turn.” Natural History. November, 1981.

THE AUTHOR

Lucia Severinghaus recently received her doc¬
toral degree from the Cornell University De¬
partment of Natural Resources.

Russ Charif

RESRAECH&LREVIEW

by Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

Off-Key Vireo

Can a bird with an abnormal song lead a
normal life? Jake Rice of Arizona State
University had an opportunity to study this
question when he discovered a red-eyed
vireo singing a strange song in Kap-Kig-
Iwan Park, Ontario (“Behavioral implica¬
tions of aberrant song of a red-eyed vireo,”
The Wilson Bulletin, vol. 93, pp. 383—390).
From previous studies. Rice knew that the
red-eyed vireo’s normal song plays an im¬
portant role in its interactions with other
red-eyes, including pair formation and ter¬
ritorial defense. But he did not know
whether normal song is essential in these
interactions.

The abnormal song was unrecognizable
to Rice as that of a red-eyed vireo, and when
he played tape recordings of this song to
territorial red-eyes that had never heard it
before, they didn’t seem to recognize it
either. They exhibited far less response to
the strange song than they did to recordings
of normal songs. However, when Rice
played the abnormal song to the misfit’s four
immediate neighbors, they did respond to it

Short-term Hoarding

Several bird species are known to hoard
food. Some jays store acorns as insurance
against future food shortages. Other birds,
such as certain European tits, store food for
short periods of time, usually less than 24
hours. Why bother?

One theory is that these birds often are
subordinate to other bird species in contests
for food. Therefore, when a member of a
subordinate species locates an abundant
food source, it is to that bird’s advantage to
hide the food items for later consumption,
dispersing them about its territory to reduce
chances of the food being discovered by
potential competitors.

Few if any studies, however, had ex¬
amined this theory by assessing hoarding
behavior of individual birds. Recently,
Richard J. Cowie, John R. Krebs, and
David F. Sherry of the University of Oxford
have been working with marsh tits, Parus
palustris, relatives of North American
chickadees and titmice, to understand
short-term hoarding behavior more fully.
They addressed several questions: do these
birds select specific food storage sites? Do
they store food systematically throughout
their territories? How do they recover

as if it were a normal song. Apparently,
these neighbors had learned that the
strange song belonged to an otherwise nor¬
mal member of their own species, thus the
song was functioning as a normal song.

Besides experimenting with recorded
playbacks. Rice also observed encounters
between normal vireos and the aberrant
bird. He discovered that this bird did not
have unusually long or intense disputes with
other red-eyes. The bird occupied typical
red-eyed vireo territory and had a mate.
Unfortunately, while Rice observed the bird
and its mate feeding two brown-headed
cowbird chicks, he could not find the nest
and so was unable to determine the bird’s
breeding success.

Rice concludes that for red-eyed vireos,
normal song is not always an essential be¬
havioral cue for territorial defense or for
obtaining and keeping a mate. Presumably,
for these important interactions with key
individuals such as neighbors, natural selec¬
tion favors multiple behavioral cues, which
could include call notes or visual displays
that function in the absence of normal
song.

stored foods? Cowie, Krebs, and Sherry
worked with birds in the wild and in an
aviary, and their results suggest that marsh
tits have pretty good memories.

In their first series of tests (“Food storing
by marsh tits,” Animal Behavior, vol. 29, pp.
1252—1259), their aim was to describe
hoarding behavior of individual wild marsh
tits in the field. The study took place during
two winters in Wytham Woods, Oxford¬
shire, England. In all, 13 separate experi¬
ments involving seven birds were con¬
ducted in five different areas.

To begin, the researchers allowed indi¬
vidually color-banded marsh tits to collect
radioactively tagged sunflower seeds from a
feeding tray. The seeds were numbered and
placed in the tray one at a time so the
researchers knew which bird had taken each
seed. After all the seeds had been hoarded,
the researchers used a scintillation counter
to find the seeds and examine the locations
in which they were stored.

Cowie, Krebs, and Sherry discovered
that the birds used five different types of
storage sites: seeds were either pushed into
mud or under leaves on the ground; tucked
into balls of dead leaves and twigs off the
ground; wedged into moss; inserted into
cracks in bark; or poked into dead, hollow

stems of nettles and bracken. The research¬
ers also discovered that individual birds
seemed to specialize in specific types of stor¬
age sites. Of the three birds for which there
were the most data, one was a moss
specialist, one favored nettle stems, and the
third preferred balls of dead leaves and
twigs. In addition, when both members of a
pair stored seeds at the same time, they
tended to use different portions of their
territory.

These findings lend support to the theory
that short-term hoarding functions to hide
and disperse food supplies, thereby protect¬
ing them from competitors. The tendency
for individuals to specialize in different
kinds of storage sites most likely prevents
competitors from learning to recognize one
single type of site where seeds are likely to
be stored. And the tendency for mated pairs
to avoid storing food in the same place helps
to spread out the food stores.

But if this theory is valid, then the birds
must be able to recover their stored foods
efficiently. Presumably, they could do this
in one of two ways: either they could re¬
member the exact places where they had
hidden food, which would require a well-
developed memory, or they could remember
the kinds of substrates — such as bark or
moss — where they had stored foods, and
then search only these substrates when re¬
trieving food. Cowie, Krebs, and Sherry
devised a way to test these ideas.

Near each hoarded seed that they had
located with the scintillation counter, they
placed two “control” seeds. The “near con¬
trol” was placed about four inches away
from the hoarded seed, the “far control”
about 40 inches away. Both controls were
placed in sites as similar as possible to the
ones used by the bird. The positions were
mapped and unobtrusively marked. The re¬
searchers felt that if the birds were remem¬
bering the exact locations of their hoarded
seeds, they would find them more quickly
than the nearby controls. In contrast, if the
birds were searching substrates, they should
find the control seeds as quickly as the seeds
they had hoarded.

The researchers returned to the study
area at three-hour intervals to record which
seeds were gone, and discovered that the
hoarded seeds were found most quickly. In
fact, the tits removed the hoarded seed be¬
fore the adjacent near control in 93 of the
121 cases. It took the birds an average of
eight hours to recover hoarded seeds,
whereas near controls were discovered in

The Living Bird Quarterly 27

P otenticd predators are usually driven away.

about 14 hours, and far controls in about 20
hours after being hidden.

Cowie, Krebs, and Sherry feel that these
results indicate that marsh tits can re¬
member the precise locations of stored
seeds, even when they store large numbers
of seeds in a single day. The alternative
explanation, that the birds do not re¬
member the precise location of a hoard but
return to the general area, seems improb¬
able considering the large percentage of
hoarded seeds that disappeared before the
adjacent control. It also is unlikely that the
birds found the hoarded seeds first because
of their radioactivity; the researchers had
exchanged half of the radioactive, hoarded
seeds with the nonradioactive controls.

The researchers suggest that near con¬
trols are found more quickly than far control
seeds because birds, having found the
hoarded seed, search the surrounding area
more closely and thus find the near control.

Exploration of storage behavior in the
aviary sheds more light on the recovery pro¬
cess (Sherry, Krebs, and Cowie, “Memory
for the location of stored food in marsh
tits,” Animal Behavior, vol. 29, pp. 1260—
1266). Here, three captured marsh tits were
tested individually in a three-phase experi¬
ment in which the birds stored and relo¬
cated sunflower seeds in moss-filled trays.

In the first “control” phase, each bird was
let into the aviary for 15 minutes. As the
birds explored the aviary and the trays, the
researchers recorded the lengths and
number of visits to each tray to determine
whether the birds had initial preferences for
any of them.

In the second “hoarding” phase, which

immediately followed, 15 sunflower seeds
were provided in a small bowl. As the birds
stored these seeds in the moss, the locations
of the hoarded seeds were recorded on an
aviary map.

Before the third “recovery” phase, which
took place a few hours later, the researchers
removed all the hoarded seeds from the
moss to eliminate any visual, olfactory, or
other location cues from the seeds them¬
selves. Then they allowed the birds into the
aviary and recorded the lengths and visits to
each moss-filled tray to determine whether
the birds returned to the trays where they
had hoarded seeds. Any guesses? The birds
seemed to know exactly where the seeds had
been stored; they returned to the appropri¬
ate trays more often and for longer periods
than they had visited those trays during the
control period.

It appears then that marsh tits store and
retrieve food systematically. Considering
that marsh tits are subordinate in food con¬
tests to blue tits and great tits, which do not
store food, these findings lend credence to
the theory that short-term hoarding in
marsh tits serves to disperse and hide food
from competitors.^'^.

Mobbing Robins

Many bird species exhibit mobbing be¬
havior, where they encircle, dive at, and
harass a potential predator. Typically, the
predator is a hawk or owl, and it is usually
driven away. This behavior is useful to bird
watchers and ornithologists who imitate the
call of a screech owl or place a stuffed owl in
the field to attract songbirds. But the value

of the behavior to mobbing birds is less
obvious, considering the predators some¬
times capture and kill their tormentors.

Researchers have noted that mobbing
frequently increases during the breeding
season. To Douglas H. Shedd this suggested
that mobbing serves as a nest-defense
mechanism. To investigate this possibility,
Shedd, then at Cornell University, devised
a study to test for an association between
mobbing and the breeding season in the
American robin, (“Seasonal variation and
function of mobbing and related anti¬
predator behaviors of the American robin,”
The Auk, vol. 99, pp. 342—346).

Shedd’s study took place near Ithaca,
New York over a 27-month span that in¬
cluded three breeding seasons. During this
time, he conducted biweekly field trials in
which he placed a stuffed screech owl in a
conspicuous location seven feet from the
ground. Using a portable tape recorder, he
broadcast screech owl calls from a speaker
located near the owl. From a concealed
position he then observed mobbing of the
stuffed owl.

Shedd discovered that mobbing occurred
only during the breeding season, March
through August. Mobbing frequency in¬
creased as the breeding season advanced,
peaked in May or June and then declined.
No mobbing was observed after August,
even though robins remained in the area
through November. Mobbing did not re¬
sume until the following March, after
the birds returned from their wintering
grounds.

Shedd feels that at least two factors ac¬
counted for the occurrence of mobbing dur¬
ing the breeding season. First, robins are
territorial at this time and lack the option of
easy relocation away from predators. Sec¬
ond, they may be defending their eggs or
young; Shedd notes that the May-June peak
in mobbing coincides with the time when
70 percent of the young are hatching and
fledging.

Why does a mobbing bird risk its life for
the sake of its young? Because an important
goal for a parent is to perpetuate its genetic
makeup, and this can happen only if the
young survive.

Interestingly, Shedd observed that robins
are not as eager to put their lives on the line
when they are not breeding. Outside of the
breeding season, robins often approached
the stuffed owl silently, watched it for a
moment, and then departed.

Shedd points out that his findings may or
may not be valid for other species. “Given
the frequent occurrence of mobbing among
groups of unrelated birds,” he notes, “it
would be unrealistic to hope for an explana¬
tion of the function of mobbing that would
apply to all species in all situations.

28 The Living Bird Quarterly

NEWS&NOTES

We are among the fortunate who knew
Dr. Arthur A. Allen and benefited from his
teaching. One day in the summer of 1963
my wife Elizabeth and I found a wood thrush
nest low down and easy to observe in Sap-
sucker Woods. It contained three wood
thrush eggs and one cowbird egg and we
reported this to Dr. Allen who at that time
had an office in the Laboratory. “Would you
show it to me?” he said in his delightful way.
Of course, we were eager to show it to him.
“Why not take out the cowbird egg?”
Elizabeth said. “Oh no” he said, beaming at
her through his spectacles. “Let’s wait and
see what happens.”

In two days there were four young birds in
the nest and they all looked alike. Dr. Allen
came again and we asked him which was the
cowbird. Gently he tapped the edge of the
nest with a finger and all four mouths
opened, expecting food. He pointed out
that three of the young had yellow mouth
linings and the fourth had a red mouth
lining. Seventy-two hours later there were
but three young in the nest and all of them
had yellow mouth linings.

We reported this to Dr. Allen and he
explained that he had observed similar
events from a blind when photographing.
He said that the wood thrush fed only the
mouths with the yellow linings and so the
cowbird young died quickly and the wood
thmsh then took the body and threw it out
of the nest. This illustrates one bird’s
method of defense against the cowbird and
also the wonderful way that Doc Allen had
of teaching.

Fred T. Ranson, member

Nalcrest, Florida

A few upcoming programs of Cornell’s
Adult University which may be of interest
to Laboratory members are:

Spring Comes to Mohonk Mountain
House. May 20—22. Professor Richard B.
Fischer will guide your observations of the
region’s birds at the height of spring migra¬
tion. Professor John M. Kingsbury will ac¬
company you on field trips to study local
vegetation, and Professor Harlan P. Banks
will bring his expertise to your investigation
of herbaceous and woody plants.

Introductory Ornithology. July 3—9.
Laboratory staff will help you develop the
skill of bird identification by sight and
sound through field trips, recordings, slides,
lectures, and discussions.

Avian Evolution: Explorations in the
Beginnings of Birds. July 10—16. A guided
tour through the world of primal birds led by

John Chiment, research associate, Ithaca’s
Paleontological Research Institute.

For more information about these and
other CAU programs, write: Cornell’s
Adult University, 626-L Thurston Avenue,
Ithaca, New York 14850; or call (607)
256-6260.

With sadness we note the passing of Aus¬
tin L. Rand (1905-1982). Dr. Rand re¬
ceived his doctorate from Cornell in 1932,
based on his dissertation, “The Distribu¬
tion and Habits of Madagascar Birds.” He
held posts with the American Museum
of Natural History, National Museum of
Canada, and Field Museum of Natural His¬
tory in Chicago. After he retired in 1970,
Dr. Rand had been a research associate with
Archbold Biological Station, Lake Placid,
Florida.

The Living Bird, the Laboratory’s annual
journal for 19 years, is fast becoming a col¬
lector’s item. A leading publication in or¬
nithological research, it combines techni¬
cal articles and exquisite color plates. The
Laboratory is now offering a limited number
of complete sets (some imperfect) of The
Living Bird to our members. Cost: $1,000.
Mail your request and check or money order
to Library, Laboratory of Ornithology, Sap-
sucker Woods, Ithaca, New York 14850.

The Shoals Marine Laboratory is offer¬
ing two programs in island bird study during
the 1983 season, each timed to correspond
with the spring and fall migrations of birds
through the Isles of Shoals. The islands’
special list of birds numbers over 250, in¬
cluding 143 migrants or visitors and 27
species of resident breeders. Each three-
day program, offered May 26—29 or Sep¬
tember 8—11 at a cost of $245 per person,
combines bird walks, field trips by land or by
sea (weather permitting), and films with
informal lectures and discussion.

In addition, mist net demonstrations
offer participants the opportunity to ob¬
serve close-up the nuances of color, shape,
and size which serve to distinguish certain
otherwise hard to differentiate species. The
faculty is composed of expert field or¬
nithologists familiar with both land and
marine birds inhabiting the Gulf of Maine.

For more information write: Shoals
Marine Laboratory, G-14 Stimson Hall,
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
14853, or call (607) 256-3717.

The Laboratory has hundreds of high-
quality color slides taken by outstanding
bird photographers. Slide sets, some keyed
to our records of bird vocalizations, are also
available. Write or call for a brochure. Lab¬
oratory of Ornithology, Dept. SP, Sapsucker
Woods, Ithaca, New York 14850. (607)
256-4017.

Dear Member:

Our Library of Natural Sounds is as old as the Laboratory itself In the library’s long history it
pioneered in the recording of bird song—first for the old Movietone Newsreels, later with bulky
disc equipment, and finally with a succession of tape recorders. With the technical expertise of
Peter Paul Kellogg and ornithological knowledge of Arthur A. Allen, the library took an early lead
in technical innovations and methods for recording bird song.

These recordings have found their way into countless records and indeed, the Laboratory’s
reputation rests in part on its bird song records. This tradition is continuing. We’ve just released a
revised edition of “Voices of the Night,’’ we are preparing a set of records to accompany Roger
Tory Peterson’s popular field guides to North American birds, and a record set for National
Geographic’s new bird books.

We are also modernizing the library to bring its equipment up to date. With a foundation grant,
we’ve assembled a new studio for making master tapes for record projects. In fact, the master tape
for the soundsheet accompanying this issue of the Quarterly was produced there. In addition, we
are planning a project with the Section of Neurobiology and Behavior here at Cornell to establish a
regional center for the analysis and synthesis of animal sounds.

Yet, as with almost everything we do at the Laboratory, the ultimate success of the library rests
with our members and contributors. Most recordings in the library’s collection were gifts, and I
am continually impressed with the donors’ generosity. In return, our responsibility is to guard and
catalogue the recordings and to make them available for research and for the education and
pleasure of all who are interested in living birds. All in all it looks like the Library of Natural
Sounds has a busy and exciting future.

Charles Walcott, Executive Director

The Living Bird Quarterly 29

George Miksch Sutton 1898— 1982

O n one of our walls hangs a life-sized
portrait of a young eastern whip-poor-will, a
delightful textural study for which 1 yearned
for many years. Beneath the signature of
George Miksch Sutton are the precisely
penciled words: “Signed especially for
Robert M. Mengel on 8 September 1982.”
Although he didn’t say so, 1 understood that
this gift was Doc’s farewell to me after an
acquaintance that 1 can scarcely believe
spanned 42 years.

It was the last of many generous acts for
which I could never have repaid him di¬
rectly. Repayment, of course, was the last
thing Doc thought about. By his generosity,
which verged on the spectacular, he was
perhaps trying to repay the similar generos¬
ity of Louis Agassiz Fuertes. He gave away
major portions of a fine working library to
students deemed worthy. To one he pre¬
sented a slightly used Jeep; others were sub¬
sidized by field work on behalf of a large
personal bird collection now in selected
museums. There is much more.

1 first met him on a pre-freshman visit to
Cornell in May, 1940. He took me to lunch,
showed me Louis Fuertes’s studio, where he
lived, and a show of his own pictures. 1 was
entranced. 1 had never seen anything on
paper like those crisp, lively, bright-eyed
birds, and 1 had certainly never met anyone
at all like this man. 1 still have not.

To portray George Miksch Sutton in a
few bold strokes, start with a man firmly cast
in the mold of late 19th century natural
history and bird painting. On this templet
superimpose an intense personality of al¬
most ascetic fervor; an equally intense, per¬
vasive aestheticism, and a marked suscepti¬
bility to the lure of a receptive audience of
any size. He may have acquired the last from
his ministerial father. When he rose to
speak it was easy to imagine him in a pulpit.

George Miksch Sutton:

A Bird Artists Bird Artist

by Robert M. Mengel

not preaching so much as leading worship.
Birds, after all, were his religion.

I particularly remember his hands. Sur¬
prisingly large and strong, they were incred¬
ibly sensitive, precise instruments whether
with brush, pencil, or scalpel. It is well
known that his many thousands of magnifi¬
cent, beautifully labeled bird skins were the
envy of colleagues everywhere. Few know
that while Doc was in Michigan his friend
Max Minor Peer would often visit to watch
him skin, hoping thereby to improve his
own work. Many did that, but Max Peet was
one of the world’s leading brain surgeons.
He said that Doc’s scalpel technique was the
finest he had ever seen.

Roger Tory Peterson once said, very ac¬
curately, that Doc was a bird artist’s bird
artist. Equally he was a field ornithologist’s
field ornithologist, probably unique in
being more ornithologist than any bird
painter of equal note and more artist than
any ornithologist of his stature. In the field
he was alert as a hunting sharp-shin, a con¬
summate hunter in search of the special
kinds of beauty and knowledge that his di¬
verse quarry provided and which, 1 believe,
a bird painter can fully acquire in no
other way.

He could thus easily rationalize a day in
pheasant cover or duck blind. One memor¬
able day in 1941 Doc treated students
Dwain Warner, Bud Tordoff, and me, to his
company on a day-long pheasant hunt in
Ithaca. He joyously humiliated us with his
skills and genially ribbed us for our relative
shortcomings. Then we became aware of a
large, very irate farmer bearing down upon
us. We students courageously lined up be¬
hind our mentor. Doc squared his shoulders,
assumed his best country squire manner,
and flashed the full Sutton charm. “How do
you do?” he boomed jovially, stepping for¬
ward with hand outstretched. “Sutton is
my name.”

“1 don’t give a_ what your name

is,” came the reply, “you’re trampling all

over my-turnips.” 1 suspect

we took some ignoble joy from this, but we
were nonetheless relieved as the famous
charm slowly wrought its work and we were
able to emerge from our shelter.

As a painter of birds. Doc was unusual in
continued, life-long growth, evolving by
stages from an ornithological illustrator to
an ornithologically sophisticated painter
whose creative need, still requiring a bird
for release, was now satisfied by nothing less
than total unity of design, space, and color.

He was uncomfortable with art philosophy,
impatient with labels and words with vague
meanings. I think it pained him to try to
intellectualize matters about which he felt
so strongly as he did about his painting. Late
in life he often said that he was not really an
artist, just a sincere seeker after truth. 1
dislike contradicting my old teacher, but if
the word is to mean anything, he was
an artist.

In November, 1981, 1 spoke in the lec¬
ture series that he endowed at the Univer¬
sity of Oklahoma in Norman. It was the last
time I saw him, shockingly feeble but alert
and enthusiastic as ever. While there, 1
lingered at a large retrospective show of his
work. It was eye-opening seeing the finer
old portraits done from living birds all to¬
gether, the Mexican studies so patiently
painted outdoors at the same time each day
and, for the first time, many of the big,
airy, economical arctic watercolors of his
final period.

On the flyleaf of my copy of To a Young
Bird Artist, his final bow to Louis Fuertes, is
this inscription, dated 29 August 1979:
“For my friend Robert M. Mengel — one
person in this world who knows how great
Louis Agassiz Fuertes was!” After my trip to
Norman I wrote to Doc on that subject. I
remarked that, while their strengths and
styles were ultimately very different, I
thought it now had to be said that the mas¬
ter had been equaled by his most distin¬
guished pupil. In Doc’s thoughtful response
was no false modesty, no dissembling de¬
nial, not even a direct reference to the
statement. But I think he liked it, and I
believe he deserved it.

It had been a long time since March 30,
1915, when Louis Fuertes had written to
him: “I don’t know, yet, whether you’ve got
the thing in you so hard that it will prove
your dominant passion right through your
life or not. If not, I mustn’t encourage you
to give your life to it; if you have, I wouldn’t
be able to dissuade you anyway.”

The George Miksch Sutton Fund has been
created by the Laboratory in the memory of Dr.
Sutton. Contributions to this fund will endow
seminars, art, and color plates for The Living
Bird Quarterly. Those who contribute $ 1,000
or more will receive a 22 Vz” x 27yi" limited
edition print of a ringed kingfisher, signed and
numbered by Dr. Sutton (see facing page). For
more information, contact: Samuel Eliot, Lab¬
oratory of Ornithology, Sapsucker Woods,
Ithaca, New York 14850; (607) 256-4288.

30 The Living Bird Quarterly

GEORCE

SUTTOti

\^0 0^ 300

yyij<Si4\

THE LIVING BIRD

QDOiTEELY

^ Sunimer/1983

Caboratory of Orritholofy
159 Sapsucker Woods Roa;
Cornell University

iQdt 14850

David Blanton

1/7

iDiiW

Explore the ecology and culture of East
Africa, including its remarkable bird life, on
three 21-day safaries scheduled for November
and December, 1983 and January, 1984.

For more information, please call David
Blanton (607) 256-4017.

Co-sponsored by

The Academy of Natural Sciences

and

The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology

M. P. Kahl (Bruce Coleman Inc.)

^auuidiuiy 01 urnunoiogj

159 Sapsucker Woods Roao
Cornell University
Ithaca. New York I485n

Summer/1983
Volume 2 Number 3

EDITORIAL STAFF

LABORATORY STAFF

Charles Walcott, Executive Director
Tom J. Cade, Director, Raptor Research
Jill Crane, The Living Bird Quarterly
Donna J. P. Crossman, Library
Samuel A. Eliot, Public Affairs
James L. Gulledge, Library of
Natural Sounds
Thomas S. Litwin, Seatuck Research
Donald A. McCrimmon, Jr., Cooperative

Research Program
Kathleen A. Mclsaac, Business
Charles R. Smith, Public Education
Jane Hance Wood, Administration

ADMINISTRATIVE BOARD

James W. Spencer, Chairman
Morton S. Adams
Robert Barker
John Frederick Barry
Benjamin R Burtt
William G. Conway
Alan Crawford, Jr.

Robert G. Engel
Ann F. Gaylord
Imogene P. Johnson
Hamilton F. Kean

John D. Leggett, Jr.
Harold Mayfield
G. Michael McHugh
Edwin H. Morgens
Olin Sewall Pettingill, Jr.
Chandler S. Robbins
Lester L. Short
Joseph R. Siphron
R. Eliot Stauffer
Charles E. Treman, Jr.
Charles D. Webster

T. Spencer Knight

Charles Walcott, Ex Officio

The Living Bird Quarterly, ISSN 0732-9210, is published in January,
April, July, and October by the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell
University, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, New York 14850.
Telephone: (607) 256-5056. The Living Bird Quarterly is free to members
of the Laboratory. Single copies; $2.50. © 1983 Cornell
University Laboratory of Ornithology.
Printing by Brodock Press Inc., Utica, N.Y.
Typography by Partners Composition, Utica, N.Y.

FRONT COVER. Northern gannets at breeding colony.
Photograph by Tim Fitrharris®

BACK COVER. Outside—Black skimmers at nest.
Photograph by Michael L. Smith. Inside—Brown pelican and
pilings by Robert Bateman.

THE LIVING BIRD

QUARTERLY

p. 14

p. 18

4 Floaters and Fliers of the Prairie Marshes

John G. Sidle

Once hunted almost to extinction in North America,
the white pelican now flourishes on Chase Lake at the
National Wildlife Refuge in North Dakota.

8 What’s That Bird Doing?

Gordon M. Meade

Birders involved in breeding bird atlases no longer just
look for field marks and ask “What bird is that?” They
question what a bird is doing and what the behavior means.

12 Covering Block 4373A

Dorothy W Crumb

New York State breeding bird atlaser describes her
summer looking and listening for breeding birds.

13 The Crow’s Nest Bookshop

14 The More Things Change ...

Kenneth C. Parkes

Already a flood of negative comment has been received
by the committee that compiled the new edition of the
A.O.U. Check-list of North American Birds. The vice-
chairman of the committee answers some of the critics.

18 View from a Hayloft Aerie

Libbie Johnson

Imagine birding through the lower section of bifocals!
Libbie Johnson takes a close look into the nesting
habits of the swallows that reside in her horse bam.

23 Research & Review

Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

25 News & Notes

26 A Study in Nesting Diversity

Hal H. Harrison

What do a hummock of sphagnum moss, a jack pine
forest, the festoons of old man’s beard lichen, and the
woodland floor have in common? They all provide
sites for those diverse nesters, the wood warblers.

30 Peter, Paul, and the Parabola

M. Peter Keane

M. Peter Keane, director of quality control for Home
Box Office, recalls his undergraduate days at Cornell
when bird song recording was just beginning.

p 26

«o

^^ETTLERS did not consider the
pelican of any value and they made a
practice of going there on Sundays and
seeing how many they could kill by
shooting them on the wing which they
considered great sport.”

So wrote H. H. McCumber of the
killing of white pelicans at Chase Lake,
North Dakota in the 1880s. The slow,
undulating flight of the pelican drew
gunfire across the northern plains. Shot
out of the sky and assaulted in their
nesting colonies, pelican numbers
dwindled. By 1900 the white pelican
had been reduced to the same state as
the sandhill crane, giant Canada goose,
buffalo, and elk. McCumber con¬
vinced the United States Biological
Survey to protect the Chase Lake pel¬
ican flock and, in 1908 with only 50
pelicans left, Theodore Roosevelt
established one of the earliest wildlife
refuges—then known as Chase Lake
Reservation.

Elsewhere in North America the pel¬
ican suffered also. Human disturbance
has forced the abandonment of over 20
nesting islands in Canada since 1900.
Many nesting areas in California were
abandoned because of human activi¬

ties; intrusions can have a devastating
effect on clutch size, hatching success,
and the number of young fledged. Mink
ranchers gathered boatloads of pelican
eggs from Canadian lakes to feed their
mink. Fishermen destroyed and ha¬
rassed colonies on remote Canadian
lakes as recently as 15 years ago. The
belief that pelicans competed with man
for fish was so entrenched that even
the National Park Service killed peli¬
cans in the 1920s and ’30s to reduce
their impact on the trout population in
Yellowstone Lake.

Today we wildlife managers are trying
to protect and monitor the white pel¬
ican, one of North America’s largest
birds. As our plane flew low over the
North Dakota prairie, 1 opened the
window and adjusted my camera. Chase
Lake was coming up fast. After banking
south the aircraft drifted over the white
mass of pelicans on the two nesting
islands. 1 was able to photograph peli¬
cans, double-crested cormorants, and
ring-billed and California gulls. The

Above: Most nesting sites are far from
shore. Right: White pelicans often eat tiger
salamanders found in North Dakota marshes.

Floaters and Fliers of the Prairie Marshes

by John G. Sidle

birds seemed unconcerned and none
flew off their nests. Chase Lake is a
turning point for B-52 bombers and 1
wondered if the birds had become
accustomed to aircraft.

One of my tasks is to examine the
status of pelicans on the Chase Lake
National Wildlife Refuge. In the past,
pelican nests have been counted by
walking through the colony. Such walks
flush the birds off their nests and cause
pandemonium. Eggs may be broken by
fleeing birds. Incubating birds may
abandon their nests and expose chicks
to patrolling gulls or the heat of the day.

For many species, aerial photogra¬
phy is as accurate as a ground nest search
and has been used at several white pel¬
ican colonies. In 1980, 6,142 pelican
nests dotted the two islands in the 2,004

acres of Chase Lake. Since 1980 the
refuge has regained or exceeded its for¬
mer pelican population, a fine example
of what statutory protection can do for
a wildlife population. It is now the larg¬
est white pelican colony in North
America.

Across the continent in the past 15
years white pelican numbers have
increased, primarily in Canada. All
told, 66,000 white pelicans breed in
Canada and 37,000 in the United
States. Eighty-five percent of the nests
are on islands in large lakes in the cen¬
ter of the continent. Glaciation of
10,000 years ago carved many lakes
and ponds in the terrain of central
North America.

Island nesting sites provide security
from predators such as fox and coyote.

These sites are usually far from shore
and barren, although the birds will
sometimes nest under trees. Most nest¬
ing islands are above water but some
submerge with fluctuating water levels.
Pelicans will abandon these sites and
move to other islands. Although once
mistreated, obdurate attitudes toward
pelicans are disappearing.

The growing pelican population is
encouraging but determining why a bird
population changes is not easy. Popu¬
lations exhibit natural fluctuations; the
difficulty is judging the impact of man.
Less harassment on Canadian lakes and
recent sanctuary status of many Cana¬
dian colonies has been a boon to peli¬
cans. In the United States most of the
pelican colonies are protected.

Under sanctuary, pelican numbers

have increased but were dampened by
pesticide pollution similar to that which
almost destroyed the reproductive
capacity of brown pelicans. The brown
pelican population, which spends the
year on the Gulf Coast and the coast
of California, plummeted because its
environment and fish prey were con¬
taminated with DDT, causing eggshell
thinning and reproductive failure.
Endrin, another pesticide, increased
mortality in the population. The white
pelican, which winters in the coastal
estuaries along the Gulf of Mexico,
Galifomia, and west Mexican coasts,
was not heavily contaminated.

However, pesticide contamination
in wetlands where pelicans forage
resulted in the death of pelicans near
the colony at Tule Lake National Wild-

4 The Living Bird Quarterly

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

Right; Aerial photograph of nesting white
pelicans at Chase Lake in North Dakota.

Below: Ornithologist Craig Faanes bands a
juvenile white pelican at Chase Lake.

life Refuge, California. Cold weather
and a shortage of food can cause the
birds to draw on fat residues, where the
contaminants are concentrated, weak¬
ening the birds further. Exposure to
contaminants varies in different peli¬
can colonies. Sublethal effects of pes¬
ticides may be wearing off the way they
have in the brown pelican, perhaps due
to decreased contamination in the
environment.

Each April, V-formation echelons of „
pelicans migrate from their wintering ^
grounds and descend on isolated prairie
lakes and remote northern areas almost
into the Northwest Territories. They
often arrive when lakes are still frozen
and remain six months before depart¬
ing with their progeny.

When I first came to North Dakota,
the tropical-looking pelican seemed out
of place in this duck country of the
Prairie Pothole Region. But these birds,
with a 40-million year ancestry, are
among the most conspicuous floaters
and fliers of the prairie marshes. Out¬
side my window at Arrowwood National
Wildlife Refuge, 40 miles northeast of
Chase Lake, large flocks often fish
before breeding. Some of the birds are
stopping over before continuing north,
as do the geese.

Chase Lake Pass is no longer the
place of Sunday afternoon pelican
shoots but rather the launching point
for the canoe of the wildlife manager.
During periodic visits we gather eggs
for pesticide analysis, conduct behav¬
ioral observations, or band birds for
migration studies. With fellow refuge
manager Phillip Arnold, I set out to
the nesting islands to collect eggs. A
strong wind on the bow lapped water
against the canoe and spray dried white
on my hands. Nestled among hills and
without an outlet, the lake is strongly
alkaline and salts pile high along the
shore. Bird life surrounded us, shore-
birds on the flats and waterfowl along
the rushes.

In the distance I could see a mass of
white on both islands. Cur course took
us to the easternmost island and soon
individual white pelicans took shape.
Drawing closer a hubbub of ring-billed
and California gulls flew out and scolded
our approach. These brazen guardians
are common breeding associates of
white pelicans and their raucous scorn
may deter predators swimming toward
the islands. Common terns rose up from
the island’s saddle to register their com¬
plaints. The pelicans remained on their
nests but once on shore I could hear
their low grunts of dissatisfaction.

It was early in the breeding season
and most birds were incubating. Last
year’s marsh elder growth was incor¬
porated into many pelican nests. Two
large white elliptical eggs rested under¬
neath their webbed red-orange feet. To
4 avoid panicking the birds I slowly
c approached the edge of the nesting
-2. group. They stepped off their nests and

I quickly collected one egg from each
of 20 nests. Subsequent analysis showed
normal eggshell thickness.

Some of the orange chicks that had
already pipped appeared helpless in their
new world. Within one week they
would be lightly covered with dirty
white down. Elsewhere a courting party
carried on courtship displays. Their
courtship garb consisted of a white
nuptial crest and a horn on their bills.
During incubation their crest would
turn grayish black and the horn would
fall off.

Male and female, which have iden¬
tical plumage, take turns incubating.
Near midday the relieving bird will
return from fishing and spiral down with
a whooshing sound. The changing of
the guard is unceremonious and the
colony resumes its sedate character.

Pelicans are synchronized in their
breeding, but different groups arrive to
breed over several weeks. At one loca¬
tion on the island, adults may be incu¬
bating and at another spot they may be
performing their courtship rituals of
strutting and bowing. At three weeks
of age the young will group together
into pods and roam the island. Parents
will continue to feed them but spend
less time with the young as they grow
larger.

Throughout the breeding season
many young perish. The first laid egg
hatches several days ahead of the sec¬
ond egg, causing considerable size dif¬
ference between nestmates. The bigger
chick pecks on the little one and the
intense rivalry may be fatal. In some
years at Chase Lake most chicks from
the second eggs died within two weeks

6 The Living Bird Quarterly

H. Cruickshank/VIREO

of hatching, but this system has evolved
to ensure the survival of at least
one chick.

In early August I was again airborne
over Chase Lake, this time to photo¬
graph juveniles. It was near fledging
time and this count would tell me the
number of pelicans about to leave the
nest. The young were large, their wing
feathers hrown, and pouches and feet
a light grayish yellow. Some were just
offshore in the shallows but most of the
4,211 birds were wandering on the bar¬
ren nesting area. On the ground it
would have been difficult to count the
thousands as they rambled into the tall
marsh elder.

Before these pelicans began their
southward migration, 1 hoped to band
and mark 200 of them. What we know
about pelican migration we have
learned from the metal leg bands. Each
band carries a serial number and leg¬
end, NOTIFY FISH AND WILDLIFE
SERVICE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
When a band is recovered, the details
of a pelican’s journey unfold.

I landed on the westernmost island
with a crew of six. Although visits to
the islands early in the breeding season
can be stressful to the young, later ones
do not cause panic. Our goal was not
only to band but to place numbered red
vinyl markers on a wing of each bird.
This would enable us to recognize
individuals.

On the island’s saddle I spotted a
flock of about 100 young pelicans. They
lacked the silent dignity of the adults.
I positioned the crew to guide the
ungainly birds into the net. Once shep¬
herded in we quickly closed it around
them. With pliers in hand we jeweled
their legs with aluminum bands and
marked their wings. Liberated, many
tried to re-enter the net but soon they
huddled together and waddled away on
the pebbly mud.

The remainder of the pod moved
back and forth in the net with pouches
fluttering and wings haplessly extended.
I glanced above to a thermaling flock
of adults, white against the blue sky. In
a short time these flightless subjects
would master flying and glide south on
rising air currents to their wintering
grounds. In a few years they would breed
at Chase Lake or link up with another

Top Right: Young feeds from pouch of
adult. Right: Courtship garb consists of a
white nuptial crest and a horn on the bill.

colony on the northern plains.

Although the breeding grounds of
white pelicans are better protected and
numbers of pelicans are up, problems
still exist. In Canada, power and irri¬
gation projects threaten several colo¬
nies. Subsurface withdrawals of water
for yearly irrigation may affect the water
level of Chase Lake. Should the level
drop on this shallow lake, the islands
could be bridged to the lakeshore and
predators could easily gain access. Wet¬
lands, major sources of food for peli¬
cans, continue to be destroyed for con¬
version to cropland. Though white
pelicans do not require vast expanses
for nesting, their habit of nesting in
large numbers on small islands leaves
them vulnerable.

This unusual, majestic, almost pre¬
historic bird has survived the great
transformation of the northern Great
Plains wrought by the settler’s gun and
plow over 100 years ago. Still, we must
continue to be cautious in assessing the
status of these birds and be watchful of
developments which may threaten
breeding and wintering areas.

FURTHER READING

Palmer, Ralph S. Handbook of North American
Birds, vol. 1. Yale University Press, New Haven.
1962.

Schreiber, Ralph W. “Bad Days for the Brown
Pelican." National Geographic. January, 1975.

THE AUTHOR

John Sidle is manager of the Chase Lake Na¬
tional Wildlife Refuge in North Dakota.

Bob & Clara Calhoun^ (Bruce Coleman Inc.)

The Living Bird Quarterly 7

Tim Fitzharris®

What^s That Bird Doing?

by Gordon M. Meade

H^e looks at his watch. It

reads 3:45 a.m. It’s mid-May and spring
is in full flush. As he stands in the
fragrant woods he hears the dawn cho¬
rus beginning to swell. For the atlaser
the woods contain the challenge of
spotting POs, PRs and COs for a PI WO
or a SWOW. By August he will have
found several of these and will be able
to mark Block 5492A as “adequately
covered.”

What draws a person into the pre¬
dawn twilight? What is the meaning of
this alphabetic jargon? Why are a bur¬
geoning number of birders becoming
involved in atlasing?

An atlas is a survey of where in a
given geographic area a bird species
breeds; usually the breeding locations
are plotted on a map, hence the term
atlas. Producing an atlas of the distri¬
bution of life forms dates back more
than a century. Only recently, how¬
ever, has it come into wide use as the
need to monitor and understand our
environment increases.

In the 1860s a German botanist,
Herman Hoffmann, plotted the occur-

Left: Marsh wren collects nesting material.
Above: During the nesting season conflicts
often occur between neighboring birds. Here
a common tern descends on a black skimmer.

rence of certain plants in central
Europe. The British, concerned with
the possibility of extinctions, resur¬
rected and refined the method in the
1960s by superimposing a grid on a map
to determine the distribution of plants
of Britain. Wherever a species of plant
was discovered it was plotted in the
proper square. The result was a picture
of the geographic range of plant spe¬
cies. Following the British lead, Amer¬
ican botanists published An Atlas of the
Vascular Flora of the Carolinas in 1965.
In 1976 British ornithologists pub¬
lished An Atlas of the Breeding Birds in
Britain and Ireland.

The British atlas became the proto¬
type for a much larger endeavor, the
atlasing of all Europe. At present,
atlases have been made for Denmark,
France, the Netherlands, Switzerland,
and West Germany, and are under way
in other European countries, Australia,
New Zealand, and Africa.

The first avian atlas in this country
was done in Montgomery County,
Maryland in 1971 as a pilot to deter¬
mine its feasibility and to learn tech¬
niques. Since then statewide surveys
have been completed in Massachusetts
and Vermont. In both states several
species were found as breeders for the
first time, and species known to breed
in the state were found in localities not

previously reported. Surveys are now
under way or being planned or dis¬
cussed in at least 22 states. In Canada,
atlases are in progress in Ontario, Brit¬
ish Columbia, and the Maritime Prov¬
inces. In Ontario new breeding loca¬
tions for the bald eagle and Henslow’s
sparrow have been found; Kentucky
warblers have been heard singing on
territory for the first time, and the
California gull was recorded as a
new breeder.

The immediate result of atlasing is a
map showing where each species of bird
is breeding or suspected of doing so.
But what are the long-term benefits of
plotting a detailed map? By showing
where species breed it gives a base
against which to measure ecological
changes in 10, 20, 50 years from now.
It signals species and habitats that
require study and protection. Land
planners and park commissions are
assisted in their educational and pres¬
ervation efforts, while developers and
corporations use the data to prepare
environmental impact statements. Bird
atlases have already served as models
for surveys of other life forms such as
marine algae, lichens, spiders, and fleas.

Methods of conducting atlas surveys
in the United States are based on those
established in Britain. The first ingre¬
dient is an organization which will start

The Living Bird Quarterly 9

Leonard Lee Rue III

the activity. In Vermont it was the Ver¬
mont Institute of Natural Science, in
Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Au¬
dubon Society, and in New York, the
Federation of New York State Bird
Clubs and New York State Department
of Environmental Conservation jointly,
with support from the Cornell Labo¬
ratory of Ornithology and the National
Audubon Society.

Once the administrative structure is
in place, the survey area is divided into
equal units. Usually 36 square miles are
divided into manageable blocks of about
nine square miles. The squares are
numbered and the blocks lettered,
hence the meaning of the number-let¬
ter combination 5492A, (which is
my square in the Adirondack woods,
20 miles west of Lake Placid, New
York).

Before surveying, criteria are set for
judging whether a bird is breeding in a
block or is only a transient. Breeding
evidence falls into three categories:
Possible (PO), Probable (PR), and
Confirmed (CO).

One key a surveyor uses to decide if
a bird is breeding is its behavior. Find¬
ing a nest is not essential. In fact, sur¬
veyors are urged not to seek nests
because the disturbance may cause birds
to abandon their nests.

If a bird is seen in the proper nesting
habitat and there is no other indication
of breeding, or if a singing male is pres¬
ent, or if breeding calls are heard in
breeding season, the record is marked
as Possible (PO).

For breeding to be considered Prob¬
able (PR) the atlaser may witness a
range of behavior, from a pair being
observed in suitable habitat in breeding
season to birds building a nest or exca¬
vating a nest hole.

The killdeer that tried with a wing¬
dragging performance to lure me away
from its nest gave confirmation of
breeding — CO-DD (Confirmed by
Distraction Display). Even stronger
evidence came from the chestnut-sided
warbler pair that kept dashing into a
patch of red osier dogwood carrying
worms and insects in their bills. I
recorded them as CO-FY (Confirmed
by Feeding Young).

Once the squares and blocks have
been plotted, breeding criteria estab¬
lished, and maps and instruction book¬
lets distributed, the surveyors are ready
to go afield.

An atlaser’s work begins as early as

Top: Pair of ospreys about to copulate.
Left: Displaying sage grouse indicates
probable breeding. Right: Courting
ceremony of cape gannets is a PR to
an atlas worker. Far Right: Common
merganser brood is a CO.

February when he scouts for hawk and
owl nest sites and watches for birds to
take possession and start keeping house.
As spring migration begins, he spends
more time searching haunts for hints
of breeding. In May, June and July he
reaches his block at dawn because the
most fruitful hours in the field are the
three after dawn and the three before
nightfall. Nesting areas of nocturnal
species such as owls, woodcock and
whip-poor-will are located by listening

Sullivan & Rogers (Bruce Coleman Inc.)

10 The Living Bird Quarterly

for after-dark calls. Atlasing draws to a
close in August.

On entering a block the worker
watches for the most compelling evi¬
dence of breeding behavior. For exam¬
ple, on the first visit he may hear a
house wren singing and records a PO-
X for possible breeding. When he goes
back a few days later and sees a pair
with the male trembling his wings and
“flutter flighting,” the breeding likeli¬
hood is upgraded to PR-D (Probable,
courtship Display). Tliree weeks later
the surveyor triumphantly checks off
CO-FY (Confirmed-Feeding Young)
when he sees the birds repeatedly
entering the nest box with worms to
feed the young.

On a visit to a block a surveyor may
have confirmed (CO) four species and
observed six probables (PR). And what
are PIWO and SWOW? They stand
for P/leated WOodpecker and Saw-
Whet OWl as written in a four-letter
shorthand devised for recording birds’
names. It has been adopted by a num¬
ber of atlas projects and incorporated
by many surveyors into their atlas
language.

Because of the vast areas, limited
time and manpower, and mass of obser¬
vations to be recorded, an atlas project
usually takes at least five years to com¬
plete. Every effort is made to cover
every block but when this is not feasi¬
ble, mapping units are selected ran¬
domly or according to a predetermined
pattern which gives a representative
sampling of habitats and bird life.
Remote or inaccessible units such as
those in wilderness may have to be sur¬
veyed by “block-busting.” This is an
intensive, one- or two-day survey by an
expert team.

Under any system—complete, ran¬
dom or selective—the question arises
as to what is “adequate coverage” of a
unit. Even with daily visits by a knowl¬
edgeable birder it is impossible to find,
let alone confirm, all species in all
blocks even in five years. The British
discovered that experienced workers in
accessible blocks could find 50 percent
of the breeding species in two hours,

75 percent in 10 hours, and 87 percent o
in 16 hours, but 100 percent were not |
found even after 200 hours. Satisfac- ^
tory atlases were obtained if 75 to 80 f
percent of the species were found. I

In Vermont adequate coverage was J
finding 75 percent of the species c
believed to occur in a block with 50 i

percent confirmed. In New York the
standard is 76 species with 38 con¬
firmed. Any figure is only an approxi¬
mation because many blocks have
nowhere near 76 species (the center of
a city) and some blocks will contain
over 100. The number found will be
influenced by the skill and diligence of
the surveyor. The New York project
encourages surveyors to draw a graph
for their blocks with the number of
hours of observation on the horizontal
axis and the number of species found
on the vertical. When the curve levels
off it is time to move to another block.

As they work a block, surveyors
record their findings on field cards. At
the end of the season the findings are
summarized and eventually reach a
central data bank. New York’s data are
computerized by the Department of
Environmental Conservation. The
mass of data (38,000 items were stored
the first year, 63,000 items in the sec¬
ond year) is meaningless without anal¬
ysis. Computer analysis can disclose
many important facts including the
number of blocks surveyed in each
region, species found in each category
in each block, region, and the state.
In its first three years, three new breed¬
ing species were found in New York
State—Forster’s tern, boat-tailed grac-
kle and blue grosbeak. In its five-year
survey Massachusetts found 12 new
breeding species. Vermont found eight.

Computer graphics have been devel¬
oped that make data visually meaning¬

ful. On a map of the state a computer
prints the location of PO, PR, and CO
symbols in the appropriate blocks. The
result is a map for each species showing
in which blocks it has been recorded.
Thus one can follow progress from year
to year, see what areas have been cov¬
ered, and what remains to be done.

In addition to the ecological value
of atlasing, birders have found it to be
fun. No longer do they simply look for
field marks to answer “What bird is
that?” The making of lists is no longer
the major goal. Now the birder observes
what a bird is doing and tries to inter¬
pret what its behavior means. Is it sig¬
nifying breeding by performing a dis¬
traction display, singing on territory,
building a nest? Is it expressing aggres¬
sion, submission, alarm, warning, dis¬
tress or fear?

The end of spring migration no longer
signals the summer doldrums of bird-
ing but rather the beginning of new
discoveries and the possibility of con¬
tributing meaningfully to scientific
knowledge.

FURTHER READING

Carroll, J. and J. M. C. Peterson. “New York’s
Breeding Bird Atlas.” The Conservationist. May-
June, 1981.

Peterson, J. M. C. “Mapping the Birds.” Adiron¬
dack Li/e. May-June, 1981.

THE AUTHOR

Gordon Meade is a physician, lifelong birder,
founder of the Federation of New York State Bird
Clubs, and chairman of New York’s Atlas Project.

Covering

Block 4373A

by Dorothy W. Crumb

A FEW YEARS BACK most of us in

New York State were new at locating breed¬
ing birds for the atlas. We had our instruc¬
tions, maps, and forms to fill out. We had
a wide choice of areas to cover. I did some
work on the block where I live—no real
planning, just walking around listening for
singing birds. It was fun, but 1 decided to
go further.

Wilderness areas were out. They were
too far away, but also I have no sense of
direction. If 1 am in the woods and walk
around a tree to look at a bird, I forget
where I started. I thought it would be best
to leave the remote areas to people who are
good at finding their way.

Twenty-five miles southeast of my home
near Syracuse is Georgetown, New York.
TTiis block looked good, so armed with map,
field checklist, food, thermos, and insect
repellent, 1 started for Block 4373A just
before dawn on June 21st. The day was
perfect—cool and windless. 1 watched for
points on the map to be sure I had crossed
into my block before starting my count. 1
passed Jones Road and watched Tioughnio-
ga Creek on my right. When it crossed
under the road I began.

Right at that point 1 heard alarm notes
of a killdeer. I walked toward it. It imme¬
diately went into a distraction display which
was enough to confirm the species without
further disturbance. I walked away and lis¬
tened for other songs to add to my list—
song sparrow, red-winged blackbird, field
sparrow, yellowthroat—all were present. I
made a few “spishing” noises. A song spar¬
row instantly appeared with a worm. A
red-wing carrying food sat up on a small
tree. Two more easily confirmed, using the
symbol FY for feeding young.

I had made arrows on my map so I could
follow the route, but they hadn’t prepared
me for Chapin Road which appeared as a
thin black line and perfectly flat. In reality,
it went straight up. I made a stop just before
I climbed the hill. A small creek passed
under a bridge and opened into a wet mead¬
ow on the west side. Here I logged a spotted
sandpiper, green heron, barn and rough¬
winged swallow. I had the pleasure of seeing
four newly fledged rough-winged swallows

The distraction display of the killdeer is enough information to confirm breeding.

lined up on a fence near this bridge impa¬
tiently awaiting handouts from busy parents.

I reached an abandoned barn at the crest
of the hill. Phoebes and cliff swallows had
taken up residence. The surrounding area
is mostly hayfields and alive with savannah
sparrows, bobolinks, red-wings, a pair of
eastern kingbirds, crows, and a pair of kes¬
trels. A pair of hunting northern harriers
caught my eye. They spent the summer, but
I’m afraid the mowing of the field may have
disturbed the nest. Hindsight tells me I
should have alerted the farmer that this
hawk rarely nests in our area. Later he told
me he would have tried to avoid mowing
the nest area. The hawks never returned.

I started down the other side of the hill
into state reforestation land that had been
planted 50 years ago. Except for the hilltop
and Georgetown itself, the block was old
hardwoods or planted evergreens. Old fire
roads and well-worn trails made access easy
to the wooded areas. The din was unbeliev¬
able. I got so sick of hearing magnolia war¬
blers that I kept wishing they would keep
quiet so I could hear other songs.

During a coffee break I tuned in to wood
warbler music. I sorted out black-throated
green, Blackburnian, magnolia, oven-
bird—but what was that strange one? It
sounded like a Cape May, but I knew it was
highly unlikely since they’re rare here. I
detoured to track down the bird in the tall
spruces. It didn’t sing constantly, but it
seemed stationary. Much to my surprise it
was a Cape May, probably a late migrant.

Being alone I got brave and tried my
ridiculous imitation of a barred owl. In
addition to being mobbed by golden-
crowned kinglets, chickadees, nuthatches,
juncos, warblers and a solitary vireo, an
adult Cooper’s hawk came screaming in. It
took one look and sailed off. Things quieted
down after this appearance of the enemy.

but I felt something else lurking. As I turned
to leave I realized the lump in the tree up
ahead was a barred owl.

I worked the town area to find chimney
swifts, house sparrows and starlings. I did
bmshy creek areas for flycatchers, gold¬
finches, blue-winged warblers. In only one
spot did I find a cardinal and redstart. I
hiked back to a pond where I saw a goshawk
fly over and was warned off by an angry
Canada gander. Wood duck, pheasant,
horned owl and homed lark must have been
in the block somewhere, but I didn’t locate
them.

I topped a hill to come down into the
woods and crossing the road were two huge
wild turkeys and an uncountable number of
balls of fluff on long legs. It was the first
time I had seen wild turkey poults.

I found seven species of hawks in the
block, five of which I confirmed. Broad¬
winged and red-tailed hawks were carrying
food for young. Sharp-shinned, Cooper’s
hawk, and kestrel had fledged young. I nev¬
er found nesting evidence for the goshawk,
although I saw flying individuals in three
areas.

The block is an excellent birding area
that so far has produced 103 species. While
most blocks are exciting, one with no diver¬
sity of habitat can be rather dull, but even
a block that is largely farmland can be saved
when you stumble on a singing short-billed
marsh wren. Or if you see tiny upland sand¬
pipers running after a gigantic parent. Or
if you see a lineup of fuzzy kingbirds so
intent on watching for food they ignore
you. Nothing in the world of atlasing can
be boring. Go out and see for yourself.

Dorothy Crumb is Region 5 coordinator of the
Neu) York State Breeding Bird Atlas.

1 2 The Living Bird Quarterly

M. P. Kahl

The

Hummingbirds

North America

Paul A. Johnsgard

“Of all the numerous groups into which the
birds are divided there is none other so
numerous in species, so varied inform, so
brilliant in plumage, and so different from all
others in their mode of life. ”

-Robert Ridgway

The Humming Birds. 1889

The Hummingbirds of North America
is the first comprehensive summary
of the biology and natural history of
all 23 species of hummingbirds.

Artist James McClelland has
illustrated in full color all these
species near the flowers with which

they are associated.

Please send me_copies of The Hummingbirds of North America.

384 pages, cloth, 1983, $35.00/31.50 Laboratory of Ornithology members.

Enclosed is a check or money order in U.S. funds, payable to The Crow’s
Nest Bookshop.

$ _Amount of order

$_(N.Y. state residents add 7% sales tax)

$_Postage and handling ($2.00 + SOtt each additional copy)

$_Total amount enclosed

Name _

Address_

City_State_Zip_

Mail to: The Crow's Nest Bookshop, Sapsucker Woods, Ithaca, New York 14850

This exceptional volume,
published by Smithsonian,
includes all the comparative
aspects of hummingbirds,
identification keys, distribution
maps, a glossary of technical
terms and a list of over 160
flowering plants reported as
hummingbird-adapted in
North America.

Paul A. Johnsgard, well known for
his ornithological publications, is
a professor of life sciences at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

M. P. Kahl

The More
Things
Change...

by Kenneth C. Parkes

o NCE UPON A TIME, a com¬
mittee of senior members of the Amer¬
ican Ornithologists’ Union (A.O.U.)
compiled and published a new edition
of the Union’s “Check-list of North
American Birds,’’ the first revision of
this work for two-and-a-half decades.
The committee had made many
changes in classification and scientific
names. Some had been previewed in
Supplements in the Union’s journal.
The Auk. But to many, the new Check¬
list came as a shock, as they were not
prepared for the changes in English
names.

Adverse criticism was not long in
coming. The committee was accused of
knuckling under to the British. “What
was the matter with a descriptive name
like ‘Red-backed Sandpiper’—why do
we have to use a silly name like ‘Dun¬
lin’ just because the British do?”

There must be something unpatriot¬
ic about a committee that could coun¬
tenance changing “American Egret”
and “American Merganser” to “Com¬
mon Egret” and “Common Mergan¬
ser. ” Even regional patriotism was out¬
raged; “Maryland” was replaced by the
banal “Common” for the Yellowthroat.
A fine old traditional name, “Man-
o’war-bird” was scuttled for “Magnifi¬
cent Frigatebird,” for a species no more
magnificent than the rest of its genus.

A major policy change, the use of
English names only for species and not
for each subspecies, deprived birders of
the quaint names they had faithfully
entered into their field notebooks as
they traveled around the country—

California Murre, MacFarlane’s Screech
Owl, Long-tailed Chickadee—had all
disappeared.

Some readers may realize that 1 have
been writing about the transition
between the Fourth (1931) and Fifth
(1957) Editions of the A.O.U. Check¬
list. But the nature of the complaints,
if not the actual examples, will be pain¬
fully familiar to the ornithologists with
whom I served on the A.O.U. Com¬
mittee on Classification and Nomen¬
clature (often called the “A.O.U.
Check-list Committee”) that compiled
the Sixth Edition.

At this writing, the Sixth Edition is
in press, and should appear shortly.
Nevertheless, Committee members
have already received a flood of com¬
ments, mostly negative, based on a
Supplement in the July 1982 issue of
The Auk, a bare-bones list of those spe¬
cies that had been in the Fifth Edition,
under the names to be used in the Sixth
Edition.

The first five editions of the Check¬
list had as their geographic limits a
“North America” consisting of the
continental United States and Cana¬
da, Baja California and Greenland. The
Sixth Edition expands its scope to
include all of Mexico and Central
America, the West Indies, and the
Hawaiian Islands, but omits Greenland
as being more akin to northern Europe
in its avifaunal relationships,

In addition to the expansion in geo¬
graphic coverage, the Sixth Edition
departs from its predecessors in several
ways. Most noticeable is the omission
of subspecies accounts, the Sixth Edi¬
tion being entirely a species-level list.
This departure was made for highly
practical reasons. The geographic
expansion of the list has more than
doubled the number of included spe¬
cies. The Committee knew that in order
to present a check-list with reasonably
definitive subspecific classifications, far
more research was necessary than could
be done before the publication
deadline.

Previous editions of the check-list,
although also based on voting and
compromises by members of commit¬
tees, had presented their classification
and nomenclature as though these were

Left: Tricolored heron, a. k. a. Louisiana
heron. Right: Pluvialis dominica, lesser
golden'plover ivas American golden plover.

“Holy Writ.” In the Sixth Edition, by
contrast, detailed footnotes mention
alternative opinions as well as widely
used English names other than those
chosen by the present Committee.

Although the members of the
A.O.U. Committee were chosen for
their taxonomic expertise, most if not
all of them are recreational birders,
knowledgeable about and sympathetic
with the interests of amateurs. The late
Eugene Eisenmann, long the Commit¬
tee’s Chairman, was a lawyer, not a
professional ornithologist, and was
widely known for his encouragement
of other amateurs. The Committee that
completed the Sixth Edition (after sev¬
eral personnel changes) included Burt
L. Monroe, Jr., Chairman (University
of Louisville); Kenneth C. Parkes, Vice-
Chairman (Carnegie Museum of Nat¬
ural History); Lester L. Short, Secre¬
tary (American Museum of Natural
History); Richard C. Banks (U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service); Thomas R.
Howell (University of California, Los
Angeles); Ned K. Johnson (University
of California, Berkeley); and Robert
W. Storer (University of Michigan).

The members understood that
changes in English names have an
impact on far more people than do
changes in scientific names or of order
and family sequences. Many hours of
Committee time were spent in discuss¬
ing alternatives among English names,
often using solicited outside advice.

The very short introduction to the
July 1982 Supplement stated only that

“English names, where changed, were
adopted with a global viewpoint.” A
preface in the Sixth Edition, unprece¬
dented in its comprehensiveness, pre¬
sents thorough discussions of the prin¬
ciples adopted by the Committee in
coming to its decisions. I would like
to expand here on some of these
principles.

JL he key factor in choosing English
names was the principle of “a global
viewpoint.” In the past 25 years there
has been a tremendous increase in
international birding. Birders from all
over the world may carry their favorite
recreation to every continent, even
Antarctica. By no means were all of
these world-hopping birders Ameri¬
cans. Tourists from Great Britain,
Australia, New Zealand, and other
English-speaking countries are as avid
as Americans in their desire to see new
birds. Germans, Scandinavians, Japa¬
nese,and others have also become
global birders, but most of the new field
guides are written in English, so the
only alternative to using scientific
names is learning the English names.

And here, indeed, was the rub. A
major problem confronting the Com¬
mittee in trying to find globally accept¬
able English names was the multiplicity
of names available for the same species.
Phalacrocorax carbo is called Great Cor¬
morant in North America, Black Cor¬
morant in Australia, White-necked or
White-breasted Cormorant in Africa,

The Living Bird Quarterly 1 5

and just “the” Cormorant in Britain.

The opposite problem was the dupli¬
cation of names—the same English
name used in different parts of the world
for unrelated species. “Mourning Dove”
to a North American means Zenaida
macroura; that same birder traveling in
Africa would find that it meant Strep'
topelia decipiens.

In spite of the efforts of several
authors who have recently published
competing lists of birds of the world,
we are far from a consensus on English
names for all species. Nevertheless, the
Committee agreed with the principle
of striving for global standardization,
so that the next generation of birders
would know what species was meant by
“Mourning Dove” in conversations with
any English-speaking colleague.

ome of the conflicts caused by
duplication of English names were
resolved simply by adding an adjective.
The birds of the world include two
White Pelicans, two Black Ducks, and
two Swallow-tailed Kites. In each of
these instances we simply prefaced the
name of our species with “American”
and, by implication, assumed that our
overseas colleagues would use, for
example, “African Black Duck.”

The British are well known for their
insistence on “their” species of a group
being the Heron, the Jay, the Wren, etc.
Alas, some of this same provincial out¬
look could be found in the Fifth Edition
of the A.O.U. Check-list. The world
has more than one Gannet, Pintail,
Goshawk, Skua, Roadrunner, Dipper,
Mockingbird, and Starling, to mention

about half of the “unadorned” names
used in the Fifth Edition. All of these
now have appropriate adjectives to dif-
ferentiate them from relatives
elsewhere.

In a few instances, the expansion of
the geographic coverage brought an
additional species of the group into the
Check-list area. Thus the Fifth Edition
had only a single species called “Tur¬
key.” The Sixth Edition includes the
Ocellated Turkey of the Yucatan Pen¬
insula, and Meleagris gallopavo thus
required an adjective. We tossed quite
a few around, such as the overused
“Northern,” but our reasoning was that
everybody calls it “Wild Turkey” any¬
way, so why not go along with that
usage?

In general, “appropriateness” or lack
thereof has not been used as a sole
reason to change a long-standing name
for a genuinely North American spe¬
cies. We all know that magnolias are
not the typical habitat for Magnolia
Warblers, and that Philadelphia may
not be the best place to look for Phil¬
adelphia Vireos. However, we have
made a few changes when the name
used was misleading, especially if not
well established. When the three “spe¬
cies” of North American flickers were
combined into Colaptes auratus, the
name first proposed was “Common
Flicker.” However, this species is com¬
mon only to a North American; other
flickers are equally common in South
America, so the name has been changed
to the geographically accurate “North¬
ern Flicker.”

Several species in the Fifth Edition
are only peripherally North American,

including a number of seabirds and some
tropical birds that have penetrated the
southern United States. We usually
chose the names for such species that
are used in the literature of the prin¬
cipal parts of their ranges. “New Zea¬
land Shearwater” was changed to
“Buller’s Shearwater,” which is what
New Zealanders call it. “Louisiana
Heron” was not discarded because of
inappropriateness (although Louisiana
is only a tiny fraction of its range), but
because the species is called “Tricol¬
ored Heron” in most of the English
language literature of Central and South
America.

A few names have been shortened
and simplified, even by as little as a
single syllable. “Spot-breasted Oriole”
sounds less “stuttery” than “Spotted¬
breasted Oriole.” A pair of awkwardly
long names disappears with Short-billed
Marsh Wren becoming Sedge Wren,
and the Long-billed species retaining
the name Marsh Wren.

A major reason for name changes is
taxonomy. When two or more species
are combined into one, a new name
must be found for the collective spe¬
cies. The best known example is the
Northern Oriole which is the com¬
bined name for Baltimore Oriole and
Bullock’s Oriole. The loss of the name
“Baltimore Oriole” created more tumult
than any other change announced in
the 1973 Supplement to the A.O.U.
Check-list. Yet had we applied this
familiar name to the broadened spe¬
cies, think of the confusion that would
have arisen with the sudden rash of
reports of “Baltimore Orioles” from the
Pacific coast!

16 The Living Bird Quarterly

M. P. Kahl

Left: American flamingo becomes greater
flamingo. Right: The American kestrel was
once inappropriately named sparrow hawk. It
eats primarily mice and large insects. Below:
Pintail becomes northern pintail to
differentiate it from white'cheeked pintail.

In three instances, the name used
for the species outside North America
has been adopted for the whole
“lumped” species: “American Flamin¬
go” becomes Greater Flamingo,
“White-tailed Kite” becomes Black¬
shouldered Kite, and “Arizona Wood¬
pecker” becomes Strickland’s
Woodpecker.

Birders have often accused the Com¬
mittee of eroding their life lists by
lumping species. Fiowever, we have had
to introduce several new English names
for the opposite reason—birds formerly
thought to belong to a single species
that are now considered two species.
We are accustomed to the former Boat-
tailed Crackle being divided into the
Boat-tailed and Great-tailed Crackles,
and the division of the former Traill’s
Flycatcher into Willow and Alder Fly¬
catchers. There are six such “splits” in
the Sixth Edition, including the divi¬
sion of the Screech-Owl into Eastern
and Western species, and the revival
of the Red-breasted Sapsucker as a sep¬
arate species from the Yellow-bellied.

By my count we have announced
101 changes of English names (not
counting changes in hyphenization).
In only one case did we introduce a
completely new name to ornithological
literature. This was done to resolve the
conflict between the American and
African usages of “White-necked Rav¬
en.” The “White-necked Raven” of
Africa, Corvus albicollis, really does have
a white neck, whereas the white is con¬
cealed in Corvus cryptoleucus of the
southwestern United States and adja¬
cent Mexico. We felt that because the
African bird was conspicuously white¬
necked, it deserved to keep the name.
Somebody proposed that the American
species be called “Chihuahuan Rav¬
en,” and we were delighted to accept
this suggestion. The name, inciden¬
tally, does not refer to the Mexican
state of Chihuahua, but to the Chi¬
huahuan faunal and floral district which
constitutes the major portion of the
range of this raven.

Will these “new” English names
prove to be stable? I have no doubt
that they will be as quickly learned as
were the new names introduced in

1957. Soon only we old geezers will |
remember that Americans once called £
the Red-necked Phalarope “Northern |
Phalarope.” Will there be more ~
changes? Almost certainly. Supple- ^
ments to the Sixth Edition will prob- |
ably be published as frequently as every |
two years. We anticipate, however, that “
altered taxonomic status will be the
principal and perhaps sole reason for
changes in English names.

Meanwhile the Committee that pro¬
duced the Sixth Edition hopes our 20
years of work have resulted in a refer¬
ence work that both amateurs and
professionals will find indispensable.

We are well aware that it is not the last
word—it is a cliche to mention that a
check-list is out of date before it is
published. We know of at least one
species that has been added to the fauna
of the area covered since the Sixth Edi¬
tion went to press, a South American
hummingbird collected in Panama.

The changes in English names and
in classification will undoubtedly take
some getting used to, but in the long
run we hope that they will turn out to
be improvements.

FURTHER READING

“34th Supplement to the American Ornitholo¬
gists’ Union Check-list of North American Birds,”

The Auk, vol. 99, pp. 1CC-16CC.

THE AUTHOR

Kenneth C. Parkes is Chief Curator of Life Sci¬
ences at Carnegie Museum of Natural History,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

View from a Hayloft Aerie

by Libbie Johnson

Imagine birding through the lower section of
bifocals! Libbie Johnson takes a close look
into the nesting habits of the swallows

in her horse bam.

Hans Reinhard (Bruce Coleman Inc.)

I BACKED INTO ORNITHOLOGY

through the barn door. I had been a
bird watcher, roaming fields and woods,
frequenting beaches, and traveling afar,
binoculars at the ready. The move from
casual watcher to bird-blind sitting and
note taking came about on a cold windy
morning in late April, 1979.

I had gone to the barn one morning
to feed the horses. Shivering, I mount¬
ed the steps to the loft, intent on
throwing down hay. A faint chittering
rose above the stomping and snorting
of the hungry animals. Two barn swal¬
lows, the first of the year, sat huddled
on a crosstie, feathers fluffed. Here I
stood freezing after walking 35 yards
through bitter winds, yet they had made
it to the same barn from South Amer¬
ica, surviving storms in nothing but
their feathers. By the time I returned
to the kitchen I was asking myself ques¬
tions about why the swallows came back
to my barn in Princeton, New Jersey.

Our farm, with buildings that go back
150 years, has been hospitable to a long-
established colony of barn swallows.
Their adherent cup nests are plastered
atop beams and onto crossbraces, joists,
and rafters. Doors sagging on weary
hinges hang ajar to bid them welcome
to the haylofts. The barns stand near a
country road, and while the utility lines
are bothersome aesthetically, they are
easy perches for the small feet of the
adults and their fledged young. The
birds, lined up like so many clothes¬
pins, have a view of the hayfields and
pastures over which they search for
insects.

Now I wanted to know exactly when
the swallows arrived, how long they
stayed, and how they refurbished old
nests or constructed new ones. Each
answer brought new questions and four
years later I am still asking them. But,
after 228 hours photographing and
observing two different nests and three
swallow families, several thousand
slides, and pages of notes on mud gath¬
ering, nest building, tending and feed¬
ing, I have some answers too.

Because photography is my hus¬
band’s avocation, for me to think of
studying a bird is to use a photographic
approach. I sought Dave’s help with
what I envisioned to be no more than
a photographic essay. Spring of 1979

Left: Ybung barn swallows wait to be fed.
Right: Barn swallows are the only North
American swallow with a deeply forked tail.

was a period of many ifs. If the birds
returned to the nest on the inside wall
of one of the barn stalls, I would have
the ideal angle for photography. If they
returned we would need to mount cam¬
era and photographer close to the nest.
We gambled on the swallows’ return
and built a platform six feet above the
floor of the stall. Next Dave mounted
tripod, camera, and lights, all the time
wondering if the birds would tolerate
the flashes. Using wornout sheets I
fashioned a blind atop the platform and
waited to see if the swallows would
accept the paraphenalia.

Sure enough, the swallows came to
the stall and though they stared and
chittered at the strange arrangement,
they claimed the nest. Each morning
Dave loaded the camera and all I had
to do was activate the flash and snap
the pictures. The first questions I want¬
ed to answer were if swallows survived

.ft

the long migration, did they come back
to the same nest each year? Did the
young return to where they fledged?
Reports indicated that at least one of
the pair often returned to the same
nest, and that the young returned to
the area. But I wanted to see for myself
and banding some young seemed the
simplest way to begin.

My search for a banding authority
turned up Hannah Suthers, a research
assistant in biology at Princeton Uni¬
versity, and president of the Eastern
Bird Banding Association. That year
we banded only 19 young. This was not
an auspicious beginning and I won¬
dered how we could see the tiny bands
once the birds were perched on the
nearby wires, hunkered down on their
weak legs and small feet with nary a
band visible. Swallows need strong
wings to pursue airborne food rather
than strong legs for perching upright
and displaying numbered bands.

By late summer, when the swallows
were massing on power lines readying
for their trek southward, I was planning
the next swallow season. I wanted pic¬
tures of swallows gathering mud and to
be able to look directly into a nest—to
be even closer than my platform four
feet from it.

On April 18 of the following spring
the swallows began to arrive. In three
or four days the utility wires and top
rails of the barnyard fence were pressed
into service as mating grounds, the birds
close together, sometimes rubbing heads
and necks or touching bills before cop¬

ulating. Nest selection was under way
and building would soon start.

The only way to get mud-gathering
pictures was to create a mud puddle at
a good spot on which to train the cam¬
era. It was simple to let the old iron
tub used as a watering trough overflow.
The swallows wasted no time claiming
it and never minded the horses that
walked by on their way to the trough.
Cats sent the birds into a swooping,
chittering frenzy, dogs and humans
sometimes disturbed them, but the
horses could sneeze, snort, and stomp,
yet birds in nearby nests didn’t bat an
eye.

The birds’ routine for mud gathering
was to land in the barnyard, pick up
several pieces of straw in their bills,
then fly to the puddle and gather mud
with thrusts of their beaks opened just
far enough to take in mud without
dropping straws. Sometimes a pair
would fly away in tandem; other times
one would pause and wait for a turn to

The Living Bird Quarterly 19

through the lower section of bifocals!

The view from my darkened hayloft
aerie was magnificent. I was able to see
the pronounced difference in coloring
of this pair; the throat and forehead of
the male were a much darker rust than
that of the female. I observed the final
steps in the mud-gathering process. They
did indeed approach the nest in tan¬
dem, one perching on the rim of the
nest while the partner finished placing
its burden. Most often they brought a
combination of mud and straw.

I could see the throat muscles con¬
tract as an amazing amount of semiliq¬
uid material spilled from their trian¬
gular bills. One time they would deposit
the mixture along the rim of the cup,
another along the back where the nest
was anchored. Or the mud might be
placed in a back corner; although the
nest appeared elliptical from below,
looking into the cup I could see the
birds kept it round inside by packing
mud into the back comers.

I observed their technique for cre¬
ating the springy, cradle-soft center of
the nest. After each new layer of mud-
and-straw blocks was laid, the birds
would bring loose, clean straws and drop
them across the nest not bothering to
tuck the ends into the mud. No need
to, for once the next blocks were start¬
ed, they automatically covered the ends
of the straws, anchored them firmly,
and left the middle of each straw riding
free. Throughout the building process
the female turned around in the nest,
tamping the material with her feet and
smoothing it with her body.

On May 14, I noticed the female
perched on the barnyard gate with two
white feathers in her mouth, framing
her face in a “v. ” I raced up to the loft
and climbed under my black canopy in
time to see her fly in and place the
feathers in the nest. She made quite a
ceremony of tucking them in with the
other feathers, then she flew off with a
two-note call which was answered by
her mate from the telephone wire.

The egg laying began the following
day. As I had observed the year before,
the eggs were usually laid by 7 a.m. She
would settle down in the nest while her
attentive mate flew in and out. She
would rise and strain and look beneath
to see if an oval white egg spotted with
brown had fallen into place. The task
accomplished in several minutes, she
rose, dropped off the nest, and flew
out, the male in pursuit. The day the

Both photos by Dave Johnson

lay down an oozing building block of
mud and straw on the chosen nest. I
observed a pair work for an hour, take
a half-hour break, then gather mud
again.

According to Arthur Cleveland Bent
in Life Histories of North American Flj'
catchers, Larks, Swallows and Their Allies,
authorities differ as to how swallows
carry mud. My swallows carried it in
the throat and mouth. I have seen birds

push their beaks into mud as many as
14 times before flying away, throats and
mouths bulging. Rarely was there a
small deposit of extra mud rolled atop
a bill as some observers have noted.

To get even closer to the birds than
I had been the previous year, I chose a
different nest for observing and pho¬
tographing. This one, plastered to the
side of a ceiling joist, had been a favored
nest for years and chances were good
the birds would return to it.

Right on schedule a pair of swallows
began to stand on the edge of the nest.
We fashioned a hatch on the hayloft
floor boards directly above the nest
through which I could observe and Dave
could photograph the birds. They didn’t
seem to mind my watching so long as
I was covered with a huge swatch of
black cloth. Occasionally the birds
would land on the nest, pause, cock
their heads, and peer at me with black
eyes as bright as beads. I was so close
to them I had to put on my reading
glasses to focus. Imagine birding

Refurbishing the barn swallows’ nest of mud
and straw requires frequent visits to mud
puddles. The mud is then carried in the
bird’s throat and mouth. Mud may also be
pushed onto the top of the bill.

2 0 The Living Bird Quarterly

fifth and last egg was laid the female
began to incubate.

My hayloft aerie was not good for
observing the sharing of the incubation
duties. While the birds had not minded
me in their frenzy of nest building, now
that they were sitting on the eggs they
were all too aware of my presence and
would cock their heads at me and fly
off, so I had to stop. Once the eggs had
hatched and the birds were into their
brooding duties, however, they were
too busy to notice me.

I watched for an hour the first day
after the five eggs had hatched. The
scarlet, naked creatures were altricial
young all right, and needed attention.
Their eyes were not open, they had
no claws and only a few puffs of grayish
natal down. There was only occasional
feeding during this period; I was unable
to see what the parents bore in their
beaks, but no doubt they had small
insects for small mouths. The female
took longer turns at keeping the young
warm than did the male. While he
merely perched low, she settled down
over them.

Each day brought phenomenal
development in the nestlings: tiny
claws, pinfeathers, opened eyes, and
soft cheeps. By the 13th day they were
stretching their wings, and by the 17th
they were preening.

At 5:30 a.m. on the 19th day a sense
of urgency pervaded the barn. 1 heard
a whirr of wings as one nestling stood
on the edge of the nest revving up its
motor. Moments later another hovered
above the nest like a helicopter then
lowered itself to the pad. Soon all five
were awake and stretching, bumping
into one another and flying in place.
Suddenly one perched on the rim, flut¬
tered for a moment and flew off. A
second bird followed. The parents were
wild with attention to the fledglings
and the air resounded with two-note
calls. The three unfledged young set¬
tled into their more roomy nest. The
female returned to feed them. The male
brought food to the two who had land¬
ed on the nearby telephone wire.

By 11 a.m. the last three young
fledged. One flew straight out the door
to the telephone wire, the other two
to pegs on the barn walls for a brief stay
and then out into the world. So ended
my second year of observation. During
the third year 1 would watch feeding
behavior.

1 had noted so much variation in

Above; Adults relay food to their chicks.
Right: Chicks in two stages of development.

number of feedings per hour that 1 real¬
ized only a day-long count would be
valid. In my counts of the previous
year, for instance, I had kept a record
from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. one day and
found that the parents had fed 462
times. But they fed as few as 10 times
between 5 and 6 a.m. and between 11
a.m. and noon, and as many as 46
times between 3 and 4 p.m. and 7 and
8 p.m. Trying to project a day’s feeding
schedule from a few hours had no mer¬
it. Only a full day of observation would
tell the story.

In addition to counting the feedings,
I wanted to observe how the parents
shared feeding duties. For this I had to
be able to distinguish readily the male
from female. In North American Bird
Banding Manual the bander is advised
that the male has “unsheathed outer
tail feathers 83mm or more,” and the
female has “unsheathed outer tail
feathers 74mm or less.” I defy anyone
to detect nine millimeters of difference
in the length of two feathers on moving
swallows. Identification of male and

The Living Bird Quarterly 21

Three photos by Dave Johnson

This newly fledged barn swallow has a lot to learn before embarking on its journey to South or Central America where it spends the winter.

female would depend on a foolproof
system of marking so I could sit in a
blind and distinguish each bird as it
swept in.

I came upon such a system with help
from ornithologist Meg McVey who at
the time was attending Rockefeller
University. She had been studying a
barn swallow colony and devised a
marking system which consisted of a
long white mark and a combination of
dots painted on the three outer pri¬
maries of each wing. She had found
that yellow and white worked best and
that when the bird came to rest the
colors were easy to see.

Hannah Suthers applied to the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service Bird Banding
Laboratory for permission to mark my
birds. By early spring permission was
granted but it was May 22 before Han¬
nah and I succeeded in netting the
male. I had been fearful of scaring off
the birds until the eggs were laid and
the parents were committed to the site.

1 hoped to catch the pair but the female
escaped. With only one bird in hand
there was no need for a code system,
so we marked the male with a long slash

of white paint on three wing feathers.
When we released him, he flew to join
the chirruping female on the telephone
wire. He was readily distinguishable
from her both in flight and when
perched.

I spent 76 hours in a blind only six
feet from the nest, most of the time in
all-day sessions. The male was a relief
sitter on both eggs and young, willing
but edgy. I observed the female sitting
on the eggs for as long as 30 minutes a
stretch, occasionally standing to turn
the eggs with her bill; the male usually
sat only a minute or two and rarely
looked comfortable.

The same pattern held for keeping
the young warm. The female would set¬
tle over them for 11 or 12 minutes
while the male stayed only a minute or
two. He hadn’t abandoned his familial
duties; he was an avid nest cleaner and
dispatcher of cats, dogs, and the occa¬
sional swallow that strayed too close to
the nest.

While the male worked hard at feed¬
ing the young, he never equaled the
female and seldom fed more times in
an hour than she. I say this after

observing them for 56 hours in stints
of 13, 14, 12, 6, and 11 hours. During
those hours he fed 442 times, she 629.

I could never have logged all these
hours if Dave had not served me break¬
fast in the blind and come home at
noon to give me a lunch break, he all
the while jotting down feeding trips
and behavior patterns.

While I sat in the blind listing and
listening, I was already planning the
next swallow season. Two hundred
twenty-eight hours of observation were
but a beginning. The same was true of
66 banded young. So far none has
returned, but someday one will come
back from South America. 1 will net
it, check the band number, and find
that its home is in our barn.

FURTHER READING

Roth, Charles E. The Wildlife Observer’s Guide¬
book. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New
Jersey. 1982.

THE AUTHOR

Libbie Johnson has published two adult and six
juvenile books, short stories, and travel articles.
She also writes on ornithological subjects.

22 The Living Bird Quarterly

eeSkciISCrevTew

by Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

Food Limitation

Birds need food, water, cover, and space to
survive. Many bird ecologists believe that
of these resources food supplies play the
greatest role in limiting the size of bird
populations. These ecologists suggest that
competition for food determines the num¬
bers and kinds of bird species present in a
given area. Others argue that more food
is available than is eaten, and that food
plays only a minor role in regulating bird
populations.

Proof that food is or is not limiting is
extremely difficult to obtain. It requires
detailed knowledge of the food eaten, food
available, and the energy requirements of
every bird species present in a given area.
This task may be possible, but it has not
yet been completed by any researcher. In
the meantime, we must examine the impor¬
tance of food as a limiting factor by other,
less definitive means.

For example, John B. Dunning, Jr. and
James H. Brown of the University of Ari¬
zona have discovered that the numbers of
several kinds of sparrows wintering in
southeastern Arizona grasslands and deserts
are dependent upon food supplies (“Sum¬
mer rainfall and winter sparrow densities: a
test of the food limitation hypothesis,” The
Auk, vol. 99, pp. 123—129).

Dunning and Brown examined relation¬
ships between the density of 10 species of
wintering, seed-eating sparrows and the
amount of rain that had fallen the previous
summer. Earlier studies have shown that the
more rain, the greater the number of seeds.

To estimate sparrow abundance, Dun¬
ning and Brown tapped the annual Christ¬
mas bird counts sponsored by the National
Audubon Society and published in Ameri'
can Birds. These data provide reasonably
reliable population estimates. For their
analysis, Dunning and Brown used yearly
data from five separate Christmas count
areas that included arid grassland and desert
habitats. Data on summer rainfall were
obtained from reports of United States
Weather Bureau stations located within the
five count areas.

Dunning and Brown subjected their data
to several statistical tests and concluded
that the number of wintering sparrows was
highest during years of highest summer
rainfall at four of the five count areas. They
also discovered that a good year for one
species was a good year for all.

The researchers feel that their analyses
provide support for the proposition that local

abundances and distributions of seed-eating
birds, at least of sparrows in southeastern
Arizona, are regulated primarily by the
availability of food. Could the increased
numbers of sparrows be related to some fac¬
tor other than food? TTie most obvious pos¬
sibility is cover. However, Dunning and
Brown feel that cover is of small importance
to these wintering birds which forage in
open areas.

Other studies have shown that several of
these sparrows overlap in their food pref¬
erences. Therefore, competition for the
limited food supply almost certainly occurs.
Do outcompeted sparrows switch to less-
preferred seeds? Are they forced to move?
Do they perish? Or, as many ecologists
believe, has competition caused species to
evolve diets and feeding behaviors that
minimize competition?

We may never be sure. Each study, how¬
ever, brings us a little closer to understand¬
ing the total picture of bird ecology.

V V

Do Not Disturb

Avian researchers face the possibility that
their activities may affect the birds they
study. This is particularly true where young
birds are handled to assess growth and
development. Does handling influence
behavior, growth, or survival of the study
birds?

There is no simple answer. Bird responses
to human disturbance vary among species
and even individuals of the same species.
Still, any data addressing this question are
useful, such as the findings of Katharine C.
Parsons and Joanna Burger of Rutgers Uni¬
versity, who examined the effects of human
disturbance on nesting black-crowned night
herons (“Human disturbance and nestling
behavior in the black-crowned night her¬
ons,” Condor, vol. 84, pp. 184—187).

Parsons and Burger worked in a 58-nest
heronry on Dead Neck Island, off Cape
Cod, Massachusetts. Here they studied 26
newly hatched young that were interspersed
randomly through the colony. The young
were divided into two groups, “experimen¬
tal” and “control” nestlings.

During the first three weeks after the
birds hatched, the researchers entered the
colony every other day. All the adults tem¬
porarily abandoned their nests while the
researchers moved about the colony, sys¬

tematically ignoring the control birds and
handling (marking and weighing) the
experimental chicks. Typically, the ignored
controls froze as the researchers passed. In
contrast, handled experimental chicks
greeted the researchers with defensive pos¬
tures—gaping, lunging, and feather- and
wing-raising—as well as vocalizations.

At the end of this period. Parsons and
Burger observed the behavior of all 26 chicks
during a several minute “disturbance” where
the researchers stood by the nest tree, parted
the branches, climbed the tree, and cap¬
tured a chick. During this disturbance, the
12 handled experimental chicks all remained
in their nests. All 14 of the ignored control
chicks, however, left their nests; two actually
leaped from the tree.

Apparently the experimental birds had
become accustomed to the researchers’
intrusions. The ignored control chicks,
however, were traumatized by the invasion
and left their nests. Premature fledging can
be fatal to a young bird if it encounters an
unfriendly adult or if it becomes lost and
cannot find its nest.

These results suggest that occasional dis¬
turbance to a nestling heron may be more
harmful than systematically repeated dis¬
turbance. However, caution must be taken
in relating these findings to the behavior of
other species.

Copycat Birds

Each spring brings a rousing bird chorus as
amorous males announce their breeding
intentions. Some are singing to prospective
mates, others are warning competitors to
keep their distance. To the birder it all
sounds beautiful, yet beneath the pleasing
trills, warbles and whistles may lie an ele¬
ment of deceit. Consider the indigo bunting.

This member of the finch family is one
of several species in which individual birds
sing their own personal variations of the
species’ song. A keen-eared birder can dis¬
tinguish between individual buntings, and
the birds themselves recognize each others’
songs. Sometimes, though, a bunting may
imitate or “match” a neighboring bunting’s
song. Robert B. Payne of the University of
Michigan has examined the relationships
between song matching and bunting breed¬
ing success and concludes that young birds
probably match the songs of their older
neighbors as part of an avian con game

The Living Bird Quarterly 23

Steve Sierigk

(“Ecological consequences of song match¬
ing: breeding success and intraspecific song
mimicry in indigo buntings,” Ecology, vol.

63, pp. 401-411).

Payne studied indigo buntings during
three breeding seasons in southern Michi¬
gan. He attempted to capture, mark, map,
record the songs, and determine the age
and breeding success of all buntings present
on two large study areas. When his field
research was complete, he had more than
400 song recordings which he analyzed for
instances of song matching.

Payne discovered that breeding success
of male indigo buntings varied in relation
to age. On the average, adult buntings two
years of age or older were more likely to
have a female and a nest, and fledged more
young than one-year-old (first-year) males.

There was, however, marked variation in
the breeding success among first-year males.
Nearly half matched the song of an adult
neighbor. These song matchers were twice
as likely to fledge at least one young as the
remaining half that did not match an adult
neighbor’s song.

Of this remaining half, some matched
songs of other first-year birds (young-only

matchers). Others matched songs of adults
that were located some distance away
(remote matchers). Others sang only their
own, individual song (non-matchers).
Young-only and remote matchers were only
slightly more successful breeders than non¬
matchers. This led Payne to believe that
increased breeding success of song-match¬
ing birds is limited to those territorial birds
that match the song of an adult and stay on
a territory near the adult.

Does song matching itself increase the
birds’ reproductive success or are other fac¬
tors involved? Payne examined relation¬
ships among the buntings’ breeding success
and four other factors: body size, date of
arrival on the breeding ground, breeding
habitat occupied, and plumage color. (Adult
male indigo buntings are virtually all blue,
while first-year males range from brown to
blue.)

Of these factors, only plumage color could
be linked to breeding success—the blue first-
year birds were more successful than their
browner counterparts. However, the effect
of plumage color on breeding success was
independent of song matching; song
matching increased the success of both blue

and brown birds. But how?

Here is where deceit comes in. As males
establish and maintain territories, they may
avoid territories where they associate a par¬
ticular song with an earlier defeat in a
boundary dispute. Payne feels a young
bunting that matches an adjacent male’s
song is mimicking that adult in an attempt
to keep other males away.

The observation that blue song matchers
were more successful than their browner
counterparts lends support to this idea; the
mimic that was more successful in his strat¬
egy of deceit not only sounded but looked
like his adult neighbor.

If song copying has such a dramatic effect
upon bunting breeding success, why don’t
all first-year buntings copy their adult
neighbors’ song? One possibility is that
matching behavior is inherited. However,
Payne’s earlier studies have shown that all
first-year males are capable of copying an
adult neighbor’s song. Payne feels the dif¬
ference in breeding success of song-match¬
ing and non-matching buntings is not
genetic, but a result of individual experi¬
ences. Exactly what these experiences may
be remains to be discovered.

This unusually curved and
specialized bill developed to extract
snails from their shells.

Hook'billed kites with different
sized bills do indeed eat
different sized snails.

Snail Extractors

The hook-billed kite, Chondrohierax unciri'
atiis, is an unusual bird of prey found in
South and Central America. It feeds almost
exclusively on tree snails which it extracts
from the shell with its specialized bill. But
neighboring hook-bills of the same sex and
age often have extremely different-sized
bills.

Thomas Bates Smith and Stanley A.
Temple of the University of Wisconsin
recently explored this phenomenon. They
began by examining and measuring the bills
of 358 museum specimens of hook-billed
kites that had been collected in nine geo¬
graphical regions (“Feeding habits and bill
polymorphism in hook-billed kites,” The
Auk, vol. 99, pp. 197-207).

Smith and Temple discovered that spec¬
imens collected from two of these regions
were small billed and showed little varia¬
tion in size. In the other seven regions,
however, the range of variation was extreme.
Some specimens from Peru had bills that
were three times as large as those of birds
collected in the same area at the same
time.

Earlier studies have shown that bill size
is sometimes related to the size of food items
eaten by birds. To examine this possibility.
Smith and Temple obtained data on the
sizes of snails eaten by observing hook-billed
kites in the field and by collecting broken
shells beneath perches. They also deter¬
mined the sizes of snails available to the
kites by collecting live snails and empty
shells.

Smith and Temple discovered that bill
size was closely related to the sizes of snails.
For example, in Tamaulipas, Mexico only
small snails were available and only small¬
billed kites were observed. In contrast, in
Colima, Mexico, both large- and small¬
billed kites were observed and two distinct
sizes of snail were available. Field observa¬
tions, although few in number, verified that
kites having different sized bills fed on dif¬
ferent sized snails.

Could small-billed and large-billed kites
be two separate species? Smith and Temple
feel it is unlikely; the two types of kite
cannot be differentiated by plumage, vocal¬
ization, or habitat preference. Neither do
the researchers believe that the two types
of kite represent different subspecies, as
subspecies do not occur together in the same
portion of a species’s range.

Instead, Smith and Temple speculate that
all hook-billed kites are one species, derived
from a common ancestor with a uniform
bill; once the species developed its special¬
ized method of snail extraction, natural
selection led to a variety of bill sizes suited
to the variety of snail sizes. In this way the
species could exploit a broader range of
snails, thus partitioning resources to reduce
within-species competition.

Resource partitioning often occurs among
species, between males and females of the
same species, or different aged birds of the
same species. But, if Smith and Temple are
correct, this is the only known case of a
species partitioning resources by means of
a physical characteristic not related to sex
or age.

24 The Living Bird Quarterly

newhSCnotes

Dear Member:

The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) has been gathering information about bird popU'
lations, migratory habits, and the changes birds have undergone over many decades. Thanks to
voluntary efforts of its several thousand members, a picture of the ecology of British birds is
emerging. The centralized collection of information enables biologists like Raymond O'Connor,
director of BTO, to describe the reproductive success of British songbirds, as he did in the
Summer, 1982 issue of The Living Bird Quarterly.

The task of developing a picture of how bird populations are changing in the United States,
with a land area of more than 35 times that of Great Britain, is challenging. Pioneering work
has been done by Chandler Robbins and the staff of the Migratory Bird and Habitat Research
Laboratory of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service in developing the North American Breeding
Bird Survey. Annual Christmas bird counts and surveys of breeding and wintering bird
populations have been sponsored by the National Audubon Society. We maintain a Nest Record
Card Program, modeled after BTO efforts, and manage the Colonial Bird Register in cooper^
ation with National Audubon. Many states are undertaking or have concluded breeding bird
atlases also modeled after similar British projects.

Like the British, we are fortunate to have many volunteer cooperators. We have, however,
no centralized, computer'based information processing system to store and interpret continent'
wide and regional patterns. The Laboratory’s Cooperative Research Program is moving in that
direction and has the potential to become a major resource for studying North American birds.
Many of the essential elements already are in place. Volunteer cooperators are u/illing to help;
over 2,000 volunteers contribute information. We have the resources of a major university
computing system and many methods for statistical analysis.

All we need is to find a way to enlarge our computing facilities, office space, and technical
staff. The need is urgent if we are to understand our North American bird populations well
enough to assure their preservation.

Charles Walcott, Executive Director

The Laboratory’s Library of Natural
Sounds (LNS), which has over 40,000
recordings of more than 4,000 species, is
one of the most heavily used ornithological
collections of its kind in the world. Recent¬
ly the Kiwi Shoe Polish Company requested
tapes of kiwi sounds for possible use in a
future advertising campaign. And Mattel
will be using, as part of a programmed activ¬
ity for its Teach and Learn Computer, the
sounds of a white pelican from the LNS
collection.

Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Associa*
tion announces two tours of outstanding
raptor areas. The first is September 16 to
October 2, 1983 and is to Gibraltar and the
Bosporus for fall migration. One week is
spent at each site. Over 35 species of raptor
may be seen, nine eagle species, including
the Spanish imperial eagle. The second tour,
April 8 to April 22, 1984, covers the raptors
of Israel. See over 30 species of raptor; Elat,
where almost a million raptors pass every
spring; nesting lammergeiers. Barbary fal¬
cons, Bonelli’s eagles. Both tours will be
guided by raptor expert Bill Clark. For more
information write to Hawk Mountain
Sanctuary, Route 2, Kempton, Pennsylva¬
nia 19529.

Are you a birder who can’t hear birds
well? An audiologist has expressed an inter¬
est in developing a “black box” that would
dramatically improve this hearing. If you
are interested in learning more, please write
to Charles T. Clark, Star Route #1, Box
442-D, Rockport, Texas 78382.

The American Ornithologists’ Union

will celebrate its centennial in New York
City September 26 through October 1,
1983. Most functions will be held at the
American Museum of Natural History,
Central Park West at 79th Street. The pub¬
lic is invited. At the time of the meeting
the museum will be displaying “A Celebra¬
tion of Birds—Louis Agassiz Fuertes and
His Art.”

Readers have been asking us what those
bluebirds on page 19 of our last issue are
doing, all huddled together. In the photo¬
graph about 14 adult eastern bluebirds are
crowded into a hollow log box on a very
cold night. Bluebirds often roost in this
manner during severe winter weather. Their
body heat keeps the interior of the box
relatively warm, thus reducing the danger
of the birds perishing.

We regret to report the passing of Donald *
S. McChesney (1895— 1983). Mr.
McChesney’s association with the Labora¬
tory of Ornithology pre-dates his appoint¬
ment in 1958 as a charter member of its
administrative board. In 1976 he was
appointed an honorary member.

Assisted by his wife Marion he devoted
much time to sound recording and filming
of birds in North and Central America,
Africa, and England on behalf of the Lab¬
oratory. In 1956, 1957, and 1967, he helped
to sponsor expeditions to East Africa out of
which “More Voices of African Birds” was
produced. Beginning in 1958, he recorded
and photographed waterfowl in Slimbridge,
England; District of Keewatin in Canada,
and in Louisiana. In addition he worked in
Central America with Wesley Lanyon of
the American Museum of Natural History
on the sound recording and filming of fly¬
catchers and, in 1965, he co-authored an
article in The Living Bird, “Sound Produc¬
tion in Two Species of Geese.”

We will miss his unstinting and enthu¬
siastic support.

Paintings, decoys, quilts, and soft
sculpture have been donated to the Labora¬
tory for sale at our October auction to raise
funds for our new Avian Rehabilitation
Center (ARC). Plans for the Center were
kicked-off by gifts from Cornell alumnus
Richard T. Cliggott and The Peregrine
Fund. Proceeds from the auction will fund
the new aviaries for the care of injured
birds. To obtain a program of the auction
write to ARC, Laboratory of Ornithology,
Sapsucker Woods, Ithaca, New York
14850. Or call (607) 256-4319. Bids will be
accepted by phone or mail.

Kenya Tours —The Laboratory of Orni¬
thology, Ithaca, and the Academy of Nat¬
ural Sciences, Philadelphia, are co-spon¬
soring three 21-day safaris to Kenya. The
aim is to explore the ecology and culture of
East Africa, including its remarkable bird-
life. Tours are scheduled for November and
December, 1983, and January, 1984.

The expedition leader is Alec Forbes-
Watson, a former Kenya game warden and
head of the anti-poaching unit, now a staff
member at the Academy. Each group also
will be accompanied by an experienced
photographer from the Laboratory.

For more information call David Blanton
(607) 256-4017 or Alec Forbes-Watson
(215) 299-1069.

The Living Bird Quarterly 25

A Study in Nesting Diversity

article and photographs by Hal H. Harrison

What do a hummock of sphagnum moss, a jack pine forest,
festoons of old man’s beard lichen, and the woodland floor have in
common? They all provide sites for those diverse nesters,

the wood warblers.

V^ONFUSING fall warblers” is a
term used by bird watchers throughout
the United States and Canada. It
describes the hordes of wood warblers
that annually migrate south, many of
which display plumage changes that are
startlingly different from the brightly
colored birds of spring.

Much less apparent and overlooked
by many who are fascinated by the 53
species of warblers that nest north of
Mexico is the fact that the nests and
nesting habits of many may be just as
confusing as the birds themselves.

To the tyro the common name of the
family, wood warblers, could be mis¬
leading. The novice birder would hardly
associate a wood warbler with a dry,
barren desert wash, yet Lucy’s warbler
finds this habitat ideal for its grassy nest
within a mesquite cavity. Nor do high
mountain peaks come to mind when
one thinks of warblers, but the olive
warbler is at home at 12,000 feet in
Arizona’s pine forests. A pocket in a

hummock of sphagnum moss is often
home to a Canada warbler, and beneath
an upturned root in an alder swale is
where a northern waterthrush nests.

Warblers choose varied and specific
sites for their nests. To look anywhere
but high in a pine tree for the nest of
a pine warbler is usually futile. The
pine warbler is not unique in its affinity
for one type of vegetation for its nest.
Probably best known for its insistence
on a particular habitat is Kirtland’s war¬
bler. Its demand for a jack pine forest
of trees six to 18 feet high, eight to 20
years old, with heavy ground cover has
been a puzzling phenomenon for years.
A surprise is that Kirtland’s does not
nest in the jack pine trees; it nests on
the ground under or near them.

Not so well known but just as insis¬
tent upon the right nesting trees is the
golden-cheeked warbler of central
Texas, mainly the Edwards Plateau.
This close relative of the black-throated
green warbler commonly nests on the

horizontal limb of a mature Ashe jun¬
iper and the exterior of the nest is con¬
structed of gray cedar bark. All nests I
have found were well hidden in leaves
and twigs.

A classic example of a species deter¬
mined to use the same kind of nesting
site wherever possible is the northern
parula. I have observed this species from
the live oaks of Florida to the foggy
spruce forests of coastal Maine, and I
have yet to find a parula that did not
nest in Spanish moss in the south or in
festoons of old man’s beard lichens in
New England. In between, where nei¬
ther the moss nor the lichen occurs,
parulas seem to be at a loss to know
how to build a nest and where to place
it. In this situation nests are crude and

Above: On the woodland floor an ovenbird’s
nest is concealed by its surroundings.
Right: Black'throated blue warbler nests close
to the ground in low trees and shrubs.

26 The Living Bird Quarterly

(Grant Heilman)

trashy. The most unusual I ever found
was in West Virginia where a pair of paru-
las nested in a piece of burlap dangling
from the branch of a hemlock tree.

The proclivity of Lucy’s warbler for
a desert nesting site is not this species’s
only bid for individualism. It is the only
wood warbler in the western United
States that builds its nest in a cavity.
Most nests I have found have been in
natural cavities, but Lucy’s will also
inhabit old woodpecker holes, build
under loose bark, or occupy deserted
nests of verdins.

Among warblers only the prothon-
otary, which nests in the eastern United
States, shares the hole-nesting habit
with Lucy’s. This species, however, is
as attached to a wet climate as Lucy’s
is to an arid one. Observers report that
most nests are built in cavities over
water. The prothonotary is much more

of an opportunist than Lucy’s, accept¬
ing what is available. Usually nests are
placed in natural cavities, woodpecker
holes and bird boxes, but the following
nesting sites have been reported: on a
shelf inside a shed, in a paper bag partly
filled with staples, in a coffee can, a
tin pail hung on a porch, an old hor¬
net’s nest, a tin cup in a barn, and an
upright glass fruit jar in a houseboat.
Amazing is the pair that built its nest
on a ferryboat in daily operation in
Mammoth Cave National Park and
another pair that placed its nest in a
tool box on a log loader in operation
along the Mississippi River. The tool
box was used successfully two years in
succession.

While observers of the American
redstart and common yellowthroat
might disagree, I believe that the yel¬
low warbler may be the best known

wood warbler in our country. It is the
one species that nests close to inhab¬
ited areas, particularly in yards that offer
cover of multiflora and other rose
bushes. Nests of the yellow warbler and
redstart are quite similar in appearance
but the latter’s nest is neater in con¬
struction and has thinner walls.

Millions of warblers in northern
United States and Canada are attract¬
ed to evergreens as nesting sites: spruce,
fir, hemlock, and pine. At or near the
tops of these trees are the nests of Cape
May, Blackburnian, and bay-breasted
warblers. For me, one of the most dif¬
ficult warbler nests to find is that of the
Cape May. With most warblers you can
follow the female to the nest, but the
elusive Cape May female has a trick
that makes following her almost impos¬
sible. She flies to the base of the nest
tree and slowly and quietly makes her

The Living Bird Quarterly 2 7

way up through the inner branches until
she reaches the nest, which is most
often in the crown of a spruce.

The only Cape May nest I was able
to study from egg laying to hatching
ended in disaster. When the young were
five days old and photography seemed
possible, a storm destroyed the nest and
young. In that same storm I also lost
the nest of a Blackburnian warbler in
which the young had just hatched.

In the Chiricahua Mountains of Ari¬
zona I had to climb 60 feet to reach the
nest of Grace’s warbler on a horizontal
limb of a ponderosa pine. Grace’s is
another warbler that does not fly
directly to the nest. It lands where the
nesting limb joins the trunk and then
works its way out to the nest through
dense foliage.

Two arboreal warblers that would
seem to have little in common are the
American redstart and olive warbler,
but they are alike in that one-year-old
males, still wearing plumage that
resembles females more than members
of their own sex, are capable of secur¬
ing mates and breeding in competition

with rival males adorned in nuptial
plumage.

In Barfoot Park high in the Chiri-
cahuas I had two olive warbler nests
under observation at the same time. At
one nest, the male was a striking adult
with orange-brown head and a con¬
spicuous black cheek patch. At the
other nest, the male was hardly distin¬
guishable from the nondescript female.
Photography at these nests was impos¬
sible. Both were very high in ponde-
rosas but more discouraging was that
both were far out on horizontal limbs,
at least 20 feet from the trunk.

Compared with nesting olive war¬
blers photographing American red¬
starts is simple. They commonly nest
low in deciduous trees. I have been
successful in recording the feeding
activity of redstarts, including the year¬
lings. While others have found young
males nesting in many areas, I have
seen them only in Maine on Mt. Desert
Island. Here in the alders, birches, and
young conifers, I have found females
that apparently welcome the yearlings
as mates. At one nest where I spent a

day photographing, the female refused
to feed the young while my camera was
in place, but the young male fed with¬
out apparent fear.

With the exception of the parula,
the ovenbird is the warbler that builds
the most unusual nest. The bird’s name
suggests the structure. Like an old-fash¬
ioned outdoor Dutch oven, the little
mound of grass and twigs is open only
on one side, usually a mere slit through
which the bird can squeeze itself On a
woodland floor, this nest so matches its
surroundings that discovery is almost
impossible.

Another ground-nesting bird that is
a master in hiding its nest is Virginia’s
warbler, a resident of western moun¬
tains of the United States. This nest
also has a tiny opening which leads to
a grassy structure buried deep in ground
litter, but its roof is not elevated above
the forest floor like the ovenbird’s
“oven.”

Two very similar species of warblers,
also ground nesters, are the blue-winged
and the golden-winged. They appear
to be engaged in a battle for nesting
survival in quite a few areas where
ranges overlap. Where studies have
been conducted the blue-winged has
become the dominant species, replac¬
ing the other as the commoner if not
the only one breeding in disputed
territories.

These species are quite similar in
many ways; both prefer woodland edges,
openings in deciduous forests, over¬
grown pastures, stream edges and bot¬
tomlands for their nests which are built
on or near the ground. Their eggs are
similar although the golden-winged
female tends to lay eggs more heavily
marked than the blue-winged, and both
species are attracted to the base of gold-
enrod clumps as a favorite nesting site.

The nest of the yellow-breasted chat
is quite unwarblerlike. It is a bulky
structure built of leaves, vines, weed
stems, and grasses. It reminds me of a
cardinal nest. The chat’s eggs are the
largest of warbler eggs and the chat’s
behavior is not very warblerlike. For
example, the aerial antics of this spe¬
cies during courtship are not only unlike
other warblers but unlike other birds.
It is at home in dense, thorny thickets
of berry bushes, vines, and rose bushes.
The nest may be one of the hardest
warbler nests to find. I have been able
to find quite a few but, I hurry to add,
not without innumerable scratches.

28 The Living Bird Quarterly

Bogs, swamps, swales, and marshes
attract nesting warblers more often than
one might suppose. A denizen of remote
bogs is the Connecticut warbler which
travels each year from the tropics to
breed in the vast tamarack-black spruce
bogs of Canada and northern Michi¬
gan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The
female sinks her nest in deep moss where
it is so well concealed that few have
been studied. While the female incu¬
bates, the male sings far from the nest
and is of no help to the nest hunter.

The northern waterthrush is also a
dweller of swamps and swales. Although
the female occasionally places her nest
in a wet hummock, more often it is
hidden among the upturned roots of a
fallen tree. A friend of mine, Ralph
Long, spent a day searching for the nest
of this waterthrush in a Maine alder
swale. The birds were close by but nei¬
ther approached the nest while Long
was near. Returning to his camp. Long
discovered that he had left his pipe in
the swale where he had been sitting for
many hours. Returning to the spot, he
was startled when a female flushed from
an upturned root within four feet of
where he had been sitting. The nest,
hidden among the roots, contained five
eggs.

The following year, 1 informed Ralph
that I would be spending a week in the
rOn Swamp on the Fairlawn Planta¬
tion near McClellanville, South Car¬
olina, hunting for the nest of Bach¬
man’s warbler, one of the rarest birds
in North America. He mailed me his
pipe with the suggestion that 1 leave it
in the swamp and then go back to
retrieve it.

In the rOn Swamp, Arthur T. Wayne
found the first South Carolina nest of
Bachman’s warbler in 1906. In time
Wayne found 32 nests in that area, but
over the past 46 years not one nest has
been found anywhere. (The last nest
was found in Alabama in 1937.) Indeed,
the bird itself has been seen only rarely
in recent years. Incidentally, Audubon
named the species for his friend John
Bachman who discovered it in 1832
and I learned from the natives in this
Carolina low country that the Bach¬
man family pronounced their name
“Backman” not “Bockman.”

I have made two treks to the I’On
Swamp in search of this phantom war¬
bler, and although I never saw or heard
a Bachman’s, the trips were always
memorable. This cypress swamp is alive

with birds in the spring. In a 10 minute
walk on a dike above the water I listed
19 species I either saw or heard. In that
list seven were warblers. The most
abundant were the northern parulas
that were busily weaving nest pockets
in Spanish moss.

As time moves on, the number of
nesting species of wood warblers in the
United States may increase. Tropical
species from Mexico are continually
being sighted in Texas and the south¬
west. A rufous-capped warbler’s nest
was found in Arizona not long ago. The
breeding ranges of some eastern war¬
blers have been moving westward;
southern species are reported moving
north.

The world of wood warblers illus¬
trates the dynamic nature of birds’ dis¬
tributions and the pervasive influence
habitat has upon birds, further under¬
scoring the need for the preservation
of habitats and for increased under¬
standing of all birds, even the confus¬
ing ones.

FURTHER READING

Griscom, L. and A. Sprunt, Jr. The Warblers of
America. Doubleday &. Company, New York.
Revised 1979.

THE AUTHOR

Hal H. Harrison is author of two field guides: A
Field Guide to Birds’ Nests and A Field Guide to
Western Birds' Nests. His latest book, Wood War¬
blers’ World will be published in fall of 1984.

Left: In New England northern parulas
usually nest in old man’s beard lichens.
Above: American redstart commonly
nests low in deciduous trees. Below: Lucy's
warbler shares its holemesting habit with
only one other warbler, the prothonotary.

The Living Bird Quarterly 29

X WAS FORTUNATE enough to be
studying under Dr. Arthur A. Allen when
the combined talents of Allen, Albert
Brand, and Paul Kellogg were propelling us
toward the first breakthrough in bird song
recordings.

I took all of Doc’s classes. One was an
entry level course in bird identification
which was taken by many arts and science
students. Then there were the professional
courses. George Sutton was around for a
while as was a graduate student named
Pettingill.

As a special project. Doc teamed me up
with Albert Brand. The impetus for pursu¬
ing the recording of bird song was provided
by Albert when he arrived at Cornell in the
1930s. He had been a stockbroker in New
York City who, at the age of about 40, sold
his seat on the stock exchange, retired from
business, and began to study his real pas¬
sion, nature.

Albert was very interested in birds and a
friend of his, Frank Chapman, an or¬
nithologist at the American Museum of
Natural History in New York, told him “if
you want to learn more about birds, you
ought to go to Cornell.” Even before he got
to Cornell, Albert had heard of Doc Allen.
Doc had written books and had gone on
successful expeditions.

Albert soon learned the importance of
identifying birds through their songs and
asked if phonograph records existed. At
that time only the Fox-Case Movietone
Corporation had a recording of a song spar¬
row made with the assistance of Doc Allen.
Albert then offered to fund and operate a
project to record all possible bird songs in
the wild.

His first step was to ask for help from a
friend in New York City, David Samoff,
chairman of the Radio Corporation of
America (RCA). When Albert explained
his project, Samoff proposed that Albert

bring the birds into his recording studio—
not very practical. Albert then found an
electronics engineer who built an amplifier
he thought would be powerful enough to
record bird songs. Encouraged, Albert
bought a sound-on-film recorder and a
panel tmck to house the equipment.

In the days before audio tape, sound re¬
cording was done on 35mm film, and it had
to be sent away to a laboratory for develop¬
ment. When the film returned to Ithaca we
rented the State Theater to hear our results.
One of the first recordings included a loon,
which seemed pretty faithful; however, the
meadowlark we had recorded was totally
distorted. Albert said it sounded like a
Bronx cheer. The equipment simply could
not handle the higher frequencies con¬
tained in many bird songs. So Albert en¬
listed the aid of Professor Tme MacLean of
the Cornell electrical engineering school
and Arthur Stallman, a local consultant.
They were able to build a properly designed
amplifier that could handle the high fre¬
quencies.

But there was still much to do. Besides a
good amplifier we needed a sound reflector
that would make faraway bird sounds seem
louder. It just so happened that during
World War I a Cornell physics student, Har¬
ley Howe, had made a plaster parabolic
sound reflector to evaluate its use in detect¬
ing enemy airplanes. Now years later, that
reflector was pulled out of storage and used
as a model for the lightweight, portable one
we needed.

With the help of Paul Kellogg, who had
expertise in electronics, we made a copy of
Howe’s reflector. I contacted some people at
the American Museum of Natural History
and told them we needed a lightweight,
hard substance with which to make our
parabola. They gave me a formula that con¬
sisted of plaster of Paris, shredded building
paper, and a powdered milk by-product. It

Peter, Paul,
and the
Parabola

by M. Peter Keane

M. Peter Keane, director of quality control
for Home Box Office, was an undergraduate
student in ornithology at Cornell when bird
song recording was just beginning. He recalls
his part in the birth of the first parabola made
for the recording of bird sounds. At left, Paul
Kellogg, sound truck, and parabola.

made a bone-hard substance when it dried.
In fact, the museum people said they used it
to make bodies of elephants for their
exhibits.

The parabola worked surprisingly well.
Its operator would point it toward a singing
bird while the sound operator in the tmck
would watch the strength of the incoming
signal on a VU meter. Communication be¬
tween the parabola operator and the record¬
ing operator in the truck was two-way. The
tmck operator, observing the song signal,
would advise the parabola operator through
earphones when the sound was loudest. The
parabola was very directional and when it
was right on a bird the signal suddenly be¬
came very loud.

Over the next few years, recordings were
made with difficulty since singing birds
often flew away while the equipment was
being set up. Also, noise from farm tractors
or even nearby birds would damage the
quality of the recording. Nevertheless a
small, reasonably good library was acquired
and Albert had a disc record cut, “Bird
Songs Recorded from Nature,” followed by
his own book on bird song recording which
contained several small discs.

When the far superior technology of
audio magnetic tape recording became
available after World War II, many species
were recorded again, this time with an ad¬
vantage. Now a recording could be made
and immediately played back through a
loudspeaker, instead of being sent to a labo¬
ratory. The singing bird hearing its own
song will often fly close to the loudspeaker
to challenge the “intmder.” At that mo¬
ment the tape machine can be switched on
and an excellent recording can be made.

The parabola, however, has not been
surpassed in its ability to pick up and con¬
centrate bird song, and although today’s
models are made of aluminum or plastic, the
basic instmment is unchanged.”

30 The Living Bird Quarterly

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o Manufactured expressly for the Lat>oratory of Ornithology by Johnson Camping Inc. Designed by Dr. Alvin Carpenter.

David Blanton

Autumn/1983
Volume 2 Number 4

THE LIVING BIRD

QUARTERLY

EDITORIAL STAFF

Jill Crane, Editor
Richard Nadeau, Art Director
Richard E. Bonney, Jr., Associate Editor
Charles R. Smith, Technical Editor
Les Line, Consulting Editor
Donna J. P. Crossman, Editorial Assistant
Lynne H. McKeon, Editorial Assistant

4 Secrets of the Swift

Richard B. Fischer

They never perch on trees, roof tops or the ground.

What’s happening in the shadowy world of chimney swifts?

9 The Crow’s Nest Bookshop

LABORATORY STAFF

Charles Walcott, Executive Director
Tom J. Cade, Director, Raptor Research
Jill Crane, The Living Bird Quarterly
Donna J. P. Crossman, Library
Samuel A. Eliot, Public Affairs
James L. Gulledge, Library of
Natural Sounds
Thomas S. Litwin, Seatuck Research
Donald A. McCrimmon, Jr., Cooperative

Research Program
Kathleen A. Mclsaac, Business
Charles R. Smith, Public Education
Jane Hance Wood, Administration

Administrative Board

p. 10

p. 14

James W. Spencer, Chairman

T. Spencer Knight

Morton S. Adams
Robert Barker
John Frederick Barry
Benjamin P. Burtt
William G. Conway
Alan Crawford, Jr.
Robert G. Engel
Clifton C. Garvin, Jr.
Mrs. Harvey Gaylord
Imogene P. Johnson
Hamilton F. Kean

Charles

p. 20

10 Chips from the Night Sky

Kenneth P Able

New knowledge is accumulating about how migratory birds
find their way during their epic journeys. But we are
still faced with a profound and unanswered question.

14 Seabirding

Ron Naveen

Motion is everywhere—the birds, the boat, the sea,
and in one’s stomach. But the chance to glimpse a
wandering albatross spurs on the indefatigable seabirder.

20 Birds in a Patchwork Landscape

Jeffrey K. Keller and Charles R. Smith

In a mosaic of shrubland, forest, marsh, and swamp,
why do birds live where they do? The search for an
answer underlies much of the study of bird ecology.

24 Research & Review

Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

26 News & Notes

The Living Bird Quarterly, ISSN 0732-9210. is published in January,
April, July, and October by the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell
University, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, New York 14850.
Telephone: (607) 256-5056. The Living Bird Quarterly is free to members
of the Laboratory. Single copies: $2.50. O 1983 Cornell
University Laboratory of Ornithology.
Printing by Brodock Press Inc., Utica, N.Y.
Typography by Partners Composition, Utica. N.Y.

p.27

27 Mecca on the Migration Mainline

Pete Dunne

The sparkle of Cape May reflects the dash of accipiter
and the laser flight of merlin. Each fall the list of
visitors reads like Who’s Who in North American Birding.

FRONT COVER. Common golden-eye resting on driftwood.
Photograph by Tim Fitzharris*'

BACK COVER. Outside—Young Adelie penguin. Photograph by
M. P Kahl. Inside—Pileated woodpeckers by Owen J. Gromme.
Page 8. Chimney swift by Louis Agassiz Fuertes.

SECRETS OF THE

SWIFT

by Richard B. Fischer

A.S FLYING BIRDS GO, chimney
swifts are certainly different. Not so
much in their dizzying flight speeds.
Nor in their adaptations for flight. Not
even in their plumage or flight feath¬
ers. They are different when they come
to rest. The flying swifts vanish into
some sort of cavity—into a shadowy,
secret world as small as a woodpecker
hole or as large as a smokestack. They
never perch on trees, posts, wires, roof
tops or on the ground. Most bird
watchers observe chimney swifts only
when the birds are flying. Result: the
interesting features of chimney swift
biology remain a secret to even the
most enthusiastic field ornithologists.

What do bird watchers see? A dusky
gray, swallow-sized bird capable of flight
speeds of over 100 miles per hour, a feat
equaled by few other species. At cer¬
tain angles the swift appears to flap its
wings alternately. Indeed, respected
ornithologists once insisted that the
swift did so even though this notion
violated all known laws of avian
aerodynamics.

Ornithologists agree that the chim¬
ney swift is one of very few birds whose
numbers have increased as a result of
the arrival of early settlers in North
America. Like barn swallows and
phoebes, chimney swifts prefer to build
their nests on man-made structures.
Chimney swifts were already cavity
nesters, using woodpecker holes and
hollow trees in the vast primeval forests
they inhabited. Chimneys offered not
only more nest sites, but also new hab¬
itats in the form of towns and cities.

2 Chimneys were adopted quickly, pos-
I sibly as early as the 1600s.
a Chimneys are where I have wit-
A nessed the swift’s unique roosting spec-

The Living Bird Quarterly 5

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

Chimney swift salivary glue is so strong that nests may be reused for many years.

tacle. This migration phenomenon
involves selected ancestral chimneys
along the migration routes the swifts
use year after year. Before sunset, swifts
gather near their chimney; they fre'
quently give their chipper call and do
some feeding. When an hour of light
remains, the birds assemble into a huge,
doughnut-shaped flock. During the
next 15 minutes, the flock revolves over
the chimney. Suddenly a bird breaks
out of the group and drops fluttering
into the mouth. Then another. And
another. Mob psychology sets in—the
entire flock of chipping birds drops pre¬
cipitately into the roost. They look like
smoke going back into the chimney. T.
Gilbert Pearson, long-time president of
the National Audubon Society, saw
1,000 birds stream into a North Caro¬
lina chimney in less than 20 minutes.
That is not a record number, however.
Ornithologist Gordon L. Might once
took almost 7,000 swifts out of a chim¬
ney in Atlanta, Georgia.

We call it the chimney swift but the
bird also nests in other structures such
as barns, silos, woodsheds, abandoned
houses, air shafts, even wells. And when
it does the structures are ideal for prying
into the chimney swifts’ secret life—as
1 learned one day in 1936 when friends
showed me some fledgling swifts in an
unused Catskill Mountain silo at Bea¬
ver Kill, New York. They were the first
chimney swifts 1 had seen that were not
flying, and 1 examined them minutely.
They impressed me so profoundly that
1 became a student of this common yet
unobtrusive and little-known bird even
though I was only a high school student
at the time.

It was my good fortune to spend the
next 17 summers in the Sullivan
County, New York hamlet. By 1939,
when 1 had become a licensed bird band¬
er and had perfected a method of cap¬
turing chimney swifts after dark using
a headlight and insect net, I was deep
into field research. The farmers gave
me ready access to the bams, silos,
woodsheds, and chimneys that swifts
occupied. These structures offered
unparalleled research opportunities and
1 exploited them vigorously.

Devising techniques to study swifts
was almost as fascinating as the data 1
accumulated. By erecting photo¬
graphic blinds in the buildings, 1 was
sometimes within six feet of the nesting
birds. And by eating my lunch in a
blind, I could observe the birds for long,
uninterrupted periods. To obtain pic¬
tures of nest life, 1 mounted my camera
equipment to the roof timbers, and
tripped the shutter from my hiding place
by remote control.

In this soot-colored species the sexes
are carbon copies. Plumage is identi¬
cal, even to the brood patches. Each
weighs slightly less than one ounce.
How to tell the swifts apart short of
dissection remains a mystery. But 1 had
to know; therefore, 1 sacrificed an indi¬
vidual which turned out to be a female.
Knowing her sex enabled me to figure
out that her mate was a male and, in
turn, that his new mate was a female.
I kept track of the two by banding them
and dabbing paint on various parts of
their bodies, especially the wings.
That worked fine; the birds were identi¬
fiable hundreds of feet away through
binoculars.

Behavioral cues are important to
male birds in determining the sex of
others of their species. If a possible mate
gives the wrong response, the male
assumes it is another male and looks
elsewhere. What response does a male
chimney swift expect from a female?
We do not know for sure. Perhaps, at
the beginning of courtship, you have
seen three swifts flying about your gar¬
den and chipping loudly. Two birds seem
to be chasing the lead bird, doubtless
a female, as they execute sudden angu¬
lar turns in unison. Later in the pair-
forming period perhaps you saw two
birds, one pursuing the other as they
glide with their wings forming a V. The
pursuing bird raises its wings in the V
position first and then the lead bird
does the same. We think this is how
chimney swifts establish a pair bond.
V-ing, as 1 dubbed it, continues even
after the eggs hatch, for it reinforces
the pair bond.

Chimney swifts are intimately
acquainted with the limited number of
possible nest sites because they use them
for roosts before pair formation begins.
Unlike garden songbirds in which nest-
site selection follows pair formation,
paired chimney swifts know in advance
where their nest will be built. They do
not have the wide choice of nest sites
open to songbirds.

This limited number of sites greatly
facilitated my research, for chimney
swifts exhibit an unusually strong tend¬
ency to return to their previous nest
sites, where they are easily captured,
banded, and color marked. Seventy
percent of my birds came back to their
former nest sites. Such nest-site fidelity
is higher than that for most of our com¬
mon land birds. For example, studies
show that an average of 53 percent of
eastern bluebirds and 40 percent of tree
swallows return to their former nest
sites.

Nest-building house wrens pick up
twigs from the ground near their nests.
So do catbirds, thrashers and many
other songbirds. But not chimney
swifts. They go long distances to find a
tree branch bearing dead twigs. To
obtain a twig, a swift flies at it and
snaps the twig off with its feet. If the
bird misses, it circles the tree and usu¬
ally strikes the same twig again. And
again. Until it is successful. Some per¬
sons maintain that the swift occasion¬
ally breaks a twig off with its bill. Given
the bird’s small, soft bill that seems

6 The Living Bird Quarterly

unlikely. However, between the dead
branch and the nest, the bird does
transfer the twig to its bill.

Chimney swifts build their nests near
the spot on the wall where they had
roosted during the pair-formation
period. Arriving at the nest, a bird
attaches its twig to the other twigs,
then adds saliva produced in its over¬
sized salivary glands. In time the twigs
take shape as a nest-large enough for
the bird to sit on.

Although both sexes build, they each
take turns and do not build simulta¬
neously. Their salivary glue is so strong
that nests built where rain cannot soften
the glue may be reused for several years.
The greatest strain on a chimney swift
nest is where the upper, rear portions
meet the surface to which the nest is
fastened. This is precisely the area the
swifts strengthen with an extra semi¬
circle of saliva. They add this reinforce¬
ment while sitting on their eggs.

Darkest of the mysteries surrounding
chimney swift breeding biology was
where the birds copulate. In the United
States the white-throated swift and in
Europe the common and white-rumped
swifts copulate on the wing and certain
ornithologists claimed that this method
was used by chimney swifts also. The
answer came unexpectedly as I observed
a pair of birds in 1951. While watching
nest building one afternoon, I won¬
dered why both birds lingered so long
before going out for more twigs. Hear¬
ing one bird give a series of undulating
chippers, I assumed it was about to
depart. Instead, it fluttered up onto the
back of the other bird and mated with
her. Then the male returned to the
half-finished nest and stayed for several
minutes. Next he fluttered down beside
his mate, where they preened them¬
selves but not each other as many song¬
birds do after copulation. This mating
ritual—I saw it four times—was so ster¬
eotyped that the notion that swifts
mated on the wing became untenable.
Their first egg was laid the following
day with the nest only half finished.
How swifts finish a nest before their
eggs hatch was another mystery. I dis¬
covered that each time a bird enters
the nest to incubate, it adds a new twig.
So, twig by twig, their jackstraw nest
takes shape. It is complete when the
eggs hatch.

How many minutes one bird will sit
on the eggs was another chimney swift
secret I wanted to reveal. Hidden in

The Living Bird Quarterly 7

blinds for long observation periods, I
discovered it was not unusual for an
incubating swift to sit for nearly two
hours. The shortest period was 34 min¬
utes (by a male) while the longest was
216 minutes (by a female). Their com¬
mitment to keeping the eggs warm in
a nest with no lining is so strong that
a sitting bird usually departs only when
relieved by its mate.

Another fascinating phase of chim¬
ney swift biology begins when the young
hatch. Homely but durable, their legs
and toenails are unusually well devel¬
oped. Around 1920, ornithologist
Frederick H. Kennard told of a chim¬
ney nest containing two eggs that fell
down into the ashes of the fireplace.
One of the eggs evidently hatched; he
found the tiny swiftlet clinging to the
fireplace screen. Though naked, blind,
and injured, the little waif had crawled
out of the ashes, across the hearth and
up the screen. It lived!

Long shrouded in mystery is the un¬
usual circumstance of more than two
adult chimney swifts caring for a nest
containing young. Two birders, Mary
Day in 1899 and Althea Sherman in
1921, recorded this phenomenon. Pro¬
fessor Ralph Dexter of Kent State Uni¬
versity chronicled it over a period of 40
years. Why should an adult bird capa¬
ble of reproduction prefer to associate
with a mated pair and help with their
young?

Helpers begin as visitors to the site
after a pair has begun the nest, after
the eggs are laid, or after the young
have hatched. As a visitor, the odd bird
does not usually roost with the pair in
characteristic chimney swift roosting
position, side by side. Instead, the vis¬
itor will be off to one side. At some
point after hatching, the visitor
becomes a helper, sharing in feeding
and occasionally brooding the young.

Most extra-parental situations
involve one visitor; Dexter found 80
such cases. But he noted two helpers
in 13 percent of his situations, and three
in rare instances. And, Dexter reports,
male helpers outnumber females three
to one.

Who are these extra birds? They are
probably immature birds capable of
breeding but not yet ready to nest.
However, the issue is clouded by Dex¬
ter’s discovery of a female that bred
successfully for four years, then became
a helper herself.

Are the visitors really helpers? One

isfying the nestlings’ food require¬
ments. Curiously, Dexter has shown
that the number of young produced by
any given pair of swifts is not increased
when helpers are present.

Do the helpers themselves benefit?
Here one is tempted to apply biologist
Glen Woolfenden’s ideas concerning
cooperative breeding, where helpers
may “inherit” a part of their parents’
territory. But there is a problem; the
chimney swifts Dexter and I have stud¬
ied had not filled their available habi¬
tat as had Woolfenden’s scrub jays.
There was no need for the swifts to wait
for a place of their own. No, that the¬
ory does not fit the facts. And the swifts
are not telling.

In the late 1930s southern swift band¬
ers began tagging thousands of south¬
bound swifts. Gordon Hight was one
of a group of banders who in a single
year captured and banded 71,000 birds.
Each spring they recaptured some of
them on the northward flight. But
where had they been all winter?

That secret, which had nagged at
ornithologists for generations, remained

unanswered until 1944- How it was
revealed conjures up visions of steam¬
ing tropical jungles, primitive people,
and the vast headwaters of the Amazon
in South America. For it was in that
remote wild land that some native
hunters killed a flock of swifts roosting
in a hollow tree. Thirteen of the birds
wore U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
bands. Thinking them valuable, the
Indians gave them to a trader who for¬
warded the bands to the American
embassy in Lima. From there the bands
went to the bird banding records office
in Laurel, Maryland. Those 13 birds
had been banded in several eastern
United States cities plus Kingston,
Ontario. Ten years later a chimney
swift, banded in Memphis, Tennessee
two months earlier, was collected at
Trujillo, Peru. At about the same time,
one or two unbanded specimens were
taken in Lima. Evidently the Amazon
headwaters represent an extensive win¬
tering area for North American chim¬
ney swifts. Precisely how extensive? We
do not know. Nor do we know fully
how an unobtrusive little “chimney
swallow” finds its way from the Peru¬
vian jungles to the same bam in New
York State where it hatched less than
a year before.

FURTHER READING

Whittemore, Margaret. Chimney Swifts and Their
Relatives. Nature Books, Jackson, Mississippi.
1981.

THE AUTHOR

Richard B. Fischer is professor of environmental
education at Cornell University.

Our thanks to Ralph W. Dexter for his careful
reading of the manuscript.

Since high school Richard Fischer (second from left) has been a chimney swift enthusiast.

8 The Living Bird Quarterly

—it’s the closest thing
to taking afield trip
with Roger Tory Peterson

Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology,

William W. H. Gunn, and James Gulledge
Introduction by Roger Tory Peterson

A completely new edition of the famed Peterson
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species for which sound is crucial to
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• Instructional booklet

Sound is as important as sight in bird
identification. A Field Guide to Bird Songs is a
necessity for anyone interested in birds.

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Frans Lanting

Chips

From

The

Night

Sky

by Kenneth R Able

It is a still, warm night in

late May, muggy with low clouds and a
light drizzle. In the distance I hear gray
treefrogs, intense in their mating activ¬
ities in this ideal weather for amphib¬
ians. My attention, however, is fixed
on other, less obtrusive, sounds. Silent
to the uninitiated but magnetic to my
ears are the calls of night-migrating
birds. From the myriad calls I sort out
the reedy “feeer” of the gray-cheeked
thrush headed for some northern fir
forest, and the clearer whistle of the
more common Swainson’s thrush. Most
notes are unidentifiable “chips” and
“seeps” from warblers and other late
spring migrants. I wonder why one hears

so many calls on nights like this one.
Are the birds having trouble finding
their way in the mist and calling to one
another in confusion? Perhaps they are
trying to maintain loose groups with
others of their kind. Maybe they always
call, but are simply lower in these poor
flying conditions, making them easier
to hear.

How many individual birds are up
there? Under clear skies I could turn
on the light of a portable ceilometer
and with the aid of a telescope I could
see the birds passing through its beam,
count them and determine their direc¬
tion. On a cloudy night I could use
radar. Because of the drizzle neither of

these techniques will work—when
beams of light and microwave energy
are reflected by water droplets, the birds
become lost in the “noise.” So I am left
to wonder what they may be doing.

Curiosity about the seasonal migra¬
tions of birds is not new. Humans surely
marveled at the appearance, disap¬
pearance and passage of birds long
before recording thoughts in pictorial
form. The earliest natural history writ¬
ers described the phenomenon and
attempted to explain what they
observed. Modem students of animal
behavior have learned much about
migration. Many of the ground rules
have been laid, but we are still faced

with a profound and unanswered ques¬
tion. By marking birds with uniquely
numbered aluminum bands we have
learned that many individual migratory
birds return year after year to the same
localities where they nested or spent
the winter in previous years. Yet we
cannot explain how they navigate with
such precision over distances of many
thousands of miles. The question is one
of the most alluring in animal behavior.

Why do birds engage in long-dis¬
tance migration? In general terms, it is
a means of escape. Many parts of the
earth are habitable for only portions of
the year. It is easy to exploit those envi¬
ronments during the flush seasons,
but they must also be endured during
periods of climatic hostility. Many
life forms — invertebrates, reptiles,
amphibians, and mammals—cope by
entering an inanimate state (diapause,
estivation, or hibernation).

Birds, with their ability to fly, have
solved the problem by evacuating an
area when they cannot survive in it.
The conditions for the evolution of
migration are easy to conceive: if a bird
can produce a larger number of off¬
spring by breeding in one area and
moving to another for the rest of the
year than by remaining in one place,
and if migratory behavior is genetically
controlled, then natural selection will
favor the migrant over the non-migrant.

This does not answer the more spe¬
cific and complicated question of why
species A migrates while species B does

not. Because the environments on earth
are constantly changing, migration is
a continuously evolving system, not
something that sprang into existence
at one time in the dim past. Indeed,
since no two species or individuals are
alike, there may be nearly as many
scenarios for the evolution of migration
as there are birds.

Let us return to the more accessible
question of how birds find their way
during their epic journeys. In formu¬
lating hypotheses, we are not flailing
entirely in the dark. Several decades of
research have established numerous
facts that have set boundaries on our
theorizing. Although some species
migrate by day (swifts, swallows, many
finches, hawks, and cranes), the
majority of birds migrate at night.
Whatever means they use to find their
way must work in darkness. Some birds,
especially large water birds, migrate in
flocks or in family groups where the
inexperienced might rely on and learn
from the older birds, but most birds
journey alone. Autumn banding stud¬
ies have shown that in several species
the young migrate much later than the
adults; also, the two sexes often migrate
at different times. In these cases the
explanation for their behavior is not
shared knowledge or following the
leader.

Yet most migratory birds have
remarkable homing ability. To be able
to return to specific places, birds have
to learn something about the sites. A

bird learns its natal area during the first
summer of life; transplanting a young¬
ster will result in attachment to the
new site. On its first autumn migration
the young bird apparently has no spe¬
cific goal, as shown in studies of star¬
lings by Dutch ornithologist A. C. Per-
deck. Rather, it flies in a given direc¬
tion for a distance that may be genet¬
ically programmed. With luck, this will
bring the bird within its species’ win¬
tering range. Later in the season it will
fix on a specific site to which it will
probably return in subsequent years.
What birds experience or learn that
enables them to find places with pre¬
cision is unknown but basic to the
homing process.

Homing ability has been demon¬
strated in many kinds of animals from
limpets and ants to salmon and sala¬
manders. What sets birds apart is that
in many cases the distances involved
are so great. That fact precludes the
possibility that birds directly sense the
goal or “home” by sight or smell alone.

Assuming birds have no extraordi¬
nary capacity to sense their goal, we
are left with two possibilities: location-
based navigation and route-based nav¬
igation. The former involves variations
on the “map and compass” scheme
conceived by German scientist Gustav
Kramer over three decades ago. Birds
are able to determine compass direc¬
tions from several different environ¬
mental cues—this is called orienta¬
tion. However, the map component

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Ueff Lepore

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

requires something more: a sense of
one’s location relative to the goal. Only
when the map is resolved can the bird
effectively use its compass.

Route-based navigation assumes that
animals process information during
migration which allows them to find
their way back. For migratory birds we
know almost nothing concerning the
map or navigational component of their
behavior, but a fair amount has been
learned about the compass problem.

When 1 first began to study migra¬
tion in the late 1960s, we knew that
migratory birds had several orientation
capabilities. The pioneering work of
Gustav Kramer had shown that some
birds use the sun to determine compass
directions. Another pioneer, Franz
Sauer, showed that night migrants could
make similar determinations using stars,
even the star patterns in a planetarium.
Sauer’s early studies were refined and
extended by Stephen Emlen of Cornell
University. Working both outdoors and
in a planetarium he showed that the
indigo bunting can use stars as a com¬
pass, that the star patterns themselves
are used, and that major components
of the star compass are learned during
the first summer of a young migrant’s
life. At the same time, Frederich Mer¬
kel, Wolfgang Wiltschko, and their
colleagues at Goethe University,
Frankfurt, West Germany, were report¬
ing on experiments which suggested

that European robins had a magnetic
sense of direction. Subsequent studies
on migrants and homing pigeons have
built a convincing case for the exis¬
tence of a magnetic compass in birds.

With these capabilities in mind, my
aim was to look at the orientation of
free-flying migrants to see if their
behavior was consistent with the results
of the controlled laboratory studies. I
began in Louisiana and Georgia in col¬
laboration with Sidney Gauthreaux at
Clemson University. We watched
migrants as they passed through the
beams of a portable ceilometer and
simultaneously monitored the flow of
migration on a broad scale with weather
surveillance radar. What we found was
not at all what we had expected. The
songbird migrants—warblers, vireos,
thrushes—we observed at night almost
always flew in the direction the wind
was blowing, even when that meant
flying in directions opposite those
expected for the season and even when
the birds’ flight speed exceeded the
speed of the wind. Thus the birds were
not being blown passively in peculiar
directions. And if the wind direction
changed during the night, the birds
reoriented themselves so that they
would be heading downwind.

This picture of songbird migration
bore faint resemblance to that emerg¬
ing from experiments on caged
migrants. The wild birds used wind

direction as their primary orientation
cue even on nights when the stars were
visible and the earth’s magnetic field
was undisturbed. One message from this
is that we should not generalize from
experiments performed under narrowly
defined conditions. As I was to dis¬
cover, one also must be wary of extend¬
ing field results to other birds and
regions.

On weather radar, echoes from song¬
birds were easily distinguishable from
those of flocked migrants such as water-
fowl and shorebirds. These larger, faster
migrants were more selective of the
weather conditions in which they
migrated, and rarely flew in large num¬
bers except when the wind was blowing
in the direction they were heading any¬
way. This indicated to us that when
free flying, different types of birds
respond to directional cues in different
ways.

When I moved my studies to upstate
New York I expected the nocturnal
migrant songbirds to behave as they
had in the southeastern United States.
I soon discovered this was not the case.
On nights when winds blew in unfa¬
vorable directions for migrants, there
was seldom any correspondence
between the birds’ orientation and wind
direction. Even though the songbird
species in eastern New York were sim¬
ilar to those in the Gulf states, they
responded differently to directional

12 The Living Bird Quarterly

Wayne Lankinen

information, a hitherto unexpected
complication.

Some nights most migrants did fly in
peculiar directions. These instances were
tantalizing because they seemed to
happen under solid overcast skies.
However not all cloudy nights with
unfavorable winds had such flights. By
tracking birds with radar over several
seasons under closely monitored
weather conditions, a pattern emerged.
When skies became solid overcast so
that birds could see neither sun nor
stars, and winds were opposed to the
normal direction of migration, the birds
headed downwind and thus in inappro¬
priate directions. On days when the
birds could see either the sun or the
stars they oriented normally, regardless
of the wind. These observations suggest
that migrants respond to directional
cues in a hierarchical manner; in this
case the visual cues—sun and stars—
took precedence over wind direction.

Unfortunately, we cannot identify
species with radar and ceilometer tech¬
niques. A swarm of migrants may con¬
tain 75 species and individuals of vary¬
ing age, experience, motivation, and
migratory goal. To overcome this prob¬
lem, I borrowed a technique from Ste¬
phen Emlen and Natalie Demong
which allowed me to track single birds.
They devised a method for launching
nocturnal migrants from small boxes
carried aloft under helium-filled bal¬
loons. At a predetermined height above
the ground the bottom of the box drops
open and the bird flies out.

Using this method, 1 tracked white-
throated sparrows and found that most
flew on straight and reasonably level
paths. My releases were made under
precise conditions: clear, starry nights
when winds were light, but opposed to
the normal direction of migration.
Under these conditions, I predicted that
sparrows would use the stars and orient
in the appropriate direction, regardless
of the wind, and that is what they did.

I also released sparrows fitted with
frosted lenses so that they could not see
the stars. These birds embarked on
straight and level flight generally in
downwind, inappropriate directions.
Thus the birds wearing frosted lenses
behaved like migrants in nature
deprived of visual cues. What is even
more remarkable, as any pilot can
attest, is that they were able to deter¬
mine wind direction without a visual
frame of reference.

We have learned a great deal about
how migratory birds find their way from
wintering to breeding areas and back
again. New knowledge about the infor¬
mation birds “sense” to determine
compass directions has come especially
rapidly. But as 1 listen to their “chips”
from the night sky 1 am aware that we
cannot explain how they do what we
know they do. No bird has ever been
followed over the course of an entire
migratory journey. Do they move
straight to their destination or wander
about, homing only when they near
the goal? Our inability to answer these
questions generates the mystery of
migration; the possibility of discover¬
ing answers makes it an enthralling
subject for study.

FURTHER READING

Baker, Robin. The Mystery of Migration. Viking
Press, New York. 1980.

Fisher, Allan C., Jr. “Mysteries of Bird Migra¬
tion.” National Geographic, August, 1979.

THE AUTHOR

Kenneth Able is an associate professor in the
Department of Biological Sciences, State Uni¬
versity of New York, Albany.

On weather radar, echoes from flocked
migrants, such as Canada geese (left) and
dunlins (below), are distinguishable from
songbirds. (Above) Guy Tudor’s dramatic
painting of night'migrating songbirds.

The Living Bird Quarterly 1 3

Jeanne White (Photo Researchers, Inc.)

SEABIRDING

by Ron Naveen

Left, black-browed albatross. Above, blue-footed boobies.

Wb ROUNDED THE HORN at
2 a.m. and turned into the 600 mile
long, windswept expanse that separates
terrestrial humanity from the white
desert to the south. 1 awakened early,
went directly to the ship’s fantail, and
began my sea watch in the murky
morning light of the world’s bottom.
We seabirders are used to inexorable
scans of the horizon, straining to see
any seabird that might whiz by or join
the stern’s trailing flock. Many
uneventful hours may pass, and one’s
patience and discipline may be
stretched to the limit. A seabird may
emerge unexpectedly and then disap¬
pear just as quickly. However, in this
circular latitudinal belt of unimpeded
wind and sea known as The Roaring
’40s and The Furious ’50s, frustrations
3 are reduced and satisfaction is more
frequent than in other waters.

There were numerous southern giant

petrels in this morning’s wake and scat¬
tered numbers of Wilson’s storm-petrels
and black-browed albatrosses. The “g-
ps” and “brows” had been with us con¬
stantly through the Beagle Channel and
into the Drake Passage; the diminutive
storm-petrels were new additions and
would increase in number as we got
closer to their breeding grounds on the
Antarctic Peninsula. They were also
familiar sights, common post-breeding
visitors to my regular pelagic haunts in
the western north Atlantic Ocean.
Wilson’s storm-petrels are about six
inches in body length and seemingly
vulnerable to being swept away by the
next gust or to drowning in the next
swell. Sailors call them Mother Carey’s
chickens and, depending on the tale,
they are considered omens of either
good or bad luck. One myth has Mother
Carey turning the souls of drowning
sailors into storm-petrels, hence the fear

The Living Bird Quarterly 15

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

that storm-petrels precede the worst of
fates. I’d rather believe the contrary
superstition, that their presence indi¬
cates the protection of both birds and
mariners from imminent danger.

Today I was preoccupied by the pros¬
pect of seeing my first wandering alba¬
tross. If you haven’t guessed by now,
we seabirders are unrelieved dreamers.
Dreaming compensates for the obsta¬
cles we face. Terrestrial birds give us
relatively long looks; we can take time
to look for field marks that clinch an
identification. Seabirds, however, are
constantly on the move and only rarely
offer a second chance to guess their
identity. Adding them to one’s life list
requires numerous trips offshore in
myriad kinds of craft, from fishing
headboats to tramp steamers, and in all
sorts of weather, never knowing what
might be served up. There is motion
everywhere—the birds, the boat, the
sea, and one’s stomach.

Consequently, seabirding generates
either antipathy or unrestrained enthu¬
siasm, and few reactions in between.
Too often the high hopes that accom¬
pany the start of a pelagic trip are lost
in the disappointment of missing the
desired birds and having spent so much
time, effort, and comfort in the proc¬
ess. The cost is high but those willing
to pay are rewarded. The wandering
albatross, with a wingspan approaching
11 feet at maturity, is the creme de la
creme of seabirds. Every seabirder with
mettle craves this bird; the myths sur¬
rounding it and the reality of its unpar¬
alleled grace make it a capstone that
justifies the long hours and strenuous
effort seabirding often requires.

And finally this January morning it
came, soaring past a swarm of slightly
smaller giant petrels, banking and arc¬
ing through our ship’s trailing drafts. It
hovered no more than 15 feet away.
The appearance lasted 30 minutes,
interrupted once by the wanderer’s brief
descent to inspect a potential food item
on the surface.

The wanderer of the southern ocean
sky is a fascinating creature. After a
fledgling period of almost 280 days, the
longest of any bird, the young wanderer
roams the ’40s and ’50s for eight or nine
years before it makes its first attempt
to breed. Because of the lengthy fledg¬
ling period, mates breed every two years
and one season’s fledglings are still
present when the next season’s adults
return to the breeding grounds.

My first wanderer was approximately
six years old and still had some black
on its tail and mantle. It was joined by
a three-year-old bird which had much
dark brown on its head and body. As I
watched them I wondered how many
times they had traveled past this spot.
How many circumnavigations had they
made in their brief lives? Finally for no
apparent reason, they soared away.

V^eabirding in the Arctic, on island
outposts in the middle of the ocean, or
in Antarctica begins with identifica¬
tion. To be successful seabirders we must
restructure the usual emphasis on field
marks. Fast-moving seabirds may yield
no more than a fleeting glimpse. The
trick is to use this time advantageously
by examining seabird flight patterns and

behavior, valuable identification clues.
Feeding styles and relative size also may
be important.

Recognizing behavioral subtleties
requires some practice, but can be
learned easily. They force birders to
ascertain a seabird’s gestalt or what the
British call “jizz.” Both relate to the
combined visual and abstract impres¬
sions a seabird conveys. Is it powerful?
Does it proceed with quick move¬
ments? Is it piratical? Does it soar or
glide and to what extent? This evi¬
dence places the seabird into its proper
generic niche, setting the stage for using
field marks more readily and accu¬
rately. Field marks are useless if the
albatross you think you saw is actually
a giant petrel. I’ve seen black-capped
petrels identified as greater shearwaters
because the jizz was incorrectly assessed.

Reliance on subjective characteris¬
tics began because birders found it dif¬
ficult to focus their binoculars while
the subject was constantly shifting.
Only one modern field guide. Seabirds
by Peter Harrison, reflects the evolu¬
tion of seabirding skills. Perhaps our
fascination with seabirds began with
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the
Ancient Mariner” but it wasn’t until
1928 that someone attempted a seabird
field guide. H. B. Alexander’s Birds of
the Ocean was a bold stroke, consider¬
ing the lack of accurate, or in some
cases, any information about these
birds. Close on its heels was Robert
Cushman Murphy’s epic Oceanic Birds
of South America, published in 1936.
Murphy’s two-volume treatise of South
American seabirds remains a classic,
in-depth treatment of seabird breeding
biology, natural history, and identifi¬
cation. Although these two works kept
some interest in seabirds alive, progress
in identifying seabirds was scant for the
next 30 years. A second edition of
Alexander appeared in 1954, but little
new information was presented, with
many gaps in knowledge still remaining.

In the 1950s and ’60s, James Fisher
and Ronald Lockley published their
natural history study of north Atlantic
pelagics, Sea-Birds, and each had writ¬
ten detailed natural history treatises
(Fisher’s The Fulmar and Lockley’s
Shearwaters) , but these did not com¬
pare in comprehensiveness regarding
field identification to Roger Tory Peter¬
son’s United States and European field
guides. Some progress was made with
the Smithsonian Institution’s PrelimF

Northern fulmars closely resemble gulls in
size and shape but have a bullheaded jizz-

Wm. Curtsinger (Photo Researchers, Inc.)

Northern gannets are attracted to chum and fly ivith deep wingbeats interspersed with glides.

nary Seabird Identification Manuals in
the 1960s where, for the first time,
species accounts noted seabird behav-
ior and made comparisons among sim¬
ilar species.

The 1970s saw the phenomenal
growth of pelagic bird watching in the
United States and elsewhere, and it
became apparent to pelagic pioneers
that further identification tools were
needed. A committed group began to
examine critically the behavioral
aspects of seabird identification. How
could flight and feeding characteristics
clinch an identification of a difficult
seabird? Did certain seabirds prefer
warmer waters? Were some attracted to
vessels while others avoided them?
Leading birding journals began to pub¬
lish identification articles using these
techniques, as did one field guide. Har¬
per &. Kinsky’s Southern Albatrosses and
Petrels. But it wasn’t until this year with
the publication of Harrison’s book that
a guide fully incorporated an analysis
of behavioral criteria as a means of
identification.

Seabirds are consummate flappers
and gliders and their flight aspects are
the key to correct identification. (Pen¬
guins have taken these skills under¬
water. ) Indeed, each family of seabirds
flies differently and with practice these
flight styles, as well as feeding behavior
and relative size, can become part of a
birder’s identification arsenal.

Regarding flight behavior, concen¬

trate on the seabird’s course, speed,
effort, wing position, and jizz. Is its
flight path straight, zigzag, or erratic?
Does it rise or fall along its course? Does
it fly quickly, moderately, or slowly?
Does it fly with few or many wingbeats,
and how much gliding and banking does
it incorporate into its flight pattern?
When flapping, does it take its wings
above its back (and to what extent),
or just to the horizontal plane? Does it
soar high above the water? Does it
remind you of a swallow, a bat, a night-
hawk, or a shorebird?

If you see the bird feeding, note its
style. Is it a plunge diver, surface picker,
or foot patterer? Does it harass other
seabirds? Is it attracted to ships or chum
thrown overboard? Does it associate
with others of its species or mingle in
mixed groups of seabirds?

Gulls and terns are so well known
that they make useful introductions to
the new approach. Gulls fly with rela¬
tively deep wingbeats, taking their
broadly based and rounded wings well
above their backs, fluttering often to
the water’s surface to feed. There is
considerable flapping in their flight
repertoire, and only a minor amount of
soaring. Among the gulls, black-backed
gulls have looser, slower wingbeats and
appear heavier (they have a heavier
jizz) than glaucous gulls which in turn

have a slightly heavier jizz than herring
gulls. Herring gulls fly more slowly than
the lighter jizzed ring-billed gull, and
ring-billed gulls fly more slowly than
Bonaparte’s gull and kittiwakes. Bonie’s
and kittiwakes are the most aerobatic
of the gulls, with quick wingbeats that
resemble those of terns.

Terns do considerable flapping, but
with stiffer wingbeats than gulls, and
take their wings through a narrower
arc. Their wings are more narrow and
pointed than gulls’ and terns plunge
dive after subsurface prey. Some of their
plunge diving is preceded by hovering.
Caspian terns and gull-billed terns have
slower wingbeats than royal terns, and
all of these have much slower wing-
beats than Arctic, roseate, and Fors¬
ter’s terns. The least tern has the fastest
wingbeat in the group.

Northern fulmars closely resemble
gulls in size and shape, but have a bull¬
headed jizz. They appear neckless and
give a powerful impression. Their very
stiff and shallow wingbeats are inter¬
spersed with gliding and banking on
outstretched, stiff wings. Compared to
gulls, they proceed more quickly and
use fewer flaps. They are curious, rap¬
idly approaching ships, then departing
after their brief inspection. They fly
close to the water, sometimes soaring,
with their powerful movement the most
noticeable flight characteristic. Jizz is
crucial because northern fulmars have
two color phases. Light-phased fulmars

The Living Bird Quarterly 17

can easily be mistaken for lightly col- ^
ored gulls and dark-phased fulmars
closely resemble dark shearwaters.
Confusion may be avoided if the birder
knows the jizz of each group.

The northern fulmar’s closest rela¬
tive is the southern or Antarctic ful- .1
mar. It has only one color phase, but ^
shares the northern fulmar’s bull- «
necked jizz and quick powerful flight. “
Other relatives in the southern oceans
are: huge giant petrels, which do more
flapping, with deep, slow wingbeats,
and are much larger and more prone to
gliding and soaring high above the sur¬
face; and, the beautiful Cape pigeon
(also called pintado petrel).

Skuas and jaegers are the raptors of
the seabird world, and they harass and
chase other seabirds. All show a flash
of white in their primaries. Skuas have
broadly based wings and closely resem¬
ble gulls in bulk and size, but they have
a steadier, more powerful flight and an
aggressive jizz. Skuas are very curious
about large concentrations of birds, and
may rest on the surface among poten¬
tial victims.

To find great skuas on our winter
pelagic trips in the western north
Atlantic, we put down a chum slick of
ground beef fat and stale bread, which
attracts a trailing flock of northern gan-
nets, black-legged kittiwakes, north¬
ern fulmars, and great black-backed and
herring gulls. Then we wait for the skua
to come barrelling through the feeding
throng. On our summer trips, some¬
times we find South Polar skuas min¬
gling with thousands of northward
migrating greater, Cory’s, Manx, and
sooty shearwaters.

jaegers have a more slender and less
bulky jizz and frequently can be rec¬
ognized by their twists, turns, and
changes of direction as they pursue prey.
Pomarine jaeger is the largest, has the
broadest based wings, and appears rel¬
atively large headed and large billed; it
proceeds with very steady wingbeats.
Parasitic jaeger is smaller with a more
lilting flight during which it may rise
and fall with each wingbeat. Long¬
tailed jaeger is smaller and more slen¬
der than the parasitic, with an even
more buoyant flight. Based solely on
field marks, adult jaegers may be iden¬
tified by the shape of their elongated
central tail feathers. However, the birds

range in color from light to dark and
the diagnostic tail feathers may be bro¬
ken in adults or absent in immature
birds. So the subtleties of flight and jizz
become very important and may be the
only clue to these birds’ identity.

Shearwaters fly close to the surface,
with bursts of wingbeats followed by
periods of gliding and banking. Some¬
times they soar, but generally not to
considerable heights. Shearwaters have
longer and narrower wings than gulls,
skuas, and jaegers, and feed by making
short dives from the surface. The repet¬
itive flap-and-glide pattern is charac¬
teristic and may be discerned at great
distances. Many species of shearwaters
can be identified by the quickness of
their flaps and the length of their glides.
Cory’s and greater shearwaters rival a
ring-billed gull in body length; Cory’s
has very slow and floppy wingbeats,
while greater has stiffer and stronger
wingbeats. The smaller black-and-white
Manx, Audubon’s, and little shearwa¬
ters are comparable to a Bonaparte’s
gull in body length; Audubon’s shear¬
water flaps more often and glides less
than Manx shearwater, while little
shearwater has the fastest wingbeats of
the three.

The many kinds of gadfly petrels
resemble shearwaters, but inject much
dynamic soaring into their flight rep¬
ertoire. They proceed skyward on the
strength of a few flaps, then swoop
downward in a powerful glide close to
the water’s surface. Gadfly petrels soar

much more than shearwaters, and rise
and fall along their flight path.

Another group of flappers and soar-
ers are the sulids, the gannets and
boobies. They are very bulky, as large
as loons, and their bodies are tapered
fore and aft. This bulky, double-pointed
jizz in flight is easily recognizable. They
are much larger than shearwaters, gadfly
petrels, jaegers, and skuas. Sulids are
unparalleled plunge divers. Northern
gannets dive from heights of 100 feet,
and blue-footed boobies can dive into
water no more than a foot deep without
breaking their necks. They often soar
high above the water searching for sub¬
surface prey. Northern gannets are
attracted to chum and red-footed boob¬
ies to ships, and all fly with deep and
steady wingbeats, interspersed with
glides.

The two seabird families which soar
the most and flap the least are the ffi-
gatebirds and the albatrosses, and there
should be little difficulty learning their
jizz. The frigates have long, narrow,
and pointed wings and the greatest
wingspan-to-weight ratio of any bird.
They can soar to considerable heights.
They assemble in swirling masses high
above their breeding and roosting sites,
circling like kettles of migrating hawks.
Frigatebirds feed by swooping to catch
flying fish breaking the surface and by
harassing boobies and tropicbirds, forc¬
ing them to disgorge recently caught
food. Albatrosses are considerably more
bulky than frigates, with a hump-

18 The Living Bird Quarterly

backed appearance, broad and often
bent wings, and a flight plan domi¬
nated by soaring and gliding.

On the other end of the spectrum
are the flappers: storm-petrels, diving-
petrels, prions, alcids, and tropicbirds.
Diving-petrels and alcids are small and
chunky, with a weak, whirring flight
close to the surface. Blue-gray prions
fly quickly and erratically over the
water, with considerable twisting and
turning. Tropicbirds are white plunge
divers with very long tail streamers.

Storm-petrels deserve special men¬
tion because their flight and feeding
characteristics can be used to identify
individual genera and species. For
example, Wilson’s and Elliot’s storm-
petrels do much flapping on their short,
rounded wings, with little gliding, and
they proceed on a relatively direct flight
path. In flight they resemble swallows
and have a distinctive habit of patter¬
ing their feet on the water as they search
for food. Also, they are gregarious and
attracted to ships and chum.

Leach’s storm-petrel has more
pointed and longer wings, slower,
deeper and less frequent wingbeats and
flies with erratic changes of direction.
In flight it resembles the nighthawk.
White-faced storm-petrel hops over the
surface like a miniature kangaroo. The
white-throated storm-petrel hits the
surface with its large, spatulate feet,
then instantly changes direction.

\y/

While unlocking these identifica¬
tion secrets we seabirders have an
opportunity to examine the adapta¬
tions of seabirds and add to our knowl¬
edge of their natural history. One adap¬
tation is the ability of their special nasal
glands to expel excess salt ingested with
sea water. Look closely at seabirds and
you’ll see the salt solution continuously
dripping from their bill tips.

Another adaptation is their migra¬
tions. Arctic terns leave wintering
grounds in the high latitudes of the
Antarctic to breed in the high latitudes
north of the equator. Wilson’s storm-
petrel breeds in the far south and spends
the austral winter in the north Pacific,
Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. Seabirds
are very successful at locating prey; in the
Indian Ocean, tropicbirds select specif¬
ic portions of the ocean to feed accord¬
ing to water temperature and salinity.

Seabirds have mastered an environ¬

ment alien to humans, a realm that
covers 75 percent of the earth’s surface.
The only requirement that brings them
onto terra firma is that they must nest
on shore. As enthusiastic as I am about
pelagic trips. I’m practically apoplectic
about seabird breeding colonies. These
visits are incomparable experiences.

Imagine being in a teeming club of
male great frigatebirds, with their
inflated, red, gular pouches pointed
skyward and swaying back and forth.
The sight of an eligible female over¬
head causes the males to erupt in a
frenzied display of outstretched, quiv¬
ering wings and pulsating, swine-like
whinnies. The cacophony may be deaf¬
ening. With some luck, a female will
swoop down to inspect a particularly
impressive potential mate.

And then there are the penguins,
perhaps the greatest spectacle in sea-
birding. My favorite is the pugnacious
chinstrap penguin, 27 inches of unbri-

FURTHER READING

Alexander, W.B. Birds of the Ocean (Second Edi¬
tion). G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York. 1954-

Brown, R. G. B. “Seabirds as Marine Animals,”
in Behavior of Marine Animals: Vol. 4. Burger,
J., B. Olla, and H. Winn (eds.). Plenum Press,
New York. 1980.

Finch, D. W., W. C. Russell, and E. C. Thomp¬
son. “Pelagic Birds of the Gulf of Maine.” Amer¬
ican Birds 32(2): 140- 155.

Grant, P. Gulls. T. & A. D. Poyser, Calton,
England. 1982.

Harper, P. C. and F. C. Kinsky. Southern Alba¬
trosses and Petrels. Victoria University Press, Vic¬
toria, New Zealand. 1978.

Harrison, Peter. Seabirds: an Identification Guide.
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. 1983.

died personality. Chinstraps are closely
related to gentoo and Adelie penguins,
the two other brush-tailed penguins in
the Antarctic region. By comparison,
however, chinstraps are the most
aggressive in defense of family and
property. This bold animal fiercely
approaches enemies and may attack
with bill and flippers.

I won’t forget a visit to a spectacular
chinstrap colony at Deception Island
near the Antarctic Peninsula. My pres¬
ence was noticed by one chinnie who
sauntered over to me, wildly flexing its
flippers and croaking. I stopped in my
tracks, dropped my camera bag, and
returned an ecstatic display. It ceased
its imprecations and we exchanged
stares for a few minutes. The chinstrap
then nodded its head, bowed deeply,
turned and waddled away.

Savoring the moment, I vowed to
return to these chinstraps and other
seabirds wherever they may be found.

1936.

Naveen, R. “Storm-Petrels of the World: an
Introductory Guide to Their Field Identifica¬
tion.” Birding 13(6): 216-229, 14(1): 10-15;
14(2): 56-62; 14(3/4): 140-147.

Nelson, J. B. The Sulidae, Gannets and Boobies.
Oxford University Press, Oxford. 1978.

Stallcup, R. “Pelagic Birds of Monterey Bay, Gal-
ifornia.” Western Birds 7(4): 113-136.

Watson, G. Birds of the Antarctic and Sub-Ant¬
arctic. American Geophysical Union, Washing¬
ton, D.C. 1975.

THE AUTHOR

Ron Naveen is editor of Birding, the journal of
the American Birding Association. He leads tours
to the north Atlantic, the Galapagos Islands,
and the Antarctic.

Ron Naveen and Adelie penguin

Murphy, R. D. Oceanic Birds of South America
American Museum of Natural History, New York

The Living Bird Quarterly 19

by Jeffrey K. Keller and
Charles R. Smith

Why do birds live where they do? The search for an
answer underlies much of the study of bird ecology.

V^^ONSIDER the long-term conse¬
quences of abandoning a tract of farm¬
land in the northeastern United States
and allowing it to remain ungrazed or
untilled for a century. Initially, the
property will become populated by a
whole new array of grasses and other
herbs. After a few years shrubs and
saplings will become established fol¬
lowed by the growth of the saplings
into mature trees and, after many dec¬
ades, a forest will appear where it once
occurred before the land was cleared.

Different species of birds and other ani¬
mals will be associated with each new
group of plants. This sequence of
changes in vegetation and associated
groups of animals is called ecological
succession—a process which creates the
mosaic of fields, shrublands, forests,
marshes, and swamps you see when
looking down on the earth from an
airplane. Before early European settlers
arrived in North America, natural
processes accounted for landscape vari¬
ety and successional change — fires

ignited by lightning, floods caused by
severe rainfall, forest clearings created
by heavy windstorms or tornados, and
swamps and marshes formed by beaver
activities in our northern forests.
Within this patchwork, why do birds
live where they do?

The question seems simple but the
search for an answer underlies much of
the study of bird ecology. Take a well-
known species like the red-eyed vireo.
A quick check of its range map in one
of the popular field guides shows that

Birds in a Patchwork Landscape

White-breasted nuthatch belongs to the bark-gleaners’ guild.

20 The Living Bird Quarterly

Guilds. One often-studied subset of
the community is called the guild. A
guild is a group of species using similar
resources in similar ways, such as for¬
aging for insects by gleaning foliage.
The members of a guild do not have to
be related. In the tropics, for example,
if we study the guild of animals that uses
nectar for food, we will observe hum¬
mingbirds, butterflies, ants, bees, and
wasps that use the nectar resource by
day, and moths and bats that search for
nectar at night. The ecological concept
of the guild is much like the term for
describing medieval trade organiza¬
tions. Groups of artisans with similar
skills formed guilds to standardize labor
practices, training for apprentices, and
compensation for their labor. Several
members of the same family might be
in the same guild, but other families in
the same town also could have mem¬
bers in the guild as long as they did
similar work.

Patches. We referred to habitat as
the address within the community
where we find a particular bird species.
Since the species forming a guild may
use parts of several different habitats,
it is also helpful for us to identify the
parts of a community used collectively
by guild members. To extend our earlier
analogy, we need to identify the address
of the guild. Within the community
the address of a guild becomes the patch
within which the various guild mem¬
bers interact and make a living. What
might be some examples of patches and
guilds? Let’s look within a forest again,
but this time let’s choose a northern
hardwoods-hemlock forest in the
northeastern United States.

Within this forest of maple, beech,
birch, and hemlock we may identify
two kinds of patches and their associ¬
ated guilds in the canopy. The deci¬
duous canopy of maple, beech, and
birch could constitute one patch while
the coniferous canopy of hemlock would
be another. We usually find the red¬
eyed vireo foraging for insects among
the leaves and twigs of the deciduous
canopy. Another species often associ¬
ated with the red-eyed vireo, the scar¬
let tanager, might also be found glean¬
ing insects in this patch. Other species
making their living in a similar man¬
ner, but more typically found in the
hemlocks, are the black-throated green
warbler, Blackburnian warbler, and sol¬
itary vireo. These two guilds of birds
may be described, respectively, as the

called its habitat. It may be helpful to
think of habitat as the address of a
species within its ecological community.

After identifying the habitat of the
red-eyed vireo we may ask—what does
it do in the deciduous forest canopy
that makes it best suited to live there?
Ecologists refer to the functional role
of a species within a community as its
niche. In the same sense that habitat
may be considered its address, niche
may be thought of as the occupation of
the species. In this case, the red-eyed
vireo makes its living by searching
among the leaves and twigs of the forest
canopy for insects; it is a foliage-gleaner.

There are a number of other ways for
birds to make a living as well as other
places for them to live in the forest
community. While it may be interest¬
ing to describe separately the niche and
habitat of each bird species in the for¬
est, community ecologists often are
interested in identifying patterns of
interactions among two or more species
within communities. Because so many
interactions are possible among the
birds in an ecological community and
the potential interactions among all the
species in a community are virtually
innumerable, ecologists have found it
useful to describe and define units of
organization that lie between individ¬
ual species at one end of the spectrum
and the total community at the other.
By dealing with a subset of organisms,
and hence interactions, researchers can
better organize information and focus
their questions regarding the structure
and complexity of entire communities.

Solitary vireo is typically found in hemlocks and is a coniferous'canopy'foliage gleaner.

A mosaic of habitats

in summer it is distributed over much
of the continental United States and
Canada. However, we know that within
that broad geographic range red-eyed
vireos are not found everywhere. Typ¬
ically, they inhabit deciduous forests.
Interacting groups of plants, birds, and
other animals occurring together are
called communities. Within the deci¬
duous forest community, red-eyed vireos
usually inhabit the tree canopy. Thus,
exactly where a bird lives turns out to
be much more restricted than a range
map implies. The specific place where
a bird lives within the community is

The Living Bird Quarterly 21

deciduous-canopy-foliage gleaners and
the coniferous-canopy-foliage gleaners.

If two or more species in a guild fail
to divide a patch into recognizable spe¬
cies-specific habitats, the potential for
direct competition exists. However,
competition among species sharing the
same habitat may be avoided in several
ways. For example, two different spe¬
cies may feed on different parts of veg¬
etation, one on leaves, the other on
twigs. Or they may feed in different
ways—one may glean small insects from
leaves, while the other hovers near
leaves to seize larger insects. Or the
species may feed at different times. The
idea is that each species has a slightly
different occupation—the niche con¬
cept we described earlier. Thus, two or
more species may continue to coexist
in the same habitat as long as their
niches are different.

Returning to the northern hard-
woods-hemlock forest, what other
patches and avian guilds might be pres¬
ent? For the deciduous- and coniferous-
canopy-foliage gleaners the patches
included the leaves and small branches
of the forest canopy. As far as these two
guilds are concerned, the forest floor,
tree trunks, and large branches of trees
are different and unused patches. What
avian guilds are using those patches?

On or near the forest floor two com¬
mon birds are the wood thrush and the
ovenbird. Two other species often found
with them are the veery and the hermit
thrush. Each may occupy slightly dif¬
ferent habitats, but together they could
be considered a guild that makes its
living by foraging for insects on the
ground and in low shrubs. Another
guild is one of the most familiar. The
downy woodpecker, hairy woodpecker,
and pileated woodpecker are three

widespread members of the guild of bark
drillers and probers which makes its
living foraging on the trunks and larger
branches of trees.

So far we have described patches and
guilds as if the kinds of patches and the
members of guilds never changed. But
because the landscape is constantly
altered by wind, fires, floods, and
human activities, as well as by ecolog¬
ical succession, we might expect
patches to appear or disappear sud-
I denly. Consider the consequences of a
j violent windstorm or tornado sweeping
g through a 100-acre tract of woodland,
I creating an opening (often called a
blowdown) of approximately 50 acres.
What new species of birds might appear
during the following breeding season?

To answer this question we might try
to predict what new patches would be
created by the windstorm and, in turn,
what guilds and species of birds might
appear. For example, a blowdown cre¬
ates openings of various sizes in the
forest canopy as larger trees fall. The
area between those openings and the
remaining forest is called an edge. Edge
is a border between adjacent commu¬
nities of plants. However, none of the
birds occurring along the forest edge

use all of the edge, just as none of the
birds in the forest interior use all of the
forest. Guilds of birds need only the
patch that provides them with oppor¬
tunities to make a living.

One patch found along the edge is
the interface between the canopy layer
and the open air. That patch is bene¬
ficial to birds that sally forth from
perches in search of flying insects. A
guild member in such a patch is the
eastern wood pewee. The windstorm
has given the pewee a chance to join
the community. This example demon¬
strates how even a modest increase in
habitat complexity can lead to an
increased number of species.

Patch Productivity. What other
changes could take place in the north¬
ern hardwoods-hemlock forest com¬
munity as a result of the blowdown?

Another patch created by the blow¬
down occurs at ground level. Within
the first three to five years following
the blowdown, tree seedlings, root
suckers, and stump sprouts appear,
forming a low and dense shrub layer.
That patch is invaded by a rich variety
and high density of foliage-gleaning
insect eaters that are typical in this
kind of vegetation. Among them are

22 The Living Bird Quarterly

the common yellowthroat, chestnut¬
sided warbler, black-throated blue war¬
bler, Canada warbler, mourning war¬
bler, and gray catbird.

Recently, on the Connecticut Hill
Wildlife Management Area near Ith¬
aca, New York, Jeff Keller found that
the early successional stages following
a disturbance are characterized by an
exceptionally high productivity of
insects. Such an abundance of insect
food leads to an increased number of
bird species found in the resident guild.

In the case of the eastern wood
pewee, the blowdown led to an increase
in habitat complexity which resulted
in a new species and its associated guild
being added. In the second example,
several new species were added to an
already existing guild because of an
increase in the quantity of food avail¬
able. Thus, changes in either food
quality or quantity or both can lead to
the addition of species to a community.

Patch Size. If a windstorm can cre¬
ate new patches resulting in new spe¬
cies or new guilds, can it also cause the
loss of patches and their guilds? Since
the windstorm affected only 50 acres of
our 100-acre forest, all of the patches
within the original forest and all of

their guilds might be expected to be
intact.

But are these 50 acres large enough
to support all of the resident species?
How small can a patch be and still
support breeding populations of its
guild members? In the guild of bark
probers and drillers, our 100-acre forest
might support five or more pairs of
downy woodpeckers, but might only
provide for the needs of a single pair of
the larger pileated woodpecker. There
simply might not be enough foraging
locations or food for the larger wood¬
pecker to occur in greater abundance.
After the windstorm reduces the forest
to half its original size, how long would
the pair of pileated woodpeckers last?
Could they find enough food in the
remaining tract of forest, or might they
be forced to move to a larger woodland?

Recent studies by Chandler Robbins
and his colleagues at the Patuxent
Wildlife Research Center of the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service have under¬
scored the importance of area in main¬
taining a variety of species of woodland
songbirds. Robbins’s work has shown
that some species are sensitive to the
reduction in area associated with the
cutting of forests and clearing of land.
Such area-sensitive species include the
red-shouldered hawk and barred owl
and songbirds like the red-eyed vireo.

Center: Smoldering aftermath of forest fire.

Above: Three years later, a new array of
lush herbaceous growth. Far Left: Downy
woodpecker belongs to the bark'probing guild.

scarlet tanager, and ovenbird. In heav¬
ily developed areas like the corridor
between Baltimore, Maryland and
Washington, D.C., where Robbins did
his work, it appears that contiguous
woodlands of 200 acres or more are
necessary to assure that those species
will be able to remain in the area.
Smaller areas may not contain suffi¬
cient habitats or patches to support area-
sensitive species and the guilds they
compose.

Double-Edged Sword. Thus, we are
confronted with a double-edged sword
when deciding how best to manage
dwindling wildlife preserves. Do we
create and maintain a variety of differ¬
ent habitats for the greatest number of
species, or do we leave intact as many
acres of forest as possible for area-sen¬
sitive birds? Such questions are at the
base of habitat management. The
answers, however, are neither apparent
nor simple, and are further compli¬
cated by the gradual but continuous
changes occurring within communities
over long periods of time—the process
of ecological succession.

Birds exist within a landscape where
habitat fragmentation from fire, flood,
and wind has been augmented by
human activities on a scale unprece¬
dented in magnitude and frequency.
Managing landscapes to prevent fur¬
ther loss of species or reductions in
abundance requires a thorough knowl¬
edge of the dynamic interplay of eco¬
logical succession, habitat structure,
size, and productivity, as well as species
abundances in a human-dominated
landscape. Birds are not the only com¬
ponent of that landscape, but they pro¬
vide us with insights that may lead
to a better understanding of the dis¬
tributions and abundances of other
organisms.

FURTHER READING

Burgess, R. L. and D. M. Sharpe. Forest Island
Dynamics in MamDominated Lxindscapes. Sprin¬
ger-Verlag New York, Inc. 1981.

Cody, M. L. and J. M. Diamond. Ecology and
Evolution of Communities. Harvard University
Press (Belknap), Cambridge, Mass. 1975.

Whittaker, R. H. Communities and Ecosystems
(Second Edition). MacMillan Publishing Co.,
New York. 1975.

THE AUTHORS

Jeffrey Keller is a Ph.D. candidate in the New
York Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit,
Department of Natural Resources, Cornell Uni¬
versity. Charles Smith is director of the Labora¬
tory of Ornithology’s education program.

The Living Bird Quarterly 23

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

RESKAECH&REVIEW

by Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

Radioactivity Sensing

The canary in the coal mine has become a
cliche. Nevertheless, the canary’s sensitiv-
ity to carbon monoxide remains one of the
best examples of an animal warning humans
of unhealthy environmental conditions.
When the canary died, the miners knew it
was time to evacuate the mineshaft. In a
similar manner, declining numbers of bald
eagles and peregrine falcons over the last
few decades warned us of unsafe pesticide
levels in our environment. Now, studies by
Reto Zach and Keith R. Mayoh of Atomic
Energy of Canada Limited suggest that some
birds can detect environmental radiation
(“Breeding biology of tree swallows and
house wrens in a gradient of gamma radia¬
tion,” Ecology, vol. 63, pp. 1720- 1728).

In 1973 a radioactive source was placed
on a 70-foot tower at the Whiteshell Nuclear
Research Establishment in Manitoba, Can¬
ada to examine the effects of chronic gamma
radiation on a mixed boreal forest. The
source produces a radioactive field which
diminishes in intensity with increasing dis¬
tance from the tower. The source is lowered
into a shielded castle by remote control
when researchers need to enter the study
area.

The area is predominately aspen-birch
parkland, with open meadows and willow
thickets. Now, 10 years after the source was
placed in the area, most trees within 175
feet of the tower have been killed by radia¬
tion, although other plants still abound.
Beyond 300 feet, radiation effects on the
vegetation are not obvious and may or may
not exist.

Zach and Mayoh erected 250 tree swal¬
low/house wren nest boxes in positions
ranging from immediately adjacent to the
source to about 1.3 miles away. They nailed
boxes to trees, telephone poles, and stakes,
attempting to space the boxes uniformly in
and around similar appearing meadows.
They measured the amount of radioactivity
reaching each box by means of dosimeters
stapled inside each box. In general, the
farther from the source, the less radiation
a box received.

Zach and Mayoh discovered that the 150
tree swallows and house wrens that nested
in the boxes during two breeding seasons
avoided boxes with high exposure rates.
Furthermore, most of the birds that built
nests in boxes with relatively high exposure
rates abandoned the nests before laying eggs.

Did the birds actually sense the level of
radiation? Was some coincidental factor

involved? Or did the birds pick up cues
from some secondary factor associated with
radiation exposure, such as the amount of
vegetation near each box?

To examine these questions, Zach and
Mayoh measured several variables: height
of the nest holes, direction (compass ori¬
entation) of the holes, and the amount of
vegetative cover near and above each box.
None of these factors seemed to influence
nest-box selection. The birds used boxes
with varying hole heights and directions,
and both species rejected nest boxes with
high exposure rates regardless of the amount
of cover near the boxes. Of the remaining
boxes with low exposure rates, swallows
chose those with little cover, while wrens
used the ones with heavy cover; two species
with different habitat requirements
responded identically to the radioactive
exposure.

Zach and Mayoh also compared the
amount of exposure of boxes used for breed¬
ing with several measures of breeding per¬
formance, including number of young
fledged per nest and growth rate of nest¬
lings. They found no significant correla¬
tions. However, the lack of correlations
between radioactive exposure and breeding
success may have been because the birds
used only those boxes with radioactive lev¬
els low enough to permit successful breed¬
ing. It is interesting to note that the single
tree swallow that nested very close to the
radioactive source did not hatch its three
eggs despite prolonged incubation.

This is not the first study to show that
animals, including rats and certain inver¬
tebrates, can detect radiation. However,
the method by which animals may detect
it is unknown. And the question remains
whether birds actually detect the radioac¬
tivity or if they sense some secondary char¬
acteristic, related to radioactivity, that the
researchers thus far have not identified.

Song Stealing

The mockingbird is well known for its abil¬
ity to imitate the songs of other birds, yet
even its best teplications are usually rec¬
ognized as fakes by experienced birders.
What about other birds? Are they fooled?

Eliot A. Brenowitz of Cornell University
tested whether mockingbird imitations of
red-winged blackbird song are good enough
to deceive red-wings (“Aggressive response
of red-winged blackbirds to mockingbird
song imitation,” The Auk, vol. 99, pp. 584-
586). Using a tape recorder, he compared

the responses of 10 territorial red-wings to
red-wing song with responses to a mock¬
ingbird imitating a red-wing song. He dis¬
covered that most of the blackbirds showed
strongly aggressive responses upon hearing
the mimic song, just as they did when hear¬
ing the songs of other red-wings.

Brenowitz feels that this suggests that
red-wings are unable to distinguish between
songs of other red-wings and mockingbird
imitations. Therefore, mockingbirds
potentially could use theit red-wing imita¬
tions to exclude blackbirds from mocking¬
bird territories. Since mockingbirds and red¬
wings often eat similar foods, this could be
a way for mockingbirds to dominate a food
supply.

However, as Brenowitz points out, the
study is not conclusive. The tape-recorded
mockingbird imitations he used consisted
of only isolated red-wing songs. Even expe¬
rienced birders could be fooled by these.
Normally, the mockingbird sings red-wing
songs as part of a longer song-phrase that
includes other bird songs. So, in a natural
situation, red-wings may not always be
fooled.

Further studies could answer this ques¬
tion. They also could examine whether
other mimicked birds are fooled by mock¬
ingbird imitations. And they could shed
light on other possible functions of song
mimicry. Perhaps mockingbirds increase
their song repertoires to attract mates better
or to do a better job of advertising their
territorial boundaries to other male
mockingbirds.

Wild Park Ducks

People often think of park waterfowl as
tame birds, eagerly awaiting a crust of bread
or other handout from youthful visitors.
However, H. W. Heusmann of the Massa¬
chusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife
has discovered that some park mallards are
truly wild, at least for part of the year (Jour¬
nal of Field Ornithology, vol. 52, pp. 214—
221 ).

Heusmann analyzed the seasonal move¬
ments of 269 mallards that he banded dur¬
ing winter in Massachusetts parks where
ducks were accustomed to being fed by peo¬
ple. About 28 percent of the birds were
recovered at least 60 miles from the parks
where they were banded, indicating that
they were only visiting the park at the time
they were banded. Heusmann calls these
ducks “wild migrants,” or birds that reside
in parks only during late fall and winter.

The Living Bird Quarterly

Cedar u’axwing

Approximately 60 percent of the ducks were
recovered outside but nearby the parks; these
are “local residents”—mallards that spend
most of the year in a park but nest in nearby
wild areas. Only about 12 percent of the
banded birds remained in the parks
throughout the year.

Because of the apparent importance of
parks as wintering grounds for many wild-
nesting mallards, Heusmann feels that any
management plan for the mallard in the
northeast must consider the role of parks in
the mallard’s ecology.

Deadly Plantings

Highway plantings make travel along oth¬
erwise boring, desolate stretches of roadway
more pleasurable. However, Robert C.
Dowler of Fordham University and Gustav
A. Swanson of Colorado State University
discovered they can be deadly to birds
(“High mortality of cedar waxwings asso¬
ciated with highway plantings,” The Wilson
Bulletin, vol. 94, pp. 602 — 603).

Driving along the four-lane Highway 6
bypass near Bryan, Texas, they noticed sev¬
eral cedar waxwings being hit by cars. The
birds were feeding on the fruits of silver-
berry, Elaeagnus pungens, large, native shmbs
planted along the median strip about 10
feet from the pavement. As cars passed,
flocks of waxwings flew up, crossed the
highway, and returned to the shrubs. Sev¬
eral birds were killed each time a flock passed
over the road.

During the next month, Dowler and
Swanson counted 300 dead waxwings along
a two-mile stretch of Highway 6. The larg¬
est single count was 133 birds found one
day in March along a 300-foot stretch of
roadway. By the end of the month, only
about 10 waxwings remained in the area.

All of the dead birds that Dowler and
Swanson found were near median plant¬
ings; they found no birds at plantings along
sides of the highway or entrance ramps. The
message seems clear: shrubs or trees that
bear fruit or other foods attractive to flock¬
ing birds should not be planted along nar¬
row median strips.

Speeding Sparrowhawks

How often have you heard that predators
kill only old, feeble prey? This idea is a
long-perpetuated myth that originated early
in this century as part of a widespread
attempt by conservationists to convince
people that predators were not evil. This is
true; they are simply doing what they have
to do to stay alive.

It is also true that predators frequently
kill old and feeble prey. To stay healthy,
grow, and reproduce, predators must not
waste their energy. Therefore, they usually
concentrate on prey that are easiest to cap¬
ture; often these prey are young, old, weak,
or diseased members of a population.

But predators do not always eat the weak¬
est prey. Usually, a predator will kill any
prey it can capture. Many predator-prey
interactions are the result of chance
encounters and, under favorable condi¬
tions, a strong, healthy predator may be
able to capture almost anything.

New evidence for this fact comes from a
recent study by Timothy A. Geer of the
Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology,
Oxford, England. Geer studied great and
blue tits preyed upon by sparrowhawks,
European relatives of our sharp-shinned
hawk. They found that killed birds differ
ver>’ little, if at all, from their counterparts
that are not captured (“The selection of tits
Parus spp. by sparrowhawks Accipiter nisus, ”
Ibis, vol. 124, pp. 159— 167).

Geer worked in Wytham Wood, En¬
gland, home of several pairs of sparrow-
hawks and dozens of great and blue tits.
Virtually all the tits in the wood breed in
nest boxes provided for them, making it
easy to monitor the birds’ breeding. During

breeding season, all nest boxes are checked
regularly and records are kept for several
brood and physical characteristics, includ¬
ing the number of the band given to each
nestling bird. Age, sex, and band number
also are recorded for adults captured near
their nest boxes.

To discover which individual tits were
captured by sparrowhawks, Geer collected
hawk pellets from nine sparrowhawk nests.
Pellets are indigestible parts of prey, such
as bones, beaks, and claws, that a hawk
regurgitates a few hours after eating. The
sparrowhawk pellets also contained the
bands of tits that the hawks had eaten.
After the breeding season, Geer removed
and dissected the hawks’ nests to recover
bands that had become lodged inside.

Over a three-year period, Geer made three
kinds of comparisons to see whether certain
types of tits were captured more frequently
than others. First, he compared character¬
istics of individual fledgling tits killed by
sparrowhawks with average characteristics
of fledgling tits, including brood size,
hatching date, and individual weight. Sec¬
ond, he compared characteristics of killed
adult tits with average characteristics of the
adult population, including sex and time of
nesting. Third, he compared hawk selec¬
tion of young versus adult tits.

Geer discovered that young tits killed by
sparrowhawks did not differ significantly
from the general young population, except
young blue tits killed in the second and
third year of the study were those that had
hatched slightly later in the season. Geer
speculates that the hawks may-have cap¬
tured more late-brood young because they
were still in family groups and therefore
more vulnerable than earlier brood birds
which already had dispersed into the thick
cover of the tree canopy.

There also were no significant differences
between killed adult tits and the average
adult population, except that hawks tended
to select male great tits slightly more fre¬
quently than females. Geer suggests that
this is because males are more conspicuous
when foraging or defending their territories.

Finally, for both species, Geer found that
hawks captured young more frequently than
adults only during the study’s second year.
This may have happened because during
the second year there were far more tits
living in the wood; although the ratio of
young to adults did not change from year
to year, the sheer number of young birds
present during the second year may have
increased their vulnerability.

Geer concludes that the sparrowhawks
were largely unselective in capturing their
prey. This probably results from the spar-
rowhawk’s method of attack: it lies in wait
or dashes into a group of prey from cover.
A surprised tit, even a healthy one in the
prime of life, has little chance to escape a
speeding sparrowhawk.

The Living Bird Quarterly 25

NEWS&NOTES

Dear Member:

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for helping us achieve a year of tremendous
growth. Two years ago our membership barely reached 3,000. With so little money coming in,
our research and education programs had to be stripped to the bone.

Then we decided to suspend publication of our technical journal. The Living Bird, in order
to fund a new magazine which would be geared to a larger audience. Our idea was that people
interested in reading the Quarterly might want to become members. And the larger our
membership, the more extensive and effective our research and public education.

With much holding of breath and wringing of hands, we waited for netvs about the Quarterly
to spread. At last we are beginning to see some results; our membership is now near 6,000,
with 700 people signing up in May alone. We hope to have 10,000 members by this time
next year.

What, you may ask, do we hope to do with our support dollars^ If our finartces continue to
improve, we would like to increase our services to members —by expanding the Quarterly and
perhaps resuming occasional publication of a technical journal. We hope to improve our art
gallery and add to our interpretive exhibits at Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary. If we can find the
initial funding, we have high hopes for national distribution of our new radio program, “Song
and Flight. ” We also would like to sponsor more international tours, similar to our current
series to East Africa.

Besides enhancing our services, we wish to extend our research programs. At the top of the
list is our desire to transfer nesting and breeding data to a computer so that anyone studying
the reproductive success of selected bird populations can do so quickly and comprehensively.
Other plans involve the analysis and synthesis of natural sounds, and habitat studies of areas
under particular stress from land development Continued growth of our membership is the key
to our taking these initiatives.

Your dues, gifts, and bookshop purchases provide more than half our income. By joining with
us you have not only made our continued existence possible, but have allowed us to plan an
exciting future which we hope all of you will share.

Charles Walcott, Executive Director

Alexander F. Skutch is winner of the 15 th
Arthur A. Allen award for his outstanding
contribution to tropical ornithology. The
award was presented at the centennial
meeting of the American Ornithologists’
Union in September.

Dr. Skutch became deeply interested in
tropical birds while doing research in Cen¬
tral America in 1928 and, since no support
for studying them was available in the
depression years, he paid his own way, largely
by collecting and selling botanical speci¬
mens. After doing this for about eight years
he bought a farm in Costa Rica and settled
there in 1941 to continue his studies.

His writing includes: Life Flistories of
Central American Birds (1954), Life HistO'
ries of Central American Highland Birds
(1967), Studies of Tropical American Birds
(1972), Aves de Costa Rica (1977), A Bird
Watcher’s Adventures in Tropical America
(1977), The Imperative Call: a Naturalist’s
Quest in Temperate and Tropical America
(1979), and A Naturalist on a Tropical Farm
(1980).

Dr. Skutch writes, “I am greatly con¬
cerned about man’s destruction of na¬
ture-To know, appreciate, and pre¬

serve all the beautiful and wonderful things
our planet contains is, in my opinion, the
proper end of man.”

The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology
established the award in 1966 in memory
of Arthur A. Allen, ornithologist, teacher,
and co-founder of the Laboratory.

Early last June three peregrine falcon
chicks hatched under the Verrazano Nar¬
rows Bridge and two under the Throgs
Neck Bridge. The parent birds were raised
in captivity and released by Cornell Uni¬
versity’s Peregrine Fund. This is the first
time since repopulation efforts began in 1970
that the endangered species has hatched in
New York City.

The nests were discovered last spring by
bridge maintenance workers who witnessed
characteristic nest-defense behavior—div¬
ing, screaming birds that warned them to
keep their distance.

If all goes well for the chicks, they may
eventually return to the area to raise young
of their own.

The Laboratory is pleased to announce

the appointment of four new members to
its administrative board. They are Robert
Barker, vice president for research and
advanced studies at Cornell University;
Clifton C. Garvin, Jr., chairman of the
board and chief executive officer of Exxon
Corporation; Mrs. Harvey Gaylord, life

An acrylic painting of a pair of pintail
ducks on water won the 1983—84 federal
duck stamp competition. It was painted by
PhilV. Scholer, aprofessional wildlife artist
from Kasson, Minnesota.

Scholer had entered the federal compe¬
tition on four previous occasions, placing
high in the judging but never winning. This
year, however, his entry topped 1,563 other
paintings during the two days of judging at
the Department of the Interior.

His design will be reproduced on this
year’s Migratory Bird Hunting and Conser¬
vation Stamp, which must be purchased by
all waterfowl hunters 16 years of age and
older in the United States. The design for
each year’s stamp is selected through a
national contest. Revenue from the sale of
the duck stamp is used to buy wetlands and
other types of waterfowl habitat under a
program administered by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service.

member and former administrative board
member of the Laboratory, and Joseph R.
Siphron, member of the law firm of Mil-
bank, Tweed, Hadley &. McCloy.

Ron Naveen will be leading a tour Jan¬
uary 4 to 29, 1984 to the Falkland Islands,
South Georgia, South Orkney Islands,
South Shetland Islands, and the Antarctic
Peninsula on the M. S. Lindblad Explorer.
See numerous seabirds and multitudes of
nesting albatrosses and penguins. For more
information write: Salen Lindblad Cruis¬
ing, 133 E. 55th Street, New York, New
York 10022, or call (212) 751-2300.

Marion McCbesney, wife of Donald
McChesney, died on June 24, 1983, just a
few months after Mr. McChesney’s death.

Mrs. McChesney assisted her husband on
all his expeditions, including those devoted
to the sound recording and filming of birds
of North and Central America, Africa, and
England on behalf of the Laboratory of
Ornithology. In 1956 she was appointed a
research collaborator of the Laboratory.

The McChesneys were retired and resid¬
ing in Beaufort, South Carolina. They were
both active supporters of the Laboratory
since its inception and surely will be missed.

2 6 The Living Bird Quarterly

WESTERN

AMMUNITION/

Rtaehe» Up
and CetM *Em

>! PER \ KHF.LI.<
for hlch f1>b>c llswkH and iHirka. \
\-IVrt ahrlh for ra^irr abota —
)nit pirnt; nf puflrh in thrm.

VVpSr jiivt ‘^UK-krd a romplrlr lino wf thU fasnoBM anipunl-
(ton ijJiHfH, lubalo} cartriilt^M. He. Ml new. frmh •torli.

F<*K Hardaan*. PainI'v Hxhint Taclilr. Sporting Aidv '"ht-ri
W»»rk and rHm»>Ajnirt tr>

CHAS. A. SWAIN & SON

‘>'. 7 JXtKHi.N STREET. r\PE MAT
, lSeK>eocfoo<>cs5oc^>^-^«BWc^>^^

fc>

(/)

Impressions of Cape May. Tpp: Sunset at Cape May Point. Center Left: A 1938 Cape
May newspaper advertisement. Center Right: Peregrine falcons are common visitors.
Bottom: Cape May Peninsula offers dry footing on an otherwise wet stretch of planet.

Mecca
on the
Migration
Mainline

by Pete Dunne

IHEY LINED THE ROAD north
of Cape May Point just before dawn;
locals in Plymouths and Fords, sports
down from Philadelphia in Packards.
Over the whine of wind in the pitch
pines, you could catch snatches of con¬
versation, voices taut with anticipa¬
tion, and the sound of car doors slam¬
ming. As the sky behind the lighthouse
brightened, other sounds sharpened the
chill October air: the crisp, slick ring
of a shell chambered into a pump shot¬
gun, or the soft, uncompromising snap
of a double being closed.

They were gunners and they came
for the hawks that came with the
northwest winds of autumn. They came
for excitement, to test gunning skills
grown stale from a summer’s disuse, and
for the camaraderie that accompanied
the great autumn hawk shoots at Cape
May, New Jersey.

The shoots are history now. The pines
that flanked the road are gone. But the
wind returns each fall—and the birds.
And so do the cars that line the roads
of Cape May Point before first light.
Some belong to locals. Others bear
plates that span the continent and
belong to birders who come to Cape
May to observe and enjoy the hundreds
of thousands of birds that pass in migra¬
tion—the birds that have made Cape
May synonymous with fall migration.

The Living Bird Quarterly 27

Just how long birds have been
threading the length of Cape May pen¬
insula is not known, but it hasn’t been
long in geological time. Cape May itself
is only about two million years old.
Why birds concentrate here is no secret.
Cape May has a geographic position
that lies between the breeding ranges
of many northern and southern species
and it stretches out along the eastern
edge of a continent of prevailing west¬
erlies. It also has a diversity of habitats
that can accommodate many species.

“But,” you say, “other places can
claim these advantages that are not a
migratory junction.” One other feature
about Cape May comes into play. It is
a peninsula, a long narrow extension
of the New Jersey coastal plain that
reaches out between the Atlantic
Ocean and Delaware Bay. Each fall the
Cape becomes a giant funnel, catching
and directing southbound birds to its
terminus at Cape May Point. Some
species, like the broad-winged hawk,
are directed here because they shy away
from the rigors of a water crossing. Any
broad-wing that misjudges the inten¬
sity of the northwest wind and misses
Bermuda does not have another place
to land until it reaches the Ivory Coast.

But even species of land birds that
show little reluctance to migrate over
long distances of open water still must
rest and feed en route. For these. Cape
May offers the only dry footing on an
otherwise wet stretch of planet. When
nocturnal migrants begin landing after
midnight, they concentrate along the
length of the peninsula, bounty for
birders.

Human interest in Cape May’s bird-
ing wealth antedates the arrival of the
European invaders if the finely worked
quartz and flint arrowpoints that sprout
from new-plowed fields each spring are
any evidence. Written accounts by early
settlers mention large numbers of “bus¬
tards, swans, geese and fowls” but not
thrushes, warblers and the like, sug-

Bird counters

•£

Hawk watching

gesting, perhaps, an adoption of the
Indian’s practical interest in the region’s
avifauna.

Today, if you avoid the suburban
sprawl that characterizes the Atlantic
side of Cape May and make your way
along the bay shore, you will meet
shareholders in the Cape’s heritage,
people who can trace their lines back
to men who held charters from kings:
oystermen and gill netters, commercial
fishermen, cedar cutters and salt hay
farmers. They talk with a deep knowl¬
edge of the “cranes” (egrets) of the
marshes, of the “summer” (laughing)
gulls, and the “winter” (herring) gulls
and, when the spring tides flood the
marshes, about the awesome concen¬
trations of shorebirds that feast upon
the bounty of horseshoe crab eggs—
“red-breasts” (knots), “calicos” (wil-
lets), and the “bumblebee beach birds”
(sanderling/semipalmated sandpi¬
pers). (Lumpers are not a new phenom¬
enon. ) And you will recognize in these
people their deep-rooted oneness with
this land of black ducks and blue mud,
the calm assurance of those who have
learned to live in harmony with the
tides.

Alexander Wilson made a number
of trips to Cape May accompanied by
his friend and birding sidekick George
Ord. In 1813, Wilson collected both a
male and female of a bird new to him
in the area called “Cape Island.” Ord,
who was with him that day, named the
bird “Wilson’s plover.” Ord himself was
responsible for collecting a small pas¬
serine in 1809 which defied known
descriptions and was named by Wilson
“Cape May warbler,” the same com¬
mon name it carries today.

Audubon painted in the marshes just
north of Cape May, Spencer Baird (of
sparrow and sandpiper fame) made
extensive forays into Cape May, and

Cape May sparkles with sand and sunlight.

Witmer Stone, Cape May’s birding
patriarch and a leading ornithologist of
his day, set down his vast knowledge of
Cape May’s bird life in his two-volume
work Bird Studies at Old Cape May.

Then in 1976, the New Jersey Audu¬
bon Society established the Cape May
Bird Observatory. Cape May’s reputa¬
tion as a mecca on the birding circuit
grows yearly and as its fame increases
so does the number of its proponents.
If you were to stand in the shadow of
the Cape May lighthouse during the

^ j •• 1 .. ^ ^ ■ ■■''■■■■ ■■

last week in September and not wear
binoculars you would be in a minority.
The list of birders present would read
like a Who’s Who in North American
Birding.

Many are veterans of multiple sea¬
sons here, their arrival and departure
dates as predictable as the birds them¬
selves. You saw the same faces in High
Island/Galveston, Texas in April, and
Point Pelee in May. Now their paths
carry them south with the flow of
autumn migrants. But many more are
first timers, drawn by written accounts
or the insistence of a Gape May advo¬
cate that this is the place to be. The
atmosphere is festive. Rumors of a
“good” bird are tracked down by hope¬
ful tour leaders. Information is traded
freely; one Connecticut warbler report
for the location of a western kingbird
and the rumor of a Baird’s sandpiper.

The hawk watch platform at Cape
May Point State Park has become the
marketplace for the barter of informa¬
tion as well as a place for birders to

plant their feet in the flow of the day’s
events and not lose any prime birding
time. Overhead is the Cape May hawk
flight, known to exceed 75,000 birds
during most years with some estimates
doubling or tripling that figure.

Since 1976, Cape May Bird Observ¬
atory has maintained a raptor count at
the Point. The first took place from a
makeshift elevated tabletop. Now, eight
years later, the peak-season crowd of
hawk watchers crams the sturdy 90-
foot platform that each season becomes
a little less adequate. That first count
of 48,000 hawks in 1976 took the North
American hawk-watching community
by surprise. The figure, thought to be
too high, met with skepticism and in
some cases derision. The impact of DDT
upon raptor populations was still being
felt. Numbers that doubled the annual
totals from ridge hawk watch sites such
as Raccoon Ridge or Hawk Mountain,
were considered overly optimistic.
Many feared this would be interpreted
as a premature recovery in pesticide-

C/3

stressed populations and would cause a
relaxation of protection standards. A
hawk count conducted at Cape May by
Ernest Choate in 1970 which included
a count of 105 peregrine falcons was
doubted in print by Donald Heint-
zelman in his Autumn Hawk Flights.

It was partly in the hope of getting
to the heart of the rumor that brought
hawk watching’s godfather Maurice
Broun, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary’s
curator emeritus, to Cape May, and
this is when I met him. We stood elbow
to elbow overlooking the foxtail and
the waning afternoon flight, trading
banter and shoptalk, the new kid on
the block and the grand old master.

Maurice asked about the flight,
pointed questions about its pattern and
the problems of counting birds in a cul-
de-sac. As we spoke and watched,
Maurice got caught up in the flight, in
its subtleties, the patterns of different
species—accipiters along the wood’s
edge, falcons down the beach, harriers
overhead, buteos cutting the corner on
the Cape and turning north. Waves of
birds moved through in pulses and as
his excitement increased his skepticism
dissipated.

A new wave of raptors moved
through and I swept my binoculars along
the treeline, clicking off sharp-shinned
hawks and a stray Cooper’s hawk. I
spun around to work the beach and to
record birds passing to our right. Maur¬
ice held to the woods north and after
a flurry he turned and asked if I had
seen the harrier and the half-dozen
sharpies. “No,” I admitted, but had he
seen the eight kestrels and merlin that
had moved down the beach?

“No,” he replied, and then a smile
crept over his face that made it clear

Pete Dunne

The Living Bird Quarterly 29

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

that he was now another Cape May
advocate.

Comparisons between Cape May and
Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, Pennsyl¬
vania are inevitable and slow moments
on the watch at both mighty migratory
junctions are often filled with good-
natured debate about “which site has
the better overall flight” or “which offers
closer looks at birds of prey.” To my
mind, the Cape and the Mountain are
two sides of the same coin. Hawk
Mountain is steeped in the timeless
dignity of the Kittatinny Ridge, the
endless mountain of the Lenape Indi¬
ans. Its birds are spirits in league with
the mountains, the broad-winged wind
masters like the red-tailed hawk and
the golden eagle.

Cape May sparkles with sand and
sunlight, reflecting the dash of accipi-
ters in the trees and the laser flight of
a merlin. In the past eight years the
Cape May hawk watch has racked up
a set of raptor statistics that has made
many a grizzled hawk-watch veteran
push back his or her visor and whistle
in unabashed awe. And for ardent hawk
watchers. Cape May has become a must
stop, either on their way to or from
their annual pilgrimage to Hawk
Mountain—two grand autumn phe¬
nomena as different from each other as
mountains and shore.

But more than just a place to observe
tremendous numbers of birds. Cape May
is a famous rarity trap, where the bird
out of place is the norm, not the excep¬
tion. Peninsulas and other last points
of land have a way of attracting the
wayward bird, and Cape May shares
this happy circumstance with Pelee in
Ontario, Cape Cod, Massachusetts,
Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine
and Block Island off Rhode Island. It
makes perfect sense. Where you have
large concentrations of birds you are
likely to encounter the odd-bird stray,
out of touch with time and place.

The trouble with living on a vagrant
trap like Cape May is that the observer
develops new standards about what
constitutes an unusual sighting—stan¬
dards out of line with the mainstream
of birding. Seasoned members of the
Cape May birding block would hardly
lengthen their strides to intercept a
wanderer such as a western kingbird or
a Swainson’s hawk. Even rarities like
an eared grebe, Franklin’s gull or wheat-
ear are taken for granted.

To really rock the inner circle at Cape

30 The Living Bird Quarterly

May, it takes a genuine avian anomaly;
a brown booby, European kestrel, or
great snipe. Then there are the sight¬
ings that are spoken of only in whispers
to a close friend. Credibility is a little
like virginity—you lose it only once.
There are birds that could shatter an
otherwise unblemished reputation, a
European sparrowhawk, for instance,
or a greater golden plover. (Not, of
course, that they have ever been
proven. Certainly not!)

But even by Cape May standards,
hawk watcher Fred Hamer is a marvel
of unconcern. In 1981, amid 400 bird¬
ers, a rare wheatear perched atop a
picnic pavilion some 200 yards from
the hawk watch platform. Pressed for
an identification of the distant silhou¬
ette, Fred allowed it to be “some kind
of thrush” and returned his attention
to the hawk flight.

If you are interested in experiencing
a little of fall in Cape May, you can
pretty much pick any date. Fall begins
June 25 with the southward passage of
the first lesser yellowlegs and ends in
February with an influx of common
redpolls. Most birders cannot work nine
months of autumn into their schedules
and choose to arrive from mid-August
through October, the period of peak
numbers and diversity.

Shorebird numbers run keen early in
the season, from July through August.
Fall warblers peak during the last week
in August through mid-September. The
peak of the hawk flight occurs during
the last week in September through
October. Waterfowl and seabirds make
their run in November and December.

If your vacation is only a few weeks
long, I would suggest a trip to the Cape
when September brushes October, a
time of year that offers the greatest spe¬
cies diversity. Twice in the 37-year
history of the New Jersey Audubon
Society’s annual Cape May Autumn
Weekend, the species list for the three-
day event crested to 200. A few orga¬
nizations arrange fall trips to Cape May
and several tour groups offer peak-
migration package tours, including
Cape May Bird Observatory and Cor¬
nell’s Adult University.

I could say a whole lot more about
Cape May and its birds. I haven’t even
mentioned spring migration. But that’s
another story.

FURTHER READING

Teale, Edwin Way. Autumn across America. Dodd,
Mead, New York. 1956.

THE AUTHOR

Pete Dunne is director of Cape May Bird
Observatory.

Killdeer seek the borders of inland pools or remote brackish ponds.

Owen J. Gromme

Courtesy of the artist and Stanton & Lee Publishers, Inc., Madison, Wisconsin

TEIE LIVING BIRD

OTAETERLY

^ Winter/1984

Laboratory of Ornitrioio<)
i59 Sapsucker Woods Road
University

^baca. New York I "’ * -

AND AFTER
THEY HATCH

The Laboratory of Ornithology Cooperative
Research Program is fast becoming a major
force in the collection of information on
nesting habits and reproductive success of
North American birds.

We need participants from all over the
continent to help our ongoing study of how
bird populations are changing.

By completing even one nest or colony
record you are contributing to the study of
birds far beyond passing interest. Each form
returned to us represents one more piece of
the puzzle.

Find out how you can put your birding
skills to work. Write or call for more
information.

^ Cooperative Research Program, Laboratory of Ornithology
Cornell University, Sapsucker Woods, Ithaca, New York 14850 (607) 256-4999

Winter/1984
Volume 3 Number 1

THE LIVING BIRD

QUARTERLY

EDITORIAL STAFF

Jill Crane, Editor
Kathleen Dalton, Design Director
Richard E. Bonney, Jr., Associate Editor
Charles R. Smith, Technical Editor
Les Line, Consulting Editor
Donna J. R Crossman, Editorial Assistant
Lynne H. McKeon, Editorial Assistant

LABORATORY STAFF

Charles Walcott, Executive Director
TomJ. Cade, Director, Raptor Research
Jill Crane, The Living Bird Quarterly
Donna J. P. Crossman, Library
Samuel A. Eliot, Public Affairs
James L. Gulledge, Library of
Natural Sounds
Thomas S. Litwin, Seatuck Research
Donald A. McCrimmon, Jr., Cooperative

Research Program
Kathleen A. Mclsaac, Business
Charles R. Smith, Public Education
Jane Hance Wood, Administration

Administrative Board

p. 14

4 Bare-headed Vulture of California

Dean Amadon

Some say the California condor is a relict species on its
way to extinction from natural causes. Others argue that,
had modem man not come to North America, the condor
could have existed for another million years.

8 Evolution of an Encyclopedia

John K. Terres

What is the encyclopedia process like? It is a continuous
branching out from a great central corridor with many
bright and some dark rooms laying always ahead.

13 The Crow’s Nest Bookshop

14 Islas Encantadas

David O. Johnson

Into a ceaseless sea pours a fury of foam; swirls of grey,
haggard mist amidst which sail screaming flights of
unearthly birds heightening the dismal din.

18 Tale of Two Woodpeckers

John V. Dennis

Why does the pileated woodpecker thrive under
conditions that seem to have doomed the ivorybill?

James W. Spencer, Chairman

T. Spencer Knight

Charles

John D. Leggett, Jr.
Harold F. Mayfield
G. Michael McHugh
Edwin H. Morgens
Olin Sewall Pettingill, Jr.
Chandler S. Robbins
Lester L. Short
Joseph R. Siphron
R. Eliot Stauffer
Charles E. Treman, Jr.
Charles D. Webster
Walcott, Ex Officio

The Living Bird Quarterly, ISSN 0732-9210, is published in January,
April, July, and October by the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell
University, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, New York 14850.
Telephone: (607) 256-5056. The Living Bird Quarterly is free to members
of the Laboratory. Single copies: $2.50. © 1984 Cornell
University Laboratory of Ornithology.
Printing by Brodock Press Inc., Utica, N.Y.
Typography by Partners Composition, Utica, N.Y.

22 Birding on the Yucatan Peninsula

Ernest P. Edwards

Once past hotel-streaked boulevards, the tropical birder
can see the streaked attila, bananaquit or Vaux’s swift.

27 News & Notes

p.22

28 Research & Review

Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

30 A Question of Identity

Stephen Noivicki

“Chick-a-dee-dee-dee!” What does this sound mean to
black-capped chickadees on these cold winter mornings?

FRONT COVER. Golden eagle, western Montana.
Photograph by Alan Carey.

BACK COVER. Immature blue-footed booby. Photograph by
David O. Johnson.

Pleistocene drama: saber'toothed tiger encounters teratorns, ancestors of the California condor, the “bare-headed vulture of California. ”

Mural by Charles R. Knight. Courtesy of the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.

Bare-headed

Vulture

California

by Dean Amadou

I ONCE EXAMINED a manuscript
in the Bishop Museum in Honolulu
that represented the lore of an old
Hawaiian native as recorded by an early
missionary. The opening sentence of
the section on birds has stuck in my
memory: “In Hawaii dwell many
birds—some large, others despicably
small!” Now whatever one might say
about the California condor it would
never be called despicably small. Some
whooping cranes may stand a few inches
taller, some trumpeter swans or turkey
gobblers weigh a few pounds more, but
with its broad wings reaching to nine
feet and beyond and weighing 20 or 25
pounds, Gymnogyps californianus, the
bare-headed vulture of California as it
is called will, along with its cousin the
Andean condor, be on anyone’s list of
the half-dozen largest flying birds.

If we could turn the clock back a few
million years we would be in the golden
age of mammals when mastodons, giant
ground sloths, saber-toothed tigers and
other impressive beasts roamed our
continent. Among the scavengers
which evolved to feast upon their
remains was the California condor. At
that time it ranged across the conti¬
nent; its fossil bones have been found
in Florida. Perhaps these were young
birds which later retreated to the near¬
est mountains to nest; the condor does
not mature until it is six to eight years
old.

The Ice Age put an end to this mam¬
malian Garden of Eden. Most of the
big mammals went and with them went
their predators and scavengers includ-

4 The Living Bird Quarterly

Winter/1984 5

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

Rettig, Salb, Degen, F.R.E.E., Ltd.

The harpy eagle is another large, rare bird with a leisurely reproductive rate. Right top: The elephant seal, believed extinct at the turn
of the century, has abnormally low genetic variation. Bottom: The king vulture is cousin to the endangered California condor.

ing the huge teratorns, relatives of the
condors. The California condor sur¬
vived, though in a greatly reduced
range, along the west coast from the
Columbia River where Lewis and Clark
saw it, south to the mountains in Baja
Califorfiia, Mexico, just below the bor¬
der. More recently its distribution, as a
result of shooting, poisoning and dete¬
rioration of habitat, has become even
more restricted and now it is found only
in the coastal ranges of southern Cali¬
fornia. Its numbers have continued to
decline; today about 20 individuals are
left in the wild and nine in captivity.

The California condor is thus a relict
species, one whose range has shrunk
dramatically. Relicts occur at all levels
of classification: the ginkgo tree, Lati-
meria fish, and duck-billed platypus,
are relicts of groups that reached their
zenith millions of years ago and seem
to be disappearing. On the other hand
Kirtland’s warbler, which nests only in
a restricted area in Michigan, is a recent
relict, a member of the same genus that
includes our common warblers such as
the yellow warbler.

Some would say that the California

condor is a Pleistocene relict on its way
to extinction from natural causes and
would find no justification for going to
great lengths to prolong the supposedly
inevitable decline. One may answer
such seers by emphasizing how incred¬
ibly brief, in geological terms, has been
the presence on earth of civilized man
with a written record—a mere five or
six thousand years. If modem man with
his guns and poisons had not appeared
in North America, there is no reason
why the California condor, scavenging
upon deer, elk, and seals, might not
have existed for another 50,000 or
100,000 years, or perhaps for ten times
that long. And where will mankind be
after another 50,000 or 100,000 years?
Perhaps flourishing, perhaps sadder but
wiser, perhaps deader than a dodo.

No species is doomed to extinction
if a breeding nucleus exists, no matter
how small, and if no irreversible genetic
deterioration sets in. This is not to deny
that some species are more likely can¬
didates for extinction than others. The
duck-billed platypus is not only a living
relict of an ancient line of egg-laying
mammals, it is also highly specialized

which always makes long-term survival
less likely. Still, one cannot be abso¬
lutely certain that some pestilence or
calamity, man-induced or natural, will
not wipe out the higher mammals and
leave the scene once again to the egg-
laying monotremes. Vulnerability is
found in strange places. One would not
have expected the passenger pigeon,
once the most numerous bird in North
America, to have succumbed to per¬
secution with shocking rapidity—its
Achilles’ heel perhaps an ingrained
compulsion to nest in colonies, and for
the stragglers to seek colonies when
they no longer existed.

The California condor population,
while not necessarily doomed, cer¬
tainly is endangered by its extremely
small size. The old belief that inbreed¬
ing is harmful has a sound basis in
genetics. In a very small population
harmful genetic effects can spread
throughout the population purely by
chance. An unbalanced sex ratio also
can become established by chance as
in a large family of all girls or all boys.
In a species reduced to very small num¬
bers this can be especially harmful.

6 The Living Bird Quarterly

Just how small a population can be
before encountering adverse genetic
effects or chance deterioration depends
upon a number of factors in part
unknown or little understood. The fact
that the condor is a long-lived bird
helps—it can live for 30 to 50 years.
On the other hand, a small songbird
such as the endangered Kirtland’s war¬
bler is surely in trouble now that its
population is less than 1,000 indi¬
viduals.

Some birds and mammals have fallen
to a very low population and then
recovered nicely. The American bison
is one. A more spectacular example is
the northern elephant seal. Believed
extinct at the turn of the century, about
a dozen escaped the sealers on the
inhospitable coasts of the Mexican
island of Guadalupe. The small nucleus
bided its time for a few decades, then
began to mushroom and now there are
several hundred thousand of these huge
seals with new colonies appearing every
few years. Even so, tests by Dr. R. K.
Selander of the University of Roches¬
ter have shown that the amount of
chromosomal variation in this seal is
far below what is normal in its rela¬
tives. We may safely say that a species
that remains below 100 individuals for
any appreciable length of time, perhaps
a century in long-lived species such as
the condor or the whooping crane, is
almost certain to be doomed by the
spread of deleterious genetic combi¬
nations. How large a population is
needed for genetic health is debatable,
but 500 would seem minimal.

The California condor first nests
when it is six to eight years old; the
courtship, incubation and care of the
single young are so protracted that
nesting usually is attempted only every
other year. How did such an extremely
slow rate of reproduction ever evolve?
The question acquires greater perti¬
nence in view of the evidence first set
forth by David Lack of Oxford, that
natural selection will always favor the
maximum number of eggs and young
which can be nurtured successfully.

The leisurely reproductive rate of the
condor is matched by fewer than 10 of
the world’s roughly 9,000 species of
birds. One is its cousin the Andean
condor and perhaps the king vulture as
well. Some of the largest eagles such as
the harpy also have a cycle in which
nesting takes place only once every
other year. The same is true of two of

''Where will mankind
be after another
100,000 years?
Perhaps flourishing^

,.. perhaps deader
than a dodo, ’’

the largest albatrosses and of the king
penguin.

All of these birds are long lived and
turnover is slow. Once the population
has built up to the supporting capacity
of the environment, it is very difficult
for a young bird to get established. A
long process of maturing is necessary
for it to acquire the skills to mate and
successfully rear a chick.

One might compare the situation to
a stable, closed population of humans
which could support only a limited
number of professionals, whether sur¬
geons or shoemakers. Youngsters who
served a long apprenticeship would be
more apt to make the grade than those
who tried to rush things. Such a system
existed in human societies in simpler

times. Even a genius like Benjamin
Franklin started as an apprentice
printer.

One thus concludes, unlikely though
it seems, that condors breed slowly
because this is the best that such a
long-lived species can do. A pair that
started nesting at eight years of age
might then have a breeding span of 30
years and rear 15 young. Only two need
survive to replace their parents in a
population which, like all living spe¬
cies, would have reached a balance
point—all that the environment can
normally support. The longevity and
slow population turnover have helped
the condor to survive at low numbers;
on the other hand it means that recov¬
ery will be painfully slow.

Everything considered, the chances
that the California condor can be saved
are certainly no better than 50:50, even
with captive breeding. Citing this,
along with the deterioration of its Cal¬
ifornia habitat and with Los Angeles
ever upwind, some have concluded that
the funds devoted to the effort might
be spent better elsewhere.

Whether one agrees with this con¬
clusion is a matter of philosophy. To
the extent possible, no one will quarrel
that every species should be saved. Yet
human nature being what it is, all of
us are more concerned with a condor
or a whooping crane than with horse¬
flies. And it is much easier to raise
funds for a large, dramatic form of wild¬
life than for an obscure one. Further¬
more, some of the funds and interest
will spill over into the conservation move¬
ment in general. There is no certainty
that the support raised to save condors
or bald eagles could be diverted to other
species; much of it surely could not.

The truly remarkable growth of
interest in wildlife and conservation in
recent years has been in large part the
result of films about species such as
condors, or indignation such as that
aroused by the poisoning and shooting
of eagles. Questionnaires to the public,
to the consternation of commercial
interests, reveal that the public wants
not less but more concern for land,
water, forests, and wildlife. All power
to the California condor and those who
are trying to save it—by whatever
means.

THE AUTHOR

Dean Amadon is the Lament Curator Emeritus
at the American Museum of Natural History.

Winter/1984 7

EVOLUTION
OF AN

ENCYCLOPEDIA

by John K. Terres

The title of this article is

“Evolution of an Encyclopedia.” Per¬
haps it should have been called “How
to Wrestle for 21 Years with One Book
and Live to See It Published.”

It was not 25 years ago (1959), as I
have often said, that I began my Encj'
clopedia of North American Birds, but
almost 40 years ago. That was the time,
while I was still in the Armed Forces
in World War II, that I began to write
natural history and wildlife conserva¬
tion articles for popular magazines.

Fortunately for my early writing
career, I was stationed in New York
City and, in order to research my arti¬
cles, I became a grubby collector of
facts. I practically lived in the New
York Public Library and in the library
of the American Museum of Natural
History where I wrote down in long-
hand—mostly from scientific periodi¬
cals—detailed notes about birds, mam¬
mals, insects, reptiles, and amphibians,
on large yellow pads or 3" x 5" cards
that were the beginnings of my refer¬

ence file. These cards, arranged alpha¬
betically by subject, numbered at least
40,000. They constituted the general
nature subjects from which I selected
and later prepared a separate card file
for the bird encyclopedia. And I never
wrote an abstract of a scientific or pop¬
ular paper without recording the author,
title of article, date, and where it was
published. This was for future reference
if I ever wanted to return for further
information. I became a bibliographer
who enjoyed his work and during all
my years of writing I was, and still am,
addicted to the habit.

I am reminded of Dr. Elliott Coues’s
assessment of a bibliographer. Coues
was a brilliant 19th-century American
ornithologist and one of the great bib¬
liographers. After preparing three vol¬
umes of a bibliography of North Amer¬
ican birds, numbering some 15,000
titles, he wrote: “It takes a sort of
inspired idiot to be a good bibliogra¬
pher, and his inspiration is as dangerous
a gift as the appetite of the gambler or

dipsomaniac—it grows with what it
feeds upon, and finally possesses its vic¬
tim like any other invincible vice.”

In a very modest way, I can attest to
that statement for even in this quota¬
tion, which I remembered only in part,
I could not resist hunting it down and
at last finding it and recording it exactly.

But my searches in the ornithologi¬
cal literature were not to build a bib¬
liography for its own sake, but to draw
information from those more than
4,000 titles I had access to, and to cite
them in the encyclopedia as my author¬
ities. They were also for the benefit of
those readers who might wish to pursue
a subject further.

Many people have asked me how I
started the encyclopedia. Did I start
with the A’s, finish them, and then go
on to the B’s, the C’s, and so on? I
started in this way, certainly, and my
first article was a short biography titled,
ABERT, JAMES WILLIAM, the man
for whom Abert’s towhee was named;
the last article was ZOONOSIS. How-

8 The Living Bird Quarterly

Hans & Judy Beste (Ardea Photographies, Ltd.)

Winter/1984 9

Steven C. WUson/ENTHEOS

Black oystercatchers

ever, I never kept to a rule that I must
finish one letter before moving to
another because later readings would
reveal that 1 had not finished a previous
letter at all. In fact, 1 never knew when
a letter was complete until 1 was near¬
ing the end of the book.

A prime example is DISEASES in
which I discovered that I could not do
justice to all of the major bird diseases
in that one article without making it
much too long and tedious. Therefore
I wrote as separate articles, AVIAN
CHOLERA, AVIAN MALARIA,
AVIAN POX, and AVIAN TUBER¬
CULOSIS, after I had completed DIS¬
EASES. Thus I contributed substan¬
tially to the letter A long after I had
thought it completed.

Many large, interesting, and neces¬

sary articles were stimulated by one bird
family alone—the duck family. They
were AVIAN CHOLERA, BACTE¬
RIA, BULLA, EELGRASS, EMBER-
IZID, HETERAKIASIS, NEMA¬
TODE, PINION, SALMONELLOSIS,
SPECULUM, and WATERFOWL-
these after I had spent a month on the
research for the duck family.

Often I found it necessary to write a
major article before I had approached
its alphabetical sequence. For exam¬
ple, I researched and wrote the article,
NESTS AND NESTING, before doing
EGGS AND EGG-LAYING. Nesting
comes before egg-laying in the biolog¬
ical cycle, and it was easier and more
natural to cross-reference from nesting
to the later egg-laying period. It was in
this way, by skipping letters and writing

the big, biologically important articles
first, that I laid the framework for much
of the book, and developed the cross-
referencing system as I went along.

Edwin Way Teale was one of my
strongest supporters in writing the
encyclopedia. I shall never forget my
first visit to his home in Connecticut.
It was August 27, 1960 and we had a
discussion about my initial work on the
book. Ed said that he thought it should
have a long subtitle, such as one I
already had written: A Compendium of
Knowledge about the Physiology of Birds,
Their Feathers, Bone Structure, Behavior,
Ages, Life Habits, Common and Sciem
tific Names, and a Phonetic Pronuncia'
tion for All. He said this was the sort of
thing librarians depended upon as it
would give specific information about

10 The Living Bird Quarterly

''Sometimes it was like
Alice’s journey in
Wonderland but with
even more marvelous
company in the
characters of the
birds, ”

what is in the book. This was never
done and in the editing was discarded
as too long and cumbersome—a sort of
tail wagging the bird. I think my editors
were right, but somehow 1 still like that
long subtitle.

Reddish egret: dark and white phases

Progress was “satisfactory” as I noted
on February 28, 1962 when I wrote to
Roger Tory Peterson, telling him I had
delivered 70,000 words of finished copy
to the publisher. I said: “I have over¬
come the greatest obstacle, in a time-
consuming way, of having worked out
my formulae for the presentation of the
multiplicity of ideas and information
that will be in the book. It is an enor¬
mous task and might have been too
awesome to take on had 1 known in
advance how big a job it was to be. But
1 am happy in doing it—it is a constant
challenge that I delight in. I spend most
of my waking hours at it, and when not
strictly working, I am thinking, plan¬
ning, and actually ‘writing’ my way to
its completion, asleep or awake!”

Periodically I delivered to the pub¬

lisher the original manuscript in batches
of 10,000, 20,000, or even 30,000
words. The carbon copy I filed alpha¬
betically in my cloth ring-binder books
on my library shelves. These eventually
numbered 16 volumes, containing
about 50,000 to 60,000 words each. In
these I could take out or insert items
as the book progressed, retaining what
I thought was most important. To keep
order, to have the material accessible
for reading, correcting, or rewriting was
as necessary as the researching and
writing of the book itself

From beginning to end, it was selec¬
tion that shaped the encyclopedia,
always subjecting it to my judgments as
to what belonged or did not. Some¬
times I went astray in my desire to
include everything that interested me

Winter/1984 U

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

Least bittern nestlings

about birds—an impossible task espe¬
cially in one volume. To show how my
enthusiasm sometimes carried me away,

I occasionally went to great lengths to
write on a subject I liked, but later had
to discard for a briefer treatment or
perhaps to eliminate it altogether. I
spent one month researching and writ¬
ing the history of bird banding in
America and Europe. Then I decided
not to use it. It was much too long and
I felt that I had to limit BANDING to
a general discussion that would serve
anyone interested in banding work
itself I loved my historical account but
brevity had to be served.

What is the encyclopedia process
really like? I can assure you it is not the
neatly planned journey that one might
think. It was like traveling through
many great halls and corridors, most of
them with windows of light that were
the ideas that came gleaming through.
Then there were the dark rooms that
only after a time opened doors and win¬
dows, their unyielding darkness pene¬
trated at last by my complete absorp¬
tion, day and night, in the book, as
one idea led to another.

I am not trying to be dramatic but
graphic in showing that the journey
was not direct but mostly random and
that it was a continuous branching out
from that central great hallway that lay
always ahead, and leading to an even- g
tual end. ^

Sometimes I feel the process was like g
Alice’s journey in Wonderland, but with ^
even more marvelous company in the |
characters of the birds—to see their |
lives opening up and to feel the satis-
faction of getting to know them better ^
as I read and wrote about them. But x

12 The Living Bird Quarterly

always there was time looking over my
shoulder and the voice that said the
job must be finished—hurry, hurry.

Some worry crept in, prompted by
conversations with others working in
ornithology. Did I know that someone
in England was writing a similar book?
I did not let this concern me too deeply.
After all, I consoled myself, no two
people could write a book of this mag¬
nitude in the same way.

To illustrate that the work was not
pure joy, allow me to quote from a letter
I wrote an editor at Knopf on June 6,
1972.

“Dear Best of Friends: After talking
with you on the phone this afternoon,
I want to emphasize, even though I
knew you were kidding me somewhat,
that my problem in writing has never
been loneliness. It is, especially in the
current encyclopedia, a need for more
frequent editorial conferences, about
technical problems and subject matter
in the book, and my need at times for

Common redpoll

more guidance. I have an absolute hor¬
ror of doing over and over again some
of the material, which I have had to,
after reconsideration and editorial
advice, which makes the book seem
never to end.

“The frustrations are incredibly
trying—in having to revise as I am, the
bird biographies, and certain large bio¬
logical subjects which I wrote some 10
years ago, and am rewriting now because
of the need for updating, and even of
giving some of the articles a new slant.
This has put me in a real emotional
bind, at times, as you know, and I have
been further frustrated by nagging ill¬
nesses—which have not helped because
of time lost.

“I must say I enjoyed talking with
you on the phone today about birds and
nature in general. I especially miss the
association with others in my field, but
don’t want to intrude on the time of
others who are just as busy as I am. But
those associations do help, what with
my virtual incarceration in New York
where even the sound of a house finch’s
voice can be as alluring as a hermit
thrush’s in its sure effect of taking me
elsewhere. ...”

But the encyclopedia has been fun,
and with all the agony and despair that
I felt, the vision of a completed work
kept me going. Never have I had so
great a challenge, and the sheer, even
savage joy of the work is still with me.
What does one do after keeping stead¬
ily at one project for a third of a life¬
time? Of course, I have found the
answer—it is to start another book!
Not so big as the last one, not so long
and involved, but in the time required
to do it, it will suffice.

Iteven C. Wilsoi

The Audubon Society
Encyclopedia of North

American Birds

John K. Torres

This monumental work is the first truly
comprehensive one-volume encyclopedia to
provide rich, concise, authoritative, and
brilliantly illustrated information on the
birds of North America—all the birds that
nest or have been sighted in the 48
contiguous United States, as well as Alaska,
Canada, Greenland, Bermuda, and Baja
California, as recorded by the American
Ornithologists’ Union.

The contents include life histories of 847
birds, their appearances, habitats, ranges,
songs, nests, behavior, and much more...
625 major topics including courtship, flight,
singing, territory, and young and their care
... and definitions of ornithological terms.

More than 875 full-color photographs show
almost every bird that nests in North
America and many of the visitors. There are
also more than 800 black-and-white
illustrations.

1980, cloth, 1109 pages.

$60.00/54.00 members

Enclosed is a check or money order in U.S. funds, payable to The Crow’s Nest
Bookshop. Our address—The Crow’s Nest Bookshop, Laboratory of Ornithology,
Cornell University, Sapsucker Woods, Ithaca, N.Y. 14850.

Item Title Qty. Price

Amount of order -

N.Y. State residents add 7% sales tax -

Postage and handling, $2.00 1st item - 2.00

50<t each additional item -

Total amount enclosed -

Form of payment:

□ Check □ Money Order □ VISA □ MasterCard

Card #-Expir. Date-

Signature_

Name-

Address_

City_ State_ Zip-

Birds of the World

Oliver L. Austin, Jr.

Illustrated by Arthur Singer

Informative presentation of all the bird
families of the world, illustrated with 300
full-color paintings depicting 700 species.

Lively and expert discussions of
distribution, evolution, characteristics,
behavior patterns, nesting and feeding
habits, and biological structure.

1983, cloth, 317 pages.

$24.95/22.46 members

Seabirds:

an Identification Guide

Peter Harrison

A definitive book on the identification of all
known species of seabirds, including sea
ducks, loons, and grebes. Each species is
illustrated in color with different plumages,
postures, and views shown. Species
descriptions include plumages, flight habits,
distribution and movements, similar species,
and subspecies. Line drawings,
identification keys, and color range maps.

1983, cloth, 448 pages.

$29.95/26.96 members

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bias

Encantadas

Photographs and text by David O. Johnson

*ThE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS,
first named Islas Encantadas by Spanish
navigators, were visited by Herman
Melville in 1841. He wrote of his
impressions: “Take five-and-twenty
heaps of cinders dumped here and there
in an outside city lot; imagine some of
them magnified into mountains, and
the vacant lot the sea; and you will
have a fit idea of the general aspect of
the Encantadas. ... In many places the
coast is rock-bound, or more properly,
clinker-bound; tumbled masses of
blackish or greenish stuff like the dross
of an iron-fumace, forming dark clefts
and caves here and there, into which
a ceaseless sea pours a fury of foam;
overhanging them with a swirl of grey,
haggard mist, amidst which sail
screaming flights of unearthly birds
heightening the dismal din.”

So they were hundreds of thousands
of years ago, and so they are today.
More than 40 lava-bred tips of sub¬
merged mountains form the moon¬
scape islands dotting the Pacific Ocean
600 miles west of Equador. Hot lava

still steams to the surface forming new
islands and reshaping the old. The
bases of the islands lie more than 7,000
feet below the surface of the clear, cold
waters—a legacy of the Humboldt Cur¬
rent flowing from the Antarctic and
cooling the equatorial Pacific.

At the water’s edge gather seals, pen¬
guins, crabs, and marine iguanas. Bright
green algae contrasts with the dark rocks
and etches the line between the abun¬
dant food of the ocean and the fragile
inland food chain.

In 1835 Charles Darwin made his
historic visit to the Galapagos on the
H.M.S. Beagle. He wrote in Origin of
Species (1859): “Seeing every height
crowned with its crater, and the bound¬
aries of most of the lava-streams still
distinct, we are led to believe that
within a period, geologically recent,
the unbroken ocean was here spread
out. Hence, both in space and time,
we seem to be brought somewhat near
to that great fact—that mystery of mys¬
teries—the first appearance of new
beings on earth.”

Winter/1984

16 The Living Bird Quarterly

Above: Brown
noddy, adult and
young, on Isabela
Island. Right:
Immature yellow'
crowned night
heron on Seymour
Island. Left:
Swallow'tailed gull
and chick, S. Plaza
Island. Far left:

Fur seal and
newborn pup on
Hood Island.

Winter/1984 17

TALE OF
TWO

WOODPECKERS

by John V Dennis

Surely bayard christy, writ¬
ing in A. C. Bent’s Life Histories of
North American Woodpeckers, was
describing the ivory-billed wood¬
pecker; “It is a forest dweller; ... it is
alert, furtive (almost) as a bear, rather
silent in midsummer ... and it easily
eludes observation.” He goes on to
describe the huge holes this wood¬
pecker digs in the trunks of trees.
Finally, suggesting something a bit
uncanny about the bird, he speaks of it
as almost a fabulous creature.

Although his description fits today’s
ivorybill, he actually was writing about
the pileated woodpecker. If this seems
confusing remember that about 50 years
ago the pileated was everything he said
it was. It was wary, hard to find and
much less common than it is now.

In fact, around 1900, the pileated
seemed to be in the same category as
the Carolina parakeet and passenger
pigeon. As a result of hunting and a
seeming inability to adjust to the cut¬
ting of timber, this magnificent wood¬
pecker had steadily declined in num¬
ber. Surprisingly, after it reached a low
point around the turn of the century,
the pileated began to make a come¬
back. By 1920, it was not only return¬
ing to its former haunts but appearing
in second-growth timber—timber that
grows after a forest has been cleared.
In the words of ornithologist Lud¬
low Griscom, the pileated woodpecker
came back “not so much due to con¬
servation, as to its adaptation to less
primeval conditions.” By mid-century
it had begun to appear in towns, out¬
lying sections of cities, even at bird
feeders. The only major requirement

seemed to be good numbers of large
trees, including a few dead ones for
roosting and nesting holes.

Unlike the pileated, the ivorybill has
never shown a tendency to adapt to
humans. Its strategy has been to retreat.
Once found from southeastern North
Carolina and southern Illinois to Flor¬
ida and eastern Texas, by 1900 the ivory¬
bill survived only in the largest and
most remote of the southern swamps.
Amid moss-draped cypress trees sur¬
rounded by the waters of the swamp,
its strange, plaintive calls could still be
heard. We do not know whether the
ivorybill was always partial to swamp¬
land or retired to it because of vanish¬
ing forest habitat.

About 1930, Arthur A. Allen, then
a Cornell University professor of orni¬
thology, spoke of the ivorybill in Flor¬
ida as nesting in cypress swamps but
doing most of its feeding nearby in
young pine trees killed by bark beetles.
Perhaps before the arrival of European
settlers the ivorybill nested within the
safe haven of the swamp but ranged far
and wide in search of food. This is only
a guess.

As the century wore on, there were
fewer and fewer authenticated reports
of ivorybill occurrence. Then, during
the 1930s, the world was treated to
what might have been a final oppor¬
tunity to learn about this little-known
woodpecker. Thanks to the discovery
of a small population in the Singer Tract
of Louisiana, the first photographs, tape
recordings, and extensive life-history
studies of this species were procured.
James Tanner, then a graduate student
at Cornell, played a prominent role in

Right: Young pileated woodpeckers. Far right: Young ivorybill sits atop biologist's hat, 1938.
18 The Living Bird Quarterly

>■

“The easiest
course would be
to declare
the bird extinct
and be done
with it ”

Winter/1984 19

®James Tanner from National Audubon Society (Photo Researchers, Inc.)

collecting the information. Omithol- I
ogists Arthur Allen, Paul Kellogg, and o
George Lowery of Louisiana, visited the |
tract and helped preserve a record of "x
this bird. But by 1948 the 80,000'acre J
Singer Tract had been cut extensively s
for lumber and the birds were gone from «
the area.

At about this time 1 joined the search
for the ivorybill. My first expedition
was not to our southern swamps but to
the mountains of eastern Cuba. The
ornithological community had almost
forgotten that the ivorybill is repre¬
sented in Cuba by a slightly smaller
bird, considered a subspecies. Not since
the previous century had there been a
reliable report of the Cuban subspecies.

Responding to rumors that a few
ivorybills were still present in this wild
region, birder Davis Crompton of
Worcester, Massachusetts and 1 began
our search in April of 1948. We were
soon rewarded by finding an active nest
tree, where incubation was probably
under way. No fewer than three adults
were in the vicinity. As an indicator of
ivorybill tenacity, the birds inhabited
badly cut and burned pinelands. Cuban
ornithologists still visit the region and
within the past few years have made
sightings. But the outlook is not
encouraging.

The whereabouts of our North
American ivorybill are at present so
unclear that it would take a brave per¬
son to state anything unequivocally.
The few who may have sighted the bird
say nothing because they fear that pub¬
licity might bring harm to the bird.
Others are afraid of ridicule; few serious
bird students report seeing an ivorybill
these days. But probably as many reports
as ever come from novices who contin¬
ually confuse the pileated woodpecker
with the ivorybill. The easiest course
would be to declare the bird extinct
and be done with it. But the ivorybill
has a way of reappearing just when
nearly everyone has given up hope.

1 still visit our southern swamps on
the chance that I’ll see an ivorybill.
But I must confess that I haven’t had
any luck since the late 1960s. My first
encounter with the North American
ivorybill was auditory, not visual. 1 had
joined veteran ivorybill searcher Whit¬
ney Eastman of Minneapolis on a trip
to the Chipola River in northwestern
Florida in the fall of 1950. He and
several members of his party had

Typical pileated woodpecker excavations.

''The question that
puzzles me and others
is why the pileated
woodpecker thrives
under conditions that
seem to have doomed
the ivorybill ’’

reported seeing a pair of ivorybills after
1 had left them to return to the Uni¬
versity of Florida where I was a student.
Returning to the Chipola River on my
own, I had the good fortune toward
dusk of hearing the distinctive tin-
trumpet notes that only the ivorybill
can make.

In December of 1966, while inves¬
tigating an ivorybill report from the Big
Thicket of Texas, I had my only good
look at a North American ivorybill. I
say good because I was reasonably close
to the bird as it flew before me on its
way to a large cypress which stood in
the dark waters of a bayou. I could see

the wing pattern perfectly but not
enough of the bird’s head to be sure of
the sex. My impression was that the
crest was dark, making the bird a female.

I had a second look after it had flown
some distance and settled on a stump
in an opening in the forest. Seemingly
agitated over the presence of a nearby
pair of pileated woodpeckers, it had
spread its wings in what may have been
a gesture of defiance. In February of
1968, I had my last fleeting contact
with the bird that I have searched for
so often. This time I only heard the
voice coming from dense foliage. I did
capture the tin-trumpet calls with a
tape recorder as I stood at the top of a
heavily wooded bluff overlooking Vil¬
lage Creek in the Big Thicket.

Whatever one may or may not
believe about these sightings, there is
no escaping the conclusion that the
ivorybill is in very precarious straits and
may not survive the century.

The question that puzzles me and
others is why the pileated woodpecker
thrives under conditions that seem to
have doomed the ivorybill. Both are
much larger than other North Ameri¬
can woodpeckers. The pileated’s length
ranges between 16 and 19V2 inches, the
larger birds belonging to the northern
race; the ivorybill has a length of about
20 inches. Both species are conspicu¬
ously crested. The male and female
pileated have striking red crests, while
in the ivorybill the male has a red crest
and the female a black crest. Both
woodpeckers are otherwise clothed in
black and white—more white in the
ivorybill, less in the pileated. In spite
of these resemblances, the two species
are not closely related; each belongs to
a different genus.

An important difference between the
two species pertains to the structure
and function of their bills. The bill of
the ivorybill is not only larger and more
powerful than that of the pileated but
the tip is blunt, like a chisel. The ivory¬
bill uses its bill very effectively to
remove the bark from trunks and
branches of recently killed trees. Here
it finds the large and juicy larvae of
wood-boring beetles. For a while it has
a monopoly on this food. No other
woodpecker can pry off the bark until
it has become loosened with age. The
ivorybill’s whole evolution seems to
have centered around this advantage.
So long as there were plenty of dead

20 The Living Bird Quarterly

Both photos: Arthur A. Allen Papers, Cornell University Libraries, Manuscripts and Archives

Dr. Arthur A. Alien watches ivory^billed woodpecker nest in Louisiana’s Singer Tract.

and dying trees, the ivorybill had the
food it needed.

The pileated woodpecker has a
smaller, more pointed bill that is better
adapted for more generalized types of
digging and food finding. It sometimes
competes with the ivorybill when it
uses its bill to forage for beetles that
live under bark. But more than half of
its animal food consists of ants, often
procured from rotting logs on the forest
floor. And during certain seasons the
pileated feeds heavily upon grapes and
other wild fruits and berries. The ivory-
bill takes some vegetable food but seems
less versatile in its feeding habits. With
changing habitat conditions, it is usu¬
ally the generalized feeder that wins out
over the specialist. But other factors
also need to be considered.

Looking back to the writings of early
naturalists, we find Mark Catesby
describing the uses that the Indians
made of the ivorybill’s striking ivory-
colored bill. In 1731 he states that the
Canadian Indians “made Coronets of
’em for their Princes and great warriors,
by fixing them round a Wreath, with
their points outward. ” Catesby goes on
to say that the northern Indians traded
with more southern tribes, paying as

much as two or three buckskins per bill.
Both Alexander Wilson and John James
Audubon commented upon the use the
Indians made of the ivorybill’s bill and
plumage. The early settlers also used
parts of the ivorybill for decoration.

By the time the ivorybill became too
rare for commercial exploitation, it had
a new enemy. This was the museum
collector, a breed that toward the end
of the last century pursued the ivorybill
to its remotest retreats. The story might
have ended here had it not been for
a new conservation ethic that swept
the country. Birds and other wildlife on
the verge of extinction had to be saved.
Although the shooting ceased, it was
apparently too late for the ivorybill.
Unlike the pileated woodpecker, it did
not recover but lingered in limbo.

Allen and Kellogg, writing in a 1937
issue of The Auk, offered a hypothesis
that seemed to explain the ivorybill’s
inability to respond to more favorable
conditions. They suggested that, with
its increasing scarcity, inbreeding could
have led to weak young and infertile
eggs. But Tanner’s studies in the Singer
Tract did not lend support to this con¬
tention. He found that the nesting suc¬
cess of the Singer Tract ivorybills was

Pair of adult ivorj'billed woodpeckers.

approximately the same as that of the
pileated woodpecker. Something else
was dooming the ivorybill.

For this something else, 1 think we
must return to the ivorybill’s highly
adapted bill. It was the bill that capti¬
vated the Indians and early settlers,
causing so much slaughter. It was the
bill that made the ivorybill a specialist,
feeding upon beetle larvae that existed
in adequate numbers only where very
large tracts of timber existed. Under
primitive conditions the ivorybill had
an advantage because of its bill but as
the timber was felled and the forests
disappeared, the advantage was lost.

Others, however, have alternative
explanations for the demise of the ivory¬
bill. But whatever the reason, the fact
remains that the ivorybill hangs on by
only a slender thread.

FURTHER READING

Dennis, John V. “The Ivory-billed Woodpecker. ”
Aviculture Magazine 85 (2). 1979.

Tanner, J. T. “The Ivory-billed Woodpecker.”
National Audubon Society, New York. 1942.

THE AUTHOR

John Dennis is author of A Complete Guide to
Bird Feeding and Beyond the Bird Feeder.

Winter/1984 21

22 The Living Bird Quarterly

Russ Kinne (Photo Researchers, Inc.)

^d^AKING OUR APPROACH to
Cozumel Island on a jetliner from
Miami, our Cornell birding tour group
looked down upon ever-changing
shades of blue and green. The shallow
waters of the Caribbean Sea washed
the coral shores of this island just off
the east coast of Quintana Roo in Mex¬
ico. Most participants on this tour had
attended the first Cornell tropical field
seminar which I had taught also. The
Yucatan Peninsula had been judged an
ideal second tropical destination. Birds
would be easy to see in the patchwork
of fields, gardens, and low woodlands,
and the Mayan ruins would form an
ideal counterpoint to the exotic birds.

As the plane neared the runway, my
thoughts turned back 25 years to the
time I first saw Cozumel Island
unspoiled and teeming with wildlife.
On that visit, after days of driving, a
long bus ride, and a 28-hour train trip
to reach the Yucatan Peninsula, I had
flown from Merida to Cozumel on a
World War Il-vintage transport plane
and landed on a dirt runway. We man¬
aged to find a car and driver to take us
into Cozumel. There we searched out
the owner of the small general store,
the largest store in town, and picked
up the key to a beach-front cottage.
For our meals we walked to the other
side of town, a six-block stroll, to the
open-air restaurant comprising three
small tables in the backyard of another
cottage.

To see the ruddy ground-dove, Car¬
ibbean elaenia, Cozumel wren, and
bananaquit, which had lured us to Coz¬
umel, we had to walk only a few
hundred feet along a trail which led
through pastures, weedy fields, thick¬
ets, and patches of scrubby woodland.
We found a flock of Vaux’s swifts roost¬
ing in an old cistern. A car took us on
a dirt road through thorny woodland
to a beautiful pool called Laguna Chan-
canab. We saw several striped-headed
tanagers, an Antillean species not
known anywhere on the mainland of
Mexico. Surprisingly, because it was
only the first week in August, we saw
migrating prothonotary warblers and
Kentucky warblers not many days from
their summer homes somewhere in the
States. Tropical fish swam in and out
of the blue waters of Chancanab and
through the natural underground aque¬
duct which connected the coral-rimmed
pool to the sea.

Birding

on the

Idicdtdn

Peninsula

hy Ernest R Edwards

Ernest P. “Buck”Edwards
Left: Blue'crowned motmot

Winter/1984 23

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

Montezuma Oropendola

Wagler’s Oropendola

Yellow-billed Cacique

Giant Cowbird

Fuertes’s Oriole

Abeille’s Oriole

ler’s Oriole

Bar-winged Oriole

Yellow-tailed Oriole

Streaked-backed Oriole

Orange Oriole

Shining Honeycreeper

Green Honeycreeper

Blue Honeycreeper

Now, 25 years later, the sight of the
hotel-lined boulevard, and the sprawl¬
ing resort town where once stood only
a village, gave rise to some concern.
We walked in a crowd of tourists
through the airport terminal, past sou¬
venir shops, to the baggage-claim sec¬
tion and tried to find our suitcases and
the proper van to our hotel. We drove
past hotels and resort homes, through
blocks of houses, shops and restau¬
rants, finally reaching the main plaza
where our old all-purpose store once
stood. We continued southward
through business and residential areas
which once had been open countryside.

Still on a paved road we turned right
and entered the grounds of the beach¬
front Hotel El Presidente. Great-tailed
grackles flew noisily among the flow¬
ering trees in the parking lot, and hum¬
mingbirds—Prevost’s mangos and cin¬
namon hummingbirds—searched for
nectar in the blossoms. Tropical king¬
birds perched on the TV antenna and
on the lawn sprinklers, and yellow-faced
grassquits flew up from the short grass
near the tennis court. Despite this re¬
assuring sight 1 wondered if the mush¬
rooming resort could accommodate
swimmers, scuba divers, sunbathers,
and beachcombers, yet provide access
to a great variety of unusual birds.

Our first field trip dispelled any
doubts. Within a hundred feet of the
hotel we found a little-used side road
which proved to be a showcase for great
numbers of tropical-island birds.

We had hardly left the hotel parking
lot when we heard the mournful
descending call of the streaked attila,
a species 1 had seldom seen or heard
and then only in luxuriant forests of
giant trees. One individual even flew
out to perch on a utility pole. Near an
old shed beside a weedy field a Cozumel
wren sang its bubbling song, and Yuca¬
tan woodpeckers and Wied’s flycatch¬
ers showed a proprietary interest in a
recently excavated nesting cavity in a
dead tree. There, and in the fields just
beyond the hotel’s yacht basin, we saw
migrating or wintering warblers and
finches, including black-throated
green, blue-winged. Cape May, mag¬
nolia, and palm warblers.

Still walking northward we rounded
a curve in the road and lost the hotel
from view behind the bordering low
woodland. Here we found more spe¬
cialties of Cozumel Island: the Carib¬

bean elaenia, another Antillean spe¬
cies not found on mainland Mexico;
the Cozumel thrasher, and the Cozu¬
mel vireo. Peppershrikes and Yucatan
vireos were there as well, and the more
familiar blue-gray gnatcatcher.

Pairs of black catbirds hopped on the
asphalt surface of the road as far as we
could see. Most exciting of all were the
small flocks of parrots that swirled
overhead, filling the air with their rau¬
cous cries. They were mostly white-
fronted parrots, both sexes brightly col¬
ored about the head. We were able to

Hooded oriole. Left: Plate from Edwards's
book, “A Field Guide to the Birds of Mexico”
(Ernest R Edwards, Sweet Briar, Virginia).

prove the presence of a few Yucatan
parrots by picking out an occasional
dull-headed female. As co-leader of the
tour group 1 was delighted at the aus¬
picious beginning of the trip, and shared
in the excitement even as I anticipated
other great birding experiences.

As we returned along the side road,
with the hotel only a few hundred yards
ahead, another experience awaited us.
A group of rose-throated tanagers sud¬
denly appeared among the scattered
shrubs, along with some migrating
warblers. As we watched the birds in
full view and good light, we marveled
at the soft grays and rosy, pinkish reds
of this rare specialty of the area, and
were struck by the realization that the
colors were more reminiscent of male
pyrrhuloxia than of other Mexican and
North American tanagers.

Another exceptional experience
occurred on our last morning in Coz¬
umel. This time we went only as far as
the small combination field, marsh,
woodland border, and overgrown
weedpatch surrounding some tumble-
down buildings 150 yards from the
hotel. There, as we stood in a moist,
marshy area and scanned a nearby field,
a movement near our feet prompted us

to look down to see a tiny but full-
grown red rail. It looked around in a
perplexed manner, then calmly but
quickly and without making a sound,
moved into some cattails and disap¬
peared. Some of us had heard the
whinnying calls of this species in other
parts of Mexico and Central America,
but none had seen the bird, and none,
as far as I know, has seen it since.

With the memory of the red rail,
which may have been a new record for
the island, the colorful tanagers, and
unusual parrots and pigeons, we boarded
the bus to the airport and flew to
Merida.

Flying low over the waters separating
Cozumel Island from the mainland, I
observed the terrain and the vegetation
and reviewed the striking differences
between the Yucatan Peninsula and the
rest of Mexico. While most of Mexico
is mountainous, or at least 3,500 feet
above sea level, the Yucatan Peninsula
is virtually flat and is almost nowhere
more than 100 feet above sea level.
The vegetation of its western portion
is scrubby, dense, tangled, deciduous
woodland. Farther east there are larger
trees in a more luxuriant growth
approaching the aspect of tropical rain
forest. Although much original vege¬
tation has been cleared, one can still
find large tracts of native woodland or
forest, particularly near the popular
archaeological sites where good accom¬
modations are available and native birds
accessible.

Summer weather is hot, and there
are frequent rains, often fast-moving
storms of wind, driving rain, thunder
and lightning. At this time vegetation
is green and luxuriant even in western
portions of the peninsula. Butterflies
are incredibly abundant. Birds are active
and conspicuous, especially in early
morning and immediately after a rain.

As winter approaches, most plants
lose their leaves, particularly in the
west, and the woodlands appear dry
and open. Although winters are warm
and dry, occasional chilly, windy, rainy
weather modifies the idyllic climate.
Nesting activities and bird song largely
cease, but with the influx of migratory
birds in autumn, bird activity does not
subside overall.

On March 15 our tour group rode 50
miles southward from Merida on a
chartered bus—destination Uxmal. We
rode through small Mayan villages, past

Winter/1984 25

Cinnamon hummingbird

former haciendas, some tumbling down,
others still producing and processing
henequen into sturdy rope. Ruddy
ground-doves, common ground-doves,
and great-tailed grackles frequented the
roadside and farmyards and even the
village plazas and vacant lots. Tropical
mockingbirds perched on the tele¬
phone wires and trees along the way.

When we reached Uxmal we checked
into a pleasant hotel called Hacienda
Uxmal which was only a few hundred
yards from the archaeological site.
There was no real village here. The
hotel was surrounded by gardens which
in turn were adjacent to extensive
patches of woodland that covered the
countryside. Thus the hotel grounds
were a haven for resident and migratory
birds, especially during the dry season.
From our rooms we could hear the songs
or calls of the ruddy ground-dove, pau-
raque (at night), turquoise-browed
motmot, and clay-colored robin. Social
flycatchers, great kiskadees and great¬
tailed grackles frequented the palm trees
around the swimming pool. Once, cave
swallows came by the dozens from the
old Mayan city to skim swiftly over the
pool and to dip their bills into the water
for a drink.

At about six o’clock the next morn¬
ing we went walking past the parking
lot and archaeological site. We turned
right on a paved road which led to the
old city. Here there was less traffic

Ferruginous pygmy^owl

although we were occasionally sur¬
prised by buses or cars coming in to
park in a random manner as we watched
orange orioles, boat-billed flycatchers,
and turquoise-browed motmots. The
weedy patches, low woodland borders,
and telephone wires were alive with
birds. Migrating finches were in the
weed patches—indigo bunting, painted
bunting, and blue grosbeak, and a res¬
ident finch, the blue-black grassquit.
Many males were molting the drab
winter feathers and gaining their col¬
orful breeding plumage. Blue-gray
gnatcatchers hopped about in the leaf¬
less trees. White-winged doves called
from farther back in the woodland.

Leaving the parking area, we walked
along a dirt road and soon were on a
narrow track through low, still leafless,
woodland. 1 began to imitate the per¬
sistently repeated notes of the ferrugi¬
nous pygmy-owl, which we knew
occurred here. Promptly a cinnamon
hummingbird darted into view, and
soon a pair of blue-gray gnatcatchers
and one of the Myiarchus flycatchers
joined the group of small birds intent
on mobbing the little owl. Before long
a real pygmy-owl answered from the
woodland, then flew in and perched
nearby. Then another pygmy-owl came
by and, although they were anything
but conspicuous, we were able to study
their fierce yellow eyes and soft brown¬
ish-red plumage. As the real owls began

calling they were even more effective
than I in attracting hummingbirds,
gnatcatchers, a mangrove vireo, a
white-eyed vireo, and other small birds
which had remained hidden.

Before we turned back we saw one,
two, then more turquoise-browed mot-
mots. For many minutes we were sur¬
rounded by a dozen of these striking
tropical birds, moving about in an agi¬
tated manner, often less than 30 feet
away. The long, racket-tipped tail
switched back and forth like an erratic
and impulsive pendulum, a behavioral
feature which has earned the motmot
the name of “clock bird.”

The next day we drove to Merida
and boarded the plane back to Miami.
As we flew out over the Caribbean Sea,
the shallow near-shore waters seemed
to reflect all the turquoise, cobalt and
aquamarine we had seen on the tur¬
quoise-browed motmot the day before.
Our Yucatan experience had been at
least as rewarding and enjoyable as the
one of 25 years earlier and we were
reassured that this would likely be true
for years to come.

FURTHER READING

Edwards, Ernest. Finding Birds in Mexico. 1968.
Supplement, 1976. Sweet Briar, Virginia.

THE AUTHOR

Ernest Edwards is the Duberg Professor of Ecology
at Sweet Briar College, Virginia.

2 6 The Living Bird Quarterly

E Gohier (Photo Researchers, Inc.)

NEWsSCNCffiS?

A western reef heron was seen on Nan¬
tucket Island, Massachusetts on April 26,
1983, over 4,000 miles from its coastal Afri¬
can home. It was the first time this species
had been spotted in the United States. At
first it was misidentified as a little blue heron
with aberrant plumage, but the bird’s bright
yellow feet gave local birders the clue that
they were not watching an ordinary heron.
After studying pictures taken by a Phila¬
delphia Academy of Natural Science pho¬
tographer, Academy staffer Robert Ridgely
identified it as a western reef heron. Two
other staffers, Alec Forbes-Watson and
Michael Kleinbaum, confirmed the iden¬
tification in the field. After checking the
International Species Inventory to be cer¬
tain that the bird was not registered as a
captive species in the U.S., they were sat¬
isfied that it was wild. If the species were
listed, then the bird might have been an
escaped captive. When the sighting was
made public hundreds of birders flocked to
the scene. The heron remained on Nan¬
tucket throughout the summer.

The Peregrine Fund has announced its
plans to open the World Center for Birds
of Prey. The aim of the center will be to
identify and bolster populations of endan¬
gered or threatened hawks, falcons, eagles,
and owls around the world. Research by
raptor specialists may result in a frozen semen
bank which will guard against future
extinctions. In addition the center is
hoping to start cooperative ventures with
other countries to save birds in their native
habitat. The center will be located on 280
acres in Boise, Idaho.

Although the center is still in the plan¬
ning stages. Peregrine Fund specialists are
studying orange-breasted falcons in Gua¬
temala, aplomado falcons in Mexico,
Mauritius kestrels in Mauritius, and elf owls
in Arizona. The Philippine eagle is slated
to receive help as soon as the political tur¬
moil in the Philippines cools. Only 200 to
300 remain and of four pairs under obser¬
vation in the wild none has fledged young
in several years. Philippine eagles in cap¬
tivity are not reproducing. A program to
artificially inseminate, incubate, and hatch
wild eggs, and properly feed and raise the
young eagles, will begin once the safety of
the researchers can be assured.

On the home front The Peregrine Fund
produced 260 peregrines in its facilities dur¬
ing the 1983 breeding season.

Correction: The photograph of a pere¬
grine falcon on page 27 of the autumn 1983
Quarterly should have been credited to James
Weaver.

Dear Member:

Bird populations are constantly changing —some species increase in number and expand their
ranges while others decrease. When I was growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, seeing a
mockingbird, cardinal, or tufted titmouse was cause for excitement. All three are now common
residents. In contrast, the bluebirds which used to be so plentiful at our place in Hancock, New
Hampshire, are now rare. These casual observations make us wonder why these changes have
occurred. Have they resulted from changes in climated In certain cases: some researchers feel
that warmer winters have aided the cardinal’s and titmouse's northern movement. Have changes
resulted from modern lumbering techniques? Sometimes, yes. In many areas bluebirds are
suffering because of the removal of dead trees where bluebirds nest (although this isn't true in
Hancock where my father maintains nesting boxes for bluebirds). Or do the changes in bird
populations result from modification of wintering areas—from pesticide applications which
destroy food supplies or from destruction of winter habitat?

This last idea is a sobering possibility. Many birds that breed in the United States spend their
winters in South and Central America, where habitat destruction is proceeding at an astonishing
rate, and where dangerous pesticides, some of which are banned in this country, are used in
tremendous quantities.

We have no way of predicting the effects of widespread habitat destruction in the tropics.
Populations of birds that prefer disturbed habitat could increase. But it is likely that overall the
effects could result in severe declines. Already some songbirds, such as the Kentucky warbler,
seem to be returning each year to their breeding grounds in reduced numbers.

Yet aU is not lost. As Ernest Edwards writes in his article about the Yucatan, birds of many
species seem to be faring well in that area of Mexico. Still, it seems that we should approach
the future with cautious optimism and a good system for monitoring bird populations. Only if
we have an accurate measure of how bird populations are changing can we find the reasons
why. And until we can identify the reasons, impassioned pleas to save tropical forests or to stop
the spraying cannot be nearly as effective as if we had hard facts from which to argue.

Charles Walcott, Executive Director

The first auction of art for ARC was held
at the Laboratory of Ornithology last Octo¬
ber. ARC is the Avian Rehabilitation Cen¬
ter, a cooperative effort of the Laboratory
of Ornithology and the Avian Clinic of the
New York State College of Veterinary Med¬
icine. ARC was established to care for sick
and injured wild birds and to return them
to the wild. The bird art was donated by
local and nationally known artists as well

as by art collectors. Despite heavy rain a
crowd of eager bidders turned out and by
the end of the day over $2,600 had been
raised.

The goal of ARC is to provide the birds
with the best possible care during conva¬
lescence. The money raised by the auction
will buy materials for six flight cages com¬
plete with perches and baths. Equipment
such as weighing scales, heat lamp, special
gloves for handling raptors, and first-aid
supplies will be purchased.

arc’s volunteer staff have returned a
healthy 60 percent of their charges to the
wild.

The sixth edition of the A. O. U. Check'
list of North American Birds is now available.
This volume will remain the standard tax¬
onomic listing of birds for many years. The
Crow’s Nest Bookshop at the Laboratory
has a limited quantity of the Checklist
available for $35.00 plus $2.00 postage and
handling (no member discounts). New York
State residents must add 7 percent tax. Send
a check or money order to The Crow’s Nest
Bookshop, Laboratory of Ornithology, Cor¬
nell University, Sapsucker Woods, Ithaca,
New York 14850.

Winter/1984 27

RESEAECH&REVIEW

Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

Quacker Boxes

Scientific theories are ideas that offer ten¬
tative explanations for the way the world
works. They are based on facts as the facts
are understood at the time the theories are
proposed. As scientists discover new evi¬
dence, theories are modified or even dis¬
carded. For example, astronomers once
believed that the sun revolved around the
earth. Not until Copernicus presented evi¬
dence that the planets revolve around the
sun was the original theory replaced by the
new one. Similarly, Timothy Johnston and
Gilbert Gottlieb of the North Carolina
Division of Mental Health recently have
uncovered new facts leading to their reeval¬
uation of the role of imprinting in nature.

Imprinting is a biological phenomenon
whereby precocial birds—birds that leave
their nest soon after hatching—form an
attachment to the first object they see upon
emerging from the egg. Biologists have long
theorized that imprinting is the means by
which these birds learn to recognize other
members of their own species, especially
their mother. Most studies, however, have
tested this theory by imprinting birds on
non-biological objects such as toys or boxes.
When Johnston and Gottlieb tried to
imprint mallard ducklings on stuffed models
of various species of waterfowl, they were
only partly successful (“Development of
visual species identification in ducklings:
what is the role of imprinting?” Animal
Behavior, vol. 29, pp. 1082—1099). They
concluded that the traditional explanation
of the role of imprinting may be erroneous,
and speculated that in the wild, newborn
ducklings recognize their mother and form
attachments not through sight but through
sound.

Johnston and Gottlieb have examined
this idea through further testing (“Visual
preferences of imprinted ducklings are
altered by the maternal call,” Journal of
Comparative and Physiological Psychology, vol.
95, pp. 663—675). The goal of this study
was to discover what was more important
in getting mallard ducklings to follow a
model on which they had been imprinted—
the sight of the model or the sound of the
maternal call.

In their first experiment, 50 one-day-old
ducklings were imprinted on a stuffed female
mallard. Then, the ducklings were divided
into two groups. Those in the first group
were given a choice of following the famil¬

iar mallard model or an unfamiliar red box.
Almost all the ducklings followed the
familiar model.

Ducklings in the second group were given
a choice between following the familiar
model or a red box emitting a mallard
maternal call. All the ducklings followed
the calling red box. Apparently the sound
of the maternal call overrode the fact that
the ducklings had been visually imprinted.

Was the maternal call necessary to elicit
the following response by the ducklings or
would any sound work? The researchers
designed a second experiment to find out.
Thirty imprinted ducklings were given a
choice between following either the famil¬
iar mallard model emitting electronic
monotones or the unfamiliar red box emit¬
ting the maternal call. Nearly 80 percent
of the ducklings followed the box. Appar¬
ently they preferred the maternal call to the
non-biological tone as well as to the famil¬
iar, stuffed model.

The role of the maternal call has not
been ignored in earlier studies; some
researchers have thought that the call guides
precocial birds to the mother so that visual
imprinting can occur. But the role the call
plays after imprinting has occurred has been
largely overlooked. Johnston and Gottlieb
feel that the call is responsible for main¬
taining the mother-offspring relationship
and that the role of visual contact is
secondary.

Beyond Field Guides

Many birders want to know more about
birds than they can find in field guides.
Where do birds live? What do they eat?
Who are their enemies? Recently, several
books have been published to help fill the
need for this type of information. One of
the newest is America’s Favorite Backyard
Birds by Kit and George Harrison (Simon
and Schuster, New York. 1983. $15.95,
cloth, 288 pages).

This book discusses the lives of 10 birds
common throughout North America,
including the American robin, black-capped
chickadee, and blue jay. There is one chap¬
ter for each bird. The text is easy reading,
and includes technical information gleaned
from ornithological literature as well as
information derived from the authors’ own
observations. The Harrisons describe plu¬
mage, song types, food habits and habitat
preferences of each bird. They discuss nest¬

ing behavior and care and feeding of young
in detail, and include numerous facts about
interesting and unusual behavior. Each bird
is shown in color, and an appendix lists
plants and trees used for food, cover, and
nesting by the 10 birds.

Writing about animals in an objective
yet interesting way is not easy, but the Har¬
risons make an admirable attempt. In doing
so, some anthropomorphism does emerge.
For example, mourning doves are said to
have “soaring love” while the American
goldfinch is described as a “patient sitter”
and “friendly to all.” This is not a large
problem, however. A bigger problem is the
muddy appearance of most of the black-
and-white photographs. The 10 color pho¬
tographs are clear.

Overall this is a fine book, providing
insight into the lives of common birds. It
should appeal to adult and young readers
alike.

An earlier book, also written to answer
questions about the lives of individual birds,
is Donald Stokes’s A Guide to the Behavior
of Common Birds (Little, Brown, and Com¬
pany, Boston/Toronto. 1979. $9.95, cloth,
336 pages). Like the Harrison book it
devotes a separate chapter to each bird, 25
in all. Unlike the Harrison book, this one
is devoted to descriptions of social behavior,
that is, interactions among birds, such as
territoriality, courtship, breeding and flock¬
ing. In his excellent introductory section,
“Behavior Watching,” Stokes explains that
for most birds far more mysteries exist than
answers concerning behavior. He writes:
“One of the main purposes of this guide is
to encourage everybody to participate in
helping to discover the behavior of our
common birds. If just a fraction of the energy
that now goes into bird-watching were to
go into behavior-watching, within a very
short time our knowledge about the behav¬
ior of our common birds would be greatly
increased.”

This book is written more tersely than
the Harrisons’ and is probably best suited
for careful observers who watch individual
or small groups of birds for long periods of
time. Each chapter is divided into three
parts. The first is a graphic behavior cal¬
endar that shows the different behaviors
that occur each month. The second is a
display guide which, with line drawings and
written descriptions, explains the visual and
auditory displays used by the birds. Finally,
Stokes describes several behaviors in detail:

28 The Living Bird Quarterly

Eleanor Alexander

those associated with territory, courtship,
nest'building, breeding, plumage, and sea¬
sonal movement.

This well-written book is presently the
best means of answering the question “what’s
that bird doing?” While not easy reading
like the Harrisons’ book, it rapidly becomes
absorbing once you realize you’ve observed
some of the behaviors Stokes describes. This
is an excellent book for parents who want
to help their children observe the natural
world more closely.

Information Parasitism

Information parasitism sounds like a hor¬
rible affliction or a by-product of the com¬
puter age. Actually, G. L. Nuechterlein of
the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum
of Natural History has adopted this term to
describe a relationship between western
grebes and Forster’s terns (‘“Information
parasitism’ in mixed colonies of western
grebes and Forster’s terns,” Animal Behav¬
ior, vol. 29, pp. 985—989).

Nuechterlein studied western grebe nest¬
ing colonies on the Delta Marsh, Lake
Manitoba, Canada, for seven breeding sea¬
sons. He discovered that most of the colo¬
nies included nesting Forster’s terns. When
he approached these mixed colonies, the
terns sounded alarm calls that warned not
only other terns but also the grebes; the
grebes immediately jumped off their nests
and swam for open water, even those birds
on nests concealed in clumps of vegetation.

Nuechterlein wanted to test his discov¬
ery with tape-recorded tern calls. The test
required him to approach the colonies
undetected, so he built a small floating blind
and disguised it as a muskrat house by cov¬

ering it with reeds. Muskrat houses are
common nesting and resting sites for For¬
ster’s terns on the Delta Marsh, and the
terns adapted readily to the blind. In fact,
terns often landed on the blind and defended
it for hours against other terns.

From the concealment of the blind,
Nuechterlein broadcast tape-recorded tern
calls. When he played recordings of non-
warning calls only 3 of 26 experimental
grebes left their nest or adopted an alarm
posture; when he played recordings of tern-
warning calls, 21 of the 26 grebes showed
an alarm response.

Nuechterlein suggests that the grebes,
which are poor fliers and usually dive to
escape danger, establish their nests near tern
colonies so they can use the terns as aerial
sentinels. He categorizes this relationship
as information parasitism because there is
no apparent reciprocal exchange of infor¬
mation. He points out, however, that the
terns are not harmed by the association.
One researcher has suggested that alarm
callers may benefit by warning nearby non¬
relatives; if all potential prey in an area are
alert to impending danger, the predator may
leave. If this is true, then the relationship
between the grebes and terns would not be
parasitic. Instead it would be mutualistic,
a term used to describe a relationship in
which each individual involved derives some
benefit from its association with another.

Artificial Islands

When the first European settlers came to
North America there were about 127-mil¬
lion acres of fresh and saltwater wetlands
on the continent. Today, after hundreds of

years of draining and filling for agriculture,
flood control, and housing, fewer than 75-
million acres remain. Because wetlands are
synonymous with breeding habitat for
waterfowl, the number of ducks and geese
in North America likewise has declined.

Nowhere is the decline more pronounced
than in the Prairie Pothole Region, that
part of the Great Plains extending from
South Dakota north to the boreal forests of
Saskatchewan and Alberta. This region,
about 1,000 miles long and 300 miles wide,
is dotted with hundreds of thousands of
small ponds and is the most important
waterfowl breeding area in North America.

The portion of the Prairie Pothole Region
within the United States once covered 74-
million acres and produced about 15-mil-
lion ducks each year. More than half of this
region has been drained, and now it pro¬
duces only about 5-million ducks yearly.
Recently, loss of wetlands has been slowed
somewhat because of a better understand¬
ing of their ecological values, and through
legislation. But legislation can’t bring back
lost acres or dead ducks. Is there any way
to bolster flagging waterfowl populations?

One method may be to construct artifi¬
cial nest islands. Waterfowl biologists know
that both ducks and geese nesting on islands
produce more young than waterfowl nesting
on mainland. This is primarily because island
nesters are less likely than mainland nesters
to have their young eaten by predatory
mammals such as raccoons, skunks, and
badgers.

To explore the use of artificial islands by
waterfowl, Jean-Francois Giroux of Ducks
Unlimited, Canada, examined more than
1,000 duck and Canada goose nests on arti¬
ficial islands near Brooks, Alberta (“Use of
artificial islands by nesting waterfowl in
southeastern Alberta,” Journal of Wildlife
Management, vol. 45, pp. 669—679).

The islands were located in several small
ponds built by Ducks Unlimited, and were
made of piles of earth. All the islands had
vegetation, and ranged in size from .1 to .5
hectares (.25 to 1.25 acres).

As expected, Giroux found that the
islands were used heavily by breeding ducks.
Some islands had as many as 29 duck nests
per hectare, whereas typically the mainland
has less than four per hectare. Mallards,
gadwalls, and lesser scaup used the islands
most frequently. Numerous Canada geese
also used the islands, while only one pair
nested on nearby mainland.

Giroux concludes that constructing arti¬
ficial islands is a promising management
technique for enhancing waterfowl produc¬
tivity. Even if such islands serve only to
attract waterfowl that would otherwise nest
on the nearby mainland, reproductive suc¬
cess should increase because of reduced
predation.

Winter/1984 29

A Question
of Identity

by Stephen Nowicki

O F ALL THE SOUNDS of winter,
the ones I find most memorable are the
squeak underfoot of very cold snow,
and a startled “chick-a-dee-dee-dee” off
in the distance. What is the chickadee
saying? “Hey, you!” or “Over here!”?
Or does the sound mean more?

Several years ago a fellow gradu-
ate student and I began investigating
this question. From the research we
were doing at Cornell University,
we knew that by September black-
capped chickadees had formed flocks
of eight or more members, including
adults and juveniles of both sexes.
Flocking is not unusual—many birds,
such as blackbirds, form aggregations
after breeding, sometimes numbering
in the thousands. The unusual thing
about chickadee flocks is their small
size and constant membership; there is
a strong tendency for a group of birds
to stay together from late summer until
the following spring. Furthermore,
unlike other winter-flocking birds,
chickadees will vigorously defend a flock
territory. These territories probably
ensure that the birds will have sufficient
food throughout the winter.

The chick-a-dee call is heard most
frequently during boundary disputes
between neighboring flocks. These
interactions are interesting to watch
and hear. In intense conflicts, birds fly
rapidly toward each other, tumbling
through trees and bushes like crazed
acrobats, all the time calling “chick-a-
dee” rapidly and loudly. Similarly, the
discovery of a roosting owl elicits a cho¬
rus by the entire flock as they mob the
predator. A bird will also call if it is
separated from its flock. The contexts
of the call suggested to us that it played
an important role in a flock’s cohesion.
We hypothesized that the chick-a-dee
call contained information about the
identity of the calling bird and its flock.

A sonogram or
audiospectrograph
of a “chick'a'
dee'dee'dee. ”
Sonograms are
made by a stylus
that transfers
frequency
patterns to a
moving paper
belt.

To test our predictions we first had
to recognize individual birds. This
meant catching several flocks with mist
nets and banding each member with a
unique combination of colored, plastic
leg-bands. When possible, we
determined the sex and age of each
bird. By late October we had banded
five flocks and felt confident that we
knew their members and territories.
Then we began to collect hundreds of
recordings of calls. We did this by
observing our flocks on frigid mornings
and waiting until an individual bird
called within range of our binoculars
and microphone. The hardest job,
acoustically analyzing these vocal sig¬
nals in the laboratory, was the next
step.

Any sound, from symphonies to bird
songs, can be characterized in a num¬
ber of ways. In our analysis, we were
most interested in the “dee” syllable.
It has acoustical energy at a series of
frequencies, layered one on top of
another. We reasoned that this com¬
plex sound provided a basis for vocal
differences. Altogether we analyzed
about 500 calls, including several thou¬
sand “dees.”

Our analysis revealed a wealth of
variations among the calls of different
individuals. This finding was not sur¬
prising since many species of birds
(white-throated sparrows, for exam¬
ple) are known to distinguish individ¬
uals by their voices. More interesting
was our finding that each flock had its
own vocal characteristics, almost like
an accent. This meant that a bird not
only identified itself when it called, but
also potentially identified its flock. 1
say potentially because, although we
had demonstrated that differences
between flocks existed, we had not
proven that the chickadees recognize
these differences.

To obtain proof, 1 devised a test to
see whether chickadees responded dif¬
ferently to calls of their own and of a
different flock. First 1 attracted a flock
to a feeder near the edge of its territory.
Then, using a loudspeaker, 1 played calls
of this flock and those of a foreign flock.
The results of these playback experi¬
ments were striking. A flock barely
responded to its own recorded calls, but
reacted aggressively when calls of a for¬
eign flock were played. This demon¬
strated that chickadees do recognize
flock membership on the basis of voice.

The chick-a-dee call is used as a
warning, as a rallying cry in territorial
defense, and as a contact note. It may
serve other functions too. In each case,
when a bird emits this signal it is iden¬
tifying both itself and its flock mem¬
bership.

Why should chickadees do this? Per¬
haps the invariant plumage of these
birds and their thick, brushy habitat
make recognition by other means dif¬
ficult. A flock-specific vocal signal may
enable a bird to distinguish its own
flock’s members from other chickadees
in the confused jumble of a territorial
conflict. Perhaps the chick-a-dee call
is a form of commitment, an invest¬
ment by each individual that ensures
loyalty to a particular flock throughout
the winter.

FURTHER READING

Gurin, J. “There’s a Lot More to Birdsongs Than
the Sound of Music.” Smithsonian. April, 1982.

THE AUTHOR

Stephen Nowicki is a Ph.D. candidate in the
Section of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell
University.

Facing page: Snow on the Pine — Chickadees.
Painting by Ron Parker. Courtesy of the
artist and Mill Pond Press, Inc., Venice,
Florida 33595.

30 The Living Bird Quarterly

Learn and have fun at the same time. Cornell’s Adult University is offering non-credit
spring and summer courses in ornithology and natural history that will develop and
enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the natural world.

CAPE MAY: ECOLOGY IN THE MIGRATION SEASON
MAY 17- 20 Cape May, New Jersey

Explore this wildlife gathering place at its most exciting time of year. Four distinguished
naturalists will conduct lectures and lead field trips through beaches and marshes
teeming with birds, fish, crustaceans, and plants.

INTRODUCTION TO ORNITHOLOGY
July 1- 7

Novices and devotees alike are welcome to this ever-popular Laboratory of Ornithology
course. Daily field trips stress the use and integration of visual, aural, behavioral, and

habitat cues needed to identify birds correctly.

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FINGER LAKES

July 8-14

Take a closer look at the plants and animals found along the Finger Lakes Trail, a
hiking trail south of the Finger Lakes. Birds, insects, flowers, ferns, and fungi as well as

geology and meteorology will be discussed.

NATURE AND WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY
July 15-21

Learn to “see” and compose fine nature photographs. Field trips and individual
instruction and reviews are included in this Laboratory of Ornithology course.

EXPLORATIONS OF NATURE
July 22- 28

Ithaca is an outstanding area for studying nature. Investigate its birds, animals, flowers,

and plants in woods, bogs, fields, and ponds.

For program rates, registration, and other information, please call or write:
Cornell’s Adult University, 626B Thurston Avenue, Ithaca, New York 14850.

(607) 256-6260.

EDITORIAL STAFF

4 Kirtland’s Warbler: Why So Rare?

Harold F. Mayfield

Only two hundred pairs of this songbird remain and
finding a mate in the jack pine forests of northern
Michigan becomes a little more difficult each spring.

9 The Crow’s Nest Bookshop

LABORATORY STAFF

Charles Walcott, Executive Director
TomJ. Cade, Director, Raptor Research
Jill Crane, The Living Bird Quarterly
Donna J. P. Crossman, Library
Samuel A. Eliot, Public Affairs
James L. Gulledge, Library of
Natural Sounds
Thomas S. Litwin, Seatuck Research
Donald A. McCrimmon, Jr., Cooperative

Research Program
Kathleen A. Mclsaac, Business
Charles R. Smith, Public Education
Jane Hance Wood, Administration

Administrative Board

James W. Spencer, Chairman

T. Spencer Knight

Morton S. Adams
Robert Barker
John Frederick Barry
Benjamin R Burtt
William G. Conway
Alan Crawford, Jr.
Robert G. Engel
Clifton C. Garvin, Jr.
Mrs. Harvey Gaylord
Imogene P. Johnson
Hamilton F. Kean

Charles

p. 18

The Living Bird Quarterly, ISSN 0732-9210, is published in January,
April, July, and October by the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell
University, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, New York 14850.
Telephone: (607) 256-5056. The Living Bird Quarterly is free to members
of the Laboratory. Single copies; $2.50. © 1984 Cornell
University Laboratory of Ornithology.
Printing by Brodock Press Inc., Utica, N.Y.
Typography by Partners Composition, Utica, N.Y.

. V

p. 27

10 Too Happy in Thine Happiness

Samuel A. Eliot

When a bird sings it may do more than assert its
territoriality. It may inspire a poet to poorest a
full heart in profuse strains of premeditated art.

14 From Hostility to Amity

Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and Aleta Kars tad

Glimpses into the courtship of a downy woodpecker pair
illustrate how ritualized behavior helps to forge
a bond of cooperation between two wild creatures.

18 Will the Real Noxious Model
Please Stand Up?

Susan M. Smith

The experienced bird has learned to avoid the noxious
snake sliding through the brush. But no, the snake is
actually a harmless look-alike duping the bird out of
a perfectly good meal. What humbug is afoot here?

24 Research & Review

Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

26 News & Notes

27 I Say with My Brush

Martin Stiles

The color and magic of bird artist Wilhelm Goebel.

FRONT COVER. White-throated sparrow. Photograph by
Wayne Lankinen, Our thanks to Andrew ]. Schroder, II for his
generous gift.

BACK COVER. Northern flicker at nest cavity. Photograph
by John Shaw.

Albert Kuhnigk (Valan Photos)

WarUer:

Why

So Rare?

by Harold R Mayfield

The Kirdand’s warbler nests only in stands of
small jack pines. Below, a branch and
female cone: since the cones are opened only
by the heat of a forest fire, frequent fires, right,
are necessary to ensure a continued supply
of nesting habitat for this rare bird.

Rarity is the hallmark of

the Kirtland’s warbler. Named after
Cleveland physician and naturalist
Jared R Kirtland, the entire species
consists of about 200 pairs, all of which
nest in a tiny region of northern Mich¬
igan, and winter in the Bahama Islands.

Biologists suspect that the Kirtland’s
warbler was a rare bird long before it
was discovered, yet it seems hard to
imagine that the species has teetered
upon the brink of extinction during its
entire history. Its specialized nesting
habitat, stands of small jack pines
growing on dry, sandy soil, was proba¬
bly much more extensive a few thou¬
sand years ago when the retreating
Wisconsin glacier left sandy outwash
plains in its wake.

Our earliest accurate information on
the size of the Kirtland’s warbler pop¬
ulation was obtained in 1951 when it
became the first songbird in the world
to be censused completely. At that time
there were 500 singing males, pre¬
sumed to represent 500 pairs. Between
1961 and 1971 the population plum¬
meted to about 200 singing males,
where it has remained for almost 15
years despite efforts to assist the spe¬
cies. This tiny population, all of which
could fit in one shopping bag, is but a
drop in the ocean of North American
birds.

Why is the Kirtland’s warbler so rare?
To answer this, biologists look first at
the bird’s habitat. But which habitat—
nesting or wintering—or. the migration
route traversed twice each year?

We have a few clues. Whatever is
holding back the present population
affects mainly the young in their first
year of life. Adults enjoy excellent sur¬
vival rates, about 65 percent from one
nesting season to the next, and they
produce young at rates comparable to
those of more abundant species, about
three fledglings a year. Yet only about
23 percent of the fledglings survive their
first year. Compared with other war¬
blers, this is a poor showing.

Nesting Habitat

Nesting habitat is the ultimate limiting
factor in this species as in all others.
For the Kirtland’s warbler the required
habitat is particularly distinctive and
restricted. The bird nests only in ex¬
tensive stands of Christmas-tree-size
jack pines growing on dry, sandy soil
with low ground cover. Under natural
conditions this habitat is maintained

4 The Living Bird Quarterly

Spring/1984 5

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

Soon after a forest fire, open cones, below, lie

among the “fiddleheads” of newly emerging
ferns. A few years later, right, the habitat will
be suitable for Kirtland’s warblers.

only by forest fire and therefore occurs
only in scattered tracts. Although jack
pines grow across the continent from
Nova Scotia to British Columbia, the
exact requirements of this bird seem to
be provided in just three counties of
northern lower Michigan.

Why the Kirtland’s warbler is re¬
stricted to its narrow ecological niche
is not clear. The reasons probably lie in
a combination of factors. Perhaps the
requirement is not just the tree species
but the shape or form of the trees and
the rest of the surroundings, including
the ground cover. When the natural
habitat is approximated by planting,
but with red pines substituted for the
jack pines, the birds will nest in it.
Perhaps other conifers would be ac¬
cepted also. Actually, the warblers do
not place their nests directly in the
trees. They embed the nests in the sand
under low ground cover. They use the
pines for foraging and concealment, but
for these purposes it would seem that
other kinds of vegetation would do as
well.

If the bird has any special food re¬
quirement, we have not detected it. It
seems to eat whatever insects are abun¬
dant in the trees and ground vegeta¬
tion. However, the nature of the soil
seems to be important. All nests found
to date have occurred on one soil type.
Grayling sand. On this porous and ster¬
ile base the warbler finds good drainage
under its nest and stunted ground cover
to conceal eggs and nestlings. This poor
soil with its sparse fauna also provides
a measure of sanctuary from competi¬
tors and predators. Significantly, none
of its avian associates, such as the ves¬
per sparrow and hermit thrush, are lim¬
ited to this special habitat. In fact, all
of them flourish better elsewhere.

In primeval times the nesting habi¬
tat was renewed by sporadic forest fires
set by lightning, Indians, or settlers.
The period of heavy lumbering, around
the 1870s, brought fires on a vast scale,
described by some observers as “the
burning of an empire.” Slashings were
left on the ground to be ignited by
people or lightning. The damage was
often tragic, but the enormous tracts of
burned land soon covered by young
pines were a boon to Kirtland’s warblers.

For the past 100 years, however, the

habitat is preserved, four tracts com¬
prising more than 11,000 acres were set
aside between 1957 and 1961 to be
managed permanently for the benefit
of Kirtland’s warblers. More recently,
under the Endangered Species Act,
habitat preservation efforts have ex¬
panded to include 135,000 acres. If a
substantial increase in the population
is attained, it certainly will require an
increase in the amount of nesting
habitat.

Still, if the habitat requirements are
seen simply in terms of space available
for nesting, the bird does not seem to
be approaching the limit. To our eyes
the warbler does not fill all available
space. While defended territories av¬
erage about eight acres, nesting colo¬
nies occupy enough space to allow 30
acres per pair. Also, territories are sel¬
dom contiguous with others on all sides
as though crowded. Sometimes nearby
areas look suitable but have no Kirt¬
land’s warblers. Perhaps the birds see
something we do not, or perhaps there
are not enough of them to fill the
habitat.

Cowbird Threat

Early in the last century the encroach¬
ment of settlers in southern Michigan
had a profound effect on the Kirtland’s

HarcNd Mayfield

nesting habitat has been shrinking
along with the Kirtland’s warbler pop¬
ulation. Jerome Weinrich, biologist in
the Michigan Department of Natural
Resources, has estimated that the hab¬
itat decreased 40 percent from 1961 to
1971, a period in which the population
declined 60 percent. The number of
accidental fires has increased in mod¬
em times, but the ability to fight them
has improved and they are usually held
to small tracts.

To make sure some of this unique

6 The Living Bird Quarterly

John Shaw

Edgar T. Jones (Bruce Coleman Inc.)

Kirtland’s warbler nest and eggs, below. In
these nests a female brown-headed cowbird,
left, lays her egg which the host bird raises to
the detriment of its own young.

control was highly successful, and cow-
bird molestation was reduced almost to
the vanishing point. Production of
young warblers improved to more than
three fledglings a pair per year, which
laid to rest any doubts about the fe¬
cundity of the species.

Thus the most acute problem was
solved. But alas, the population did not
rebound as expected. Annual counts
still waver around 200 pairs. While it
is disappointing not to see a substantial
increase, there is satisfaction in having
arrested the precipitous decline.

Wintering Experience

Nearly everything we know about this
bird is limited to the four months it
spends on its nesting range. The greater
part of each year is spent in the Bahama
Islands, where its habits are virtually
unknown. People have reported
glimpses of the warbler in the Baha¬
mas, but no one has been able to main¬
tain sight of it for very long. Since it
does not sing in winter and does not
congregate, it is exceedingly difficult
to find. I have tried unsuccessfully on
several occasions. The Bahamas may
look small on the map, but they consist
of 700 islands, cays, and rocks, most of
which are covered by dense scrub. A
few hundred warblers dispersed among
them are so many needles in haystacks.

The Bahamas have changed greatly
since the height of the last ice age
18,000 years ago when the breeding
range of the Kirtland’s warbler was
probably much more extensive than
now. At that time so much of the world’s
water was bound up as ice on the con¬
tinents that the oceans were about 400
feet lower, and with their shallows high
and dry, these islands were vastly larger.

In recent centuries, however, the is¬
lands have changed little. Unlike many
other tropical regions, these scrub for¬
est lands have not been attractive for
agriculture, and most human inhabi¬
tants have turned their attention to the
sea. Pines grow on only the four north¬
ernmost islands, which have been lum¬
bered and burned piecemeal for a very
long time. But we are not even sure
the pines have significance to the sur¬
vival of Kirtland’s warblers, since most
modern sightings have been on islands
without pines.

warbler. The spread of agriculture across
the midwest replaced much of the for¬
est with fields and pastures. The newly
opened land provided a favorable en¬
vironment for many birds of the west¬
ern grasslands, which expanded their
ranges north and east to the Michigan
pinelands. One of these was the brown¬
headed cowbird, which entered the re¬
gion about 1880.

The cowbird is a nest parasite. It
removes eggs from the nests of other
birds and lays its own in their place.
Some host species accept the foreign
eggs and raise the young as their own.
Because the cowbird is larger than most
of its hosts and has a shorter incubation
period, host young usually do not fare
as well as the young cowbirds. Usually
only a modest number of nests are
parasitized.

Not so for the Kirtland’s warbler. In
the 1960s, 70 percent of Kirtland’s war¬
bler nests were used by cowbirds, with
production of young depressed to less
than one fledgling a pair per year. Cal¬
culations based on previous reproduc¬
tive and survival rates led to the con¬
clusion that the Kirtland’s warbler
needed help or the last one would van¬
ish before 1980.

Conservationists were alarmed and
promptly set in motion steps to rescue

BUI Dyer® (Photo Researchers, Inc.)

the bird. Plans involved an increase in
the amount of habitat, but since jack
pines need about eight years to reach
the required size, these measures did
not promise quick results. Cowbird
control was a different matter; cow¬
birds can be removed effectively from
the vicinity of nests by trapping. Sev¬
eral agencies cooperated in trapping ef¬
forts—National Forest Service, U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service, Michigan
Department of Natural Resources, and
Michigan Audubon Society. Cowbird

Spring/1984 7

''This tiny population^
all of which could fit
in one shopping bag,
is but a drop in
the ocean of North
American birds.

We cannot rule out unidentified
problems on the wintering ground.
Ecologist Steve Fretwell, formerly at
Kansas State University, has hypothe¬
sized that the Kirtland’s warbler may be
under pressure from avian competitors,
especially abundant winter visitors such
as the palm warbler and prairie warbler.
If these have a successful breeding sea¬
son they may crowd the wintering areas.
This idea is hard to evaluate since we
know nothing about the fluctuations
and interrelations of these birds.

Migration

As we consider each phase of the an¬
nual cycle, the problem of migration
deserves attention. On long-distance
flights we might expect losses to fall
most heavily on inexperienced birds,
the focus of our concern. In all species
the young are more likely to stray out¬
side the normal routes in migration. In

abundant and adaptable species this
trait may have value in pioneering new
areas and mixing genetic strains. How¬
ever, stray Kirtland’s warblers have no
future and such losses may not be
affordable.

To see this problem in perspective,
let us look at a more successful bird
similar to the Kirtland’s warbler, the
prairie warbler. This bird also migrates
to and from the Bahamas. The survival
rate of adults is comparable to the Kirt¬
land’s warbler and its production of
young may even be a bit lower. Yet its
population is sustained. Why?

In the prairie warbler, and most other
migratory songbirds, a very small pro¬
portion of yearlings, 4 percent or less,
return to the site of their hatching. The
others disperse widely. Because they
range from Kansas to the Atlantic coast,
prairie warblers may miss their birth¬
place by hundreds of miles and still find

Biologists don't know why this warbler nests
only in jack pine stands when it builds its
nest on the ground. Just 23 percent of the
fledglings, below, survive the first year.

suitable habitat and mates. The Kirt¬
land’s warbler, however, must migrate
with pinpoint accuracy or find itself
separated from others of its kind.

We know that individuals do stray.
In 1978 four misdirected males were
found, two in Wisconsin, one in On¬
tario, and one in Quebec. None had
mates. Each chose plausible habitat and
sang persistently until the breeding sea¬
son waned. Strays also have been dis¬
covered in other years.

Accurate navigation has been a re¬
quirement of the Kirtland’s warbler for
centuries, but in recent years the prob¬
lem has grown more acute. In 1961 the
distance across the breeding area was
100 miles; by 1983 it was 40 miles. At
the same time the area of a rectangle
embracing all nests has shrunk from
6,000 to 1,300 square miles. Even these
dimensions do not fully portray the
searching feat because within the range
the nesting sites occupy only a few scat¬
tered patches.

Thus the Kirtland’s warbler, while
facing the usual problems of survival
among migratory songbirds, in addi¬
tion has special problems as a conse¬
quence of its own rarity.

Postscript

To nonscientists it may be encouraging
to learn that, even in the most thor¬
oughly studied species, much is still
unknown. One of the attractions of
bird study is that the amateur can make
valuable contributions by observation
and meticulous notes. In the case of
the Kirtland’s warbler there is a high
probability that the mysteries on the
wintering ground will first be pierced
by an amateur bird watcher on vaca¬
tion in the Bahama Islands.

FURTHER READING

Huber, K. R. The Kirtland's Warbler (Dendroica
kirtlandii): An Annotated Bibliography 1852-
1980. Museum of Zoology, University of Mich¬
igan, Ann Arbor. 1982.

Walkinshaw, L. H. Kirtland’s Warbler: The Nat¬
ural History of an Endangered Species. Cranbrook
Institute of Science, Bloomfield, Michigan. 1983.

THEAUTHOR

Harold Mayfield is former president of the Amer¬
ican Ornithologists’ Union and present member
of the Kirtland’s Warbler Recovery Team.

8 The Living Bird Quarterly

A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR The

Amateur Naturalist

(^rald EHirrell

With LEE DURRELL • What to do in 17 various environ¬
ments—from your own back yard to beach, meadow,
or woods; from feeding an orphan bird to planting a
bottle garden, breeding butterflies, and much more...

rows

Item Title Qty. Price

Amount of order _

N.Y. State residents add 7% sales tax _

Postage and handling, S2.00 ist item _ 2.00

50c each additional item _

Total amount enclosed _

Form of payment: O Check □ Money Order □ VISA □ MasterCard

Card #_Expir. Date--

Signature___———

Name__________—,

Address__

City_State-Zip-

The Amateur Naturalist

Gerald Durrell

Introduction to the craft of the

naturalist. Filled with photographs,

drawings, paintings. Written with

first-hand knowledge. Durrell leads

you through a series of walking

tours of the natural environment,

from around the home to woods,

desert, swamp, shore, and tropical

forest. He shows you what to look

for, where to look, how to interpret

what you see, and gives tips on

collection.

1983, cloth, 320 pages.

$22.50/20.25 members

Weather and Bird Behaviour

Norman Elkins

Instructive and fascinating study of
the effects of weather on birdlife.
Includes chapters on flight, aerial
feeding, migrational drift and
displacement, extreme weather,
seabirds, and breeding.

1983, cloth, 239 pages.

$32.50/29.25 members

North American Marsh Birds

Gary Low and
William Mansell

Stunning collection of paintings and
drawings of 52 species of marsh
birds revealed in all their
individuality. Authoritative and
entertaining descriptions accompany
each illustration.

1983, cloth, 189 pages.

$44.95/40.45 members

pi#

l? »■•♦ /*' -£•. ft

A >*.-*■«

' wsm

Too Hafpy in
Thine Happiness

by Samuel A. Eliot

^3iRD songs play many roles in our lives. They are
objects of scientific scrutiny, signals of seasonal change; they
evoke feelings and inspire poets. The gloom of an April
morning can be lifted by the song of a robin. Biologists tell
us the robin sings to assert his territorial imperative or attract
a mate, but this does not explain the way the robin’s song
makes us feel.

Poetry does attempt to describe those feelings, particularly
the poems of 19th-century England. Poets of that time were
grappling with the place of humans in the natural environ¬
ment and with the role of the environment in inspiring
artistic creation.

Through a look at some “bird poems” of four poets of that
era—Thomas Hardy, Percy Shelley, William Wordsworth,
and John Keats—we may gain insight into how the song of
the thrush, skylark, and nightingale made them feel and how
the expression of those feelings can offer us new perspectives
on our own responses.

Poet and novelist Thomas Hardy was inspired by a bird’s
song when he wrote “The Darkling Thrush.” The main event
of the poem is a thrush’s song on a desolate December evening
in England.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a fullhearted evensong
of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small.

In blast-beruffled plume.

Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around.

That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

I talked with my literature class about Hardy’s attribution
of joy to the thrush despite the absence of any “cause for

carolings” in the bleakness of the landscape. To my surprise
one student expressed disdain for the poem. “It’s ridiculous,”
she said. “Everyone knows thrushes don’t sing in December
at that latitude.”

At the time I thought she failed to appreciate poetic
license. In fact thrushes do sing in December at that latitude.
My student was not only ungenerous but wrong. Moreover,
listening to the taped songs of thrushes in the Cornell Lab¬
oratory of Ornithology’s Library of Natural Sounds, I believe
that Hardy had encountered a singing song thrush on that
New Year’s Eve in 1900. The thrush’s song moved Hardy to
imagine “Some blessed Hope” on an otherwise bleak evening,
and to write a poem about it. He was one of several poets in
19th-century England who used seasonal imagery and bird
song to illuminate his responses to the natural world and to
articulate the impact these phenomena have on the creative
process.

Hardy was so moved by Percy Shelley’s “To a Skylark” that
he wrote a poem called “Shelley’s Skylark.” In it Hardy speaks
of finding the “priceless dust” of the skylark Shelley heard
decades before, and consecrating it because “ ... it inspired
a bard to win/Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme.” Not
just Shelley’s poem but the entire process of thinking about
and creating the poem was inspired by the skylark’s song.

Shelley’s “To a Skylark” was written in June of 1820, in

Wordsworth, left. Below, was Hardy’s darklmg thrush a song thrush?

Spring/1984 11

Derek Wa*hington (Bruce Coleman Inc.)

Ralf Richter (Ardea Photographies,

Skylark: Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert...

Italy, so there is no problem with season or latitude. But
there is a problem which recurs in different guises in all the
great bird poems—the poet’s awareness that he may be in¬
spired by but can never understand or attain the “profuse
strains of unpremeditated art,” the “unbodied joy” that is
the skylark’s song.

In the case of the skylark, you may hear the song or see
the bird, but not both at once. The skylark sings only in
flight when it is too high to be clearly visible. “In the broad
day-light/Thou art unseen—but yet I hear thy shrill de¬
light,” and “... we hardly see—we feel that it is there.” But,
as anyone who has tried to spot an obscure bird knows, feeling
it is there is not enough. Shelley tries to find the skylark by
creating a fitting analogue for it and its song. “What thou
art we know not;/What is most like thee?” he asks, and
explores the question through the five senses and the animal,
vegetable, and mineral realms. But none of his similies (a
woman, a rose, a spring shower) is successful. His poem has
been inspired by something he cannot see and for which
there is no comparison.

Like Hardy in “The Darkling Thrush,” Shelley attributes
a feeling to the bird, saying in effect “If it sounds this good,
and if hearing it makes me feel good, then the bird must be
happy; and, if it is that happy, it must know something I
don’t.” If Shelley’s skylark will teach him the gladness it
knows, then his art will capture the world’s imagination the
way the skylark’s song has captured his.

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know.

Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow

The world should listen then—as I am listening now.

Even without knowing the skylark’s “gladness,” Shelley
has been inspired by it to write a poem about how the skylark’s

song makes him feel and how those feelings heighten his
awareness of himself as part of the natural world.

That the bird is at once itself and something more is
another idea which pervades 19th-century English poetry. In
William Wordsworth’s poem, also titled “To a Skylark” the
bird’s song, “joyous as morning,” represents both freedom
from the burdens of human life and a way of lightening those
burdens.

Alas! My journey, rugged and uneven.

Through prickly moors and dusty ways must wind;

But hearing thee, or others of thy kind.

As full of gladness and as free of heaven,

I, with my fate contented, will plod on.

And hope for higher raptures, when life’s day is done.

Wordsworth infers from the song of the skylark the exis¬
tence of “higher raptures.” Hearing the song he is inspired
to create a work which suggests meaning beyond the song
itself.

Because the poets do not see but only hear the bird, they
call it by a number of ambiguous names. Shelley calls the
skylark a “spirit” and wonders if it is “sprite or a bird.”
Wordsworth calls it “ethereal minstrel” and “pilgrim of the
sky.”

In “To the Cuckoo,” Wordsworth makes the ambiguity
explicit.

O Cuckoo! Shall I call thee Bird,

Or but a wandering voice?

Even yet though art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,

A voice, a mystery. ..

Wordsworth wrote two poems entitled “To a Skylark.” In
the first he is moved by the bird’s song to reflect on his own
“rugged and uneven” life. In the second he simply celebrates
the bird and its song.

Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;

A privacy of glorious light is thine;

Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood
Of harmony, with instinct more divine;

Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!

Like the skylark and the thrush, the nightingale is hard
to see, particularly when singing in “her shady wood.” The
best-known nightingale in English literature built a nest in
the woods in Hampstead near the home of Charles Brown,
a friend of John Keats, in the spring of 1819. There is little
doubt that this bird was the inspiration for Keats’s “Ode to
a Nightingale.” Brown, in his Life of John Keats, describes
the scene: “In the spring of 1819 a nightingale had built her
nest near my house. Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy
in her song; and one morning he took his chair from the
breakfast table to the grass-plot under a plum tree, where he
sat for two or three hours. When he came into the house, I
perceived he had some scraps of paper in his hand, and these
he was quietly thrusting behind the books. On inquiry, I

12 The Living Bird Quarterly

found those scraps, four or five in number, contained his
poetic feeling on the song of our nightingale.”

Sitting in Brown’s garden under the plum tree, Keats hears
the nightingale’s song. Like Shelley in “To a Skylark,” he is
listening to a bird he cannot see. Nor can he be sure where
it is beyond the uncertainty of “in some melodious plot/Of
beechen green, and shadows numberless.” But the nightin¬
gale’s song has an immediacy that overcomes the ambiguity
of its whereabouts. Singing “of summer in full-throated ease,”
it creates in Keats a happiness, a close-to-fatal intoxication,
a “drowsy numbness” that arises from his identification with
the bird. Listening, Keats longs to become more intoxicated,
to “ ... leave the world unseen/And with thee fade away
into the forest dim.”

For Shelley and Wordsworth, the bird’s song is an inspi¬
ration and source of wonder, but the song is clearly separate
from them. For Keats, as he listens to the nightingale, this
separation breaks down. Through his imagination he enters
“the forest dim,” seeking to achieve oneness with the singer.
(We know from his letters that a few months earlier he had
hoped that he was “moulting.”)

Not intoxication but the power of the imagination is what
releases Keats from Brown’s garden in Hampstead, allowing
him to—

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known.

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan...

The process of writing the poem enables Keats to achieve
not only union and release but a new perspective on life,
“Where but to think is to be full of sorrow. ” In the imagined
darkness of the nightingale’s forest, Keats cannot see, but
can guess that the bird is surrounded by—

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit tree wild;

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

Fast fading violets covered up in leaves;

And mid-May’s eldest child.

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine.

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

But even here, the violets are fading. Though it is only
mid-May, the musk-rose already hints of summer evenings.
And after summer, fall, and inevitably, death. Yet, in the
nightingale’s “embalmed darkness,” death is a muse, not a
threat:

Now more than ever seems it rich to die.

To cease upon the midnight with no pain.

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!

But at the very moment Keats achieves identification with
the nightingale, he is reminded of his separateness from it
and its song:

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown...

A nightingale’s most outstanding feature is its melodious song.

I can hear my literal-minded student saying “That’s ridic¬
ulous!” at the idea of an immortal bird in any season, at any
latitude. Would her mind be eased if I suggested that the
nightingale’s song, not the bird itself, is immortal?

In acknowledging his separateness from the bird, Keats is
reminded of his own mortality, and at that moment the
nightingale flies away.

Past the near meadows, over the still stream.

Up the hill side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

With the departure of the unseen singer, and the fading
of its song, Keats is returned to Brown’s garden in Hampstead.
Was that moment of transcendence real? Was it just a dream?
Keats leaves the questions unanswered.

Although Keats wasn’t sure if he were awake or asleep,
though Shelley could neither see his skylark nor find an
analogue for it, both poets were inspired by the birds’ songs
to write poems which brought to their creators an immor¬
tality akin to the nightingale’s. In finding in nature a key to
their own imaginations. Hardy, Shelley, Wordsworth, and
Keats help us to understand how the joy of a bird’s song can
evoke in us an answering joy.

FURTHER READING

Bloom, Harold. The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic
Poetry. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York. 1971.

Bush, Douglas (ed.). Selected Poems and Letters by John Keats. Houghton
Mifflin, Boston. 1959.

THEAUTHOR

Samuel Eliot taught literature at College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine.
He is now public affairs director at the Laboratory of Ornithology.

Spring/1984 13

Hans Reinhard (Bruce Coleman Inc.)

FROM HOSTILITY TO AMITY

by Louise de Kiriline Lawrence Illustrations by Aleta Karstad

The beginnings of ritualized behavior in birds lie buried in the deep past. Rites affect
virtually every species of bird and color almost every phase of their behavior, courtship
and mating in particular.

Rites are movements, posturings, and vocalizations which, through repeated use,
have become rained into automatic patterns of stereotyped behavior.

One of the most important functions of the rite is to forge the bond of cooperation
necessary between the members of the pair. Their successful union depends on this.
The normal intolerance between members of the same species must be meliorated,
so that some personal recognition is established to allow the acceptance of each
other’s presence. In the relationships between wild creatures, rituals bridge die gap
between hostility and amity.

Let us follow the courtship rites of a pair of downy woodpeckers.

It is March. The male downy
woodpecker clings to the white trunk
of the birch. For the first time this
spring his whinnying call rings through
the forest. The male drums. He
displays—his outer white blacL
spotted tail feathers are fully exposed,
his bill gaping, his body a balloon of
soft fluffed feathers, and his nape
spot, erected, looks like a red bonnet
over his crown.

2 .

The female’s answer comes from a distance. Also she
postures, her tail feathers spread wide. Thus together,
but always at a distance out of sight, the pair course
the forest. They call and they drum. Signals and
answering signals leap back and forth between them.
They posture. There is an old nest hole. The female
examines it. Suddenly, the male alights below her
on the birch trunk. But she flies away. They meet again,
these two, as they met last spring. The attachment to
the land is strong. It possesses them and brings them
together each spring for as long as they live.

14 The Living Bird Quarterly

It is April. An intruding doumy woodpecker female flies into
the nesting territory of the pair. She makes a straight line for
the male. His mate, feeding in the tall poplars, dives
headlong down upon the two. With her bill aiming
skywards, she vigorously points it repeatedly right and left,
her wings flap, her tail is spread and held flat
against the support.

The female attacks the intruder. She pursues her high up
into the trees, and down. The male hides behind tree
trunks and lets the battle of die females surge around
him. At the peak of their excitement, the resident female,
her bill gaping, rises on tiptoe confronting the adversary
with her gleaming white-lined wings wide open.
Slowly, like a weather vane, she turns her body this way
and that — threatening. The sun, shining through the
trees, illuminates her.

Spring/1984 15

It’s May and bursting leaves spread a tint of green
over the aspen groves. The male is pursuing
the female in short fluttering flights to sit beside her.
But she flies away.

6 .

The male is in the nest. It is now half completed. He
backs out, ruffling his feathers, and clings to the edge
of the opening. The ferrude’s arrival causes him
to peck long and vigorously at the upper edge of
the doorway. This excites the female and she flies off.
The male follows.

16 The Living Bird Quarterly

7 .

The female looks out the doorway, scatters a billful
of collected debris upon the gentle breeze. She
emerges, flies to a horizontal branch. There she
perches crosswise, tail up, head thrown back,
wings loose against her sides, motionless.

Attending her, the male makes his ritual
advance—but hesitates, retreats. Then, once
again, his wings loosened at his sides, tips trailing,
and his tail down upon the branch, hop - hop -
hop, he reaches the female, mounts. A firm grip
on her plumage, die male siwngs his body under
her tail, his wings spread wide, the left supporting,
the other draped like a mande across her back,
and effects union.

There is no sound. The male flies away. For an
instant the female remains in the dappled light of
the forest, motionless. A soft whir of wings,
and she is gone.

Spring/1984 17

Michael Fogden (Bruce Coleman Inc.)

Will the Real
Noxicm Model

Please

Stand Up?

hy Susan M. Smith

A YOUNG BIRD capturing a mon¬
arch butterfly for the first time is in
for a surprise, for it won’t enjoy its meal.
In fact, it probably will spit it out.
What’s more, the monarch likely tastes
so bad that the bird will avoid all orange-
and-black butterflies, even good¬
tasting ones, for the rest of its life. This
is an example of the phenomenon called
evasive mimicry—a highly evolved sys¬
tem where one species, simply by look¬
ing like another species, avoids being
eaten by a third (predator) species.

The simplest form of evasive mim¬
icry is Batesian mimicry. This involves
three species: a noxious model that
stings, bites, or tastes bad; a harmless
mimic, which resembles the model; and
a predator, which avoids the mimic be¬
cause it looks so much like the nasty
model. Most models possess conspicu¬
ous colors—red, yellow, orange,
black—that serve as a warning to pred-

18 The Living Bird Quarterly

Lynn M. Stone® (Bruce Coleman Inc.)

The harmless scarlet king snake, above, resembles the deadly coral snake, left.

But which is the model and which the mimic?

ators. Over time, their mimics evolve
the same or similar warning colors and
patterns that serve to fool predators.
The system works when a predator has
a bad experience with a model, learns
that it is noxious, and generalizes to
avoid any prey that look similar.

In this system, the mimic gains and
the predator loses. Models also lose be¬
cause predators must learn to associate
a model’s colors with its noxious na¬
ture. The more good-tasting, harmless
Batesian mimics there are, the greater
the chance that naive predators will
taste a mimic first, learn that prey with
that color pattern are delicious, and
start gobbling everything that looks
similar. This is why Batesian mimicry
works best when the model population
is larger than the mimic population.

A second form of evasive mimicry is
called Mullerian mimicry. Here two or
more species, each of which is noxious.

look alike. Since each is noxious, it is
meaningless to say which is model and
which is mimic. Every species involved
benefits. The predator gains because it
has to learn only one warning pattern
and therefore wastes less time attacking
harmful prey. The model/mimics also
gain: if two noxious species converge
on a single warning color pattern, then
each individual in each population
roughly halves its chances of being
tasted.

The third form of evasive mimicry,
Mertensian mimicry, is rare and con¬
troversial. Mertensian mimicry has
been described for only one set of spe¬
cies in the world, a group of primarily
neotropical snakes which includes
members of two families: true coral
snakes, family Elapidae, and several
similarly patterned members of the
family Colubridae. Members of this
species complex have striking ringed

patterns, usually of red, yellow (or
white), and black.

Controversy about the colorations
within this species complex stems from
two points: first, do the snakes’ pat¬
terns involve mimicry at all, and sec¬
ond, if there is mimicry, what type?
Some scientists have postulated that
the ringed patterns arose simply by
chance. Others claim that the rings
serve to break up the snakes’ outlines
against their natural background of
leaves. Some of the strongest evidence
that the patterns are a form of mimicry
is the geographical pattern of color var-
iation in the species involved.
Throughout Central America, for ex¬
ample, coral snakes show striking local
variation in pattern, yet they typically
are matched by local colubrids.

Hence the coral snake species com¬
plex apparently does involve evasive
mimicry. But what kind? Coral snakes

Spring/1984 19

J. H. Robinson^

Batesian mimicry at work: the good'tasting viceroy, above, mimics the bitter-tasting monarch, right.

have extremely powerful venom. By
contrast, the similar-appearing colu-
brids are either mildly venomous or
have no venom. Early interpretations
were simple: coral snakes, whose venom
was potent, were the models, while the
mildly venomous colubrids were Miil-
lerian mimics and the nonvenomous
colubrids were Batesian mimics.

There was, however, a catch. Most
explanations of evasive mimicry claim
it works only when a predator learns
that a model is noxious and then gen¬
eralizes to avoid everything that looks
like the model. If this contention is
true, could coral snakes really serve as
models? Consider a naive predatory bird
encountering its first coral snake. Two
possibilities exist. The young predator
may succeed in catching and killing the
snake, thereby learning that coral
snakes taste fine and generalizing to
search for and eat similar snakes, until

''Adult birds in the
field tend to avoid
brightly colored prey. ”

the second possibility occurs: the young
predator gets overconfident, and the
coral snake bites before the predator
can kill. Here is the bad experience
necessary for predator learning and
generalization—but a dead predator
can’t generalize to avoid anything.

Wolfgang Wickler of the Max Planck
Institute for Behavioral Physiology in
Germany pointed this out in 1968. At
that time there was no evidence that
any predator could recognize a coral
snake innately, and Wickler felt that
coral snakes are simply too lethal to
serve as models in a conventional mim¬
icry system. Instead, he proposed that
the mildly venomous colubrids, with
which a predator could have a bad ex¬
perience and survive, are the real mod¬
els, while the deadly coral snakes are
actually the mimics. He termed this
proposed relationship Mertensian
mimicry.

20 The Living Bird Quarterly

J. H. Robinson®

Below: a blue jay becomes ill after eating a monarch. In the future, the jay probably will avoid all orange butterflies, whether harmful or not.

TTie predators most commonly in¬
volved in mimicry systems are wild
birds. It has been well documented that
adult birds tend to avoid brightly col¬
ored prey. Most texts state they must
learn to do this. But is it that simple?

Certainly learning is important in
many cases. Jane and Lincoln Brower
have shown that starlings and blue jays
must learn to avoid bad-tasting brightly
colored insects like monarch butter¬
flies. And young red-winged blackbirds
attack their first brightly colored stink-
bugs, which are noxious, just as readily
as they do their first mealworms, a
gourmet delight for any insect-eating
bird.

But do avoidance responses have to
be learned? Two other hypotheses have
been proposed. One is that young birds
possess a genetically based aversion to
anything new, so that novelty itself may
be the basis for prey rejection. Re¬

cently, however, some experiments I
performed indicated otherwise. I hand-
reared blue jays, house sparrows and
red-winged blackbirds. Every one of my
young birds attacked the first brightly
colored and contrasting pattern it saw
with no hesitation. This does not mean

I that novelty has no effect on a young
I bird’s prey-attack behavior. Young do-
g mestic chicks learn to reject novel
I stimuli more rapidly than familiar ones.
^ Still, inborn rejection of novelty alone
is insufficient to explain why wild birds
reject brightly colored prey.

The other hypothesis is that birds
possess some innate mechanism for rec¬
ognizing noxious prey. There is a con¬
siderable amount of evidence for this
idea. For example, a red-throated bee-
eater can eat a bee safely by beating it
against a branch, then quickly shifting
its grip and wiping the bee’s abdomen
against the perch, thereby de-stinging
it. What is interesting is that naive bee-
eaters can perform these movements
successfully with the first bee they
encounter.

A recent study done in England by
N. B. Davies and R. E. Green of Ed¬
ward Grey Institute shows that at least

Spring/1984 21

Russ Kinne^ (Photo Researchers, Inc.) Our thanks to W. R. Thurston for his generous gift.

one insect eater, the European reed
warbler, has a fascinating inborn re¬
sponse to bees and wasps. In this in¬
stance a Batesian mimicry system is at
work: yellow-and-black bees and wasps,
which sting, are models, and harmless
hover flies, whose yellow-and-black
ring pattern strongly resembles the bees
and wasps, are mimics. Amazingly
enough, inexperienced hand-reared
young reed warblers recognized and re¬
jected the first wasp they ever saw—
yet immediately attacked and ate their
first hover fly. Predators with such a
precise inborn mechanism do not have
to learn to avoid bees and wasps.

But could predators recognize coral
snakes innately? No one knew. So when
I was living in Costa Rica a few years
ago, I took the opportunity to hand-

“. . . when they were
shown a model
painted yellow with
red rings y they all
flew up to the
opposite corner . . .

Great kiskadees were alarmed by the coral
snake model, below, second from bottom.

rear two potential predators to inves¬
tigate this question.

The first species I studied was the
turquoise-browed motmot. From their
nest burrows I removed four broods,
two before the nestlings’ eyes had
opened, and hand-reared them until
they could catch their own prey. Then
I presented my nine motmots with snake
models—wooden dowels painted with
various colors and patterns. All of the
birds attacked solid red, yellow, green,
or blue models with no hesitation.
However, when they were shown a
model painted yellow with red rings,
they all flew up to the opposite corner
of the cage and gave alarm calls. They
readily attacked a yellow model with
red stripes, and a green model with blue
rings, therefore the motmots were not
afraid of rings per se nor simply the
combination of yellow and red. But
when the yellow and red were in a ring
pattern similar to the venomous snake
they always rejected it. I interpreted
this as inborn rejection of a generalized
coral snake pattern.

Next I hand-reared some great kis¬
kadees which were good test subjects
because their broad range, from Texas
to southern South America, largely
overlaps that of the coral snake species
complex. The kiskadees behaved just
like the motmots. All nine birds readily
attacked plain models of red, yellow,
black, white, or green. To test for nov¬
elty rejection, the first pattern they re¬
ceived was white with dark green rings.
All attacked it with no hesitation. Next
they were shown the yellow-and-red
ring model—all rejected it, yet at¬
tacked the yellow-and-red striped one.
Last came my masterpiece: a wooden
dowel carefully painted with red, yel¬
low, and black rings. Here the response
was fascinating. The kiskadees clearly
had a stronger aversion for the coral
snake pattern than for the yellow-and-
red ring pattern. More birds gave alarm
calls to the coral snake rings, and the
calls were of higher intensity.

This leads us to question the exis¬
tence of Mertensian mimicry, which is
based on the premise that predators
must learn to avoid coral snake ring
patterns. We now know that at least
two avian predators do it innately.

Thus recognition can be inborn. But
what about generalization? Generaliza¬
tion by predators is crucial to the func¬
tioning of evasive mimicry. If predators
didn’t generalize to avoid things that

resemble the model, mimics would gain
no advantage and the whole system
would break down. The young reed
warblers were able to recognize wasps
and bees innately, and this knowledge
was so precise that the young birds were
not fooled by the hover flies’ resem¬
blance. Hence the models were safe,
the predators were not duped out of a
meal, and the mimics got eaten—
not how a well-run mimicry system
should operate.

The motmots and kiskadees I tested
had an inborn recognition of coral snake
patterns. In addition, the birds showed
strong evidence of generalization since
they rejected the yellow-and-red ring
pattern which only vaguely resembled
a coral snake. Why should they do this?
Probably because of the high variability
in color patterns of coral snakes, i.e.,
there is no single color pattern pos¬
sessed by all lethal snakes. In dealing
with something so deadly, mistakes can
be fatal, so inborn generalization,
along with inborn recognition, is a
real advantage to the would-be snake
eaters.

Since two out of two avian predators
tested showed both innate recognition
and innate generalization of coral snake
patterns, there may be no need to in¬
voke Mertensian mimicry at all. The
coral snake mimicry complex can be
explained in terms of Batesian and
Mullerian mimicry.

Not all bird species acquire their
aversions to warning-colored prey in
the same ways. Yet what these aver¬
sions are, and how they are acquired,
can have a strong effect on the effi¬
ciency of local mimicry systems. More
careful studies on the behavioral de¬
velopment of young birds of a wide
variety of species are needed before we
can really understand how mimicry sys¬
tems work in nature.

FURTHER READING

Greene, Harry W. and Roy W. McDiarmid. “Coral
snake mimicry: does it occur?” Sderice 213: 1207—
1212. 1981.

Smith, Susan M. “The Ontogeny of Avian Be¬
havior,” in Avian Biology, Vol. 7. D. S. Famer,
J. R. King, and K. C. Parkes (eds.). Academic
Press, New York. 1983.

Wickler, Wolfgang. Mimicry in Plants and Ani-
mals. McGraw-Hill, New York. 1968.

THE AUTHOR

Susan M. Smith is an associate professor in the
Department of Biological Sciences at Mount
Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts.

Spring/1984 23

RESEARCH k REVIEW

Richard E. Bonney, ]r.

Band Stand

A few years ago Nancy Burley obtained 40
zebra finches for a study on parental behav¬
ior. She routinely banded them with a va¬
riety of colored leg bands and released them
into an aviary. Five months later she real¬
ized that most birds wearing red or pink
bands were breeding, while most of those
wearing light-green bands were not. When
she replaced the green bands with red ones
the rebanded birds began breeding.

Burley was intrigued. The idea that a
bird’s leg color might influence sexual be¬
havior was novel. Birders know that leg
color can be important in field identifica¬
tion, for example, the bright yellow legs of
the lesser yellowlegs help distinguish the
bird from the green-legged solitary sand¬
piper. But the idea that leg color could be
important to the birds themselves had been
suggested by only one researcher, E. H.
Burtt, Jr. So Burley, of the University of
Illinois, along with Gail Krantzberg and
Peter Radman, designed a study to test in¬
dividual zebra finch sexual preferences for
six leg-band colors (“Influence of colour¬
banding on the conspecific preferences of
zebra finches,” Animal Behaviour, vol. 30,
pp. 444-455).

The researchers designed an experimen¬
tal chamber consisting of a central area and
four radiating arms. Each arm contained a
caged “stimulus” zebra finch. Three of the
stimulus birds were banded, each with a
different color. The fourth bird remained
unbanded. A fifth “test” bird was released
into the central area from which it could
see only one stimulus bird at a time. The
test and stimulus birds could not touch one
another, but could engage in preliminary
courtship activities. The researchers mea¬
sured sexual preferences of test birds as the
amount of time they spent courting each
stimulus bird. Fifty-eight different birds were
tested, 41 males and 17 females, for several
hundred hours of observation.

Burley, Krantzberg, and Radman deter¬
mined that sexual preferences indeed were
affected by leg-band color. Certain colors
were more attractive, and others less at¬
tractive, than the natural, unbanded con¬
dition. Preferred colors coincided some¬
what with colors occurring naturally in the
finches’ plumage and beak. Females most
preferred males with bands of bright red,
the color of the male’s beak; males most
preferred black, which occurs in several

places in the adult plumage. The least pre¬
ferred colors, light blue and light green, do
not occur in the zebra finch’s plumage.

Were the test birds reacting to the altered
color of the stimulus birds’ legs, or would
their sexual behavior have been affected by
adding color anywhere on the birds’ bodies ?
This study cannot answer this question
conclusively. Support for the idea that leg
color determined the observed preferences
comes from the fact that birds’ legs often
show color changes that accompany devel¬
opmental or seasonal changes in plumage.
For example, the legs of nestlings or juve¬
niles of many species are black, gray, or tan,
while adults have bright yellow, orange or
red legs. Also, when males and females of
the same species have different colored legs,
the male’s tend to be brighter. And for sev¬
eral species, such as the snowy egret, leg
and foot color intensifies during the breed¬
ing season.

But perhaps the birds’ sexual preferences
would have been altered by other types of
colored markers. For example, if a female
zebra finch’s sexual drive is stimulated by
the color of the male’s bright red bill, then
a red wing tag may be just as attractive as
a red leg band.

Either way, the implications of this study
are ominous. Thousands of ornithological
studies have used color-banded birds in the
field and laboratory to permit identification
of individual birds. Often such recognition
is essential for correct interpretation of data.
However, researchers have paid little atten¬
tion to the effects of color marking on birds’
social behavior. Inasmuch as studies using
color marking must continue, this subject
demands attention.

Using Your Ears

Beginning birders quickly realize that rec¬
ognizing birds’ songs is a tremendous aid to
field identification. In fact some species,
such as several flycatchers of the Empidonax
group, can be positively identified only by
their songs. But how does one decipher all
the whistles, trills, and chips that resound
across the landscape?

This spring, help is available from two
new sets of bird recordings. The first is the
second edition of A Field Guide to Bird Songs
of Eastern North America (Houghton Mif¬
flin, Boston. 1983. Two 12" 3316 rpm rec¬
ords or 2 cassettes. $19.95/set). As part of

the Peterson Field Guide Series, it is de¬
signed to complement Roger Tory Peter¬
son’s A Field Guide to the Birds East of the
Rockies and includes songs, calls, or both of
246 species, arranged in the same order as
in the book.

The second set is the National Geo¬
graphic Society’s Guide to Bird Sounds (Na¬
tional Geographic Society, 17th and M Sts.,
N.W, Washington, D.C. 20036. 1983. Four
10" 3316 rpm records. Write to the Society
for price and ordering information). This
includes songs, calls, or both of 179 species,
arranged in the same order as the Society’s
new Field Guide to the Birds of North
America.

How do the recordings compare?

There are many similarities. This is not
surprising, since both sets were produced
by the Library of Natural Sounds at the
Cornell University Laboratory of Orni¬
thology. Most of the recordings were se¬
lected from the Library’s extensive collec¬
tion of bird songs. For both sets, the Library
staff chose the best and most typical song
or songs of each species.

The quality of the two sets also is com¬
parable; both are excellent. Background
noise is negligible and the songs ring out
loud and clear. What’s more, they really
sound like birds in the field.

The major difference between the two
sets is the choice of species. The Peterson
set is designed as a general reference and
presents 246 species, all found in the east¬
ern United States. Most are common, and
most families are well represented. For ex¬
ample, 35 warbler species are included.

The National Geographic set is more
specialized. It emphasizes elusive songs, such
as that of the Bachman’s warbler, and con¬
fusing songs, such as those of the various
flycatchers. It contains 179 species from
across the country—about 120 from the East.
Of these, 30 are not in the Peterson set,
including eight shorebirds and several spe¬
cies that are rare or have limited ranges
in North America, such as the common
pauraque and the Couch’s kingbird. Some
families are poorly represented; there are
only six warblers. The two sets, therefore,
are somewhat complementary, and many
birders—especially shorebirders and Texas
birders—would benefit from owning both.

The revised Peterson set differs from the
first edition in several ways. The new one
is of far superior quality: there is less back¬
ground noise from traffic, wind, and other

24 The Living Bird Quarterly

birds, and the sound reproduction is much
more faithful to the natural songs. Omitted
from the new edition are species that are
heard less commonly than the others, or
whose songs are less important in identifi¬
cation. This has given more playing time
to the remaining species, and more of their
songs, calls, and chip notes are included.
For example, the expanded coverage of the
tufted titmouse and black-capped chicka¬
dee allows the listener to compare their
potentially confusing calls. In addition, new
species have been added such as the spruce
grouse and black rail. Thus, the set is a
worthwhile investment for birders who al¬
ready own the first edition.

Novices should be aware that listening
to these recordings will not result in instant
learning. They are excellent aids to bird
identification, but are only supplemental to
time spent in the field. As teachers, records
and field guides cannot take the place of
instruction from an experienced birder. But
they can help.

Seeing Red

Ornithologists have often stated that hum¬
mingbirds have an instinctive preference
for the color red. They certainly are at¬
tracted to red objects: there are reports of
hummingbirds hovering about red ban¬
danas, sunburned noses, even red traffic
lights. But do the birds really prefer red to
other colors? TTiis contention has been
challenged by several researchers, includ¬
ing Lucinda A. McDade of Duke University
(“Long-tailed hermit hummingbird visits to
inflorescence color morphs of Heliconia ir-
rasa, ” Condor, vol. 85, pp. 360—364).

McDade conducted a study in Parque

Nacional Soberania, Panama, where the
broad-leaved herb Heliconia irrasa occurs in
two color types. One has red bracts, the
other has yellow. Bracts are modified leaves;
on Heliconia they enclose the small flowers
and are the most conspicuous part of the
plant. Other than color, the two plant types
are similar: they are the same height, pro¬
duce the same number of flowers and amount
of nectar each day, and have the same nec¬
tar-sugar content. Both types are visited by
long-tailed hermit hummingbirds, which
feed on the nectar.

To determine whether these humming¬
birds prefer the red plants to the yellow
ones, McDade established a study site along
a 220-yard stretch of road. After determin¬
ing the proportion of each color plant grow¬
ing on the site, she dusted one of the red
plants with fluorescent powder. When
hummingbirds came to feed on the plant
they picked up the powder on their feathers
and spread it to other flowers, leaving a
record of which flowers they visited.

McDade examined all Heliconia plants
on the site for evidence of powder during
eight days of the peak flowering season. She
discovered that the plants had received
powder in proportion to their abundance,
and concluded that the birds did not visit
red plants preferentially to yellow ones.

But does this evidence prove that long¬
tailed hermit hummingbirds do not prefer
red? Not really—McDade had no accurate
method of measuring the number of visits
to each flower. Therefore, red-bracted flow¬
ers may have been visited more often than
the study indicated. Nevertheless, McDade
has shown that yellow-bracted flowers cer¬
tainly are not avoided.

It also is possible that the hummingbirds
were born with an instinctive preference

for the red Heliconia, but learned from ex¬
perience that the yellow variety is just as
rewarding. Studies done as early as 1941
have shown that hummingbirds learn to
visit colors that provide the greatest energy
reward, that is, the most abundant, con¬
centrated nectar.

Thus McDade’s study, while not conclu¬
sive, lends support to previous studies chal¬
lenging the notion that hummingbirds are
driven by an instinctive and inflexible pref¬
erence for red flowers. “The emerging over¬
view of hummingbird foraging behavior is
complex,” she writes, “and involves a va¬
riety of discriminatory powers.” Indeed,
color may be just one of many cues that
lead hummingbirds to the most rewarding
flowers.

Reclaimed Mines

Old strip mines where plants have been
reestablished are known as reclaimed mines.
In West Virginia, these typically appear as
fields of grasses and other herbaceous plants
amid tracts of woodland and pastureland.
Such clearings add a new type of habitat to
the landscape, and attract several ground¬
dwelling birds. Are these birds breeding
successfully in the new habitat? TTiomas
Wray, II, Kenneth A. Strait, and Robert
C. Whitmore of West Virginia University
have examined this question (“Reproduc¬
tive success of grassland sparrows on a re¬
claimed surface mine in West Virginia,”
The Auk, vol. 99, pp. 157—164).

Working over two breeding seasons, the
researchers investigated 185 nests of grass¬
hopper, savannah, vesper, and field spar¬
rows. The study determined that average
clutch sizes for all four species were the same
as those found by other investigators at other
locations. However, predation—predomi¬
nately by snakes and crows—caused an ex¬
ceptionally high loss of eggs and nestlings
resulting in low reproductive success.

Wray, Strait, and Whitmore concluded
that the reclaimed mine represents poor
breeding habitat for grassland sparrows; be¬
cause the grassland is surrounded by forest
and pastureland, it harbors a concentration
of predators that limits the usefulness of the
area as breeding habitat for these birds. The
researchers concluded that the sparrow
population on the reclaimed mine depends
on immigration of sparrows from better
habitat elsewhere. They feel that the spar¬
rows continue to attempt breeding in this
suboptimal habitat because of site tenac¬
ity— the tendency for birds to nest in the
same area each season—and the availability
of nest sites that appear attractive to the
birds. “Although our study site is but a small
portion of the total area under concern,”
they write, “our conclusions may be reason¬
able for similar reclaimed surface mines in
northern West Virginia.”

Long'tailed hermit hummingbird and Heliconia irrasa

Spring/1984 25

NEWS & NOTES

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is in
the process of distributing one million black
duck identification leaflets to waterfowl
hunters in the eastern flyways in order to
reduce the black duck harvest. The black
duck population is down 38 percent from
the 1960 to 1969 average. Biologists think
several factors are causing the decline: east¬
ward expansion of the mallard into black
duck range, hybridization of black ducks

Black Duck

Very dark body,
contrasting light
underwing

Hen Mallard

Brown body, light
belly and tail. White
edges on blue patch
on upper wing surface

with mallards, and loss of habitat. Biolo¬
gists trying to halt the decline agree that
teaching hunters to identify the black duck
so that they may abide by the new hunting
restrictions is the first step and must be
taken now. Free leaflets are available from
state hunting license vendors and wildlife
agencies or by writing: Publications, U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington,
D.C. 20240.

1983 Annual Reports from the Labora¬
tory have been mailed to our members. If
you haven’t received your free copy write:
Membership Dept., Laboratory of Orni¬
thology, Sapsucker Woods, Ithaca, New
York 14850.

An intensive effort is under way to track
the movements of 30,000 Canada geese in
the Atlantic Flyway. The results may reveal
why the geese are remaining north of their
traditional wintering grounds in North and
South Carolina. The geese will be marked
with yellow collars stamped with a black

Dear Member:

Besides an interest in the scientific study of birds, we humans also have a need to express our
affinity for birds throu^ art, literature, and photography. We at the Laboratory tuish to encourage
these endeavors and to nurture a deeper appreciation for the aesthetic value of birds.

We have a good head start. For many years Ithaca, Cornell, and the Laboratory have been
identified with one of America’s outstanding bird artists, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, some of whose
paintings I have the pleasure of viewing right down the hall from my office. This happy circumstance
arose when we received a bequest of Fuertes oil paintings in 1958 from Frederick Brewster. Over
the years gifts of other Fuertes art — watercolors, sketches, small sculptures—have been added to
the collection.

Periodically, each oil painting must be cleaned and refinished by a professional art restorer. We
had just about given up hope of finding the money for this project when we received a donation for
oil-painting restoration from the “Class of ’83” of Cornell’s Adult University course in field
ornithology. A few months later Fuertes’s granddaughter contributed additional funds to begin
restoring our watercolors. Thanks to these generous donations, and the continuing help of our
members, the next generation of art lovers may fully partake of the color and magic of Fuertes.

In addition to the works of old masters, we show the art of lesser-known artists, some of them
exhibiting for the first time. By providing such opportunities we hope to further their careers.

The Quarterly is another means by which we hope to heighten awareness of the natural beauty
of birds. In this issue, artist Wilhelm Goebel—who exhibited at the Laboratory in 1982—brings
his own color and magic to our pages. Aleta Karstad has done excellent sketches to illustrate Louise
Lawrence’s descriptions of downy woodpecker courtship behavior, and Sam Eliot discusses some of
the finest bird poems produced by the human intellect. And through the photographs with each
story, the birds themselves most eloquently encourage our appreciation of the art and beauty
of birds.

Charles Walcott, Executive Director

letter-number code. If you observe a yellow-
collared goose, send a report of the sighting
to Richard Malecki, New York Cooperative
Wildlife Research Unit, Fernow Hall, Cor¬
nell University, Ithaca, New York 14853.
Your report must include the band’s color
and code; name, address, and phone num¬
ber of the observer; date, time, and location
of the sighting; an estimate of the banded
bird’s flock size, and the habitat the bird
occupied, for example, lake, cut cornfield.

The Laboratory Library is offering to
members Management of North Central and
Northeastern Forests for Nongame Birds for
the special price of $1. The volume is a
collection of 26 papers on bird communi¬
ties, habitat, wildlife, forests, and silvicul¬
ture. Soft cover, 268 pages. Send $1 to
Library, Laboratory of Ornithology, Cornell
University, Sapsucker Woods, Ithaca, New
York 14850.

Between 200 and 300 bald eagles were
killed over the past three years on or near
the Karl Mundt National Wildlife Refuge
in South Dakota. The carcasses supply
bones, beaks, talons, and feathers for black
market trade in Native American artifacts.
Bald eagle parts are used to manufacture
“authentic” reproductions of Indian head¬
dresses, jewelry, fans, and other ornaments,
and are sold in North America and Europe.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife special agents have
been investigating the killings and are pre¬
pared to charge as many as 50 individuals
for killing federally protected birds. Bald
eagles are protected by the Endangered
Species Act (penalty one year imprison¬
ment and/or $20,000 fine). Bald Eagle
Protection Act (one year imprisonment
and/or a $5,000 fine), and the Migratory
Bird Treaty Act (two year imprisonment
and/or $2,000 fine).

Piping plovers are declining in numbers
throughout their range. The reason: rapid
development is destroying the sandy beaches
on which they nest. Because only about
1,500 piping plovers remain on the east
coast, they are being considered for Federal
Endangered Species listing. In Maine, there
are about 20 pairs. The Maine Audubon
Society would like to know if you see piping
plovers, particularly breeding or exhibiting
breeding behavior. Please write to: Maine
Audubon Society, Gilsland Farm, 118 U. S.
Rt. 1, Falmouth, Maine 04105.

26 The Living Bird Quarterly

I Say with. My Brush

by Martin Stiles

\Y/

VV HAT THE FUTURE may hold
for Wilhelm Goebel, already recog¬
nized by those in the know as one of
this country’s most promising young bird
artists, is magnified with tantalizing ex¬
pectations by the artist’s own words:

“I see things I can’t wait to paint.
But I won’t do them yet because I know
they are beyond my capabilities.”

In context with what Goebel has
done already at the age of 24, the com¬
ment, uttered in his soft but confident
tones, reflects the humility and vision
so much a part of creativity. Goebel
takes neither his vision nor his talents
for granted. He says that since gradu¬
ating from Ithaca College in Ithaca,

New York, with a bachelor’s degree in
biology in 1982, he has devoted eight
to 14 hours a day to painting:

“You learn by doing. The whole se¬
cret is hard work. I enjoy it because I
love it. Sometimes it is frustrating, but
I have this drive in me to succeed. If
the only way I could paint was with my
mouth, I would do it, holding the brush
in my teeth.”

By some standards Goebel has al¬
ready succeeded. In 1982 his work
“Palm Tanagers” hung alongside the
paintings of many of the world’s out¬
standing contemporary artists, at the
Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum
in Wausau, Wisconsin. His work was

accepted for display in the museum’s
prestigious exhibit, “Contemporary
Western World’s Finest Bird Art,” by a
panel of judges including Dean Ama-
don, curator emeritus of birds for the
American Museum of Natural History.
Among the artists on display were: Ca¬
nadians Robert Bateman (1982 Master
Wildlife Artist) and J. Fenwick Lans-
downe; Americans Guy Coheleach,
George Miksch Sutton, and Owen
Gromme (1976 Master Wildlife Art¬
ist), and Europeans Lars Jonsson and
Richard Ward.

Following the Woodson show came
a one-man exhibition at the Labora¬
tory of Ornithology at Cornell. How-

Spring/1984 27

“Short-eared Owl on Wolfe Island,’’ 15" x 30", acrylic.

ever, there is little fear of Goebel rest¬
ing on his laurels.

The more you learn the more you
want to use what you learn. It’s a con¬
tinuous thing. Ten years from now if
you look at my work, you’ll probably
see a big difference. I can see a differ¬
ence over the past two years already. ’’
During an interview which took place
amid 24 of his paintings on display at
the Laboratory of Ornithology, he said
at one point that it was unfortunate
Louis Agassiz Fuertes died at the height

of his career, that it was obvious he was
on the verge of saying a lot more.
(Fuertes died in 1927 at the age of 53.)
Goebel discussed the tundra setting in
which Fuertes had placed what is now
considered a classic painting of a gyr-
falcon. A print of the original Fuertes
hung on the wall between two of Goe¬
bel’s works.

“A goal of my career,” Goebel said,
“is to place birds within their natural
environment, which creates a more
dramatic composition while also tell¬

ing the viewer more about the bird and
its life.”

Goebel dreams of the day he is es¬
tablished and able to paint whatever
he wants. “When I am somewhat fi¬
nancially independent, I would like to
go to other countries and do things
which haven’t been done. There are
some African birds and South Ameri¬
can birds that have been painted only
illustratively. I want to catch them in
their natural habitat. ”

He explained that the inspiration for

28 The Living Bird Quarterly

his work comes from field observations.
He uses sketches, skins and, at times,
photographs to help him capture on
canvas and paper what he had glimpsed
in his mind’s eye.

Right now Goebel’s studio is in his
parents’ home in Somerset, New Jer¬
sey. He concentrates on American birds
because “that is what the American
public wants and knows.” His works
range from $125 to $1,200 and he now
has a gallery in Flemington, New Jer¬
sey, that represents him.

Before he can pursue some of his
long-range dreams, there is a reputa¬
tion to build and craftsmanship to hone.
He often visits the home of Don Rich¬
ard Eckelberry, one of the giants of con¬
temporary bird art who has become his
mentor. “Eckelberry’s criticism and
guidance have become a significant part
of my artistic evolution.”

In 1963, when Goebel was three years
old, Eckelberry wrote an article, “Birds
in Art and Illustration,” which ap¬
peared in The Living Bird. In it Eckel¬

berry speaks of ideas that seem to be a
part of the young artist’s very being:

“When the painter looks at nature
he confronts a confusion of colors, val¬
ues, and shapes. His picture is composed
through his way of seeing—his individ¬
ual point of view. And from all this
complexity he chooses a few things with
which to make a picture that will con¬
vey, he trusts, something of the feeling
which impelled him to paint. This is
rarely fully realized, but it is the carrot
which keeps the artist on the path.”

Spring/1984 29

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

And, “Craftsmanship is an accom¬
plishment in its own right. It is satis¬
fying to see a thing well executed. There
is a sensuous delight in seeing textures
perfectly imitated or an object so con¬
vincingly reproduced that it seems to
really come alive. But it is in the extent
to which the artist goes beyond this in
his expression and his design of the
picture, which determines its aesthetic
value.”

Goebel said, “I try to use whatever

medium will suit my intent. I wanted

oil for that [a seascape with skimmers]

because it is a looser painting, I didn’t

worry about detail. I wanted enough

time to blend things, the sand, the

waves. If I had done it in acrylic I think

it would have come out too hard.

(

Acrylic tends to become hard looking,
especially for something like this where
you are using soft colors. It doesn’t blend
and smear as well as oil does. I use
watercolor, alkyd, acrylic, oil, gouache,
whatever I think will suit my purpose.”

Although the focus of his artistic life,
since he was seven years old, has been
to draw and paint birds, the young art¬
ist confessed that his first love was
drawing Volkswagen cars. “Then I got
hooked on birds, how, I can’t remem¬
ber but it’s been that way all my life.”
It is obvious Goebel has not allowed
his muse to distract him completely or
prevent him from making some prac¬
tical decisions in planning his career as
an artist. He postponed the immersion

in painting until after he earned his
bachelor of science degree. This gives
him the possibility of working as a lab¬
oratory technician at least, if his grand¬
er plans do not work out, he says.

“Getting started in a field like paint¬
ing is probably the hardest part. The
whole game is getting a reputation,

''When the painter
looks at nature, he
confronts a confusion
of colors, values,
and shapes, ’’

gaining exposure.” He said his parents
have always been very supportive, add¬
ing that he is paying his way at home
and buying materials from the com¬
missions and sales that have been fairly
regular since he has started painting
full time.

In addition there are extensive field
trips, reading and studying to develop
a varied and deeper understanding of
birds. “But I like to paint other things
also. Barns fascinate me, particularly
from the inside.”

Goebel said he enjoys illustration as
well as fine art and would like to do a
field guide one day.

“Painting has a great advantage over

photography, although there is much
magnificent and useful photography.
You can paint a particular bird in a
particular habitat, which at the same
time can be a composite of all that
particular species and its living condi¬
tions. Art transcends the specific .n a
way that technology never can.

“This is an illustration,” he said,
pointing to a watercolor of two grouse,
“showing all the feathers, a typical pose,
the actual colors on white background.
This [the seascape with skimmers] is
not an illustration, it’s an atmosphere
painting. I didn’t see each wing feather
or the eyes in the birds so I didn’t paint
them. It’s a loose type of painting, more
appropriate for oils. Now watercolor is
great for rendering detail; it goes on
very nicely and dries fast. There are
some artists who can do very beautiful
detailed work in oil but most illustra¬
tive work is done in watercolor.”

He talked on about his work inter¬
weaving a growing knowledge of his
craft with glimpses of his vision, which
filled the walls of the gallery and will
continue to unfold through the coming
years.

The interview ended with a promise
when Goebel said: “What I really have
to say, I say with my brush.”

THE AUTHOR

Martin Stiles is a writer for the Cornell Univer¬
sity News Bureau.

30 The Living Bird Quarterly

In memory of Miss M. L. Coward

KINGFISHER

by George Mitsch Sutton

This limited edition 22-1/2 x 27-1/2" print of a ringed kingfisher, signed and numbered by Dr. Sutton, is
available for a $1,000 contribution to the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology. Checks payable to the
Laboratory of Ornithology may be sent to: Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Sapsucker Woods, Lthaca,

New York 14850, Attention: Sutton Fund.

The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, dedicated to the study and understanding of birds through research
and education, has created the George M. Sutton Fund to endow seminars, art, and colorplates for the

Laboratory’s publication. The Living Bird Quarterly.

Editorial Staff

Jill Crane, Editor
Kathleen Dalton, Design Director
Richard E. Bonney, Jr., Associate Editor
Charles R. Smith, Technical Editor
Les Line, Consulting Editor
Lynne H. McKeon, Editorial Assistant

4 A Difficult Tightrope Act

Roger Tory Peterson

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the book
that revolutionized bird watching. The nation’s
foremost birder remembers how it all began.

11 The Crow’s Nest Bookshop

LABORATORY STAFF

Charles Walcott, Executive Director
TomJ. Cade, Director, Raptor Research
Jill Crane, The Living Bird Quarterly
Samuel A. Eliot, Public Affairs
Lang Elliott, Photography
James L. Gulledge, Library of
Natural Sounds
Thomas S. Litwin, Seatuck Research
Donald A. McCrimmon, Jr., Cooperative

Research Program
Kathleen A. Mclsaac, Business
Charles R. Smith, Public Education
Jane Hance Wood, Administration

Administrative Board

p. 16

James W. Spencer, Chairman

Hamilton F. Kean

Morton S. Adams
Robert Barker
William G. Conway
Alan Crawford, Jr.
Robert G. Engel
Clifton C. Garvin, Jr.
Mrs. Harvey Gaylord
Thomas M. Hampson
Imogene R Johnson
Charles

T. Spencer Knight
John D. Leggett, Jr.

Harold F. Mayfield
G. Michael McHugh
Olin Sewall Pettingill, Jr.
Chandler S. Robbins
Joseph R. Siphron
Charles E. Treman, Jr.
Charles D. Webster
Walcott, Ex Officio

p. 25

12 Birders I Have Known

Ben Gelman

Frostbite, injury, poverty—nothing stopped the
members of the Sialis Bird Club from trying to keep
up with the boys from the Bronx County Bird Club.

16 Treasure in Argentina

Olin Sewall Pettingill, Jr.

Take a guided tour of the northeastern section of
Argentina on the rich Bird Continent, where the
caracaras are tame and the flycatchers numerous.

22 News & Notes

24 Research & Review

Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

25 Bon Appetit!

J. Kent Minichiello

A red-shouldered hawk provides a feast for the eye.

The Living Bird Quarterly, ISSN 0732-9210, is published in January,
April, July, and October by the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell
University, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, New Yotk 14850.
Telephone: (607) 256-5056. The Living Bird Quarterly is free to membets
of the Laboratory. For information concerning back issues please write to
our Membership Department. © 1984 Cornell
University Laboratory of Ornithology.
Printing by Brodock Press Inc., Utica, N. Y.
Typography by Partners Composition, Utica, N.Y.

FRONT COVER. Wilscn’s phalarope, Alberta, Canada.
Photograph by Tim Fitzharris.

BACK COVER. Outside—Bald ibis. South Africa.
Photograph by M. P. Kahl. Inside—Osprey by John James
Audubon. From Audubon Society Baby Elephant Folio —
Audubon's Birds of America, published by Abbeville Press, New
York. Reproduced by permission.

p. 26

26 Wetland Sentinels

Donald A. McCrimmon, Jr.

Great blue herons may act as monitors that gauge the
health of their wetland habitats. A biologist who has
censused heron populations in New York State draws
some interesting conclusions based on his findings.

A EHjJicidt Ti^itrope Act

Roger Tory Peterson

T his year marks the 50th

anniversary of my Field Guide to
the Birds which first saw the light
of day in April, 1934. The federal duck
stamp that has raised so many millions
for the purchase of wetlands also was
born in 1934- So was Hawk Mountain,
the first of a number of raptor lookouts
which were to be established across the
land. That same year the National Au¬
dubon Society took over Bird-Lore from
the American Museum of Natural His¬
tory and transformed the little journal
into Audubon magazine. Nineteen
thirty-four was a vintage year. Al¬
though awareness of birds and a passion
for bird watching had been in ascend¬
ancy since the Audubon movement
started a generation earlier, there was
a breakthrough in the 1930s.

Today, those who watch birds num¬
ber from two million to 20-million
according to various estimates, de¬
pending on how bird watcher is de¬
fined. There are various levels of bird
watcher, from the armchair ornitholo¬
gist who reads (but seldom watches),
and the chickadee type of bird watcher,
all the way to hardcore birders who
travel to the ends of the earth to see
new species.

Although Alexander Wilson, who
published his pioneer work on Ameri¬
can birds in 1808, is usually called the
“father of American ornithology,” his
impact was not nearly as great as that
of John James Audubon who published
his Birds of America a few years later.
His “Double Elephant Folio” is not ex¬
actly a field guide; the heaviest of the
four volumes weighs 65 pounds. Even
the “Baby Elephant Folio” which my
wife, Virginia, and I recently edited
weighs 18 pounds.

Audubon’s original folio was not ar¬
ranged systematically; warblers and
sparrows were interspersed with birds
of prey, waterfowl and sandpipers, but
for the first time the majority of the
birds of eastern North America and
many of the West were adequately
portrayed.

To paint these highly delineated por¬
traits and write his text, Audubon re¬
quired freshly killed specimens, al¬
though not as many as he collected.
He once implied it was not a good day
if he took fewer than 100 birds. He shot
like mad but excused his excesses by
stating that he was impelled “by the
love of science, which offers a conve¬
nient excuse for even worse acts.”
Specimen-tray ornithology prevailed for
75 years after Audubon, for good rea¬
son. Initially many birds could not be
identified or described with accuracy
unless they were in the hand.

In 1872, scarcely 20 years after the
death of Audubon, Elliot Coues, an
Army surgeon, published his Key to
North American Birds, a revolutionary
guide to the identification of birds in

the hand. He wrote to a friend, “I have
made my wife test it, in the case of all
the birds I have shot here, and without
knowing a tarsus from a tail, hardly,
she has in every instance given the
scientific name of the specimen.” Two
years later he wrote in his Manual of
Field Ornithology, “The double-barreled
shotgun is your main reliance. Under
some circumstances you may trap or
snare birds, but such cases are the ex¬
ception to the rule that you will shoot
birds.”

In 1903, when Frank M. Chapman
published his Color Key to North Amer¬
ican Birds, illustrated by Chester Reed,
the situation was much the same.
Chapman wrote: “From the scientific
point of view there is but one satisfac¬
tory way to identify a bird. A specimen
of it should be in hand.” Then, aware
of an increasing dilemma, he added,
“(but) we cannot place a gun in the
hands of these thousands of bird lovers
we are yearly developing.”

In 1906, Chester Reed, the artist,
then produced his own little pocket
guide, shaped like a fat checkbook, one
bird per page, and when I was young
that was the book we used, even though
it was inadequate (the blue grosbeaks I
saw around my hometown were really
indigo buntings). Some years later
Chapman told me that he and Louis
Agassiz Fuertes had planned to do a
similar pocket primer but abandoned
the idea when Reed scooped them.
A pity.

Chapman’s Handbook of Birds of
Eastern North America, first published
in 1895, remained the basic reference
for any serious birder until the 1930s.
It was anything but a primer and it was
exasperating if what you wanted was a

Above, toucans from A Field Guide to Mexican Birds by Roger Tory Peterson and Edward L. Chalif published by Houghton Mifflin
Company, Boston. Copyright © 1 973 by Roger Tory Peterson and Edward L. Chalif Reprinted by permission. Peterson’s birding expeditions have
taken him to every continent; at left, he scans the Antarctic landscape from the skeleton of a blue whale.

Summer/1984 5

, .ive cannot place
a gun in the hands
of these thousands
of bird lovers we are
yearly developing/'

Audubon, right, used a shotgun to collect
specimens needed for his detailed paintings
such as the hng'biUed curlew, far right. ^
Lower right: a plate from Seton’s Two Little
Savages, 1903. Seton was among the first to
draw simple, pattemistic bird sketches.

quick clue to identification. Descrip¬
tions were organized systematically from
beak to tail. The American robin reads:
“Top and sides of head black, a white
spot above and below the eye; rest of
upperparts grayish slate-color; margins
of wings slightly lighter; throat white
streaked with black,” etc. Not until the
end of the description is the diagnostic
rufous of the underparts mentioned.

Inevitably, the idea of field marks
surfaced. As far as 1 can determine, the
term was first used in 1906 by Ralph
Hoffman, a New England schoolmas¬
ter, who later moved to California. He
wrote two excellent books, A Guide to
the Birds of New England and Eastern
New York, and Birds of the Pacific States,
which lacked only colorplates to put
the concept across in a visual way.

When 1 was a teenager, one of my
favorite books was Ernest Thompson
Seton’s semi-autobiographical novel
Two Little Savages. The part that caught
my imagination was where the young
hero, Yan, sketched some mounted
ducks he found in a dusty showcase.
He had a book that showed him how
to identify ducks in the hand, but since
he saw the live birds only at a distance,
he was usually at a loss for their names.

He noticed that the ducks in the show¬
case had bold patches or marks that
were their labels or uniforms. With
pencil and paper he sketched these pat¬
terns so that he would know these same
ducks when he saw them swimming at
a distance.

Later, when 1 was becoming increas¬
ingly obsessed with birding, 1 tried to
locate a guide which would treat all
birds in this manner. Reed was not the
answer, nor was Chapman. Not even
Hoffman, although his field descrip¬
tions were the best. 1 wanted a visual
boiling down or simplification, so that
any bird could be told from all others
at a glance or at a distance, but this 1
could not find.

Enlightenment came when 1 left my
home in Jamestown, New York at the
age of 18 to take up my art education
in New York City. It was at the Amer¬
ican Museum of Natural History that 1
met Ludlow Griscom, an assistant cu¬
rator in the bird department. Ludlow,
the guru of the field-glass fraternity,
was always a good show at the bi¬
monthly meetings of the Linnaean So¬
ciety, but was a bit austere in keeping
a group of young upstarts in line, a half
dozen eager beavers known as the Bronx

County Bird Club — the B.C.B.C.
Such future stars as Joseph Hickey and
Allan Cruickshank were charter mem¬
bers. Ludlow’s cross-examinations were
ruthless when they reported three-toed
woodpeckers and other unlikely finds.
This was good training and only a few
years later both Joe and Cruicky gave
similar merciless grillings to other
aspiring youngsters at Linnaean
meetings.

1 became the first non-Bronx mem¬
ber of the very select B.C.B.C. Gris¬
com was our god and his Birds of the
New York City Region our bible which
every one of us could quote, chapter
and verse. We used his terminology
and even his inflection when we
pronounced something as “unprece¬
dented,” or a “common summer resi¬
dent.” We learned all about field marks
from the master and in turn we became
the avant-garde of the birding elite,
refining field techniques and setting
new standards. It was logical that we
should choose Griscom as our role
model because he represented the new
field ornithology. He bridged the gap
between the shotgun ornithologist and
the modem birder. He recalled, “When
a veteran ornithologist of an older gen-

6 The Living Bird Quarterly

PAINTING OF JOHN JAMES AUDUBON BY JOHN SYME, 1826. WHITE HOUSE COLLECTION.

n Kf 1 h i.i

14 C-snvasJ^a i;

I .- Kin^ n.HkccI iUut'E ii!

9^'- W

?x. :'.;a-k. Sci-'rir

(.■hi«’flv h!j( k aiu} white 1)1 oolt.ur •. il»c leni.ile l>rrnvnl''.h iiisicatl dJ Matk ; mr»,si havr yvllow ofi>raiiKo eye. and
nioiv '-r le>:> wliilc 011 winj;:' wliitli docs not uiiovv a-i theyVwini.

1,1. Refl*h-Md 'Aythya <ttucrh ,u!.t . Head and uvek bright red ; eye ol male bill and fe«-i Idue.

14. K .iiiv.vbark ' A . -i-itUhnrriu.. Head and mck dark-red, eye ot iiule rwl, hill and feet (»f hoih dark cr bluish.

15. King-ticiked Hlvichill'W . < . Hill and feet Iduish.

j6. Ihff liiuebill '.-1 . nioriUt . Hill and fect hUiish,

ir. l.iftie HUiehiil .A . affluis'. S.imc toiour a , the iirciedlnff.

iS. Widstler or tio;de)tcyc iUiyiguUi iX!ntrii-,tv<t'. I•'eet t'lanjfe.

< I >escription continued on pasf y/i.)

. . ^ S- -t r - i. :rf Ini-k

The Sea Ducks
J'll h. si;a dicks

eration wished to add birds to his col¬
lection, he drove out on a lovely May
day from New York City to Van Cort-
landt Park and was perfectly free to
shoot as many warblers in the morning
as he could skin in the afternoon.”

My Field Guide to the Birds owes much
to Griscom; certainly the philosophy
and fine points of field recognition 1
learned from him, although the visual
presentation, particularly the compar¬
ative patterns and little arrows point¬
ing to key marks, were my own inno¬
vations. Everyone knows the system so
well today that it is taken for granted,
but it was unbroken ground 50 years
ago.

Had it not been for one of the Lin-
naean members, William Vogt, the
book might not have been written.
During my art school days Bill was a
drama critic and nature columnist for
five Westchester County papers. Later
he became the first editor of Audubon.

1 met Bill in the late 1920s at a meeting
of the Linnaean. On weekends we
birded together or with the Bronx
County Bird Club. Bill, a better bota¬
nist than 1, showed me the flowers while
I helped him with the birds. It was on
one of these Sunday trips, a Christmas

Summer/1 984 7

FROM AUDUBON SOCIETY BABY ELEPHANT FOLIO—AUDUBON’S BIRDS OF AMERICA, PUBLISHED BY ABBEVILLE
PRESS, NEW YORK. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

'My schematic drawings
were crude, but
the concept was valid,'

Right: dummy cover of first field guide, A
Field Guide to the Birds, showing a
different title. Far right: plate from first
edition of Peterson’s A Field Guide to
Western Birds.

bird count on the Hudson near Ossin¬
ing, that Bill suggested I write a field
guide. As he later wrote in The New
York Times:

“The river was Whistlerian gray, and
the outlines of the east and west banks
gave us something of the sensation of
hanging in space. The few hundred
canvasbacks off the end of Croton
Point, their reflections in the calm river,
were part of the sense of the void. . . .
A barely perceptible note fell from a
flock of small birds overhead, and my
companion said with unchallengeable
assurance, ‘Siskins!’”

Bill obviously was impressed by my
snap judgment, even though 1 ex¬
plained that siskins are relatively easy—
“they always sound like siskins.”

“Roger,” he said, “you know these
things—the field marks and the voices.
Why don’t you pass on your knowledge
in a book?” He was more excited about
the idea than 1. As we walked
back to the car along the edge of the
marsh we developed a plan. The illus¬
trations would be simple and pattemis-
tic, rather like those sketches of ducks
that Seton had drawn in Two Little
Savages. The book would concentrate
on field marks rather than full descrip¬
tions. Voice descriptions would be in¬
cluded if they would help identifica¬
tion. “But,” 1 asked, “how would 1 get
a publisher if 1 did write it? Nobody
knows me.”

Vogt guaranteed that he would find

^Field Guide

Eastern Birds

A Bird Boo\ on a Afew Plan

a publisher.

Ludlow Griscom already had left the
American Museum for a position on
the staff of the Museum of Compara¬
tive Zoology in Cambridge, Massachu¬
setts, and it was not until 1 went to
Boston in 1931 to teach school that our
paths crossed again. It was there that
we became close friends, but 1 dared
not tell him about the field guide I was
preparing! He was in the hallowed halls
of academia, and 1 was just a teacher
who wished to help neophytes.

1 missed the B.C.B.C., but enjoyed
camaraderie with the young men of the
Harvard Bird Club as well as the more
staid members of the Nuttall Orni¬
thological Club, the oldest bird club in
the country. Our weekend excursions
to Newburyport and the outer Cape
bolstered my knowledge of the fine
points of field identification.

True to his word, Bill Vogt peddled
the field guide, still in unfinished form,
to four publishers; three in New York,
one in Boston. Remember, the year was
1933, the bottom of the Great Depres¬
sion, when 18-million people were out
of work and many more were hungry.
Publishers were wary about risking cap¬
ital on an unknown author. Naive about
the facts of publishing, 1 did not realize
that an unsolicited manuscript had less
than one chance in a thousand of
acceptance.

Vogt’s four prospective publishers had
rejected my book when I arrived at the

■RING-BILLED LAUGHING

FRANKLIN^ SABlNEl'S BONAPAR.TE.S
GULLS - Adults

office of Francis Allen, a senior editor
af Houghton Mifflin in Boston. This
dignified gray-haired man, who was
chairman of the board of the Massa¬
chusetts Audubon Society, was one of
the most scholarly amateur ornitholo¬
gists in New England. When 1 opened
my portfolio, he showed immediate in¬
terest. My schematic drawings were
crude, but the concept was valid. He
wrote in his editorial report: “Peter¬
son’s book is conceived on entirely new
lines.”

One or two members of his editorial
committee questioned whether enough
people were interested in birds to buy
a book with an untried system. To con¬
vince them, Allen brought Ludlow
Griscom into the boardroom, sat him
at the far end of the conference table
while he held up one plate after the
other. Griscom named every bird with¬
out hesitation.

Houghton Mifflin decided to gam¬
ble. There would be 2,000 copies of
the first printing, and because of the
costs my contract read that 1 was to
receive no royalty on the first 1,000.
That did not bother me; as a young
dedicated teacher 1 simply wanted to
be published.

Publication date was April 24, 1934.
Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was be¬
ginning to turn the national economy
around, and at that point my own
economy took a turn for the better.
That first printing was gone almost

8 The Living Bird Quarterly

FROM A F/ELD GUIDE TO WESTERN BIRDS BY ROGER TORY PETERSON, PUBLISHED BY
HOUGHTON MIFRIN COMPANY, BOSTON. COPYRIGHT 1941 BY ROGER TORY PETERSON.
REPRINTED BY PERMISSION.

C/D

overnight and today a copy in mint
condition with its dust jacket (I don’t
have one) which originally cost $2.75,
would bring $1,000 or more in the col¬
lector’s market.

Lewis Gannett, reviewer on The New
York Times wrote, “Of all the books
published so far this year, the one which
will be remembered most 10 years from
now is Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide
to the Birds.” Fifty years have passed
since Gannett made that prophecy and
today the yearly sales are more than 10
times that of the first year.

Not all of the reviews were favor¬
able. J. T. Nichols of the American
Museum wrote that 1 had oversimpli¬
fied immature gulls and shorebirds. And
so I had. By reducing their speckled
patterns to gray tones, they did not
look convincing. I redrew these with
more detail in later editions.

In 1939,1 added four black-and-white
plates to the original book, but it was
not until my release from the Army
Corps of Engineers in 1945 that 1 un¬
dertook a major revision. Scrapping all
the plates, I replaced them with 60 new
ones, 36 in color, 24 in black and white.
This edition, issued in 1947, was still
not the book 1 would have liked. Al¬
though 1 had suggested that everything
be in color, the powers that be insisted
they could not afford it. That edition
remained virtually unchanged for 33
years. Meanwhile, an update of A Field
Guide to Western Birds and the prepa-

Peterson painted all new plates for the third edition of his field guide to birds east of the
Rockies. Above, a finished plate. Left, a preliminary sketch.

Summer/1984 9

Virginia Peterson prepares range maps for a
revised edition of the western guide.

ration of A Field Guide to the Birds of
Britain and Europe, A Field Guide to the
Birds of Texas, A Field Guide to Mexican
Birds, A Field Guide to Wildflowers and
other publications consumed my time.

Over the years the Field Guide to the
Birds had built its own following and
when Paul Brooks, who was editor in
chief, urged me to get going with the
long-contemplated fourth edition, he
said, “Go the limit!” I was free to re¬
paint every species in color, although
there was some merit in keeping the
supplementary flight patterns of ducks,
hawks, and shorebirds in monotone. I
had always felt that about four species
per plate would be ideal, inasmuch as
the text could be self-contained on the
opposite page. By using economy of
words, I was able to do this. I may have
lost some of my literary style, but con¬
trary to the impression of certain crit¬
ics, I included more field marks, not
fewer. This was because details of range
were taken care of by the maps.

Maps were not a new idea; we had
used them some years earlier in the
European bird guide and also in a num¬
ber of other books in my field guide
series. They are not thumbnail maps in
the margins; such maps are too small
to show ranges critically and they re¬
strict the amount of text. Our maps are
fairly large, show state lines and, as
several reviewers pointed out, have set
a new standard for field guide maps.

My wife Virginia and 1, when re¬
searching these maps, could be only as
accurate as our sources. We found some
states well-documented, others not.
Local checklists were helpful and es¬
pecially the journal American Birds.
Christmas counts enabled us to define
the limits of winter ranges. We also
sought the help of key birders in various
states, a procedure we are following
again in updating A Field Guide to
Western Birds. Now that many states
are becoming involved in atlases, it
may be necessary to revise these maps.
Inevitably, birds are changing their
ranges and so are birders.

After we had researched the maps,
Virginia carefully carried out their exe¬
cution. A research chemist by training,
she helped the U.S. Coast Guard Re¬
search and Development Center de¬
velop its infrared method of detecting
oil spills. She also wrote the Infrared

Manual for Oil Spill Identification. Her
critical eye and precise hand were in¬
valuable in the cartography.

I often have been asked why I felt it
necessary to undertake such major re¬
visions. It had become evident to me
that because of my field guides and the
competing Golden Guide by Robbins,
Bruun and Zim, as well as other refer¬
ences, birders had become more so¬
phisticated. They demanded more.
Furthermore I drew better and I did not
want to go to my grave with the earlier
editions as my creative legacy. How¬
ever, in the fourth edition I have leaned
more toward portraiture while trying
not to lose abstraction—a difficult
tightrope act. As an illustrator I was
caught between two pressure groups—
one wanting even simpler abstraction,
the other preferring infinite detail.

A few individuals were so imprinted
by the older colorplates through years
of use that they preferred them. Al¬
though I know that the plates are much
improved, there is a tendency for some
birders to envisage a bird the way it
looks in the book, rather than the way
it looks in the field. In preparing the
new western book I am endeavoring to
look at many species with a fresh eye,
as though I had never seen them
before.

Space is the final dictator in a field
guide. In spite of his pleading with the
publisher, the author is allowed just so
many pages—that’s it! Organizing ma¬
terial so that it fits is like working out
a jigsaw puzzle. In a general field guide
one cannot devote several pages to a

single species, as did R J. Grant in his
manual on gulls which devoted an av¬
erage of 20 pages per species.

Joe Taylor, former president of the
American Birding Association, once
said if I were to prepare a book that
would please all the hardcore binocular
addicts it would run 10,000 pages. Frank
Graham, Jr. put it differently. He wrote
in Audubon that to satisfy their spe¬
cialized needs would require a set of
books equivalent to the collected works
of Sir Walter Scott.

To cover all the subtle variations in
immature gulls or seasonal variations
of shorebirds is the stuff of hand¬
books—precisely the approach I tried
to avoid in my field guides. My inten¬
tion was to simplify not amplify. Today
some of the superstar birders no longer
rely on binoculars; they use Questars
and other high-powered telescopes
which are designed for amateur astron¬
omers and cost astronomical prices.
With such equipment they can see even
the mites on a merlin. This brings us
full cycle to bird-in-hand or specimen-
tray ornithology. However, the birds
are still alive, free, fun to watch, and
a challenge to identify. This is what
field birding is all about.

To mark the 50th anniversary of his field guide,
an exhibition of paintings by Roger Tory Peter¬
son is on display through this summer at the
National Museum of Natural History, Smithso¬
nian Institution, Washington, D.C. Thanks to
Smithsonian Institution and Mill Pond Press for
their help in obtaining early work of RTP. A
catalogue, Roger Tory Peterson at the Smithsonian,
with more Peterson art is available for $9.95 from
Mill Pond Press, Inc., Venice, Florida 33595.

10 The Living Bird Quarterly

ROGER TORY PETERSON

Enclosed is a check or money order in U.S. funds, payable to The Crow’s Nest Bookshop.
Our address—The Crow’s Nest Bookshop, Laboratory of Ornithology, Cornell Univer¬
sity, Sapsucker Woods, Ithaca, N.Y. 14850. (607) 256-5057.

Item Title Qtv. Price

Amount of order
N.Y. State residents add 7% sales tax
Postage and handling, $2.00 Ist item
50 (Z each additional item
Total amount enclosed

2.00

Form of payment: □ Check □ Money Order □ VISA □ MasterCard

Card #_

Signature.

Name_

Address _

Expir. Date.

State _

FIELD NOTEBOOK

This three-ring binder, perfect for
taking notes in the field, has a
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around three sides. Adjustable
straps make it easy to carry, and
inside pockets accommodate
pencils, maps, and checklists. A
compact 1-1/2" X 7-3/4" x 10", it
weighs just 10 oz.

$19.951$17.95 members

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
SOCIETY FIELD GUIDE
TO THE BIRDS
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This new guide contains all species
known to breed in North America,
plus numerous exotics and
accidentals, with illustrations and
range maps of each. Includes field
identification characteristics,
plumages, voice, behavior, and
habitat information.

1983, paper, 464 pages.

$15.95l$14.35 members

(

THE AUDUBON SOCIETY
MASTER GUIDE
TO BIRDING

Edited by John Farrand, Jr.

A new bird guide for the advanced
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and tips on finding birds. Contains
1,800 color photographs, color
paintings, and black-and-white
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Volume 1. Loons to Sandpipers

Volume 2. Gulls to Dippers

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Soft cover, 1,244 pages.

$13.95 per volumel$12.55 per volume members

Birders I Have f^ioivn

Ben Gelman

I T IS MAY 16, 1936-the middle of
the Great Depression. Three skinny
New York schoolboys have saved part
of their lunch money for a week so they
can pay the subway, ferry and bus fare
from the Bronx to Staten Island to
watch birds. They are standing ankle
deep in a saltwater swamp near Oak-
wood Beach, peering through ancient
World War I-vintage binoculars at a
long-necked bird far out in the swamp.
Is it or is it not a Louisiana heron?

If it is, it would be quite a coup to
be able to report it at the next meeting
of the Linnaean Society at the Amer¬
ican Museum of Natural History.

They had better be sure. Standing
in front of the older members of the
society, including master inquisitor Dr.
Ernst Mayr, and defending a rare bird
sighting can be pretty scary for a
youngster.

But the trio had been taught well.
They check their identification care¬

fully—slate-colored head and back, a
touch of reddish brown on the sides,
and white underparts. Their record is
accepted by the society and it appears
in the July-August issue of Bird-Lore,
predecessor of Audubon magazine.

The shortest of the three youngsters
in the swamp that far-off May day was
Irving Cantor, who still watches birds
and compiles at least one New York-
area Audubon Christmas Count each
year.

The tallest of the trio was William
Norse, now a resident of Londonderry,
Vermont and regular compiler of the
Winhall, Vermont Christmas count.

I was the one in the middle, now
living in Carterville, a small commu¬
nity in Southern Illinois near the Crab
Orchard National Wildlife Refuge,
where I compile an annual Christmas
count.

The triumphant triumvirate at Oak-
wood Beach that day were members of

the Sialis Bird Club of the Bronx, pat¬
terned after the more famous Bronx
County Bird Club, which included the
late Allan Cruickshank—noted bird
photographer, writer and lecturer for
the National Audubon Society; Joseph
Hickey—well-known writer on birds,
more recently a professor of wildlife
ecology at the University of Wiscon-
sin-Madison, and Roger Tory Peter¬
son—dean of bird artists and renowned
author of A Field Guide to the Birds.

In his 1948 book. Birds over America,
Peterson tells how he became an hon¬
orary member of the Bronx County Bird
Club and how he always enjoyed the
Christmas counts in the Bronx because
of their competitive spirit and the high
totals they brought in—usually over 90
and a record 107 in 1935.

In the mid and late 1930s, the Sialis
Bird Club members, eight to 10 years
younger than the Bronx County boys,
were invited to go along on the Christ-

12 The Living Bird Quarterly

CA)

Bronx Park, scene of much birding. Left, Hickey and Cruickshank.

mas counts in the Bronx. I was fortu¬
nate to accompany Peterson on one
segment of the Bronx count in 1935.
My recollection of that day is some¬
what dimmed by the intervening 49
years, but a few things stand out in my
mind.

One was that, having grown up in
upstate New York in a family of Swed¬
ish descent, he didn’t talk like the rest
of us, all natives of Noo Yawk City.

Peterson turned out to be just as quick
to call out new species for the list as
his reputation had hinted. He already
was something of a legend, even though
his unique bird guide had been out just
a little more than a year.

I remember he wore the first pair of
Maine hunting shoes I had ever seen—
rubber bottoms and leather tops. I had
no boots of my own and had borrowed
a pair that was a size too small. When
I got home that night, one of my big
toes was numb and I thought 1 might

have frostbite. But it was just the pres¬
sure from the tight boot that had cut
off the circulation in that toe and even¬
tually 1 lost that toenail.

The next few months 1 walked
around in a pair of sneakers, one of
which had the front cut out for my sore
toe. I even went on bird walks like
that, thinking of myself as a martyr to
ornithology. And a martyr who had
walked behind the great Roger Tory
Peterson.

Also around this time there was the
incident of the “dovekie.” This hap¬
pened on another Christmas count and
Peterson mentions it in Birds over
America as an instance of how even the
experts can be deceived. But he tells
only part of the story.

A couple of the Sialis Bird Club boys
were somewhat upset with one of their
number, the late Danny Lehrman (who
grew up to be a noted behavioral psy¬
chologist profiled in The New Yorker).

Danny had an annoying habit of push¬
ing in front on bird walks and trying to
be first to sing out a new species for the
day’s list. So two members of the club
decided to cure him. Knowing Danny
would be covering Bronx Park during
the Christmas count, they carved a
wooden model of a dovekie—far more
at home out in the Atlantic than in
the city—painted it in the winter col¬
ors of the little seabird and anchored it
in the middle of Lake Agassiz.

As it turned out, Danny missed seeing
the little decoy, but Peterson, who had
come by in the late afternoon looking
for a gadwall, reported that he had seen
the “dovekie.” There was quite a bit of
discussion. The “bird” appeared to be
listing to one side but that was attrib¬
uted to the fact that it was probably
worn out after being blown inland. It
hardly moved (which was scarcely
strange since it was made of wood) but
Danny thought he had seen a bit of

Summer/1984 1 3

Future midlife photographer and writer George Harrison and sister Gretchen taking pointers from Roger Tory

Peterson, Jones Spring, West Virginia, June, 1949.

movement after Peterson had called his
attention to the object.

The upshot was that Danny was al¬
lowed to make the announcement of
the rare find at the end of the evening’s
banquet at a German restaurant near
Pelham Bay Park where the results tra¬
ditionally were tallied at the end of
each Bronx count. By then, the rest of
the gang knew what had happened,
and when Danny stood up and made
his announcement, we all yelled,
“Horsefeathers!” Peterson took the joke
in the spirit of good fun. But Danny
walked quietly behind the rest of us at
our bird outings for the next few
months.

On another occasion a few years later
I accompanied Allan Cruickshank on
a Christmas count. Our starting point,
before daylight, was Van Cortlandt Park
and Cruickshank’s imitative ability
brought us the first, bird of the day. He

“ ... he wore the
first pair of
Maine hunting shoes
I had ever seen ... ”

whistled up a screech owl along the
railroad tracks that ran through the
swamp. (A highway now runs through
that area.)

Here it was, about 5:30 a.m. and
bitterly cold as only a damp, windy
winter morning can be. A reporter from
the now-defunct Herald Tribune had
been assigned to do a story on the
Christmas count. He showed up in his
thin street shoes, a skimpy topcoat, a
fedora that kept blowing off, with a half¬
pint flask of whiskey that was supposed

to make up for the inadequacy of his
other gear. He kept hopping from one
foot to the other to keep his circulation
going, taking nips from his flask. Long
before daylight his flask was empty and
he left for his office, but I don’t remem¬
ber seeing any story he had written.

One Saturday night about three years
ago, when I still was working as Sunday
news editor for The Southern Illinoisan
and writing a column that occasionally
dealt with bird watching, the phone
rang and a voice said:

“Hi, this is Joe Hickey, remember
me?”

“It’s been 40 years since I’ve heard
from you, but of course I remember
you. How’s the bird watching?” I
answered.

The bird watching had been great.
My brother Murray, a professor in Cal¬
ifornia, had been visiting Wisconsin
and he had looked up Joe because I had

14 The Living Bird Quarterly

c/)

c/5

Young barred owls and Allan Cruickshank

spoken about him often. Together they
had made a trip in which they had seen
just about every species of owl ever
recorded in that area and they wanted
to tell me about it.

How could 1 forget Joe Hickey?

When 1 met him 50 years ago Joe
was still an amateur ornithologist, but
even then he seemed to know just about
everything about birds. But that
wouldn’t have done me and my friends
of the Sialis Bird Club much good, if
he hadn’t taken us under his wing. He
not only pointed out new birds, but
gave us a free course in what he later
took up as his profession—conserva¬
tion and wildlife management.

The introduction by John Bull to a
recent edition of Hickey’s classic book,
A Guide to Bird Watching, says in part:

“His guidance inspired amateurs,
particularly the younger observers, to
engage in many worthwhile omitho-

. Cruickshank's
imitative ability
brought us the first
bird of the day."

logical projects.’’

My projects have included Christ¬
mas and spring bird counts in New York
and, for the past 25 years, in Southern
Illinois, and the occasional columns I
have written on bird watching. But
those columns, to judge from the mail
and phone calls 1 have received over
the years, have brought hundreds
(thousands?) of bird watchers out of
the closet.

It all started when a high school bi¬
ology teacher took a group of students.

myself included, for a nature walk in
Bronx Park. We wound up at the old
stone bridge across the Bronx River
that was the field headquarters for the
bird watchers of the area. That’s where
1 met Joe Hickey, and through him Pe¬
terson, Cruickshank, Irv Kassoy, Dick
Herbert and other Bronx County boys.

And though 1 knew them only
through bird walks, Christmas counts
and meetings of the Linnaean Society,
they turned a city kid who knew about
only sparrows and pigeons into some¬
one aware of the marvels of his natural
surroundings, and of the importance of
preserving the environment and con¬
serving wildlife.

Especially the birds.

THE AUTHOR

Ben Gelman writes a biweekly column for The
Southern Illinoisan, a newspaper based in Carbon-
dale, Illinois.

Summer/1984 1 5

Argenum hosts many daytime raptors,
.including the yellow'headed caracara, above,
and the crested caracara, right.

Treasure in Argentina

Olin Sewall Pettingill, Jr.

I N 1969, MY WIFE AND I had a
month to spend searching for birds
in Argentina. It was January, early
summer in that country, and we were
advised that the area for the best or¬
nithological rewards was the lowland
^ along the Rio Parana, northeast of
^ Buenos Aires. We knew next to noth-
5 ing about such a place, precisely where
I to go and, least of all, travel condi-
^ tions.

< Luck was on our side when a friend
of ours put us in touch with Maurice
§ Rumboll, a young Argentine-born
° Scotsman who was a talented natural¬
ist. He would be delighted to guide us.

But Maurice warned us in advance.
Northeastern Argentina is strictly ag¬
ricultural, far off the tourist track; ho¬
tels, motels, and camping grounds are
practically nonexistent. We would need
sleeping tents (be sure they are insect-
proof) as well as the essential utilities
for preparing meals. Although Maurice
knew the owners of several huge estan-
cias where we would be guests from
time to time, mostly we would be on
our own.

Fully equipped, we met Maurice in
Buenos Aires as scheduled and at once
hired a sturdy station wagon, acquired
food supplies and accouterments that
would be unavailable in the campo,
and we were off, Maurice driving.

Maurice’s warning about the country
and the problems to come proved un¬
derstated. Within a day we were in
level, low-lying country, on roads, rarely
paved, that threw up choking dust and
proceeded over high grades bordered
by water-filled ditches, occasionally
canals, and beyond by wire fences en¬
closing croplands, pastures, and some¬
times small woodlots. Pull-offs that of¬
fered enough space for camping, let
alone shade, quiet, and privacy, were

so few and far between that in desper¬
ation, after a torrid day, we were glad
to step under the approach to a bridge,
into some abandoned dooryard—any¬
where as long as it was off the road.

No sooner had we removed our
camping gear and shaken off the dust
when we were targets for mosquitoes,
clouds of them. Frantically we put up
our tents, then prepared our supper and
retreated to the stifling interior of the
tents to consume our food and pass the
night.

As for our other problems—and there
were many—I shall say no more be¬
cause they were incidental to our daily
ornithological sights. Never before had
I traveled in country richer in birdlife.
There were so many species that drew
our attention and tempted photogra¬
phy.

This was true from the time we left
the outskirts of Buenos Aires. In ditches
along the highway, rain recently had
softened the clayey soil. From this mud,
rufous ovenbirds were molding their
huge domed nests on bordering fence-
posts and utility poles. When dry, the
structures would have the solidity of
cement and an endurance that would
last well beyond the one-time use of
the builders. House sparrows and gray¬
breasted martins probably would oc¬
cupy them in subsequent seasons. So
impervious are the ovens to weather
and predation that their exposure is
never a factor in the sites selected as
long as the surface for them is firm and
flat. We saw one next to the top of a
frame of a swinging gate, another on
the vane support of a windmill.

Ovenbirds were everywhere, as
prominent as their nests, flashing their
reddish-brown tails and rumps in flight
and, while perched, singing energeti¬
cally, their loud descending notes ac-

16 The Living Bird Quarterly

fOM MCHUGH (PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC.)

companied by wing vibrations. Cocky
birds, they searched for food on lawns
of the estancias as if they were the own¬
ers, striding assuredly with broad steps,
their chests puffed out, and seldom fail¬
ing to chase any other bird that crossed
their path. For vitality and boldness,
as well as for their engineering feats of
nest construction, little wonder that
Argentines claim el homero their na¬
tional bird.

Here and there straddling the cross
bars of utility poles or occasionally se¬
cure in the superstructure of windmills
were shapeless bundles of sticks, nests
of the firewood-gatherers which are
close relatives of ovenbirds.

For bulk and conspicuousness, no
nests rivaled those of the monk para¬
keets. Colonial breeders—exceptional
among members of the parrot family—
they massed sticks in trees, dead or
alive, to form enormous dormitories in
which each pair had its own quarters.
Any grove with several trees support¬
ing these colonies was absolute bedlam:
screeches, shrieks, chattering, squab¬
bles, and constant comings and goings.
At one estancia where we were guests,
we were aroused at dawn by a small
colony just outside. Right then 1 shud¬
dered at the thought of monk para¬
keets, already established in the New
York and Florida areas, becoming wide¬
spread in the United States.

To be sure, a monk parakeet is a
charming little creature by itself, pleas¬
ingly colored with shades of green and
gray. Unfortunately, being so gregari¬
ous, it is never happy without others
of its kind. Granted that we could en¬
dure the racket of monk parakeets as
we have become accustomed to put up
with the sounds from flocks of Euro¬
pean starlings, however, we could not
tolerate their feeding habits. In north¬
eastern Argentina, flocks of several
hundred individuals descend on fruits
and grain crops of all sorts. So severe a
pest are the parakeets that all landown¬
ers, we were told, are required to bum
their nests every season or be subjected
to a heavy fine. From our observations,
few landowners seemed to have heeded
any such regulations.

As we traveled daily, certain birds
became familiar sights. Scores of eared
and picui ground-doves flew up from
the roadsides just ahead. Like mourn¬
ing doves, they waited until the last
moment, then rose as if flustered by
something never seen before.

Always eye-catching were guira
cuckoos, distinctively marked. Small
groups flying across the road encour¬
aged us to slow down. Sometimes they
chose to alight on a fence or post. When
they did they fell forward, seemingly
out of control, with their long tails
flipping over their heads. On recover¬
ing their balance, the clownish birds
raised and lowered their head plumes
while letting their tails hang limp. Any
wind ruffled their straggly feathers and
waggled their tails.

Touring as we did in low country
with so much wetland, 1 had not ex¬
pected to see tinamous, primitive ter¬
restrial birds which, in Argentina, or¬
dinarily inhabit grassy uplands and
scrub. But we often saw spotted tina¬
mous, a species the size of a small grouse,
scampering across the road. When we
stopped at a site where one had disap¬
peared, there was no sign of it. Of course
the bird was there, somewhere,
crouched and obscured by its spots and
bars that so well matched the grasses
and the shadows they cast. Not until
we nearly stepped on it would it burst
into the air with a startling roar of wings
and be off out of sight.

B ecause of the type of country, I
also had not expected to see
rheas. Yet we noted a few now
and then in pastures remote from the
main highways where they sometimes
grazed with cattle. They were greater
rheas, a species standing over four feet
tall. When there were no cattle in view
for comparative height, they seemed as
large as their African relatives, the os¬
triches. Generally wary, at the slightest
glimpse of us they turned and strode
away. “Going awaysters,” 1 dubbed
them, for we rarely watched them when
they were not moving away from us.

Seldom, if ever, did we explore a
field, pasture—any open stretch of land
not under cultivation—without meet¬
ing southern lapwings. Strikingly
handsome big plovers they were and
especially so in flight when they dis¬
played their boldly marked wings. Our
initial charm with them, however, was
soon replaced by downright annoyance
owing to their habit of yammering when
we neared their breeding territories and,
worse still, alerting every other living
thing to our presence. There was no
escaping their clamor for as soon as we
had passed through one territory—and
endured the ear-splitting noise of its

Rufous ovenbirds on their nest of mud.
Left, southern lapwing, a noisy plover.

occupants—the lapwings owning the
next territory took up where the others
had left off. The local name for the
lapwing is tero-tero from the sound of
its calls. Before our trip was over we
had our own names for the species,
none complimentary.

I was amazed at the prevalence of
daytime raptors. Cinereous and long¬
winged harriers frequently sailed over
ricefields and marshes; roadside, red-
backed, and black-collared hawks
perched unconcernedly in full view on
fenceposts and tree stubs; crane hawks
patrolled the forested edges of ponds
and rivers; and black-chested buzzard-
eagles soared over most any sort of
country. There were three species of
caracaras, all common, scouting farm¬
lands for dead animals, animal wastes,
insects, or whatever. The large crested
caracara 1 had seen before in such widely
separated points as south Florida and
Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic,
though never more than a few pairs.
The chimango and yellow-headed
caracaras, astonishingly tame, foraged
around cattle or sometimes, as in the
case of the yellow-headed, on the cat¬
tle where they relieved the animals of
their ticks and other parasites.

And finally there were snail kites by
the hundreds, on utility wires, fences,
trees, anything for perches, as long as
they were convenient to water-filled
ditches and channels that produced
their specialized diet, restricted to fresh¬
water snails of the genus Porruicea. At

Summer/1984 1 9

OLIN SEWALL PETTINGIU., JR.

JAMES HANCOCK (PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC.)

Young uihistUng herons on nest, above. The
southern screamer, right, is a “conglomerate
of several kinds of birds. ”

the bases of fenceposts we noted
heaps—bushels—of shells, dropped by
the birds from the post tops where they
had extracted the contents.

My amazement at the prevalence of
raptors, after being conditioned to their
scarcity in the United States, prompted
me to ask Maurice, “Why so many?”
His answer: “Most people, excepting
the wealthier landowners, can’t afford
ammunition, even if they had guns, to
shoot birds for sport or any other rea¬
son.” James Cook, our host at his es-
tancia, had another answer: “We don’t
shower our country with pesticides to
the extent that you do!”

O ur month’s attention to Ar¬
gentine birds impressed upon us
the rich diversity of species. Not
that we were really surprised since over
a third of the world’s 9,000 species breed
in South America—the “Bird Conti¬
nent”— and over 900 in Argentina
alone. The woodpeckers, for instance.
In Argentina there are 33 species (com¬
pared to 21 in the United States), 13
of which reside in northeastern Argen¬
tina. Without trying we readily saw
seven, including the ever-common field
flickers and golden-breasted wood¬
peckers, and occasionally white wood¬
peckers. One evening near our camp¬
site we counted seven white
woodpeckers entering one cavity in a
utility pole.

Without question, the birds greatest
in number of species and diversity in
form, color, and ecological adaptations
were the tyrant flycatchers. Whereas
the United States has 35 flycatchers—
kingbirds, phoebes, pewees, and so
on—Argentina has 113. We saw only
a sampling. Examples: along the high¬
ways, the graceful fork-tailed flycatch¬
ers hawking insects from trees and wires;
in marshes, both the white-headed
marsh-tyrant and pied water-tyrant, as
well as the spectacled tyrant, totally
black save for its conspicuous yellow
wattles around the eyes and white on
the wings that showed up in flight. In
pastures, the cattle tyrants rode on the
backs of horses as well as cattle when
not looking for insects stirred up by the
animals’ feet. In bmshy lands, we saw
a surprising bird for a passerine, the
white monjita, all white except for
black on the wings and tip of the bill.
The most prominent of all the flycatch¬
ers, if not the commonest, was the noisy
great kiskadee. Though 1 had become
familiar with the species in Mexico, as
1 observed it here, frequently around
water, it seemed much less a flycatcher
than a frogcatcher and fisherman.

Several times on the marshy edges
of open water we watched whistling
herons. Yes, herons that really whistle.
That this species should have any such
capability, when the usual heron rep¬
ertoire consists of croaks, quawks, and
similarly guttural utterances, seemed
impossible. But true it is. High up in a
bottle tree in the yard of James Cook’s
estancia was a whistling heron’s nest
with two large nestlings. During a se¬
vere storm, while the nest was lashed
by a gale and drenched with rain, a
parent bird sometimes whistled as it
strove to hang on to the nest and cover
its brood. The sound was plaintive and
clear—loud enough for us to hear above
the wind.

Among all the birds observed, the
most bizarre was the southern screamer.
The more 1 watched the bird the more
1 thought of it as a conglomerate of
several kinds of birds. It has the size,
shape, and bill of a turkey. After a run¬
ning start it could take off and soar high
on the thermals with the ease of a vul¬
ture. When sunning itself it spreads its
wings, cormorant fashion. Probably
more a waterfowl than anything else,
it could swim, though poorly, since its
legs were the length of a wading bird’s
and its feet barely webbed. When dis¬

turbed, its loud trumpeting calls sug¬
gested those of a swan or a goose. We
saw many screamers in pairs or flocks,
sometimes near water but more often
in pastures where they grazed along with
cattle. Spotting one bird in a flock that
for some reason was unable to fly,
Maurice captured it so that we could
examine its formidable defense weap¬
ons—two pairs of sharp spurs near the
bend of the wings.

Adding to the great variety of Ar¬
gentine birds that we encountered were
species from North America, here for
the austral summer. Enormous flocks of
bobolinks circled the ricefields, de¬
scending to feed on the rice that had
reached the delectable milk stage. Pests
they were to the farmers who called
them charlatans. And there were North
American shorebirds. Once we counted
as many as seven upland sandpipers,
each standing alone on as many fence-
posts in a row. At another time we
came upon a small flock of buff-breasted
sandpipers in a grassy field.

Excited as my wife and 1 were upon
seeing hosts of birds new to us, we never
failed also to be excited upon seeing
familiar ones in a foreign setting—not
breeding, just passing their winter. In
North America we have no comparable
situation, of South American birds mi¬
grating north to escape their winter in
our summer. For variety and abundance
of birds, Argentina hardly needs spe¬
cies from North America too.

Author’s Note

1 have no evidence that Argentina’s
political and economic problems since
1969 have affected wild birds and their
habitats in the northeastern part of the
country. However, most of the major
roads are now paved and the provincial
tourist boards have created campsites
along the roads for the hordes of camp¬
ing tourists,

FURTHER READING

Dunning, John S. South American Land Birds: A
Photographic Aid to Identification. Harrowood
Books, Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. 1982.
Meyer de Schauensee, Rodolphe. A Guide to the
Birds of South America. The Academy of Natural
Sciences of Philadelphia. 1970.

THE AUTHOR

Olin Sewall Pettingill, Jr. is a former director of
the Laboratory of Ornithology, author of numer¬
ous books and articles on birds, and 1974 winner
of the Arthur A. Allen Award.

20 The Living Bird Quarterly

NEWS k NOTES

The Laboratory’s Library of Natural
Sounds (LNS), with its extensive collec¬
tion of African bird recordings, is providing
information for the new Handbook of Afri'
can Birds. Volume 2 of this major work is
now in production. Recently LNS fur¬
nished sound recordings and audiospectro¬
graphs to C. Hilary Fry of Aberdeen Uni¬
versity for his studies of African kingfishers
in the genus Halcyon. These species are of
special interest because their sounds are ex¬
cellent examples of adaptation to different
habitats: the deep forest species have sim¬
ple whistled notes, while those species liv¬
ing in open areas have harsh rattle-like calls.
The recordings were collected by Labora¬
tory field collaborators Myles North, Peter
Kaestner, and Stuart Keith. As work pro¬
ceeds on the new books, LNS will continue
to provide materials to the editors and
authors.

S. Dillon Ripley, biologist, ecologist, au¬
thority on the birds of the Far East,
educator and museum administrator, will
receive the 16th Arthur A. Allen Award at
a dinner to be held in his honor in Ithaca,
New York on October 13, 1984-

Dr. Ripley has served as secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution for the past 20
years. Under his leadership, the
Smithsonian has become world-renowned
for its exploration of scientific frontiers and
its contributions to the arts and humanities.

Some of the major events to occur since
Dr. Ripley became secretary in 1964 are:
National Museum of History and
Technology opened, Chesapeake Bay
Center for Environmental Studies was
established, Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars was begun, Smithsonian
magazine was launched, pandas came to the
National Zoo and a 10-year renovation of
the Zoo was started. The Wilson Quarterly
was first published, the National Air and
Space Museum opened to the public and
“Smithsonian World” premiered on public
television.

In addition to heading the Smithsonian,
Dr. Ripley is president emeritus of the
International Council for Bird Preservation,
and is a member of the board of directors
of the World Wildlife Fund—U.S. He has
also authored numerous books, including
Trail of the Money Bird (1942), A Handbook
of Birds of India and Pakistan, 10 volumes
(1968—74), A Pictorial Guide to Birds of the
Indian Subcontinent (1983), and “A Port¬
folio Edition of Rails of the World” (1984).

The Arthur A. Allen Award was

established by the Cornell Laboratory of
Ornithology in 1966 in memory of Arthur
A. Allen. The award is given in recog¬
nition of outstanding contributions to
ornithology.

Ruby-throated hummingbirds are dying
because of red electric fence insulators. The
birds, which often feed on red flowers, ap¬
parently attempt to feed on the insulators;
when the birds probe the insulators with
their bills, they are electrocuted. The prob¬
lem is most severe during migration, and
occurs throughout the species’ range, which
is all of the United States east of the Great
Plains. Electric fence insulators are avail¬
able in white and black, and landowners
are advised to use these instead of red ones.

Charles R. Smith, director of public edu
cation at the Laboratory of Ornithology,
has been elected president of the Federation
of New York State Bird Clubs. This position
is an important part of the Laboratory’s goal
of maintaining working relationships with
other ornithological organizations. The

Laboratory is involved in a large-scale Fed¬
eration project, the New York State Breed¬
ing Bird Atlas, which is determining the
breeding ranges of all New York birds.
Charles Smith also represents the Labora¬
tory as a delegate to the International
Council for Bird Preservation—U.S. Sec¬
tion, and is a member of the New York State
Audubon Wildlife Advisory Committee.

You are invited to sponsor a color pho¬
tograph in The Living Bird Quarterly. Gifts
of $200 will pay for a cover; $150 supports
a full-page photo. Smaller donations will
sponsor smaller photos. Gifts will be ac¬
knowledged alongside the photo. Send your
donations to: Editor, The Living Bird Quar¬
terly, Sapsucker Woods, Ithaca, New York
14850.

The Living Bird Quarterly will hold its
first photo contest in early 1985. The con¬
test will be open only to amateur photog¬
raphers, and will be judged by Les Line,
editor of Audubon, and W. Allan Royce of
National Geographic. Winning photos will

James Gulledge and Greg Budney collect bird sounds for the Library of Natural Sounds.

22 The Living Bird Quarterly

DAVID BLANTON

appear in the Quarterly, so start taking your
prize-winning photos now.

Also, the Quarterly has received an ex¬
ceptional achievement award from the
Council for the Advancement and Support
of Education (CASE), Washington, D.C.

The Laboratory of Ornithology is pleased
to announce the receipt of a three-year grant
of $150,000 from the Exxon Corporation.
The money will be used to stimulate growth
and development of the Laboratory and its
programs.

A new annual journal. Bird Conservation,
is being published by the U.S. Section of
the International Council for Bird Preser¬
vation. The semi-technical publication is
designed to disseminate information on bird
conservation activities. Each issue will in¬
clude reports on specific conservation pro¬
grams written by biologists working on the
projects. Edited by Stanley A. Temple,
Beers-Bascom Professor of Conservation at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the
first issue contains articles on the peregrine
falcon, bald eagle, and California condor.
It is available for $12.95 plus $1.00 shipping
from the University of Wisconsin Press, 114
North Murray Street, Madison, Wisconsin
53715 (Wisconsin residents add $.65 sales
tax), or from the Crow’s Nest Bookshop
($12.95 plus $2.00 shipping; 10 percent

discount for Laboratory members; New York
residents add $.91 sales tax).

The Santa Barbara song sparrow has been
removed from the U.S. List of Endangered
and Threatened Wildlife and Plants be¬
cause it is presumed extinct. This subspe¬
cies was found only on Santa Barbara Is¬
land, part of the Channel Islands National
Monument off the Southern California
coast. The birds were common prior to 1959,
when a fire devastated much of the island.
Since that year, no one has seen a Santa
Barbara song sparrow despite many at¬
tempts to find them by ornithologists, in¬
cluding National Park Service naturalists
living on the island.

A new publication concerning the serious
problem of lead poisoning in waterfowl is
available from the National Wildlife Fed¬
eration. Steel Shot and Lead Poisoning in
Waterfowl by J. Scott Feierabend is an an¬
notated bibliography of research published
from 1976 to 1983. Copies are available for
$4.95 plus $1.55 shipping from the Na¬
tional Wildlife Federation, 1412 16th Street,
N.W, Washington, D.C. 20036.

The Laboratory’s Cooperative Research
Program (CRP) reports that data from its
files are being used to monitor potentially
imperiled birds and to assess the impact of

industrial development on certain bird spe¬
cies. Wisconsin Department of Natural Re¬
sources recently requested all nesting rec¬
ords for endangered and threatened
Wisconsin birds such as the red-necked
grebe and the loggerhead shrike. The Adi¬
rondack Conservancy, part of the Nature
Conservancy, has asked for breeding rec¬
ords for use in its rare animal project. Pa¬
tuxent Wildlife Research Center of the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service requested records
to help assess the impact of coal develop¬
ment on inland nesting least terns, white¬
faced ibises, and double-crested cormo¬
rants, and several consulting firms have ap¬
plied for data to use in environmental im¬
pact studies.

CRP data are contributed by dedicated
amateur birders as well as professional field
ornithologists. After observing nests or
breeding colonies, contributors submit in¬
formation on special forms. These records
are available for a small fee to any amateur
or professional researcher who submits an
outline explaining how the data will be
used.

Gregory S. Butcher recently joined the
staff of the Cooperative Research Program
to investigate ways of using Audubon
Christmas Bird Count data to study the
movements and distributions of wintering
birds. The Christmas Bird Count is the old¬
est and most popular volunteer census ef¬
fort, yet much of the data contained in the
counts have not been analyzed. The Co¬
operative Research Program hopes to ob¬
tain the financing to computerize the data
so they can be used in long-term population
studies of many North American bird
species.

The Living Bird, the Laboratory’s annual
journal for 19 years, has become a collec¬
tor’s item. A leading publication in orni¬
thological research, it combines technical
articles and exquisite colorplates. The Lab¬
oratory is now offering a limited number of
complete sets (some imperfect) of The Liv¬
ing Bird to our members. Cost: $1,000. Mail
your request and check or money order to
Library, Laboratory of Ornithology, Sap-
sucker Woods, Ithaca, New York 14850.

Macaw tail feathers from captive birds are
needed to prevent the slaughter of wild
macaws in Panama. Certain Panamanian
Indian tribes wear these feathers in cere¬
monial dances and are endangering several
species of macaws to obtain them. The
Panamanian National Section of the Inter¬
national Council for Bird Preservation is
attempting to obtain enough feathers from
captive birds to meet the demand. Anyone
having access to captive macaws is urged to
donate molted tail feathers, which can be
sent to Eugene Morton, Secretary, Pan
America Section-ICBP, National Zoologi¬
cal Park, Washington, D.C. 20009.

Dear Member:

The continued growth of the human population poses threats, both obvious and subtle, to
many species of plants and animals. Obvious changes in the natural landscape, such as housing
developments and shopping centers, force wildlife to move away—if it can. Covering wetlands
with parking lots or draining them for agriculture plays havoc with plants and animals that depend
upon wetlands for survival.

Subtle alterations we make in the environment are not seen immediately, but are just as serious.
Chemicals used in agriculture and industry can bring disaster: none of us needs to be reminded
of the effects of DDT on bird populations. And now acid rain caused by various types of emissions
seems to be taking its toll on a worldwide scale.

Another insidious disrupter is known as habitat fragmentation; as natural areas are divided by
roads and buildings, individual blocks of forest or field become smaller and the distances among
them become greater. As the amount of habitat diminishes, the number of birds that require large
areas of unbroken habitat also decreases. Fragmentation also results in more “edge” — the border
between two habitats, such as woods and fields. Result: edge dwellers become more numerous
while birds once hidden in the forest are brought closer to the open. Increased edge may explain
the growing number of cowbirds throughout much of North America. Female cowbirds perch in
trees along the woodland edge where they watch small songbirds whose nests they rruiy later
parasitize.

At the Laboratory we are studying the effects of human activity on bird numbers. Our
Cooperative Research Program monitors changes in bird populations by collecting and examining
breeding data. At our research program at the Seatuck National Wildlife Refuge on Long Island,
we are learning how to manage songbird habitats in a suburban environment. And many articles
in the Quarterly discuss these concerns, for example, last autumn’s “Birds in a Patchwork
Landscape” and this issue’s “Wetland Sentinels.”

Birds are the focus of our efforts to understand how human activities affect plants and animals.
Such an urtderstanding will help us preserve the richness of species for future generations.

Charles WALCOTT, Executive Director

Summer/1984 23

RRSRARCH UEVIEW

Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

New Field Guides

North American birders have come a long
way in the 50 years since Roger Tory Peter¬
son wrote his classic A Field Guide to the
Birds. The degree of birding sophistication
now attained is reflected in two excellent
new field guides: The Audubon Society Mas¬
ter Guide to Birding, edited by John Farrand,
Jr. (Alfred A. Knopf, 1983, 3 volumes, soft
cover, 1,244 pages total, $13.95/volume),
and National Geographic’s Field Guide to
the Birds of North America (1983, 464 pages,
soft cover, $15.95).

The Master Guide is very thorough. It
includes 835 species—-all those known to
breed in North America plus all 116 species
that have visited the continent—with ac¬
counts written by 61 ornithological experts.
TTie guide contains a wealth of detailed text
for each species, including general infor¬
mation, a description of the bird’s physical
and vocal characteristics, and a discussion
of similar species. There is also an expla¬
nation of each species’ range along with a
small map.

The book, however, is really a reference
rather than a field guide, for three reasons.
First, the bulk of the three volumes makes
them awkward to carry. Second, the guide
uses photographs rather than illustrations
to depict many species. While most of the
photos are excellent, they do not portray
field marks the way a good illustration does.
In the photo of the hermit thrush, the di¬
agnostic red tail is barely noticeable; other
field guides with illustrations, such as Pe¬
terson’s, show the tail clearly. Third, the
guide has no comparative illustrations
showing similar-looking species.

The Geographic guide is more useful in
the field, although it too is heavy and bulky.
While not as comprehensive as the Master
Guide, it does include all the species known
to breed in North America, plus a few vis¬
itors. The 220 colorplates are generally of
high quality. They were prepared by 13 art¬
ists, and include many illustrations of birds
in subadult and seasonal plumages, a tre¬
mendous help in identifying species with
highly variable plumages. Several plates
show birds in flight. For each species, writ¬
ten descriptions discuss physical character¬
istics, habitat, and voice. Range informa¬
tion is presented on tiny range maps which,
for some species, are difficult to interpret.

Beginners will find both of these guides
somewhat overwhelming and may be better
off learning from the less complex guides
by Roger Tory Peterson, either the revised

A Field Guide to the Birds East of the Rockies
(Floughton Mifflin, 1980, $9.95) or A Field
Guide to Western Birds (Floughton Mifflin,
1961, $11.95). Or, for those birders who
don’t mind a guide that contains birds not
found in their part of the country, there is
Robbins, Bruun and Zim’s recently revised
Birds of JSlorth America (Golden Press, 1983,
$7.95). Both the Peterson and Robbins
guides can be carried in a large pocket. Even
advanced birders probably will continue to
rely on these favorites while in the field,
leaving the Geographic and Audubon So¬
ciety guides in the car or at home for use in
confirming confusing sightings.

Tyrant Bird

The eastern kingbird has been described as
defiant, fierce, and belligerent. During
breeding season this member of the fly¬
catcher family often harasses other birds,
including much larger crows and hawks.
There is one report of an eastern kingbird
attacking a low-flying airplane. Why is this
bird so aggressive? Peter Blancher and
Raleigh Robertson of Queen’s University,
Ontario, have discovered a probable answer
(“Kingbird aggression: does it deter preda¬
tion?” Animal Behaviour, vol. 30, pp.
929-930).

Blancher and Robertson studied 32 pairs
of kingbirds nesting along Lake Opinicon,
Ontario. During nest checks from a boat,
the researchers measured the kingbirds’ re¬
actions to their presence. Reactions ranged
from silently observing the two men to
striking them with their bills. After several
checks, the researchers calculated an
aggression score for each pair.

By the end of the study, 14 of the 32 nests
had lost eggs or young to predators. These
nests belonged to birds with the lowest
aggression scores, leading Blancher and
Robertson to conclude that a high level of
aggression by kingbirds is an effective de¬
fense against predation. This idea is sup¬
ported by the fact that aggressiveness of all
pairs increased as the breeding season pro¬
gressed; biologists believe that the more
time and energy parents have invested in
their young, the more likely they will be to
risk their lives defending the young.

Unfortunately, the study cannot answer
an intriguing question: why should eastern
kingbirds be more aggressive than other
songbirds? Perhaps the answer lies in the
kingbird’s aerial agility; the superb maneu¬
verability that enables the bird to capture
its insect prey in midair also may reduce its

chances of being captured while harassing
predators, so it can afford to be daring.
Robert Ricklefs of the University of Penn¬
sylvania has shown that several other aerial
insectivores also are aggressive.

Habitat Separation

Many bird species are restricted to one type
of habitat. Three-toed woodpeckers reside
in coniferous forests, while meadowlarks
inhabit fields. Other species, however, live
in a variety of habitats; for example, the
European sparrowhawk is found in both for¬
ests and fields. M. Marquiss and I. Newton
of the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, United
Kingdom, have discovered that preference
for one type of habitat over another may be
determined by the sex of the sparrowhawk
(“Habitat preference in male and female
sparrowhawks Accipiternisus,” Ibis, vol. 124,
pp. 324-328).

Marquiss and Newton noted the sexes of
450 sparrowhawks in three different habi¬
tats in south Scotland: coniferous forest,
farmland with small woods, and open farm¬
land with no woods. The researchers dis¬
covered that the ratio of males to females
differed depending on habitat. In the forest,
males outnumbered females nearly three to
one; in the farmland with woods the num¬
bers were about equal; and in the open
farmland, females outnumbered males more
than two to one.

In this species, as in most birds of prey,
females are much larger than males. Mar¬
quiss and Newton believe size difference
may explain why males prefer woodlands
while females favor open country. First, be¬
cause they are smaller, the males are prob¬
ably more maneuverable than females in
the forest’s thick cover. Second, by keeping
under cover, males may reduce their chances
of being preyed upon by the females. Third,
females may find their preferred prey—larger
birds, such as thrushes and starlings—more
available in open farmland than in exten¬
sive woods.

There may be other reasons for the hab¬
itat preferences discovered by Marquiss and
Newton. But whatever the reasons, sepa¬
ration by sex has an important ecological
benefit to the species. It reduces competi¬
tion for food, making it easier for males and
females to coexist in the same area. For
species where the two sexes use the same
habitat, competition may be avoided by
other means. For example, the sexes may
feed in different parts of trees or may feed
on different types of prey.

24 The Living Bird Quarterly

W HILE DRIVING through the
Ding Darling National Wildlife
Refuge on Sanibel Island, Flor¬
ida in March of 1983, my wife and I
saw a red-shouldered hawk perched near
the road. A channel about 15 feet wide
separates the roadside from a mangrove
forest. We stopped, set our camera on
a tripod, and waited for something to
happen. After a few minutes, the hawk
dropped into the channel where he re¬

mained still, floating with his wings
spread, glancing about. A minute later
he drifted about three feet from shore
and began rowing violently toward it.
Coming out of the water, he shook
himself and then hopped up the bank.
At this point we saw that he had a large
rat in his talons. After mantling over
the rat for a minute, he flew across the
channel, landed on a tree limb, and
ate his catch. —]. Kent Minichiello

Bon Appetit!

Summer/1984

MARK WILSON

U NTIL A FEW DECADES ago,
wetlands were regarded as waste
areas to be drained and filled
for agricultural or industrial develop¬
ment, housing projects, or railroad
rights of way. Earlier, a few naturalists
had championed the biological, eco¬
nomic and aesthetic importance of
wetlands, but only recently have large
numbers of people come to appreciate
the important role wetlands play in the
natural world.

Wetlands are places where the soil
is saturated with water. They include
bogs, where the water is below the land’s
surface; swamps, which are flooded
woodlands, and marshes, which are
flooded grasslands. The benefits of wet¬
lands vary. Salt marshes are extremely
productive, providing food and shelter
for a variety of fish and wildlife, not
just in the immediate area, but in sur¬
rounding coastal ecosystems. The de¬
pendence of commercial and sport fish¬
eries on salt marshes as nurseries for
fish, shrimp, and oysters is a significant
economic justification for preserving
these areas.

Freshwater wetlands not only feed
and shelter invertebrates, fish, birds,
and mammals, but also absorb large
quantities of water, releasing it slowly.

By filtering sediment and other pollu¬
tants, freshwater wetlands can main¬
tain or improve downstream water
quality. They also may replenish
groundwater supplies.

Biologists have been trying to mon¬
itor the health of wetland ecosystems
because of their value. One way we
determine if a wetland is functioning
properly is to watch for changes in the
animals that live on it. Have feeding
or reproductive patterns altered in a
surprising or dramatic fashion? If so,
we attempt to find out what the changes
mean.

Certain animals are better than oth¬
ers in helping us gauge a wetland’s
health. These animals could be called
environmental monitors and are suited
to this role because of the positions
they occupy in their ecosystems.

The primary producers in an ecosys¬
tem are green plants. They rely on pho¬
tosynthesis, the use of energy from the
sun to manufacture their own tissue
from materials in water, soil, and air.
Animals cannot use photosynthesis, but
must obtain energy and nutrients by
eating plants, other animals, or both.
One way to think of the ecosystem’s
structure is as a series of feeding levels,
starting with plants and moving up to

Wetland

Sentinels

Donald A. McCrimmon, Jr.

The great blue heron has been used as a
wetland monitor. The bird’s position at the
top of food webs makes it susceptible to
environmental change. At left, great blue
fishing from kelp bed. Below, herons at
dawn at Concord, Massachusetts.

Summer/1984 27

TIM HTZHARRIS

plant-eating animals (herbivores), and
then animal-eating animals (carni¬
vores). Since most animals eat more
than one kind of food (omnivores) and
may switch feeding levels, the structure
of an ecosystem is often called a food
web.

Several important features of ecosys¬
tems result from these relationships.
First, since all members of the system
are interconnected, removing any part
of the web influences the entire system.
The degree of disruption varies, but
generally those animals at the tops of
food webs—known as top carnivores—
are most sensitive to changes in other
parts of the web, especially in food
quality or availability.

Second, chemicals, both nutrient
and pollutant that are present in an
ecosystem, are taken up initially and
concentrated by plants. Herbivores
eating the plants concentrate these
chemicals further. Carnivores, feeding
on herbivores, omnivores, or on each
other, ingest the greatest concentra¬
tion of all—equivalent to many plants’-
worth of pollutants.

Because of their top position in the
food web, wading birds—herons and

egrets—are among the best environ¬
mental monitors, and of the wading
birds, great blue herons have been of
particular interest. The species is con¬
spicuous and easily recognized, and
trends in the status of its breeding pop¬
ulation have been the subject of in¬
tense speculation and investigation.

Although solitary much of the year,
great blue herons nest in the tops of
trees in colonies near rivers, lakes,
swamps, or marshes. Colony size ranges
from two to hundreds of pairs, and col¬
ony sites may be reused for many years.
During the nesting season, the birds
feed near the colonies on fish, amphib¬
ians, crustaceans, birds, mammals, and
insects. The combination of camivory,
conspicuousness, and large numbers in
small areas, have contributed to the
great blue heron’s attractiveness as a
monitor species.

Recently, I became interested in great
blue herons both as a species and an
ecological monitor because, in the last
decade, some conservationists believed
that the species had become reduced
in numbers. Precise and complete
counts of great blue populations span¬
ning many years were almost nonex¬

istent and evidence for population de¬
clines was anecdotal. Nonetheless, the
persistence of such reports, particularly
in central and midwestem states, led
the National Audubon Society to
“bluelist” the species for several years
during the 1970s. Great blue herons
thus were regarded with special con¬
cern, and amateur and professional or¬
nithologists were asked to pay close at¬
tention to what was happening to birds
that were breeding and feeding in their
areas.

Volunteer ornithologists in New York
State already had been following great
blue heron population trends for quite
some time. Pesticides such as DDT had
led to serious reproductive failure from
eggshell thinning in other monitor
birds, such as bald eagles, and it was
thought that wading birds also might
be vulnerable to this threat. As a result,
Walter Benning, a noted New York
amateur ornithologist, and a group of
volunteers from the Federation of New
York State Bird Clubs censused great
blue heron colonies from 1964 to 1968.
These data provided a very useful back¬
ground for the studies I began in 1979.

To gather more data quickly, I de-

28 The Living Bird Quarterly

VIRGINIA P. WEINLA.ND (PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC.)

cided to combine Benning’s approach
of using volunteers to help locate great
blue heron colonies with aerial surveys.
I also enlarged the network of volun-
teers by appealing for aid through the
media. Hundreds of news releases ask¬
ing for help in locating colonies were
sent to newspapers and garden and bird
clubs throughout the state. The news
releases were written in an engaging
style by Mamie Crowell whose book,
Great Blue, at the same time was being
published by Times Books. Hundreds
of people from all walks of life re¬
sponded to our request for information.

Once colonies were located, 1, two
assistants, and a highly experienced
pilot took a small airplane over the
colonies at low altitude and counted
the number of active nests. We sur¬
veyed from 1979 through 1981, work¬
ing in late April and early May. In no
instance did our searches disturb the
nesting birds.

Combining the results of our surveys
with data from the Laboratory of Or¬
nithology’s Colonial Bird Register, we
identified 110 colonies in upstate New
York. In the 1960s there had been only
41. (No active great blue colonies have

been reported on Long Island for many
decades.) Further, the average colony
size of 50 nests had more than doubled
compared to data from the ’60s. Thus
I concluded that the population of great
blue herons in upstate New York is ro¬
bust.

How would I account for this? My
study showed that the habitats where
New York heronries are found have not
changed noticeably over the past two
decades, despite the fact that some areas
of New York are losing wetlands. Fur¬
thermore, the total amount of habitat
suitable for nesting great blues probably
has increased. In New York, many wet¬
lands that once were drained and modi¬
fied for farming have been abandoned,
allowing them to revert to their natural
condition. In addition, beavers, noto¬
rious wetland creators, have experi¬
enced a resurgence in the state. Beaver
ponds can serve as good nesting and
foraging sites for great blues and their
mutual relationship is a subject deserv¬
ing further study.

For several years, the New York State
Department of Environmental Conser¬
vation has been mapping and evaluat¬
ing the state’s wetlands. Approxi-

Far left: fish are the great blue heron's main
prey. Below left: salt marshes provide food
and shelter for fish and wildlife. This one
is on Cape Cod. Right, above: Don
McCrimmon surveyed heron colonies from a
small airplane. Right, below: beavers are
notorious wetland creators.

Summer/1984 29

mately 3 percent, or one million acres,
of New York’s land area is wetland hab¬
itat. Since 1968 some wetland areas,
especially in urban settings, have de¬
clined. Great blue herons, however,
rarely nest in these settings.

Other explanations for the robust
status of New York’s great blue heron
population may be proposed, but none
is as convincing as increased habitat
availability. Reduction in pesticide res¬
idue in the environment is one alter¬
native. Other species of fish-eating birds
recently have rebounded dramatically
following decreased exposure to pesti¬
cides. Ospreys and brown pelicans have
shown striking improvement. Pesti¬
cides, however, have been linked to
eggshell thinning and reproductive
failure among only a few wading bird
species. The great blue heron has not
been shown to be affected.

Great blue heron populations in
other parts of the United States have
not fared as well. For many decades,
urbanization, industrialization, water¬
way development and agriculture have
caused much wetland habitat loss along
the Mississippi River flood plain. Such
loss is associated with reported declines
in populations of great blue herons and
great egrets in southern Iowa, Illinois

and Missouri. Also over the past 25
years, declines in populations of wood
storks, a wetland-dependent bird in
southern Florida, parallel an estimated
35 percent reduction in wetlands im¬
portant as feeding sites.

Habitat-sensitive wading birds such
as great blue herons may face trying
times in the years ahead. Human-in¬
duced changes in habitat will be the
main reason. The mere presence of
people near a colony can have a sig¬
nificant influence; most wading birds
are intolerant of repeated human dis¬
turbance, particularly early in the nest¬
ing season. Adult birds can be fright¬
ened away and high nestling mortality
can result. In the southeast United
States, human population density is in¬
creasing so rapidly that more and more
often wading birds must try to nest near
intense human activity.

In the relatively healthy environ¬
ment of upstate New York, great blue
herons already may be facing some
problems. In the Adirondack Moun¬
tains, surprisingly few great blue her¬
onries are reported. Acid rain has se¬
verely reduced fish populations through
death and reproductive failure in many
of New York’s mountain lakes and
streams. Without fish to eat, great blue

herons can hardly be expected to breed
successfully. Also, throughout the state,
the increase in woodcutting for use in
wood-burning stoves has the potential
to disrupt great blue heron colonies.

If present trends persist, chances are
that future generations of great blues
in the United States will inherit an
increasingly manipulated landscape,
with fewer wetlands wild enough for
these wary birds. Our challenge as bi¬
ologists and conservationists is to learn
enough about the resource require¬
ments of both birds and people to pro¬
tect and preserve critical habitats. This
is particularly true for the management
of wetlands, upon whose integrity so
much life depends.

FURTHER READING

Dolesh, R. J. “Lord of the Shallows: The Great
Blue Heron.” National Geographic. April, 1984.
Kusler, J. A., C. C. Harwood, and R. Newton.
Our National Wetland Heritage: A Protection
Guidebook. Environmental Law Institute, Wash¬
ington. D.C. 1984-

Weller, M. W. Freshwater Marshes: Ecology and
Wildlife Management. University of Minnesota
Press, Minneapolis. 1981.

THE AUTHOR

Donald A. McCrimmon, Jr., is director of the
Laboratory of Ornithology Cooperative Research
Program.

The osprey, another fish eater, declined in numbers because of pesticide contamination. Osprey populations are recovering in some areas.

At right, painting of osprey by John James Audubon.

STEVE MASLOWSKl

..y]* i

l«

■ > H’’

. U.-' . ^■ :. v'V

.'C " ' j ^

c •'. t- ■-'■

a highlight of the booklet.

This unique new album—destined to become a
classic—is indispensable for all who are interested
in observing and studying these beautiful and fas¬
cinating songbirds.

Complete the accompanying card and drop it
in the mail today so that we may reserve your
copy of WARBLERS OF NORTH AMERICA at
special member prepublication prices. Copies for
your bird-loving friends will make long-remem¬
bered and treasured gifts.

WARBLERS OF NORTH AMERICA, a new al¬
bum by William Gunn and Donald Borror, pro¬
duced by The Library of Natural Sounds, will
soon be available from The Crow’s Nest Book¬
shop. The primary song and its major variants are
heard for each of the 57 North American species.
The 300 examples of songs and calls set new sonic
standards for the reproduction of these difficult
sounds. In the accompanying booklet each song
and its variants are discussed and illustrated with
sonagrams. An identification key to the songs is

Editorial Staff

Jill Crane, Editor
Kathleen Dalton, Design Director
Richard E. Bonney, Jr., Associate Editor
Charles R. Smith, Technical Editor
Steven C. Sibley, Editorial Assistant
Lynne H. McKeon, Editorial Assistant
Maureene Stangle, Publications Assistant

Laboratory Staff

Charles Walcott, Executive Director
Tom J. Cade, Director, Raptor Research
Jill Crane, The Living Bird Quarterly
Samuel A. Eliot, Public Affairs
Lang Elliott, Photography
James L. Gulledge, Library of
Natural Sounds
Thomas S. Litwin, Seatuck Research
Donald A. McCrimmon, Jr., Cooperative

Research Program
Steven C. Sibley, Library
Charles R. Smith, Public Education
Jane Hance Wood, Administration

Administrative Board

James W. Spencer, Chairman

Hamilton F. Kean

Morton S. Adams
Robert Barker
William G. Conway
Alan Crawford, ]r.
Robert G. Engel
Clifton C. Garvin, Jr.
Mrs. Harvey Gaylord
Thomas M. Hampson
Imogene R Johnson

T. Spencer Knight
John D. Leggett, Jr.
G. Michael McHugh
Olin Sewall Pettingill, Jr.
Chandler S. Robbins
Joseph R. Siphron
Charles E. Treman, Jr.
Charles D. Webster
Charles Walcott, Ex Officio

The Living Bird Quarterly, ISSN 0732-9210, is published in January,
April, July, and October by the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell
University, 159 Sapsucker Wotxls Road, Ithaca, New York 14850.
Telephone: (607) 256-5056. The Living Bird Quarterly is free to members
of the Laboratory. For information concerning back issues please write to
out Membership Department. © 1984 Cornell
University Laboratory of Ornithology.
Printing by Brodock Press Inc., Utica, N.Y.
Typography by Partners Composition, Utica, N.Y.

Front Cover. Outside—Belted kingfisher. Photograph
by Tim Fitzharris. Thanks to the Laboratory’s 1984
Field Ornithology class for its gift for printing our front
cover. Inside—Northern waterthrush. Photograph by
Barth Schorre (Bruce Coleman Inc.).

Back Cover. Outside—Bonaparte’s gull preening.
Photograph by Tim Fitzharris. Inside—Gray partridge
by Aleta Karstad.

p. 30

4 Day of the Condor

Philip K. Ensky

A veterinarian from the San Diego Zoo describes
a historic capture of a wild California condor.

8 That Divine Impulse

Janet M. Williams

Why do land birds take an arduous route over
the open Atlantic Ocean on their annual
trip south? Williams and a team of scientists
try to answer this and other migration mysteries.

13 The Crow’s Nest Bookshop

14 Decisive Moments

Tim Fitzharris

Nothing gives greater power to a bird’s portrait
than when the photographer captures a compelling
incident in the life of his subject. Wildlife
photographer Tim Fitzharris discusses the techniques
he uses to catch the elusive moment on film.

22 Saving Birds Worldwide

Roger Pasquier and Thomas Urquhart

From pink pigeons to Mauritius kestrels, the
International Council for Bird Preservation
coordinates a global effort on behalf of the
world’s endangered birds.

27 News & Notes

28 Research & Review

Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

30 An Old-fashioned Background

Frances Hamerstrom

An excerpt from Birding with a Purpose:

Of Raptors, Gabboons, and Other Creatures.

'^1

A yeteririarian from
the San Diego Zoo
describes a
historic capture
of a wild

California condor

Topa Topa, 1970, in cave at Los Apgeles Zoo.

■maasnBvs^'ssr*

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

}) Chick is flown to San Diego Zoo. 2) Nests are constantly watched. 3) A record is kept of all activity at the nest.

AM A VETERINARIAN from the
San Diego Zoo and was part of a
team of scientists from the National
Audubon Society and the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service who, in 1982,
captured one of the few remaining free-
flying California condors. In October
of that year, operating under a permit
from the federal government and the
California Department of Fish and
Game, we were ready to implement our
plan.

The strategy for saving this majestic
bird from extinction hinges on the suc¬
cess of two efforts. One—we must
monitor the estimated 20 remaining
birds in the wild, and two—we must
increase the size of the wild population
with offspring produced by captive birds
in the Los Angeles and San Diego Zoos.

Condors occupy the rugged moun¬
tainous terrain surrounding the south¬
ern San Joaquin Valley north and west
of Los Angeles. Field observation is
nearly impossible, but with radio trans¬
mitters attached to the birds’ wings we
can follow the birds to their roosts at
night, find out where they feed, on
what and how often. By understanding
their requirements, we will be able to
release and integrate captive-reared
birds into the wild population, thereby
augmenting their chance for survival.

In the wild, adult California condors
usually nest only once every other year.
In captivity, however, we can induce
the birds to breed every year by remov¬
ing each egg as it is laid and incubating
it artificially. The adults then will breed
again and the female will lay a second
egg. By using this method a captive pair
of breeding adults can produce two or
three chicks a year.

Critics say, “Why don’t you leave the
California condor alone? Invasive pro¬
cedures may do more harm than good.”
After decades of watching the popula-

Critics say
“Why don’t you
leave the California
condor alone?”

tion decline, a more productive course
has become necessary. Meanwhile the
shooting, habitat alteration, thinning
of the birds’ eggshells as a result of pes¬
ticide contamination, and the condors’
inability to cope with human distur¬
bances, have contributed to the spe¬
cies’ near demise. Knowledgeable in¬
vestigators agree if the present situation
is left as is, the wild population of Cal¬
ifornia condors may be extinct in less
than a decade.

My job on the project was to provide
medical support during the capture of
the wild bird. Our permits required a
veterinarian during capture, handling,
physical examination, tagging, releas¬
ing, holding, and transporting of Cal¬
ifornia condors.

Our success in capturing a wild con¬
dor demanded split-second timing and
careful planning by a team of highly
trained biologists. So, on the day of the
capture we were at the baitsite practic¬
ing the procedure. Two team members
earlier had spotted an immature Cali¬
fornia condor feeding nearby. Antici¬
pating the bird’s return we prepared the
trapsite—a calf carcass tied downwind
of a 50 X 50-foot capture net. The net
was designed to be carried over the
feeding condor by four metal projec¬
tiles fired from cannons carefully posi¬

tioned and camouflaged. The cannons
were electrically detonated from a blind
hidden 75 feet away.

Under our federal permit, the net
could be fired over only an immature
condor; if we also caught an adult, it
would have to be released after we had
taken a blood sample and had attached
radio transmitters. We would draw a
blood sample from an immature bird
and then place it in a large airline travel
kennel pending determination of its
sex, a task that takes 35 to 40 hours
and is done using blood cultures. If the
captured immature turned out to be a
male, he would be released with radio
transmitters attached to his wings. If
we captured a female, she would be
taken to the Los Angeles Zoo where
she would be paired with a 15-year-old
male named Topa Topa.

At the trapsite, team biologists con¬
cealed themselves on a distant ridge
where they could monitor the skies and
the condor’s movements when it came
to feed on the carcass. Meanwhile Noel
Snyder, Pete Bloom, and I hid in a
blind near the bait. We communicated
with the ridge by two-way radio.

Early on the morning of the capture,
final preparations were completed and
we entered the blind. Within an hour
the hilltop observers saw condors soar¬
ing. At 11:06 a.m. a mature female
golden eagle landed on the carcass and
ate. Forty-five minutes passed and an
immature male eagle joined her. More
eagles arrived and departed with full
crops. This activity was welcome. It
might lure a condor.

At 3:10 p.m. we received a radio
communication that an immature con¬
dor was nearing the trapsite. Then the
words “condor dropping” had our hearts
pounding. The sight of the bright pink
area on the gray neck was incompara¬
ble. The head lacked the complete

6 The Living Bird Quarterly

4) Condors eat only carrion. 5) Biologists check transmitter before release. 6) Sisquoc and Teewya, first chicks hatched at San Diego Zoo.

orange-red pigmentation of an adult,
yet it didn’t have the grayish stubble-
feather appearance of young juveniles.
A plume of fine black feathers sur¬
rounded the base of the neck. The bird
was three or four years old. A perfect
specimen. A golden opportunity.

The bird landed 75 feet from the
carcass. There were still two eagles on
the bait. Before departing, one eagle
made a harassing pass at the approach¬
ing condor. The remaining eagle con¬
tinued to feed as the condor stalked the
bait. The condor gave the eagle room
but moved closer. After a few moments
the condor rushed the eagle and forced
her off. As the condor stood feeding we
remained poised until the eagle cleared
the target. The condor lowered its head
to feed. Three. Two. One. I depressed
the automatic motor drive button on
my camera. Zero. The net shot over
the great bird. Pete Bloom was already
out of the blind, sprinting toward the
trapped bird. I was two steps behind
and together we held our precious cap¬
tive for the seven minutes it took for
the rest of the team to arrive.

We examined the bird and found it
free of injury. With the condor care¬
fully positioned on its back we drew a
blood specimen, then weighed the bird
and placed it in the sky kennel. It took
23 minutes from the time the net was
fired until the bird rested quietly in the
kennel. We were pleased.

At 4:30 p.m. Dr. Snyder began the
four-hour drive to the San Diego Zoo
with the blood samples. From there
they were sent to investigators around
the country for DNA evaluation, heavy
metals analysis, blood parasite screen¬
ing, and other studies. Of immediate
concern was the sex of the condor.
While we waited for the test results,
the bird was held in a remote location
where it was undisturbed.

... this life form
may cease
to exist

within 10 years

At 11 a.m. two days after the blood
sample arrived we learned that the con¬
dor was a male.

The following day at 8 a.m. a trans¬
mitter with a tag was placed on each
of the condor’s wings in a manner sim¬
ilar to that of a person with pierced ears
wearing earrings. The mounting pro¬
cedure took one hour. The bird dis¬
played no sign of fatigue or stress. After
we returned him to the sky kennel, we
were one step closer to release. We were
all looking forward to returning him to
the wild and were on a schedule that
permitted release close to noon, when
the air currents are best for soaring.

Precisely at noon two team members
carried the sky kennel to a knoll near
where the condor was captured. Sev¬
eral miles away a Cessna 180 with two
biologists aboard monitored the bird’s
radio signals from the air; two more
team members monitored them from
the ground.

The biologists placed the kennel on
the ground, opened the door and
stepped back. The condor walked out,
took a few steps and spread his wings.
I could barely see the white four-inch
identification tags under his expansive
wings.

The second largest flying bird in the
Western Hemisphere (after the An¬

dean condor) was free again. Cheers
went up, but briefly, for the monitoring
equipment required attention. As the
condor flew into the distance, I could
think only about the fact that this life
form may cease to exist within 10 years.

Much more work needs to be done.

POSTSCRIPT

In the two years following this achieve¬
ment, 12 eggs have been taken from
wild condor nests. All the eggs proved
to be fertile and were hatched by arti¬
ficial incubation. Ten of the chicks sur¬
vived, raising the total captive popu¬
lation to 15. From this group as many
as three will be released in 1985 to join
the wild population now numbering 16.

Also important has been the infor¬
mation on habitat gathered by follow¬
ing two condors wearing radio trans¬
mitters in the wild. The condor whose
capture and release were discussed above
was found dead on March 22, 1984.
Postmortem examination and subse¬
quent investigations indicate that his
death was caused by lead poisoning from
ingestion of a lead bullet fragment
probably acquired from feeding on a
carcass which had been shot.

The death of this special bird was
indeed a loss. By radio tracking him,
we have learned valuable habitat and
behavioral information. He will be
missed.

FURTHER READING

Johnson, William Weber. “California Condor:
Embroiled in a Flap Not of Its Making.” Smith¬
sonian. December, 1983.

Meyer, Jennifer. “To Save the Condor.” Outdoor
California. September—October, 1983.

Photographs; Previous page: Tom McHugh (Photo
Researchers, Inc.). Above: photographs one
through five by Philip Ensley; photograph six by
Ron Garrison, Zoological Society of San Diego.

Autumn/1984 7

That Divine Impulse

Janet M. Williams

L and birds have been recorded
flying over the oceans since 1498
when Columbus sighted songbirds
180 miles off Trinidad on his third voy¬
age to the new world. John Hurdis, a
naturalist in Bermuda in the mid 1800s,
writes of Samuel Nelmes on board the
Carib on September 14, 1833. Sailing
300 miles east of Bermuda, Nelmes fell
in with endless flocks of plovers all flying
in a southeast direction. In another
account Hurdis mentions Elwin Jones,
the master of the O. G. Bigelow, meet¬
ing hundreds of flocks of plovers pass¬
ing southward over the vessel on Sep¬
tember 11, 1846.

Hurdis wrote, “How wonderful must
be the power of flight, thus to enable
mere land birds to make the ocean their
highway from one region of the earth
to another, without food, and without
a resting place! More wonderful still,
that divine impulse under which these
feathered legions move, and by which
they are guided across this immensity
of open sea at the appointed time.”
These reflections summarize what
brought my husband Timothy and me
to study the migrations of land birds
over the open oceans.

There are many techniques for
studying bird migration: some are good
for long-distance migration, some for
short, and others are effective only dur¬
ing the day or at night. Each reveals a
different aspect of migration, and all
must be combined to form a complete
picture. One of the most valuable
methods is to make detailed visual ob¬
servations every day at the same site.
By doing this the observer can watch
for flocks moving through an area and

can estimate the total number of birds
in that area each day.

A second technique is banding birds.
Individuals can be caught in nearly in¬
visible mist nets, catalogued, banded
with a numbered band, and then re¬
leased. If someone finds and reports the
bird at a later date, the bander can tell
how far it has flown before being picked
up. Some birds have been banded in
Alaska and later found as far away as
South America, the South Pacific is¬
lands, or New Zealand. But, since only
about 1 percent of banded birds is re¬
covered (perhaps up to 10 percent in
waterfowl), a tremendous number of
birds must be banded to get a signifi¬
cant amount of data.

Another technique used in studying
bird migration is radio telemetry. A
small transmitter is placed on a bird,
and the radio signals of the flying bird
are picked up by receivers and direc¬
tional antennae placed on cars, boats,
or airplanes. This method of tracking
works especially well if the equipped
vehicle can go where the bird is flying,
and if the police, coast guard or air
traffic controllers have been notified of
the experiment.

Using a ceilometer is a way to look
at birds migrating at night. A ceilom-

The dots became known
as angels because
no one could figure
out what they were

8 The Living Bird Quarterly

Fall bird migration as seen on the radar screen at Bermuda. Photograph by Leonard C. Ireland.

KEN BRAT (PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC.

In many cases birds
flying over the
ocean are taking
advantage of strong
favorable winds

eter is a powerful source of light which
is pointed up into the night sky. Lying
on your back and looking along the
light beam with binoculars, you can
count the birds flying through the beam.
Also with the use of binoculars, you
can count the birds crossing the face of
the moon on nights when the moon is
full. These techniques are good for de¬
tecting numbers of migrants in a given
time period and the direction of flight,
but identification of individual species
is difficult. Also, this technique is ef¬
fective only to about 1,500 feet of al¬
titude, and the speed of flight cannot
be determined.

Radar, which can detect nearly any
object moving or stationary, is another
effective tool for studying bird migra¬
tion. Both search radar, which detects
large numbers of objects, and tracking
radar, which follows a single object,
such as one bird or a flock, can be used.
Timing, height, direction, speed, and
density of migration can be obtained
by using radar. In addition, radar can

follow birds at distances of up to 180
miles. All this sounds almost too good
to be true; the hitch is that we cannot
tell the species of bird which appears
on the radar screen.

In the 20 years Timothy and I have
been studying the movements of bats
and birds, we have used nearly all of
these techniques. Our more recent work
has used radar and detailed visual ob¬
servations to study land birds migrating
over the oceans. This work started in
the western North Atlantic using a net¬
work of National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA), Fed¬
eral Aviation Administration (FAA),
and weather radar stations in Halifax,
Nova Scotia; Cape Cod, Massachu¬
setts; Wallops Island, Virginia, Miami,
Florida and on the islands of Bermuda,
Antigua, Barbados, and Tobago. Our
ninth radar station was on board a ves¬
sel out of the Woods Hole Oceano¬
graphic Institution in Massachusetts.
By using nine radar stations simulta¬
neously, we were able to make obser¬
vations along the eastern coast of North
America and in the western North At¬
lantic during the fall migration season
for six consecutive years.

During World War II, when radar
was first used, a lot of little white dots
were seen on radar screens which the
operators knew were not airplanes. For
one thing, the dots did not move as
fast as airplanes, and sometimes masses
of them would cover the screen. The
dots became known as angels because

no one could figure out what they were.
In England in the 1950s, David Lack
and Eric Eastwood showed that many
of these angels were birds.

Here in the United States in the late
1950s William Drury and Ian Nisbet of
the Massachusetts Audubon Society
were using radar to look at birds leaving
the Cape Cod coast. By the late 1960s,
when we first started this research, get¬
ting permission from government
agencies to use radar for bird and bat
migration studies was not really a prob¬
lem. But convincing radar operators
that what we were doing was valid was
a different matter, despite the fact that
by this time radar had been used to
study birds.

We knew that flying animals could
be detected on radar because we had
completed a study for the United States
Air Force which was trying to divert
training jets away from flocks of bats a
million strong. We became curious as
to where birds went every fall after they
left the east coast of the United States
and Canada. By using radar we saw that
they were heading out over the Atlan¬
tic Ocean in flocks so dense that on
some nights they appeared as a mass of
white. We noted with interest that the
birds were heading southeast over the
open ocean. Radar operators at the
NASA Station at Wallops Island, Vir¬
ginia finally realized they were seeing
birds when one evening, as we were
tracking a large target with radar, they
picked up the object with their spotting

10 The Living Bird Quarterly

scope; it was a great blue heron.

The operators became as interested
as we in learning where the birds were
heading. Did they go out over the wa¬
ter and then turn back toward the coast
before getting to the Caribbean? Did
they fly over the water and then dis¬
appear and die? The operators even en¬
couraged us to go to Bermuda where
we could watch for birds on other
NASA radar screens.

Amazingly, the first thing we saw
when we arrived in Bermuda on a crisp
October day was a small flock of great
blue herons. Had we followed them or
had they followed us? Either way, we
discovered from our radar observations
that the migrant birds were still head¬
ing southwest over Bermuda and, for
the most part, not landing on the is¬
land but continuing over the Atlantic.
Since there are no more islands south¬
east of Bermuda, we had to figure out
where next to look for these southeast¬
erly bound migrants. We considered two
possibilities: go to the islands of the
Caribbean, or onto a ship that could
get us east and south of Bermuda. We
decided to try both.

The next four fall bird migration sea¬
sons found us on three Caribbean is¬
lands. Our coworkers Len Ireland and
David Wingate were on Bermuda; and
John Teal, Don Griffin, and Ron Lark¬
in were in the western Atlantic on ships
from Woods Hole. We continued to
find migrating birds and cooperative
radar operators everywhere we went.

People were getting used to seeing birds
on radar and our goals no longer seemed
bizarre.

From our radar observations and
those of John Richardson in Canada,
we learned that migrant birds take off
from the northeast coast of North
America heading in a southeasterly di¬
rection. The birds leave the coast after
sunset following the passage of a cold
front, when skies are clear and north¬
west winds are strong. The winds help
to carry the birds out over the Atlantic
Ocean, to Bermuda and beyond. The
birds continue to head southeast until
they reach the area of the Sargasso Sea
where they encounter strong easterly
trade winds that blow them back toward
the Caribbean and South America.

The data collected on the ships and
on Antigua enabled us to discover much
about the directional patterns of birds
migrating over the ocean. Eventually
we went beyond Bermuda to find the
pattern of land bird migration over the
western Atlantic. We got information
on wind directions at each radar site
from weather balloons. Comparing
these data with the migration direc¬
tions seen on radar helped us to put
together a pattern of migration of the
birds in flight. We estimated the time
it takes birds to fly from Nova Scotia
to the Caribbean, a distance of about
2,000 miles, to be about 80 hours. To
reach Venezuela takes 88 to 100 hours.
These calculations are based on how
long it takes waves of migrants to fly

The first birds to leave in fall are the
shorebirds. Among those that may take an
overwater route are sanderlings, far left. Map
shows pattern of overwater migration in
western North Atlantic. Large arrows show
direction of southeastward migration of land
birds. Small arrows show northeast trade winds.

from one radar station to the next.

At most stations we also were able
to determine the altitude at which the
birds were flying. At Bermuda the ma¬
jority of birds had gained an altitude of
about 8,000 feet above sea level. At
Antigua they flew as high as 20,000.
South of Antigua the birds must have
been preparing to land on the southern
islands and on South America, because
at Barbados they had dropped to about
10,000 feet and by Tobago, just off the
coast of South America, they were
down to less than a thousand feet.

Since we cannot identify the species
of bird from radar information alone,
we had to make visual observations
throughout the period of a radar study.
We cannot expect the species of birds
that are on the ground or passing ships
during migration to be exactly the same
as those flying thousands of feet over¬
head. Birds on the ground, however,
are a measure of what is migrating, as
some migrants occasionally come down
for food and rest.

Over the ocean, land birds are not
able to sit on or feed from the water.
Large flocks of land birds are often seen
or heard from ships, as mentioned by
Hurdis. Occasionally, tired and hungry
birds will land on ships, especially dur¬
ing a storm, as we know from our col¬
leagues on the ships from Woods Hole.
The birds which most often land on
ships are warblers and sparrows. Usu¬
ally they do not have the energy to fly
on, and many die in the ocean.

Autumn/1984 11

Ruddy turnstones may travel 2,000 miles, flying more than 80 hours nonstop, during fall migration.

Visual observations from ships are
not limited to occasional large flocks.
Individual birds also fly past the ships
without stopping. We kept track of
these on a daily basis, noting when and
where they were seen and in what di¬
rection they were going. One of our
coworkers, Carol McClintock, even
tried to lure some of these birds to the
ship with bits of food and water and by
playing recorded bird songs, but most
were not interested. In many cases birds
flying over the ocean are taking advan¬
tage of strong favorable winds. This can
be a great benefit to the birds and per¬
haps outweighs the disadvantage of a
long overwater flight without food or
rest.

Making daily visual observations on
land is also of great importance in mi¬
gration work. It is important to pick
the appropriate habitat for each species
that might be migrating through the
study area: for example, looking for
shorebirds on mudflats and along rocky
shorelines, for ducks in the right kind
of lake, pond, or saltwater inlet, and
for passerines in a forested area, thicket
or grassland.

This is not as easy as it sounds, and
once the appropriate place has been
found, the researcher must show up at
the same time or tide every day regard¬
less of weather. In addition you need
permission from the landowner and
have to look out for other species that
might share the habitat. I will not soon

forget the time I was counting shore-
birds on Tobago and a water buffalo
decided my two sons and I were in her
territory and wanted us out. She made
her point by butting our car and chas¬
ing us, and the only reason we got away
was because I was convinced that I could
out-drive her in our rickety old rent-a-
car which I managed to do to Robert’s
and Peter’s cheers.

In our Atlantic study the radar data
showed that millions of birds were flying
over the water and taking the ocean
route during their southward fall mi¬
gration. The radar cannot tell us what
species of bird we are seeing, but band¬
ing studies and visual observations sug¬
gest that the overwater route may be a
favored one for numerous birds.

Different kinds of birds migrate at
different times during the migration
season, and thus by knowing what
month it is, the researcher has some
knowledge of what species are migrat¬
ing without ever seeing a bird. The first
birds to leave each fall are the shore-
birds. Among those that could take the
overwater route are semipalmated
plovers, American golden plovers,
black-bellied plovers, ruddy turn-
stones, red knots, whimbrels, least
sandpipers, semipalmated sandpipers,
Hudsonian godwits and sanderlings. In
no way is this list complete, nor do I
mean to imply that all members of a
species take a particular route; some
members of a species might migrate over

water and others of the same species
might migrate over a more land-based
route. At present we do not know what
makes some birds, even within the same
species, choose one route over another.

The next group of birds to migrate
each fall is the passerines. Of these,
some overwater migrants might be bam
swallows, prothonotary warblers,
blackpoll warblers, northern water-
thrushes, American redstarts, and
bobolinks. During this same period os¬
preys and peregrine falcons might also
migrate over the ocean. The latest mi¬
grants of the season are the waterfowl.
Of these green-winged teals and blue¬
winged teals are probably overwater
fliers.

We were very excited to learn there
is a pattern to migration over the west¬
ern Atlantic Ocean, and to learn which
species of birds might take this over¬
water route each fall. Timothy and I
are now studying migration over the
Pacific Ocean to discover whether there
are global patterns to overwater migra¬
tion, and to determine the capabilities
of the birds making these vast flights.

FURTHER READING

Baker, Robin. The Mystery of Migration. Viking
Press, New York. 1981.

Fisher, Allen C., Jr. “Mysteries of Bird Migra¬
tion.” National Geographic. August, 1979.

THE AUTHOR

Janet Williams is a research associate at Swarth-
more College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.

1 2 The Living Bird Quarterly

WAYNE LANKINEN (BRUCE COLEMAN INC.)

THE ADVENTURE OF
NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY

TIM FITZHARRIS

Down-to-earth guide that unravels the
complexities of nature photography. Text
and photographs explain how to take
creative photographs. Included are camera
and accessory descriptions, techniques, tips
on attracting animals, and everything from
the principles of com^position to stalking.
1983, paper, 216 pages.

$19.95/$17.96 members

^Uahoop

Figure 6

Using the Mobile Blind d

Fefchc

slfai‘»8

Sturdy I

tApe I

Broom hnndio m Screws

BIRDS OF TROPICAL
AMERICA'*

ALEXANDER F SKUTCH
A blend of the poetry and science, the
beauty and charm of birds. Thirty-four
tropical species—from toucans and
motmots to puffbirds and quetzals—are
explored indntimate detail.

1983. cloth, 305 pages.

$29.95/$26.96 members

BIRD SOUNDS AND
THEIR MEANING

ROSEMARY JELLIS

An accurate and lucid guide for the
nonspecialist, hailed by many as the best
introduction to the subject. Chapters
include dialects, songs, moods and events,
copies and counterfeits.

1984, paper, 256 pages.

$14.95/$ 13.46 members

THE CROWS NEST BOOKSHOP

Enclosed is a check or money order in U..S. funds, payable to The Crow’s Nest Bookshop.
Our address—The Crow’s Nest Bookshop, Laboratory of Ornithology, Cornell Univer¬
sity, Sapsucker Woods, Ithaca, N.Y. 14850. (607) 256-5057.

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Great blue heron striking

Deci™ Moments

Photographs and text by Tim Fitzharris

A gain i am awakened by

the hum of a mosquito inside the
cramped quarters of the blind.
Blotting sweat from my eyes with a
dangling shirttail, I peer through the
long tunnel of lens into the white heat
of the Saskatchewan prairie.

The nest platform is empty. The four
young harriers are scattered into the
relative coolness of the surrounding
cattails and remain still except to snap
occasionally at a passing horsefly. Like
me they wait for the return of the hunt¬
ing mother. During my two days of pho¬
tography at the nest she has airlifted
over 30 mice and voles to the ravenous
brood.

Another half hour passes before her
plaintive cry floats in from the prairie.
Immediately the young converge on the
nest, staggering through the tangle of
stems in their eagerness to be fed. They
huddle together. Four pairs of eyes trace
a circle in the sky and suddenly the big
bird of prey drops into my viewfinder.
A tense, frozen silence takes over as
her blazing eyes survey the blind. I dare
not breathe. Finally her fierce gaze shifts
to the swaying, expectant hawklets.
Lunch begins. Cautiously I start to work
the camera.

My experience at the harriers’ nest
is typical of my photographic encoun¬
ters with birds. Most of these adven¬
tures entail hard work, patience, and a
good measure of heart-thumping ex¬
citement. Probably less than half of
them result in worthwhile pictures.

Bird photography carries its own re¬
wards. It’s a reason to explore new areas,
experience the wilderness, and observe
animal behavior seldom seen by others.
It’s a challenge to capture wild and un¬
predictable subjects on film. Attractive

though all this may sound it does not
keep me trudging into the bush year
after year in search of a bird. I don’t
like to get wet or cold or to walk on
bumpy ground. My greatest pleasure
and motivation is the anticipation of
seeing the finished photographs.

Soon after I became interested in
bird photography I discovered, much
to my disappointment, that practically
all of North America’s species had been
photographed. There was nothing left
for an energetic young lensman to pho¬
tograph. I was not discouraged for long.
I quickly realized that earlier photog¬
raphers had paved the way for me to
take a freer approach. They had been
charged with the necessary but dry task
of taking the “for the record’’ shots, the
pictures needed to prove that a certain
bird exists, that it has two wings and a
beak, that it will be filed henceforth
under “Aves.” This state of affairs led
me to an early decision—if I were going
to photograph a bird, I would try to do
it in a different and artistically signifi¬
cant way.

My intention was typical of a serious
photographer. But I soon found out that
birds, or any wildlife, are not easy sub¬
jects for creative photographs. Birds
cannot be directed like a human model
or provocatively arranged like fruits in
a bowl. As subjects they can be con¬
trolled only indirectly. Despite this
drawback, birds continued to maintain
a strong hold on my imagination and
photographic energies. As my files of
bird slides grew bulkier each year, I
gained an understanding of what I liked
about my own pictures and bird pho¬
tographs in general. I discovered that
a number of procedures and techniques
are crucial to the success of my work.

Autumn/1984 15

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

Mallard stretching

BIRD BEHAVIOR

Successful bird photography begins with
an understanding of the behavior of the
bird itself. Such an understanding al¬
lows the photographer to predict and
even direct bird activity to his advan¬
tage. Two aspects of behavior are most
significant to the photographer—food
procurement and the reproductive cy¬
cle. Each of North America’s 835 spe¬
cies has a unique way of carrying out
these activities. It’s not possible for a
photographer to keep this information
in his head. However a general knowl¬
edge of these aspects is required, as well
as familiarity with a species’ life history.

LIGHTING

Novice bird photographers direct too
much attention to choosing a subject,
lens focal length or camera angle, and
not enough to developing an awareness
of how light affects the image. Gaining
a sensitivity to the special photo¬
graphic qualities of light is not difficult,
but it requires a shift in everyday habits
of perception. Conscious effort and
practice are necessary to see the light
that reflects from the subject rather than
the subject itself Photographers need
to train themselves to notice such fea¬
tures as the shadows on the underside
of a prairie falcon’s beak or the reflec¬
tive properties of a blue jay’s plumage.
Most books on photography deal with
this subject.

DON’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT

For me it’s almost as important to place
a tripod beneath the camera as to put
film inside it. It is difficult to achieve
maximum sharpness unless the camera
is rock steady during exposure. Since
birds are so colorful and intricately
structured, every precaution should be
taken to ensure that none of this beauty
is lost because a shaky camera produced
fuzzy images. Further, the small size of
the average bird often calls for the use
of telephoto lenses making a tripod even
more important. Aside from the tech¬
nical advantages, a tripod requires more

16 The Living Bird Quarterly

Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology

ANNUAL REPORT 1983/1984

1981/82 1982/83 1983/84

B. MEMBERSHIP INCOME

$48,208

$73,742

250,0(K)

$212,000

200,(KK)

150,000

100,000

$50,0(M)

1981/82 1982/83 1983/84

C. LNRESTRICTED GIFTS

LETTER FROM THE
DIRECTOR

I n the following few pages 1 want to
share with you some of the excit¬
ing news in research and education
here at the Laboratory. This letter
serves as our annual report, and pro¬
vides a summary of the highlights of
the past year.

First, though. I’d like to draw your
attention to the charts on the left.

They reflect the Laboratory’s unprece¬
dented growth in membership and gift
income. A year ago our membership
was about 6,200, up from 3,400 in July
1982. This year we have been averag¬
ing about 300 new members each
month; in the summer of 1984 our
membership approached 9,500. Chart
A shows this growth, along with the
impact of the direct-mail campaign we
began in early 1983.

Charts B and C illustrate two of the
effects of our surge in membership.
Membership income is up, which
means that we are able to maintain the
quality of our membership services
even as the demand for them grows.
Unrestricted gift income has nearly tri¬
pled, from about $73,000 last year to
over $210,000 this year. Most of these
gifts, ranging from $5 to $50,000, have
come from members.

As our base of support broadens, the
quantity and the quality of our research
and education programs increases.

And, as these grow, our enhanced visi¬
bility enables us to attract more mem¬
bers and supporters. Thus there is a di¬
rect connection between membership
and gifts and the success of our
programs.

I would like to take this opportunity
to thank you, the Laboratory’s mem¬

bers and donors, for supporting our re¬
search and educational endeavors.
Without your encouragement, much of
our work would not be possible.

Seatuck

S eatuck Research Program’s survey
of least terns and piping plovers on
Long Island, conducted in cooper¬
ation with the New York State Depart¬
ment of Environmental Conservation,
has had two exciting developments.

The survey has been expanded to in¬
clude all species of terns and skimmers
nesting on Long Island, and has led to
the establishment of the Long Island
Colonial Waterbird Association, a con¬
sortium of environmental groups dedi¬
cated to preserving and managing the
endangered least terns and piping
plovers.

Using radio collars and receivers,
Seatuck researchers have been tracking
white-tailed deer in an effort to under¬
stand their ecology and behavior in the
suburban habitats of Islip, Long Island.
In a related project, a breeding bird
population survey is being conducted
in 10 areas of Islip, correlating popula¬
tion trends with vegetation and the
amount of construction in each area.
The aim of the survey is to gather
enough information to make recom¬
mendations to planners and landsca¬
pers who are considering building in
the region.

With funding from the New York
City Audubon Society, Seatuck re¬
searchers are conducting a study at
Floyd Bennett Field, Gateway National
Recreation Area, in Brooklyn. The in¬
formation they collect will help to for¬
mulate an ecological management plan
for the abandoned airfield.

At the Seatuck Wildlife Refuge it¬
self, the ospreys have nested for a sec-

ANNUAL REPORT 1983/1984

ond year, and an immature pair has en¬
gaged in frustration nesting, indicating
that the birds are likely to nest in
1985.

Perhaps the best news from Seatuck
is that in June the program received six
more years of funding. This represents
a vote of confidence in the program
and Director Tom Litwin, and is a great
boost for the projects now under way.
Laboratory board member Charles
Webster has continued to be instru¬
mental in securing funding for the Sea¬
tuck Research Program.

Cooperative

Research

D uring the past year staff members
of our Cooperative Research Pro¬
gram (CRP) have spent much of
their time compiling and analyzing
data on the seasonal distribution and
reproductive success of many species of
North American birds. In particular,
they worked closely with biologists
from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser¬
vice’s Office of Migratory Bird Manage¬
ment and the Patuxent Wildlife Re¬
search Center comparing distribution
and population sizes of two dozen spe¬
cies of colonially nesting sea and wad¬
ing birds.

Biologists from CRP’s Colonial Bird
Register helped lead special efforts to
survey and protect colonially nesting
birds in North Carolina during the
summer of 1983. Also, in cooperation
with the National Audubon Society,
the CRP analyzed data on populations
of wood storks in Florida. Our findings
contributed to the recent decision to
list wood storks as an endangered
species.

A contribution from the Bird Friends
Society of Essex, Connecticut, a non¬
profit organization dedicated to the
preservation of America’s wild birds,
will enable CRP to continue studies on
eastern bluebirds. We will be expand¬
ing upon studies by David Peakall,
published in The Living Bird, concern¬
ing habitat, productivity, clutch size,
and the length of the breeding season
for this disappearing species.

Researchers from institutions and

agencies throughout the United States
requested data from CRP’s Nest Record
Program for a variety of species during
1983: red-winged blackbirds, whip-poor-
wills, robins, white-crowned sparrows,
merlins, bald eagles, Canada geese,
and a few species of owls. Several state
bird atlas programs used NRP informa¬
tion to confirm breeding records.

Every year thousands of amateur or¬
nithologists collect enormous amounts
of data through Christmas bird counts.
Much of this information is useful in
studying the distribution and abun¬
dance of wintering birds, but currently
these data are not in an accessible
form. A new project planned for CRP
would computerize these data, making
them easier to analyze and far more
valuable to biologists.

Now that the National Audubon So¬
ciety has stopped funding the Coopera¬
tive Research Program, the Laboratory
is seeking ways to finance the program.
We have written an informational
white paper which describes the pur¬
pose of cooperative research, its place
in American ornithology, and our plans
for making the program a center for the
study of bird populations. We will be
happy to send you a copy upon request.

Library of Natural
Sounds

T he year was one of important ac¬
complishments for the Library of
Natural Sounds. A comprehen¬
sive, detailed review of LNS’s programs
was carried out by a panel of distin¬
guished ornithologists and behavioral
biologists, including Crawford Greene-
walt, Wesley Lanyon and William
Conway. In a report to the Laboratory’s
administrative board at its April meet¬
ing, the committee proposed the devel¬
opment of a research component for
LNS which will enhance its position as
the preeminent animal sound collec¬
tion in the world.

During the year, LNS completed the
fifth and last year of National Science
Foundation support. A new proposal
was submitted which included funds to
refurbish the studio and equipment and
to assist with curatorial salaries for a

three-year period. Although final ac¬
tion on the proposal is not complete,
we anticipate continued NSF support.
This, coupled with implementation of
the review committee recommenda¬
tions, will ensure vigorous develop¬
ment of LNS’s programs.

Last November, the revised edition
of A Field Guide to Bird Songs of Eastern
and Central North America was pub¬
lished by Houghton Mifflin Company
in record and cassette form. LNS pre¬
pared master tapes for the new edition
and supervised all stages of the produc¬
tion of the new records and cassette
tapes. Included are 246 species, with a
concentration on birds for which sound
is important in identification. The ex¬
amples are much longer than on the
earlier edition and provide a better re¬
source from which to learn bird songs.
The new Peterson guide complements
the bird song guides that LNS prepared
in the preceding year to accompany the
National Geographic Field Guide to the
Birds of North America.

LNS has almost completed a new
edition of the classic Warblers of East'
em North America by William Gunn
and Donald Borror. This edition in¬
cludes all species found north of Mex¬
ico and sets new acoustic standards for
such publications.

Peregrine Program

I n the spring, Scarlett, a Cornell-
bred female peregrine falcon, and
Beauregard, an unbanded wild
male, raised four young on a 33rd-floor
ledge of a Baltimore office building.
These were the first peregrine chicks
known to have hatched on a skyscraper
in eastern North America since the
early 1950s.

Peregrines nesting successfully again
on New York’s Verrazano Narrows
Bridge and Throgs Neck Bridge were
among the most visible accomplish¬
ments of a nesting season that saw the
number of successful pairs in the east
double from 10 to 20. The captive
breeding programs in Ithaca, New
York, Fort Collins, Colorado, and
Santa Cruz, California accounted for
300 young peregrines this year.

ANNUAL REPORT 1983/1984

In May the site of the new World
Center for Birds of Prey was dedicated
in Boise, Idaho. The center will house
The Peregrine Fund’s headquarters and
its Rocky Mountain recovery program,
along with projects concerned with
other birds of prey.

In addition, Tom Cade, director of
The Peregrine Fund, received this
year’s Gulf Oil Conservation Award
which honors Americans who have
made outstanding contributions to the
preservation of renewable natural
resources.

Pigeon Navigation

W e have spent the past few sea¬
sons exploring how pigeons use
the Earth’s magnetic field to
find their way home. In past experi¬
ments, where magnets were glued to
pigeons, it was found that when the sun
wasn’t shining the birds became dis¬
oriented. This led us to suspect that pi¬
geons use the Earth’s magnetic field as
a compass when the sun is not visible.

We also found that pigeons are dis¬
oriented when released at magnetic
anomalies—places where the Earth’s
magnetic field is disturbed by iron de¬
posits. Two things are interesting about
this: disorientation occurs under sunny
skies, and the disturbance of the
Earth’s magnetic field at an anomaly is
very small. Both these findings make us
think the anomalies are upsetting not
the birds’ magnetic compass, hut some
other component of their position-find¬
ing system.

But these findings raise more ques¬
tions. Because the iron-rich rock at
anomalies is denser than normal rock,
magnetic anomalies have slightly
stronger gravity. To see what effect this
had on the pigeons, we released them
from salt domes in Texas where the
gravity is anomalous but the magnetic
field is normal. The pigeons oriented
and homed normally; therefore, it is
probably the weak distortion of the
magnetic field at anomalies that causes
the disorientation.

Another question puzzles us. Last
summer we released Cornell pigeons
from a magnetic anomaly north of Ith¬
aca, New York. All the pigeons were
well oriented and homed normally.

This result is a total surprise—pigeons
from our Lincoln, Massachusetts lofts
were always disoriented at anomalies
and the same result has been found in
Ohio, Switzerland, and Germany. We
are now going to determine whether
the problem is with the anomaly or, for
some mysterious reason, with the Cor¬
nell pigeons. We’ll do this by releasing
the Cornell pigeons at another mag¬
netic anomaly in Massachusetts; if the
birds are disoriented, it will suggest
that the problem is with the New York
anomaly. If they fly straight home,
we’ll know that the difference is the
Cornell pigeons. We can’t wait to
find out.

Public Education

T his year The living Bird Quarterly
was cited for “exceptional
achievement’’ in the annual rec¬
ognition program of the Council for
the Advancement and Support of Edu¬
cation (CASE). This was the highest
award in the professional and special¬
ized magazine category.

The Public Education Program has a
new assistant director, Steven Sibley.
Steven recently completed a master’s
degree in zoology from Mississippi State
University. He will be responsible for
the Laboratory’s Library and an assort¬
ment of public education projects.

Our radio program, “Know Your
Birds,’’ broadcast every Saturday morn¬
ing over WHCU, continues to be pop¬
ular with its Ithaca-area audience. This
year we have developed a proposal for
funding national syndication of a simi¬
lar program. The proposal is under re¬
view by the National Science
Foundation.

Enrollment in our correspondence
course, “Seminars in Ornithology,’’
continues to grow. To date, over 6,000
students have enrolled. The preface
and all nine lessons were reprinted
with modest revisions, and references
for further readings were completely
updated.

During the year three Louis Agassiz
Fuertes lecturers spoke at our Monday
evening lecture series: artist Donald
Eckelberry on aesthetics in relation to
ornithological painting; Alan Kemp on

the biology of African hombills, and
David Nettleship on the reproductive
strategies of Arctic seabirds. Funding
for Fuertes lecturers is provided
through an endowment established in
1975 by Olin Sewall Pettingill, Jr. and
the late George Miksch Sutton.

Three exhibits of original art were
displayed in our galleries over the past
year. A show of natural history art by
local artists was presented last fall in
cooperation with the Cayuga Bird Club
of Ithaca. The show was organized by
artist Karen Allaben-Confer. “Photo¬
graphs of Kenya” by David Blanton
were shown last winter, and “Birds in
Print” by James Coe, most of which ap¬
pear in the Audubon Society Master
Guide to Birding, were displayed during
the spring. In addition, the Fuertes oil
paintings in the Laboratory’s Brewster
wing were cleaned and restored by the
Williamstown Regional Art Conserva¬
tion Laboratory with funds provided by
a special gift from our summer field or¬
nithology class of 1983. Also, three
waterfowl decoy carvings by Fuertes are
currently on loan for display at the
Wildfowl Art Museum of Salisbury,
Maryland, and at the 1984 World’s Fair
Exposition in New Orleans.

Summer was an especially busy time
in public education. Our staff taught or
led field trips in a variety of courses
and workshops, including Cornell
Adult University’s popular “Introduc¬
tory Field Ornithology,” the National
Wildlife Federation’s Adirondack Sum¬
mit Program, and the Audubon Camp
in Maine.

In April a record 100 students en¬
rolled in our six-week noncredit course
“Spring Field Ornithology” offered by
Stephen Kress in collaboration with
Laboratory staff.

s you can see, it has been an ex¬
citing year for the Laboratory.
Our expectations and energy are
high, and the prospects for continued
growth—in size and in programs—are
excellent. With the support of our
members, we will make next year our
best ever.

Charles Walcott

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Financial Summary l%3/84

Restricted Revenues

INCOME

Restricted Revenues.

Membership.

Crow’s Nest Bookshop . . .

Unrestricted Gifts.

Pigeon Navigation Project
Library of Natural Sounds

General Operations.

Public Education .

Photography ..

Cornell Contribution . ...

Other .

Investment Income .

Total Revenues.

EXPENSES

$ 359,412

276,194
239,847
186,959*
121,866
115,063
97,904
95,069
94,236
164,774
44,353
30,494

$ 1,826,171

Operations

Bookshop

Development
& Membership

Education

Restricted Expenses...$ 359,412

Crow’s Nest ^okshop... 230,019

General Operations. 265,148

Publications . 155,625

Library'of Natural Sounds. 151,844

Pigeon Navigation Project. 121,566

Development. 116,339

Public Education .

. 94,189

Photo Direct Mail.

. 86,954

Photography...

. 72,367

Total Expenses.$ 1,653,463

Transfer to Reserve Fund .. 172,708

Balance of Reserve Fund July 1, 1983 ... (104,574)

Balance of Reserve Fund July 1, 1984 • • .... $ 68,134

Research

EXPENSES

*Does not include a $25,000 contribution from Cornell University, listed
under Cornell Contribution.

Autumn/1984

Blank Page Digitally Inserted

Northern saw-whet owl mantling

effort to use and thus the photographer
gives more thought to image selection
and presentation. The viewfinder pre¬
sents a steady image of the scene, al¬
lowing the photographer to analyze the
picture as carefully as if he were seeing
it on a page of a magazine.

BLIND MAN’S BIRD

Many species of birds are extremely
wary. They cannot be recorded unless
the photographer conceals himself in a
blind. Working inside such a stmcture
the photographer can record the nat¬
ural and intimate behavior that does
not occur in the presence of humans.
Also, the photography can be carried
out over longer periods of time without
causing the animal to become alarmed
or take flight. A number of books on
nature photography deal with the con¬
struction of and procedures for using
blinds in bird photography. The pho¬
tographer should be thoroughly famil¬
iar with this information before begin¬
ning to shoot. Incorrect methods can
endanger the bird and its nestlings.

BACKGROUND & FOREGROUND

I want my photographs to display the
same degree of structure and composi¬
tion as one would see on a painter’s
canvas. The treatment of the setting is
just as important as the bird itself,
therefore careful consideration must be
given to the background and fore¬
ground of the scene. Ideally they should
convey some information about the bird
or its activities while contributing to
the pictorial strength of the image.
Camera angle, lens focal length, ap¬
erture size (in controlling depth of
field), and the camera-subject distance
are the photographer’s primary consid¬
erations when determining the effect
of background and foreground.

THE DECISIVE MOMENT

Nothing gives greater power to a bird
portrait than when the photographer
captures a decisive moment in the life
of his subject. A peregrine swooping
on a pheasant, a great blue heron strik¬
ing for a fish or a robin tugging at a
night crawler are obvious examples of
the dramatic moment. An experienced
birder has become aware of the in-

18 The Living Bird Quarterly

Autumn/1984 19

Bonaparte’s gulls displaying

stances of irony, humor or pathos in
the daily life of a bird—incidents that
make compelling, if somewhat more
subtle, themes for photographic study.
These decisive moments operate on a
purely visual level, arising when light-
ing, color, shape or line coalesce to
produce an exceptional image.

How does one capture a decisive mo¬
ment? The first step—keep your fingers
crossed. Luck plays a part. To improve
your chances, set up a situation where
a dramatic incident is more likely to
happen: build a blind where a heron
habitually feeds, set out night crawlers
in a location that can be photographed
readily if a robin shows up.

By learning about bird behavior you
can anticipate exciting events and be
ready to capture them on film. Eared
grebes, for example, rear up and flap
their wings just prior to laying an egg.
The first time this happened 1 missed
the picture, but the experience helped
me to capture the second egg just as it
dropped into the nest.

My last recommendation is to shoot
lots of film, especially when the action
gets fast and furious as when nestlings
are being fed or when a courtship dis¬
play is under way. In such situations I
might take more than a hundred pic¬
tures. Most shots will be only mildly
exciting or will be flawed in some way.
But one or two may capture a poignant
moment.

I haven’t touched on the special
techniques or strategies that are an in¬
tegral part of bird photography. This
information can be found in many li¬
braries. In fact, a correspondence course
in bird photography is offered by the
Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.
Aside from learning the basic princi¬
ples necessary to safeguard the bird or
its breeding cycle, most of this infor¬
mation can be digested as you go along.

As for myself. I’m still learning and
in the process getting the wet feet, blis¬
ters, chills and thrills that go along
with it.

FURTHER READING

Fitzharris, T. The Adventure of Nature Photogra¬
phy. Hurtig Publishers Ltd., Edmonton, Canada.
1983 .

20 The Living Bird Quarterly

Autumn/1984 21

SAVING BIRDS
WORLDWIDE

Roger Pasquier and Thomas Urquhart

From pink pigeons to Mauritius kestrels, the International
Council for Bird Preservation coordinates
a global effort on behalf of the world’s endangered birds.

A t the turn of the century,
the foremost concern of bird con¬
servationists was the use of plumes
to decorate women’s hats. Feathers from
egrets and tropical birds were sent
wholesale to the milliners of London
and Paris. The result was the decima¬
tion of egret populations in Florida
which, in 1896, led to the formation
of the first Audubon Society, in Mas¬
sachusetts. Other states soon followed
with their own Audubon Societies, and
these were loosely linked into a na- ,
tional organization.

Two decades later, conservationists
turned their attention to the loss of
migratory birds, especially waterfowl,
from indiscriminate hunting. The pres¬
ident of what then was called the Na¬
tional Association of Audubon Socie¬
ties was T. Gilbert Pearson. He realized
that birds disregard political bounda¬
ries and that bird protection required
an international effort as well as local
attention.

In 1922 Pearson toured Europe to
study bird protection there. He con¬

tacted the most eminent figures in con¬
servation, including Viscount Grey of
Fallodon and Percy Lowe of Great Brit¬
ain, P.G. van Tienhoven of the Neth¬
erlands, and Jean Delacour of France.
At a meeting held on June 20, 1922
the group concluded that an interna¬
tional organization was needed to pro¬
mote the protection of birds and their
habitats and to address problems that
transcended national boundaries. The
International Council for Bird Preser¬
vation (ICBP) was founded that day.

From the beginning, ICBP’s greatest
strength has been its member organi¬
zations, which now include 272 orni¬
thological and conservation societies
from 85 countries. The combined
membership of individuals in these
bodies worldwide is three million.
Wherever practical, member organi¬
zations are grouped into national sec¬
tions whose job is to promote ICBP’s
conservation priorities at the national
level. Today there are 66 national sec¬
tions. The United States national sec¬
tion includes the Cornell Laboratory of

During a stroll through Manhattan in 1886, an ornithologist counted 542 birds—all of them
stuffed and mounted on women’s hats. This wonum wears egret plumes.

COURTESY NATIONAL AUDUBC'lN SOCIETY

•' .V
i

Ornithology, American Museum of
Natural History, American Ornithol¬
ogists’ Union, National Audubon So¬
ciety, National Wildlife Federation,
Smithsonian Institution and the World
Wildlife Fund-U.S.

ICBP’s far-flung network has been
held together by a succession of dy¬
namic presidents, beginning with Pear¬
son. He was succeeded in 1938 by Jean
Delacour, a Frenchman who at 94 re¬
mains the world’s leading expert on the
birds of Indochina and on waterfowl,
pheasants, and curassows of the world.
In 1958 Delacour turned the presi¬
dency over to S. Dillon Ripley, then
director of the Peabody Museum of Yale
University and, since 1964, secretary
of the Smithsonian Institution. It was
through Ripley’s contacts with foreign
governments that ICBP and the cause
of international bird conservation re¬
ceived a favorable hearing at the high¬
est levels. In 1982, Ripley retired as
president and was succeeded by Russell
W. Peterson, president of the National
Audubon Society, former governor of
Delaware and one-time chairman of the
United States Council on Environ¬
mental Quality.

No history of ICBP is complete with¬
out homage to the redoubtable Phyllis
Barclay-Smith. From 1946 until her
death in 1980, she held the position of
secretary and guided the organization
from the British Museum of Natural
History in London. Miss Barclay-Smith
was proud of her nickname, “the
Dragon,” which she earned by her de¬
termination to win her cause. She was
one of the first to perceive the dangers
of oil pollution and, with James Cal¬
laghan, future British prime minister,
she created the Advisory Committee

The dodo was an easily attainable food source
for sailors visiting Mauritius; dodos became
extinct in 1681, less than 100 years after they
were first discovered. From Gleanings of
Natural History by George Edward.
London, 1758. Right: geckos, not birds, are
the primary prey of Mauritius kestrels.

on Oil Pollution of the Sea. For her
work in conservation Miss Barclay-
Smith received numerous medals and
was awarded the MBE (Member of the
British Empire); in 1970 she was pro¬
moted to CBE (Commander of the
British Empire).

Today, the need for action on behalf
of bird conservation is greater than ever,
and ICBP has expanded to meet these
needs. In 1980 an executive director,
Christoph Imboden, was hired to head
a streamlined secretariat now located
in Cambridge, England.

In the 60 plus years of ICBP’s history,
the web of life that supports each spe¬
cies has been revealed as ever more
complex; accordingly, conservation ef¬
forts have had to become more and
more far-reaching. While the feather
trade, overhunting, or pesticides have
been responsible for the diminution of
certain species, the overwhelming
threat to birds is loss of their habitat.
Habitat destruction is occurring world¬
wide, but nowhere more rapidly than
in the tropics and on oceanic islands.
For several years, ICBP has managed
projects on two island groups in the
Indian Ocean that harbor some of the
world’s rarest and most endangered
birds.

In 1968 ICBP’s British national sec¬
tion purchased Cousin Island in the
Seychelles, home of hundreds of thou¬
sands of fairy, noddy, and bridled terns
and of the Seychelles brush warbler. At
the time, the 30 brush warblers on
Cousin Island were all that remained
in the world. Since then, through care¬
ful management and restoration of the
birds’ habitat, the number has risen to
300, and the species is now considered
out of danger.

TOM McHUGH (PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC.)

Mauritius is perhaps best known as
the home of the dodo. Today its im¬
portance for bird conservation is more
than symbolic. Three of the world’s
most critically endangered bird species
live on the island: the Mauritius kes¬
trel, pink pigeon, and echo parakeet.
Since 1973 ICBP has been working with
the Mauritius Forest Service to protect
these disappearing populations. For ex¬
ample, the Mauritius kestrel had de¬
clined to six or seven birds. While the
outlook is far from rosy there are now
10 kestrels in captivity thanks to a cap¬
tive breeding program, and about six
pairs in the wild.

More hopeful is the case of the pink
pigeon. This species suffered greatly
from destruction of its original forest
habitat which has been replaced by in¬
troduced shrubs and trees, leaving only
15 to 20 birds in the wild. However,
pink pigeons have been bred success¬
fully in captivity and in March of 1984
the first pair of captive-bred birds was
released in Mauritius’s Botanic Gar¬
dens, Pamplemousses in order to in¬
crease the wild population of this en¬
dangered species.

The echo parakeet is undoubtedly
the most endangered bird species on
Mauritius. Following a cyclone in 1979
that stripped the fruit off all the trees
in the forest, the entire echo parakeet
population was reduced to eight indi¬
viduals. There seemed to be only two
females, and there has been no sign of
successful breeding for several years.
The Mauritius government has agreed
with ICBP’s proposal to make an all-
out effort to catch the remaining birds,
since the only hope for the species is
to breed it in captivity.

The key to the success of these proj-

Autumn/1984 25

Three presidents: Delacour, Ripley, and
Peterson at ICBP’s I8th world conference.
Hyacinth macaw, left, the largest parrot
in the world, is considered threatened.

ects may be a conservation agreement
signed by ICBP and the Jersey Wildlife
Preservation Trust with the govern¬
ment of Mauritius last March. The
agreement recognizes the need for an
integrated program to meet the con¬
servation needs of the island’s threat¬
ened plants and animals and the rapid
disappearance of their few remaining
habitats. The program is based on the
World Conservation Strategy of the In¬
ternational Union for Conservation of
Nature (lUCN) and is designed to
benefit both the people of Mauritius
and its unique wildlife.

In addition to these long-term pro¬
grams, ICBP presses the conservation
cause in other projects all over the
world. The most common are habitat
surveys to determine the areas remain¬
ing for threatened species and to ascer¬
tain the number of birds that use them.
After each survey, recommendations for
protecting the birds are forwarded for
action to member organizations or na¬
tional sections in the countries in¬
volved. On occasion, interventions
may be made to governments either
directly by ICBP or through lUCN.

Surveys also reveal the reasons for
the decline of birds when problems are
more specific than loss of habitat. For
example, research has linked the de¬
cline of the Mauritius kestrel to a de¬
crease in the number of geckos, a type
of lizard. ICBP researchers discovered
that geckos, not birds as previously as¬
sumed, are the kestrels’ main diet, and
that geckos are losing ground because
of the invasion of the forests by intro¬
duced scrub. Another problem re¬
vealed was that many parrots are de¬

clining in the wild because of high
demand for them in the pet trade. To
address this issue, ICBP has worked
hard for stricter international trade re¬
strictions, as exemplified by the re¬
cently strengthened Convention on
International Trade in Endangered
Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Greater awareness—on the part of
everyone from government leaders to
schoolchildren—of the importance of
preserving birds and their habitats is
essential to long-term conservation
success. To this end, ICBP devotes a
substantial part of its efforts to educat¬
ing the public. Technical publications,
such as Conservation of New World Par'
rots, are distributed to government
wildlife agencies throughout the world.
Six more such volumes—on seabirds,
island management, tropical forests,
birds of prey, cranes, and single island
endemics—will be published this year.
A new edition. The African Bird Red
Data Book, cataloguing the status of
over 170 threatened African species,
will be published shortly. And since
field guides arouse an interest in birds
and bird watching, ICBP has sponsored
guides to several regions of particular
importance to birds, including Guate¬
mala, Panama, the Sao Paulo province
in Brazil and the Middle East (in En¬
glish and Arabic).

ICBP also is assisting in the produc¬
tion of field guides in 10 countries
around the Mediterranean where no
guides exist in the countries’ own lan¬
guages. Drawn from a list of 96 Medi¬
terranean birds, each country may
choose from colorplates and text to
produce an identification guide specific

to its needs. Chapters highlight con¬
servation and natural history topics such
as habitat preservation and bird
migration.

Bird migration is an important part
of ICBP’s recently announced Migra¬
tory Birds Campaign, an international
issue for which the organization is ide¬
ally suited. The thrust of this multi¬
year campaign, launched jointly with
the International Waterfowl Research
Bureau, is to promote conservation of
migratory species by increasing public
awareness of the wonder of migration
and the opportunities for international
research and cooperation. The cam¬
paign will be divided into three sec¬
tions: North and South America, Eu¬
rope and Africa, and Australasia.

While much of the conservation
news is grim, there are encouraging
signs. In some countries, parks and
wildlife areas are being designated and
protected, endangered species pro¬
grams are being developed, animal trade
regulations and hunting restrictions are
being enforced. ICBP hopes that its
activities in assessing the state of bird-
life, managing rare species, advising
governments, and educating the public
will help to preserve the world’s birds—
before it is too late.

FURTHER READING

Halliday, Tim. Vanishing Birds. Penguin Books,
New York. 1980.

THE AUTHORS

Roger Pasquier was executive assistant to the
president of ICBP from 1979 to 1982 and is now
with the World Wildlife Fund—U.S. Thomas
Urquhart is information officer for ICBP,
Cambridge.

26 The Uving Bird Quarterly

NEWS & NOTES

TO THE EDITOR:

In his article on seabirding which appeared
in the autumn, 1983 Quarterly, Ron Na-
veen refers to “jizz.” The concept of jizz
may have some undesirable effects if adopted
on a long-term basis by the ornithological
community. It may increase incorrect iden¬
tifications which gloss over complex pro¬
cesses of observation, encouraging observ¬
ers to neglect the specification of objective
criteria, characteristic marks, behaviors and
settings. Jizz is not in the bird but in the
eye of the beholder since the observer can¬
not consciously say what elements consti¬
tuted recognition. Moreover, jizz seems to
be a current buzzword. In popular use the
term could become muddied and obscured
by the overlaying of other meanings.

We must ask whether the disadvantages
can be discounted, or if advantages exist to
offset them which favor the adoption of j izz.

Nicholas H. Childs and Robert L. Norton
St. John, United States Virgin Islands

THE WOOD STORK has been added to
the list of endangered species in the United
States. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
estimates that wood stork breeding popu¬
lations have declined 75 percent since the
1930s; only about 4,500 breeding pairs re¬
main. Most of these are in Florida, although
a few are in Georgia, Alabama, and South
Carolina. The country’s largest wood stork
rookery is in the National Audubon Soci¬
ety’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary near Na¬
ples, Florida, where the number of hatch¬
ling storks dropped from 13,000 in 1960 to
900 in 1983. According to the National
Audubon Society, the species has declined
primarily because of human disturbance of
water tables through construction of drain¬
age canals and levees, and lumbering of the
large cypress trees where the birds nest. The
wood stork—sometimes called wood ibis—
is the only stork native to this country.

SHOREBIRD COUNTS from anywhere
in North and South America are needed by

the International Shorebird Survey (ISS),
which is compiling an atlas of shorebird
distribution. Any counts of shorebirds at a
particular site are useful. For more infor¬
mation contact ISS at Manomet Bird Ob¬
servatory, Box 936, Manomet, Massachu¬
setts 02345.

THE PEREGRINE FUND here at Cor¬
nell enjoyed its most productive summer
ever. One hundred twenty-four young pere¬
grines were released at 25 hack sites from
Tennessee to Maine. More amazing were
the 17 wild pairs which raised young in the
United States east of the Mississippi. In
1983 only eight pairs produced young in
this area; no young were produced there for
nearly 20 years, from the early 1960s to
1980. The captive breeding and reintro¬
duction program, begun in 1970 by The
Peregrine Fund, has served as a model for
many other recovery programs, such as those
for the California condor and Philippine
eagle.

NAVEEN’S RESPONSE:

The phrase derives from “G.I.S.,” a British
military acronym denoting the “general
impression and shape” of attacking aircraft.
In recent years, some British birders have
used the concept to denote the abstract
impressions a bird conveys, especially in
situations where field marks cannot be
readily discerned.

As to the utility of jizz to identify sea¬
birds, let me make some personal attesta¬
tions. I bird about 1,500 to 2,000 hours per
year on the open ocean, where field marks
are often rendered superfluous. With the
boat rocking in high swells, it’s sometimes
impossible even to maintain an upright
stance. Despite the obstacles, I often can
identify a seabird’s family (and sometimes
its genus or species) by studying its flight
style; then, I can concentrate on important
field marks. These field marks would he
useless if the shearwater I thought I was
seeing was actually a gadfly petrel.

A careful observer collects as much in¬
formation as possible about a rare sighting,
irrespective of whether such data are sub¬
jective or objective. So, contrary to the
suggestion of Messrs. Childs and Norton, I
don’t equate jizz with the neglect of ffeld
marks. With respect to seabirds, jizz aligns
the observer in the right direction and al¬
lows for using field marks more accurately.

Ron Naveen

Dear Member:

Since the early 1900s, laws and treaties have been enacted to protect North American birds:
Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, Bald Eagle Act of 1940, Endangered Species Act of 1973.
These laws have made it illegal to kill, possess, buy or sell any native North American bird, with
a few exceptions. The laws have been effective: with the cessation of market hunting and egg
collecting in the early 1900s, populations of many shorebirds, gulls, terns, egrets, and herons have
increased from frighteningly hw levels.

Yet many populations of North American birds still are declining, for two main reasons. First,
while the birds themselves may be protected, their habitats —the areas they depend upon for food,
shelter, and water—usually are not. Second, birds ignore political boundaries; although birds are
protected within North America, many of them spend a large part of the year in foreign countries,
particularly in South and Central America, where laws protecting birds are nonexistent, weak, or
poorly enforced.

Some headway has been made in preserving bird habitat, especially for certain endangered
species. The Snake River Birds of Prey Area in Idaho, which contains the largest breeding population
of North American raptors, recently received federal protection; breeding habitat for the endangered
Kirtland’s warbler is protected in Michigan, and wintering habitat for the endangered whooping
crane is on the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas. However, preservation of large areas
of other habitats — prairies, salt marshes, wilderness lakes, mature forests—is essential if we are to
preserve bird populations, even of species that now are not endangered, for example, common
loons, American bitterns, worm-eating warblers, red-shouldered hawks.

Some progress is being made on the international front. Most notable are the successes of the
International Council for Bird Preservation, the World Wildlife Fund, and the New York Zoological
Society. The work of these organizations suggests that there is hope for the world’s bird populations.
However, our optimism must be tempered by the realization that we live on a finite planet whose
ecosystems are intricately linked. Only through sustained efforts on a global scale are we likely to
achieve our goal: the preservation of habitats and species in the United States and throughout
the world.

CHARLES WALCOTT, Executive Director

Autumn/1984 27

RESEARCH & REVIEW

Richard E. Bonney, Jr.

EACH YEAR dozens of books about birds
are published, and sometimes it’s hard to
know which are worth owning and reading.
Here is a list of some of the best bird books
in print. They have been selected using
several criteria: readability, technical ac¬
curacy, comprehensiveness, and appeal to
a wide audience. The list is far from ex¬
haustive—numerous excellent books are
missing, particularly technical books, books
of regional interest, and those about spe¬
cific groups of birds, such as shorebirds or
warblers. Also missing are classics that are
out of print. All the books below should be
available or can be ordered at any good
bookstore.

A FIELD GUIDE TO THE BIRDS
EAST OF THE ROCKIES by Roger
Tory Peterson. Fourth Edition, 1980. Hough'
ton Mifflin Company, Boston. 384 pages.
$15.00 (cloth) $11.95 (flexibook) $10.95
(paper).

A FIELD GUIDE TO WESTERN
BIRDS by Roger Tory Peterson. Second Edu
tion, 1961. Houghton Mifflin Company, Bos¬
ton. 309 pages. $12.95 (cloth) $11.95 (paper).

Fifty years have passed since Peterson wrote
his Field Guide to the Birds, the first popular
guide to identifying birds by using field
marks. Despite other guides that have ap¬
peared over the years, Peterson’s eastern
guide—along with its western counter¬
part— is still the best.

Its illustrations are accurate in terms of
color, shape and field marks. Many birds
are shown in immature or Juvenal plumages
and in flight, and similar-looking species
are grouped on plates so the species can be
compared readily. Bird sounds are described
in understandable terms, and behaviors,
such as tail pumping or head bobbing, are
discussed when they aid identification.
Range maps, which depict the distributions
of individual species, are large and detailed
and indicate state boundary lines (the cur¬
rent western guide has no maps). Because
the continent is treated separately in two
volumes, eastern birders are not confused
by illustrations of western birds, and vice
versa. Furthermore, the guides are compact
and can be carried easily; the paperback
versions weigh just one pound.

FIELD GUIDE TO THE BIRDS OF
NORTH AMERICA edited by Shirley L.
Scott. 1983. National Geographic Society,
Washington, D.C. 464 pages. $15.95 (paper).

This field guide is Peterson’s closest com¬
petition. In fact, it may be preferred by
advanced birders because it is more com¬
prehensive and more detailed. It contains
all the birds that breed in North America
plus numerous visitors not included in the
Peterson guides, and depicts more birds in
seasonal, immature, and Juvenal plumages
than does Peterson. However, beginners
probably will find the book overwhelming
because of all the illustrations. Also, many
of the illustrations are inferior to Peterson’s,
and the book is uncomfortably large and
heavy for use in the field.

THE AUDUBON SOCIETY EN¬
CYCLOPEDIA OF NORTH
AMERICAN BIRDS by John K. Terres.
1980. Alfred A. Knopf New York. 1,110 pages.
$60.00 (cloth).

If you could own Just one book besides your
field guide, this tremendous volume would
be the best choice. It is the most used book
in the Laboratory of Ornithology Library
and is worth every penny of its price.

The book discusses 625 ornithological
topics from albinism to zoonosis and defines
770 ornithological terms from abmigration
to zoogeography. It also includes species
accounts (biographies) of 847 birds and is
beautifully illustrated with 875 color pho¬
tographs and 800 black-and-white draw¬
ings. If you’re looking for specific infor¬
mation, cross-references make obscure
topics easy to find. Terres gleaned his in¬
formation from thousands of books and pe¬
riodicals, and the encyclopedia is carefully
referenced with an extensive bibliography.

BIRDS OF THE WORLD by Oliver L.
Austin, Jr. 1961 (reprinted 1983). Golden
Press, New York. 319 pages. $24.95 (cloth).

This oversize book is a survey of the world’s
orders and families of birds. What makes a
parrot a parrot? What do the passerines
have in common? How do creepers differ
from nuthatches? This book explains the
general characteristics of all bird groups in
a nontechnical manner and describes rep¬

resentative birds of each. The book'is at¬
tractively illustrated by Arthur Singer and
provides an enjoyable way of learning about
the many fascinating groups of foreign as
well as North American birds.

A GUIDE TO BIRD FINDING
EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI by Olin
Sewall Pettingill, Jr. Second Edition, 1977.
Oxford University Press, New York. 689 pages.
$15.95 (cloth) $7.95 (paper).

A GUIDE TO BIRD FINDING
WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI by Olm

Sewall Pettingill, Jr. Second Edition, 1981.
Oxford University Press, New York. 783 pages.
$25.00 (cbth).

Here in two volumes are descriptions of
some of the best birding locations in the
United States. For each state an introduc¬
tory section describes major physiographic
features, such as rivers and mountains, and
the plant and birdlife found in each. The
introductions are followed by descriptions
of specific birding areas, including lists of
expected species and directions from a ma¬
jor road. The indexes include names of bird
species, so good locations for particular spe¬
cies can be found quickly. Since Pettingill
covers the entire country his area descrip¬
tions are brief, nevertheless, the books are
excellent as a single source of information
about the country’s best birding locations.

A GUIDE TO BIRD BEHAVIOR

by Donald W. Stokes. 1979. Little, Brown and
Company, Boston. 336 pages. $14.95 (cloth)
$8.95 (paper).

A GUIDE TO BIRD BEHAVIOR,
VOLUME II by Donald W. Stokes and
Lillian Q. Stokes. 1983. Little, Brown and
Company, Boston. 334pages. $14.95 (cloth).

Are you a birder who wants to go beyond
listing tbe names of birds and learn about
bird behavior? If so, these unique books will
be a big help. Each volume discusses the
behavior of 25 common species, one to a
chapter, with each chapter divided into four
parts.

First is an introduction to the species’
behavior. Second is a calendar that shows
the general behaviors, such as courtship
and migration, that occur each month.
Third is a display guide that describes and

28 The Living Bird Quarterly

LINCOLN NUTTING (PHOTO RESEARCHERS. INC.)

explains specific visual displays, such as bill-
waving, crest-raising, and wing-fluttering,
and auditory displays, such as songs, chirps,
and chatters. Finally, detailed descriptions
are given for behaviors associated with ter¬
ritorial defense, courtship, nest building,
breeding, plumage, and seasonal move¬
ment.

BIRD SOUNDS AND THEIR
MEANING by Rosemary Jellis. 1977- Re¬
printed 1984 by Cornell University Press, Ith¬
aca, New York. 256 pages. $14.95 (paper).

For an excellent introduction to the subject
of bird sounds, read this informative yet
engaging, nontechnical book. Jellis ex¬
plains the meaning of the different kinds of
bird sounds and the contexts in which they
are made. She also discusses local variations
in a species’ songs, called dialects; birds that
imitate their neighbors, known'as mimics;
the evolution of songs, and much more.
Most of Jellis’s examples are of British birds,
but the concepts she describes apply to birds
worldwide.

BEYOND THE BIRD FEEDER by

JohnV. Dennis. 1983. Alfred A. Knopf New
York. 201 pages. $14.95 (cloth).

Unlike the Stokes book, which discusses
specific behaviors of individual species, this

book is an easy-reading treatment of general
topics of bird behavior. Dennis explains the
impetus behind migration and the many
factors that determine feeding behavior,
such as food color and availability. He dis¬
cusses the methods birds use to elude ene¬
mies such as protective coloration, alarms,
and mobbing. He describes how birds avoid
confrontations with others of their kind,
such as by flocking and maintaining peck¬
ing orders, and the ways birds induce con¬
frontation, such as thievery. He explains
why birds bathe in water and ants, and
describes the effect of weather on birds. The -
book is written in a chatty, anecdotal style
that provides a painless way of learning
about many interesting facets of the birds’
world.

A COMPLETE GUIDE TO BIRD
FEEDING by JohnV. Dennis. 1975. Alfred
A. Knopf New York. 288 pages. $15.95
(cloth).

This book is designed primarily for use east
of the Great Plains but the techniques de¬
scribed can be applied anywhere. Dennis
explains the types of feeders, what to put
in them, and where to place them to attract
a wide variety of birds. He also explains
how to deal with problems, such as feeder-
dominating squirrels and birds striking win¬

dows. A large part of the book is devoted
to methods of attracting specific types of
birds, including hummingbirds.

THE LIFE OF BIRDS by Joel Carl Welty,
Third Edition, 1982. CBS College Publishing.
754 pages. $29.95 (cloth).

Many colleges use this excellent text in
their introductory ornithology courses,
nevertheless, most of the book is easy to
read and can be understood by anyone in¬
terested in birds. Welty presents basic bird
biology in a logical and straightforward
manner, keeping technical terms to a min¬
imum. The book contains detailed treat¬
ments of bird anatomy, physiology, behav¬
ior, ecology, evolution, nesting behavior,
flight, migration, and distribution.

AVIAN ECOLOGY by C. M. Perrins
and T. R. Birkhead. 1983. Blackie and Son,
Ltd., Glasgow. 221 pages. $19.95 (paper).

The advanced undergraduate and serious
amateur are the intended audience for this
fairly technical text. However, it is clearly
written and provides the best—in fact, the
only — comprehensive and up-to-date
treatment of bird ecology available. It cov¬
ers territoriality, coloniality, breeding sys¬
tems, population regulation, interactions
among bird species, foraging behavior, and
migration. The authors attempt to explain
why various behaviors have evolved and
how they help birds survive and produce
healthy offspring. Because the book was
written by British ornithologists many of
the examples are of European species, but
the ecological principles discussed are the
same everywhere.

THE ADVENTURE OF NATURE
PHOTOGRAPHY by Tim Fitzharris.
1983. Hurtig Publishers Ltd., Alberta, Can¬
ada. 216 pages. $19.95 (paper).

Here is an instructive book on nature pho¬
tography by Tim Fitzharris, a superb pho¬
tographer whose work appears frequently in
The Living Bird Quarterly. Fitzharris excels
at bird photography and, while the book
deals with all types of nature photography,
many illustrations and examples relate to
birds.

TTie first part of the book addresses the
mechanics cT nature photography, and is
full of information on selecting equipment,
equipment maintenance, camera operation
and photographic technique, and picture
composition. The second part offers tips for
approaching birds and other wildlife, par¬
ticularly by the use of blinds; a chapter is
devoted to photographing birds at the nest
and in the field. This detailed book should
be useful to both novice and advanced
photographers.

Stokes discusses the behavior of familiar bird species including the bam swallow.

Autumn/1984 29

An Old-fashioned
Background

Frances Hamerstrom

Frances Hamerstrom, 1919

IRD WATCHING-for me-
tends to be with a purpose. As a
child in Massachusetts, I used to
borrow my mother’s pearl-handled op¬
era glasses and climb high into the tops
of the oaks and hickories to see what
the warblers were doing. My favorite
oak held a small pool in a hollow crotch
high above the ground after each rain.
1 found myself a perch still higher so 1
could look down at my pool and watch
the birds come to drink. They some¬
times fought and—as 1 watched them
day after day—a pattern developed.
Some birds were king and could have
the pool any time they wanted. Others
fought for their turn at the pool, and
still others slipped to the pool only when
no other birds were around. I wondered
why. Were certain individuals more
domineering?

A screech owl roosting in a rhodo¬
dendron was discovered by a blue jay,
and more and more jays came screech¬
ing and diving to mob it. As far as 1
knew nobody had ever watched any¬
thing like this before. This was the day
1 started to write my first bird book.
Chapter 1: How the jays hated the
screech owl. Other chapters followed.
Knowing nothing about plagiarism, if
1 found a good chapter for my book in
a magazine, 1 cut it out and pasted it
in. Sometimes 1 pasted my own hand¬
written account right over someone’s
published story, convinced that mine
was right and his was wrong. In retro¬
spect 1 now see 1 was beginning to make
progress as a scientist, for 1 no longer
believed everything that was printed
. . . a valuable lesson that some grown¬
ups have not learned yet.

My early problems with bird identi¬
fication were stupendous. The only
book I owned that could help me at all
was The Look about You Nature Book.
It was beautifully illustrated with vivid
colored pictures; but this charming vol¬
ume was British, and no one pointed

out to me that the birds of Great Brit¬
ain are not the same species we have
in the United States!

I kept my birding increasingly secret.
1 hated being laughed at whenever 1
called crows “rooks” or referred to
chickadees as “tits.” Besides, before long
1 managed to get a BB gun and started
collecting birds. This came about after
my governess took me to a museum on
one of our daily walks. She let me take
a dead bird (found by the roadside)
with me for identification. The men in
the museum were delighted. They
praised me and showed us the work¬
room where they stuffed birds in lifelike
positions. A hunchback was putting the
final touches on an exquisite thrush
standing on a twig and singing with its
mouth open. 1 leaned so close to see
better that one of my long braids fell
over his shoulder. He grunted and
pushed me aside. 1 apologized and my
governess took me away. It would have
surprised me even to suspect that the
hunchback and 1 were about to become
fast friends. What 1 did know was that
1 needed dead birds for taxidermy, and
for a way to get back to this wonderful
Ward’s Natural History Museum in
Hyde Park—just a mile from our house.
It never occurred to me that they might
let me in the door even if 1 had the
temerity to arrive without at least one
dead bird.

Thereafter 1 visited the museum
alone, escaping from adult supervision
on my bicycle. Something told me that
my family would not understand if they
found out 1) that 1 had a gun and 2)
that 1 had a hunchbacked friend who
traded me glass eyes for birds 1 mounted
for my private collection in exchange
for specimens of rarer birds the museum
wanted.

1 learned to identify the birds of Mas¬
sachusetts by wandering around in that
museum studying labeled specimens and
1 felt it my duty to supply them with as

many specimens of the birds on their
want list as 1 possibly could.

My family graciously gave me a va¬
cant maid’s room for my hobbies. It
contained my insect collection, my egg
collection, arsenical soap for preserv¬
ing skins, and things that 1 just hap¬
pened to like: for example, a doll’s bu¬
reau with a secret compartment for
hiding small objects. Dolls were not a
part of my world.

If my parents had wished to foster
my passionate interest in natural his¬
tory—and they did not—they would
have discovered that we lived only three
miles from the Brush Hill Bird Club
and would have enrolled me as a junior
member. It was my great good fortune
not to learn of the Brush Hill Bird Club.
Perhaps I’m unfair, but 1 have a sneak¬
ing suspicion that they would have dis¬
suaded me from my private collections,
my gun, and perhaps even from my
personal wild animal hospital to which
our neighbors brought injured crea¬
tures for me to nurse back to health.
Among these injured creatures was a
kestrel. 1 nursed her and recognized
that she was a falcon, so 1 read all the
books 1 could on falconry. 1 trained her
until she took English sparrows day af¬
ter day as they went to roost in the ivy
on the church.

The period, 1915 to 1925, was a time
of transition in American ornithology.
Bird clubs were forming and for many
people birding was becoming a pas¬
time. By some fluke of fate 1 found that
the direction my life was to take was
spelled out by the time 1 was 15. Later,
as an adult, 1 published technical pa¬
pers on all the subjects that 1 have
touched on.

Reprinted by permission from Birding with a Pur¬
pose: Of Raptors, Gabboons, and Other Creatures.
© 1984 by Frances Hamerstrom, published by
the Iowa State University Press, 2121 S. State
Avenue, Ames, Iowa 50010.

30 The Living Bird Quarterly

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