Field Guides

Review of Gulls Simplified

By in Field Guides, Identification

No one ever said birding is easy. With 10,000 birds in the world, one inevitably encounters groups of birds that are difficult to distinguish. Hummingbirds in the New World tropics, sandpipers and sparrows are great examples. It’s easy to identify a bird as a hummingbird but which of the 340 species are you seeing?

Gulls are another group of challenging birds. Any school kid can identify a seagull but identifying the species can be perplexing.  Which of the 16 gull species in Maine are we looking at?

The difficulty of gull identification stems in part from the similarity of the different gull species. Although body mass differs among species, every gull has roughly the same silhouette.

In addition, gulls pass through a bewildering series of plumages. Gulls molt all of their body feathers every fall, transforming their appearance dramatically. In the spring, gulls have a partial molt, again altering their appearance. To confound matters further, the timing of the molts differs among individuals so birds that are the same age may look strikingly different.

Finally, gulls may take up to four years to acquire their adult plumage, called the definitive plumage in ornithology-speak. Smaller gulls like Bonaparte’s Gull require only two years to get to their definitive plumage while our larger gulls like Herring Gull and Great Black-backed Gull take four years to reach adulthood.  That’s a lot of plumages to keep track of.

To be sure, there are some birders who delight in the challenges of gull identification. Poring through flocks of hundreds of gulls to find an uncommon gull like a Lesser Black-backed Gull, Black-headed Gull, Little Gull or Sabine’s Gull is a joy to gull enthusiasts.

That level of skill is tough to come by. However, a recent book from Princeton University Press may be a gateway to allow you to acquire those skills. The book is called Gulls Simplified by Pete Dunne and Kevin Karlson. Gulls Simplified: A Comparative Approach to Identification by [Dunne, Pete, Karlson, Kevin]Yes, I am aware that the phrase gulls simplified is a contradiction in terms but the phrase fits this book.

Who knows? Maybe your improved gull identification skills will allow you to be the person who finds a Slaty-billed Gull among the hundreds of gulls at the Hatch Hill Dump in Augusta or some other gull haven!

Dunne and Karlson are both highly skilled birders and popular bird tour leaders. However, neither one has a particular passion for gulls. The authors argue their level of interest is perfect for a book that aims to fill a need for a gull identification guide that is welcoming to any birder.

The distinctive feature of this guide is that identifications are based more on general shape, size, behavior, general color patterns, habitat and comparisons to other known birds in the area. The guide downplays the feather-centered approach that gull nerds use to identify the age and species of a particular gull.

The authors rightly claim that most birders don’t really care whether the Herring Gull they are looking at is one, two or three years old. It is more important to know that it is a Herring Gull. Dunne notes that is easier for him to identify a Lesser Black-billed Gull at 200 feet than at 20 feet because he uses general impressions rather than plumage details.

Dunn and Karlson are pioneers in promoting bird identification by impression, having produced identification guides for hawks and shorebirds that use this technique effectively. The approach works for gulls, too.

The book is packed with excellent color photographs, mostly taken by Karlson. Detailed legends for each photograph describe important characteristics useful in identification. I counted 46 photos for the Herring Gull. There are several photo quizzes, as well, to test your enhanced identification skills.

The guide covers the 20 regularly occurring gull species in North America as well as five rare gulls. A section with photos on hybrids is illuminating.

“Gulls Simplified” is a great addition to the wealth of bird guides we have.

Sandhill Cranes in Maine; Mallards and Field Guides

By in Field Guides, Species Accounts

In 2000 and 2001, Scott Melvin documented breeding by a pair of Sandhill Cranes at the southern end of Messalonskee Lake in Kennebec Count.  This exciting discovery was the first record of breeding by this species in the state.

Multiple pairs now nest in this area.  In addition, Maine birders have found other Sandhill Cranes in the late spring and summer.  These locations include North Yarmouth, Auburn, Leeds, Chelsea, Manchester, Fryeburg, Smithfield, New Gloucester, Orland, Surry, Unity and Mount Desert Island.  At least some of these cranes may be breeders as well.

The breeding range of Sandhill Cranes spans the western two-thirds of Canada into Alaska with some birds breeding in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.  Most of these birds winter in west Texas, southern New Mexico and northern Mexico.

The birds migrate in groups with families staying together. The birds fly in the efficient V-formation.  Birds tend to stop at traditional stop-over areas, the Platte River in Nebraska being one of the best known.  In the spring, half a million cranes stop along 70 miles of the Platte River, delighting birders and naturalists.

A resident, non-migratory population occurs in peninsular Florida.  The first Sandhill Crane I ever saw flew above me when I was running a road race in Melbourne, Florida. The size, color and the extended neck (different from the S-shaped, recurved neck of a heron in flight) clinched the identification.

We know that some bird ranges are expanding or changing. Most of these changes we attribute to global climate charge. Fifty years ago, Turkey Vultures, Tufted Titmice, Carolina Wrens, Northern Mockingbirds, Blue-winged Warblers and Northern Cardinals were not a part of Maine’s avifauna.

But how do we explain the arrival of Sandhill Cranes as breeders and migrants in Maine when Maine is south of most of their breeding areas?

We know that the population of Sandhill Cranes in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and western Ontario is doing well.  The populations there nearly doubled between 1980 and 1995 and continues to grow. Some of these birds seem to be dispersing east. Recent nesting has occurred in northwestern Pennsylvania, southeastern Ontario and Quebec.

We do not know if the recent breeding in Maine represents a true range expansion or a recolonization of a species that was extirpated 200 years or more. We have some evidence from historical accounts from the 1600’s and 1700’s referring to cranes in Maine and Nova Scotia.  However, those authors may have confused cranes with herons.  It does seem clear that some cranes migrated all along the eastern seaboard in the 1600’s before succumbing to human depredation.

If you want to see these magnificent birds, Messalonskee Lake is the place to go.  From I-95, take exit 112 in Augusta and head northwest on Route 27 for about 7 miles.  On the right, there is a parking area where a former motorboat launch was located.  Scan to the south from the floating dock.

Then go 0.2 mile north to Hammonds Lumber. From the parking lot, scan the marsh.  A little patience will usually reveal a crane or two.

Mallards in Maine

Mallards are common birds in Maine.  Even the most casual Maine birder has likely seen this species in our state.  However, you wouldn’t think so based on the maps in several bird field guides.  Jane Coryell has been enjoying Mallards for years on Togus Pond in Augusta.  She happened to notice that the Peterson Field Guide, the Stokes Field Guide and the Sibley Guide to Birds (First Edition) all fail to show that Mallards occur in Maine on the range maps!  Is this error a coincidence or perpetuation of an error by one author in other author’s field guides?  This oversight is yet one more example of why we should be skeptical about what we read.  Paper does not refuse ink.

Bicknell’s Thrush – II; The Warbler App

By in Field Guides, Identification, Software, Species Accounts, Vocalizations

This column continues the discussion of Bicknell’s Thrush, one of the most elusive breeding birds in Maine. By the time you read this column, most male Bicknell’s Thrushes will be done singing for the breeding season.

Bicknell’s Thrushes have an unusual mating system. Most of our songbirds are monogamous during the breeding season. A male pairs with a single female and the male defends the breeding territory against intrusions by other males.

Not so for Bicknell’s Thrushes. Their mating system is an open, communal system. Males do not maintain exclusive territories. Any of several males may sing from the same area in the same day.

Males and females both mate with multiple partners. Any given nest holds a genetic hodgepodge of offspring. The nest will have eggs laid by a single female but because of her multiple partners, some nestlings will be siblings and others will be half-siblings (due to different fathers). Males may have offspring in several different nests, corresponding to the multiple females they mate with. Thus, a nestling in one nest may have half-siblings (due to different mothers) in other nests. Now, that is a complicated family structure.

A male will bring food to more than one nest so the nestlings in any given nest may be fed by multiple males as well as by the mother.

Ornithologists refer to this mating system as polygamy. Nearly 95% of bird species show monogamy and most of the remainder display polygyny, in which one male may have multiple female partners but each female has only the one male partner. Red-winged Blackbirds are a local polygynous species. Polygamy is quite rare so it’s really neat to have a polygamous species in the Maine avifauna.

The entire population of Bicknell’s Thrushes is estimated to be around 125,000 individuals, making Bicknell’s Thrush a species of concern for environmental managers. These birds do nest at fairly high density (average of about 50 pairs per 100 acres) so habitat alteration of even a small area at high altitude can have serious repercussions for the species.

Conservationists worry about winter habitat degradation as well. The entire population winters mostly just a few islands in the Greater Antilles. Around 90% of Bicknell’s Thrushes overwinter on Hispaniola.

In terms of etymology, Bicknell’s Thrush was named after Eugene Bicknell, an amateur ornithologist. Bicknell discovered the species in the Catskill Mountains in the late 1800’s.

 

New birding app

A number of bird-related apps are available for smart phones and tablets. Some that I find particularly useful are BirdTunes, Merlin, National Aubudon’s Birds, iBird PRO and Sibley Birds.

The new Warbler App takes birding apps to a new level. This resource is a companion app to the marvelous field guide, The Warbler Guide, by Tom Stephenson and Scott Whittle that was published last year.

Like the apps above, the Warbler App provides vocalizations, photographs, line drawings and distribution maps for the birds covered. The Warbler App has full information on all of the 56 species of warblers that occur in the United States.

A skilled birder can identify a bird from five different views: above, below, side view (left or right), head-on and tail-on. Sometimes a head-on view is all you get or perhaps you get an obscured underside view through dense foliage. To clinch the identification, you really need to know all sides of the bird.

One beauty of the Warbler App is that you can see a warbler from any angle you want. Three-dimensional models of each species are provided. Using your finger, you can change the orientation to match the view you saw in the field.

The Warbler App has a great filter to allow you to quickly zoom in on an identification using morphological features as well as song features.

Take a look at this video to learn more: http://bit.ly/1KRbI61   The Warbler App is a game changer!

[First published on June 14, 2015]

Recent AOU Checklist Changes

By in Field Guides, Taxonomy

Recognizing the limits of species is one of the great challenges of biology.  Some species are remarkably variable; humans with our ranges of skin color provide a nice example.  On the other hand, some separate species can scarcely be separated based on their morphology.  The Willow Flycatcher and Alder Flycatcher are dead ringers for each other yet the distinctive songs of the males ensure that only Willow females will mate with Willow males and Alder females with Alder males.

A branch of biology called sytematics is devoted to identifying the limits of species and to understanding the relationship among the species.  We still follow the basic classification scheme erected by Charles Linnaeus nearly 300 years ago.  Closely related species are placed in the same genus.  Closely related genera are placed in the same family and so on upward in the scheme to orders, classes and phyla.

Systematic classifications were initially based on the structure of organisms.  Over the years, systematists have used other traits to help understand species limits and interrelationships.  Behavior can be an informative trait.  The ability to interbreed is used by some systematists as an indication of a “good” species.  In the past few decades, comparisons of DNA has greatly clarified and refined our understanding of the relatedness of various groups of organisms.

Like any scientist, a systematist regards her understanding of the relationships of a particular group of organisms (like the shorebirds, for instance) as a working hypothesis.  The hypothesis is provisionally regarded as true but needs continued testing.  As our knowledge grows, hypotheses have to be rejected.  Like any science, systematics is a dynamic field.

A nice example of our changing understanding is the Yellow-rumped Warbler.  Western birds have yellow throats while eastern birds have white throats.  These birds were initially treated as separate species.  The Black-fronted Warbler in Mexico and Goldman’s Warbler in Guatemala, similar to Myrtle Warbler and Audubon Warbler, also were described as distinct species.  However, all of these four species based on additional systematics work were combined into the  Yellow-rumped Warbler in 1973.  It’s possible that some or all of these forms will be split back into separate species in the future.

To keep track of these taxonomic changes for birds, the American Ornithologists Union erected a Check-list Committee.  This committee is charged with producing the Check-list of North American birds, the official source on the taxonomic classification of birds of North and Middle America.  The current version is the seventh, published in 1998.  You can see the check-list on line at http://www.aou.org/checklist/north/print.php

The committee monitors the publications on bird systematics and revises the check-list if necessary.  The committee usually publishes a supplement in the ornithological journal, the Auk, every July to describe any changes to official Check-list.

Most of the changes in the 2013 supplement pertain to birds of Middle America so I will not cover them here.  The supplement does describe some taxonomic changes to some shorebirds: Surfbird, Buff-breasted Sandpiper, Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Broad-billed Sandpiper.  The Buff-breasted is a regular passage migrant in Maine and Ruff is an occasional vagrant.  Each of these species was formerly placed in its own unique genus.  Recent systematics work has shown these species are not sufficiently different from other shorebirds to merit their own genus.   Each of these five genera has now been eliminated and all five species are now placed in the genus Calidris, the genus that includes a number of shorebirds including Sanderling, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Red Knot and Dunlin.  If you are a stickler for the scientific names of birds, make those changes in your field guide.

The other change may affect your life list if you have birded in the West.  The Sage Sparrow has been split into the northern Sagebrush Sparrow and the southern, Californian Bell’s Sparrow.

[First published on September 1, 2013]

Warbler Guide

By in Field Guides

The bird field guides available today represent an embarrassment of riches.  Until the National Geographic Guide was published in 1983, birders had two guides, one by Roger Tory Peterson and one by Chan Robbins, for help in field identification.  I cut my ornithological teeth on these two field guides.  I well remember the plates in the Peterson guide called confusing fall warblers.  Confusing they are!

The classification of the New World Warblers is confusing as well.  In the past couple of years, major changes in our understanding of how these warblers are related have emerged.  Many of these insights come from the use of DNA comparisons to assess relatedness.  Field guides published in the next few years will have a different arrangement and different scientific names for many of our warblers.  As an example, Hooded Warbler, Wilson’s Warbler and Canada Warbler were thought to be closely related and all were placed in the genus Wilsonia.  Recent research shows that Hooded Warbler is actually closer related to warblers like Northern Parula and Palm Warbler and shares a genus name with these species now.  Canada Warbler and Wilson’s Warbler remain in a different genus.

An extraordinary new field guide will do much to reduce our confusion over field identification and get us used to the new classification scheme of warblers.  This book is The Warbler Guide, written by Tom Stephenson and Scott Whittle.  Both are accomplished birders and each brings another talent to this guide.  Stephenson is a musician and Whittle is a professional photographer.

warbler

This soft-bound book is 560 pages long.  At 6×9 inches in size, it’s a bit large for a pocket but easily fits in a backpack for field use.

The first 100 pages provide an introduction to the use of the guide and warbler-specific tips for identification.  Most pages are adorned with uniformly excellent photographs of warblers.  This guide has literally hundreds of photographs.

The authors begin with a topographic tour of wablers.  The photographs are excellent for showing various feather tracts that are often useful in field identification.  Then the authors describe various features to notice on a warbler (with many photos), such as facial contrast, shape, eye-arcs, wing panels and flight-feather edging.  A useful section on sexing and ageing warblers is provided.

The introductory section concludes with a primer on auditory identification.  The authors’ approach is perhaps the most innovative aspect of the guide.  We learned to identify a male Chestnut-sided Warbler by its “pleased-pleased-pleased-to-meetcha” song.  The authors use a different, more objective approach.  Songs are broken into phrases and elements, superimposed on element qualities and speed.  Sonograms of songs are a prominent feature of this guide.

The authors next provide  Visual Finder Guides and a Song Finder Guide to allow an observer to quickly home in on an identification.  A Face Quick Finder has 86 photos of side views of all the faces of warbler species on two facing pages.  Similar layouts are provided for sideviews, underviews and oblique views of the full body.

The Song Finder Guide relies on the observer noticing numbers of phrases, the timbre of the notes, changes in pitch and other vocal characteristics to reach an identification.

The bulk of the guide is made of the individual species accounts.  Each account begins with a few symbols showing the shape in silhouette, the tail pattern, general color, range map and specific habitat (e.g., tops of trees).

Let’s take the Blackburnian Warbler account as an example.  Ten pages are provided with 50 color photos (along with 8 photos of warblers that can be confused with Blackburnian).  Telegraphic text descriptions augment the photos.  Two pages, replete with sonograms, describe the songs of this species.

This book will be published on July 24.  A companion app with sound recordings will appear soon as well.  Grab a copy of this guide in time to help with those confusing fall warblers.

[First published on July 7, 2013]

Crossley Raptor Guide; The World’s Rarest Birds

By in Book Reviews, Field Guides

 

In today’s column, I want to alert you to a couple of recently published bird books from Princeton University Press.  The first is The Crossley ID Guide to Raptors.  This book follows the format of Crossley’s well-received Crossley ID Guide to Eastern Birds.  The Crossley guides use photographs rather than paintings or drawings to illustrate the birds.  For each species, a composite plate with many images superimposed on an appropriate landscape is presented.  This new guide contains 101 photographic scenes with 35 double-facing. Brief, dense text on identification is provided at the bottom of each plate.

crossleyThe new raptor guide is co-authored by Jerry Ligouri and Brian Sullivan.  Ligouri has published a raptor field guide of his own and both men are expert in raptor identification.

To really develop confidence in identifying a bird species, you need to master five views: from above, from below, from head on, from tail on, and from a lateral view (left or right).  Crossley and colleagues make sure that views of all of all these perspectives are provided for each raptor.  Of course, the plumage of young raptors differs from adults; these different plumages are well covered along with geographic differences.  They devote five plates to the Red-tailed Hawk and three to the Rough-legged Hawk.

The book contains 81 photographic plates.  The last third of the book provides an account of each species, including a large map of the distribution of each species.  Each account follows a consistent format with sections called Overview, Flight Style, Size and Shape, Geographic Variation, Molt, Similar Species, Hybrids, Status and Distribution, Migration, and Vocalizations.

An extremely useful feature of the book is a collection of mystery photos.  The authors provide a number of composite plates to test the reader’s identification skill.  For instance, one plate gives a number of eagles in flight; a reader needs to decide if each is a Golden Eagle or a Bald Eagle.  Similarly, one plate pictures 21 accipiters at all different angles.  The challenge is to decide if each is a Sharp-shinned Hawk or a Cooper’s Hawk.  A key is provided for each plate, giving the species, age and sex of each mystery photo and a brief explanation.  These plates are powerful learning tools.  From my experience, they will also give you a generous piece of humble pie!

Thirty-four species are covered including two species of New World vultures, six falcons, and 24 hawks, eagles and kites.  The book measures 10×7.5 inches so is really not convenient to carry in the field.  Use it as a learning resource and refer to it often.

The second newly published book is The World’s Rarest Birds by Erik Hirschfield, Andy Swash and Robert Still.  The scope of the book is based on the Red List of Birds maintained by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).  The IUCN Red List is considered to be the most scientifically objective system for classifying species in terms of their risk of extinction.  The Red List incorporates six different levels of concern and this new book covers the 197 species listed as Critically Endangered and the 389 listed as Endangered.

The book begins with a description of the types of threats on Red-listed birds.  These threats include geological events, fishing, damming, pollution, energy production and mining, climate change, logging, and agriculture/aquaculture.

The coverage of the species accounts is geographic with the world divided into Europe and the Middle East; Africa and Madagascar; Asia; Australasia; Oceanic Islands; the Caribbean, North and Central America; and South America.

Four species are covered on each page with a color photograph, a distribution map, an estimate of population size, a listing of threats to the species and a short paragraph on the biology and population changes. Scattered throughout are descriptions of threatened species hotspots.  This fine book is simultaneously fascinating and saddening.

[Originally published on April 27, 2013]

Review of Kaufman’s Field Guide: Advanced Birding; Eastern Bluebirds and Tree Swallows; Bird Hormones

By in Book Reviews, Field Guides, Physiology, Reproduction

In 1990, Kenn Kaufman’s Peterson Field Guide: Advanced Birding was published.  This book discussed the identification of difficult groups of birds like winter loons, scaup, medium-sized terns, hummingbirds and Empidonax flycatchers.  The book was peppered with Kaufman’s own pen-and-ink drawings.  The guide was meant to be a supplement to a field guide.

Now over two decades later, a greatly revised edition has been published.  It is fundamentally a different and better book than the first edition.  The new edition is still best used as a companion to a standard field guide.

The number of groups of confusing birds Kaufman covers is greatly expanded over the first edition.  Informative photographs are included within each group in lieu of the line drawings of the earlier edition.

One of the greatest strengths of the new edition is the 140 pages of introductory material, compared to only 19 in the first edition.  In this new edition, Kaufman offers a list and extended explanation of 13 principles of field identification.  A couple are “Always use multiple field characteristics” and “Consider the condition of the bird’s plumage”.

He then has an excellent section on feather tracts of birds and molting.  A sequence of photographs on the movement of feathers on an opening wing of a House Finch is brilliant.   In the folded wing, all the feathers one sees are greater coverts, tertials and the tips of the primaries.  As the wing unfolds, the other feather tracts become exposed.

Kaufman then presents sample illustrations of some birds (some at rest and some flying) to indicate the different feather types.  For each example, a photograph and a line drawing of the bird showing the feather tracts is shown.

Kaufman compares two schools of thought on field identification of birds.  One school relies on “general impressions of size and shape”, shortened to the acronym of giss. The other extreme is the fine detail approach where very close study of feathers, bill color and shape and other structures is required to yield a field identification.

In his coverage of the various problem groups, Kaufman uses both types of information to permit field identification.   For identification of swallows on the wing, Kaufman suggests watching swallows without using binoculars.  One can become familiar with the slight differences in flight behavior and the appearance of distinctive marks from varying perspectives.  The giss method can work here.

But for gulls, Kaufman advocates the fine detail approach, pointing out that the color of various feathers in the wings, tail and mantle are needed to be sure of an identification.

Eastern Bluebirds and Tree Swallows

Tree Swallow and Eastern Bluebird numbers are building in the state as their migration proceeds.  It’s time to make sure your nestboxes are in good shape.

Tree Swallows and Eastern Bluebirds compete for nestboxes.  How can you increase your chances of bluebirds nesting on your property?  You can take advantage of the fact that Tree Swallows are intolerant of other Tree Swallows nesting within 10 yards of their own nest.  So, if you put two nestboxes close together, one will not be used by Tree Swallows and is therefore available for bluebirds.

Bluebirds need quite a bit more space.  Typically, bluebirds will not nest with 200 yards of another bluebird pair.

People often wonder if they should remove the previous year’s nest from a nestbox.  Eastern Bluebirds prefer to reuse an old nest.  For Tree Swallows, removing an old nest has no effect on whether it will be used by Tree Swallows in the current year.

Hormones and spring

In mammals, the gonads (ovaries in females, and testes in male) remain the same size once adulthood is reached.  Not so in birds.  Because of the demands of flight, the ovary (most female birds only have one ovary) or testes of birds are greatly reduced during the non-breeding season.  Why carry around well-developed reproductive structures when those organs are not needed?  With increasing daylength, birds start to produce hormones: mainly testosterone in males and estradiol (an estrogen) in females.  These hormones cause the testes or ovary to increase greatly in size.  The size of a House Sparrow testis increases 500 times in the span of a month or so in the spring!

The huge increase in testosterone causes the males to become fiercely combative to other males.  One behavior common this time of year is to see a male songbird attacking its reflection in a mirror or window. Testosterone levels will decline in due time and the males will become less hyperactive.

[First published on May 1, 2012]

Review of the Crossley Identification Guide

By in Book Reviews, Field Guides, Uncategorized

Over the past 25 years, an embarrassment of riches has become available for the education of birders.  Dick Walton and Bob Lawson’s Birding by Ear tapes and now CD’s allowed birders to make huge leaps in the ability to identify birds by ear.  David Sibley’s 2000 book, The Sibley Guide to Birds took the field guide to a new level.  More specialized books on the identification of difficult groups like gulls, sparrows, shorebirds and hawks have enriched our libraries in the past decade.

The latest major contribution to bird identification is The Crossley Guide: Eastern Birds written and assembled by Richard Crossley.  The assembly I refer to is made possible by the ease with which one can manipulate digital images.  In this book, Crossley presents 10,000 pictures of the birds of eastern North America.

The bulk of the book is 640 plates, each devoted to a single species, in which Crossley pastes in photographs of the species over a photograph of the habitat of the species.  The composite plate is not intended to try to create the illusion of a single photograph but rather is an effective way to associate bird with habitat.

Some of the photographs are close-ups while others are more distant.  Sometimes side views are shown and in other cases back or front views.  Some birds are perched and some are flying.  Different plumages by age and sex are provided.

As an example, the Peregrine Falcon plate has an urban landscape with skyscrapers for the background (Peregrines do well in New York City and other metropolises with a near endless supply of pigeons to feed on).  Superimposed on the background are 15 photos of Peregrines.  One is in a stoop (watch out, pigeons!), one is flying directly toward you, and one is just a distant silhouette.  Perched adult and juvenile falcons are shown.  In short, you see Peregrines from many angles and distances, just like you would in the field.

I know an ornithologist from Washington state who holds that to really be proficient at field identification of birds, you must be able to identify a bird from five angles: from the front, from the back, from the side, from the underside in flight and from the upperside in flight.  Crossley’s book has all of these views for some of the species he covers.

The geographic scope covers eastern North America westward through the Great Plains.  The coverage ends at about the western boundary of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Saskatchewan.  The coverage of the species in this guide is exhaustive.  In addition to the common birds like Northern Cardinal, full coverage is given to eastern vagrants like Swainson’s Hawk, Sage Thrasher and Green-tailed Towhee and to ultra-rarities like Fieldfare, White-throated Thrush and Yellow-faced Grassquit.

The many images provide a rich resource for even the most seasoned birders.  My wife pointed out the red lores of a Snowy Egret in one of the photographs.  This color appears briefly early in the breeding season.  I had never seen this feature nor even been aware of it.

The plate takes up the bulk of the space for each species.  A small distribution map and telegraphic text on behavior and identification are provided as well.  Crossley also gives the four-letter code for each species that bird banders use.  As a bander, I have used these codes for years for efficient note-taking.

The vast majority of photographs are crisp and pleasing; some are truly stunning.  I am glad that the format of the book is large enough to ensure that details can be seen in the photographs.  I own other bird and insect photographic guides where the images are so small as to be nearly unusable.

The beginning of the book has the usual information on bird topography and molting.  Crossley also describes his idiosyncratic (to me, anyway) of identifying birds.  In order of importance, he lists these key features: shape, size, behavior, probability (is the presumed species expected here at this time of year?), color and finally voice.  I elevate the importance of voice to near the top of my list but it is interesting to read Crossley’s reasons for ranking the features.  To facilitate size comparisons, Crossley has photographs at the same scale of birds of each group at the beginning.  It is easy to see how much larger a Purple Martin is than a Bank Swallow.

Measuring seven by ten inches, this wonderful guide will be difficult to carry in the field.  Keep it in your car or backpack though.  This guide is a wonderful addition to the birding literature.

[First published on March 6, 2011]

AOU Check-list Changes

By in Field Guides, Taxonomy

The fifty-first supplement to the American Ornithologists’ Union Check-list of North American Birds has recently been published in the ornithological journal, The Auk.  This check-list is the standard guide to common and scientific names of the birds of North America.

The committee reviews the published literature and decides if species should be split, lumped or renamed.  The consideration of DNA evidence and morphological evidence may result in changes in the higher taxonomy (such as the family level) of birds.

This supplement is the tenth one since the publication of the most recent Check-list in 1998.  This supplement is based on committee deliberations between January 2009 and March 2010.

Many of the changes involve tropical species or other species found well outside of Maine.  In this column, I will restrict myself to birds that occur in Maine, at least as passage migrants.  I will consider birds in the standardized check-list order.  You may wish to enter corrections into your field guide.

First, the common name of Greater Shearwater is changed to Great Shearwater.

The order Pelecaniformes formerly contained the pelicans, cormorants, gannets and boobies, and the tropicbirds.  All of these birds have totipalmate feet; webbing is found between all four toes.  All other bird with webbed feet only have webs between three toes.  The hind toe has no webbing.

However, DNA analysis indicates that the tropicbirds are not closely related to other members of the pelecaniforms.  Therefore, a new order, the Phaethontiformes, has been erected for the tropicbirds.  A new order for the Red-billed Tropicbird that has been seen around Seal Island the past few years during the summer.

Even with the tropicbirds removed from the pelecaniforms, DNA evidence indicates that the remaining families are a hodge-podge of distantly related groups of birds.  In fact, the herons, spoonbills and ibises are very closely related to some families of pelecaniforms.  So, now the herons (family Ardeidae) and spoonbills and ibises (family Threskiornithidae) are moved from the Order Ciconiiformes into the Order Pelecaniformes.  Now, the Order Ciconiformes contains only the storks (Family Ciconiidae).

We’re not done with the pelecaniforms yet.  The cormorants and frigatebirds are moved from the Order Pelecaniformes to a new order, the Suliformes.

The species we have been calling Black Scoter occurs on both sides of the Atlantic.  However, differences in courtship behavior and feathering of the bill indicate the European and American forms are different species.  Now, Black Scoters in North America are described as new species (Melanitta americana); the common name of Black Scoter remains the same.  The European birds are  referred to as Common Scoters (Melanitta nigra).

DNA comparisons show that the hawks and falcons, formerly united in the Order Falconiformes, are not closely related.  Now the Order Falconiformes includes only the falcons (Family Falconidae).  A new order, the Accipitriformes, is erected to contain the New World vultures (Family Cathartidae), hawks. kites and eagles (Family Accipitridae) and the Osprey, now placed in its own family, the Pandionidae.

Whip-poor-wills occur in eastern North America as well as Arizona.  The Arizona forms have been split off as a new species, the Mexican Whip-poor-will.  Our species is now called the Eastern Whip-poor-will.

Our Winter Wren, Troglodytes troglodytes, nests in coniferous forests throughout northern North America.  This bird also occurs in Europe, the only wren in the Old World.  Research indicates there are actually three species in what we called Winter Wren.  Two new species are recognized in North America.  The Winter Wren occurs in Maine but is now classified as Troglodytes hiemalis.  The wrens that occur in the west are classified as a new species, the Pacific Wren (Troglodytes pacificus).  If you have seen Winter Wrens in the Far West, you have just picked up a life bird!

The gnatcatchers are now placed in their own family, the Polioptilidae.

The scientific name of the Blue-winged Warbler is changed from Vermivora pinus to Vermivora cyanoptera.

The Tennessee Warbler, the Nashville Warbler and the Orange-crowned Warbler are all moved from the genus Vermivora to the genus Oreothlypis.

The Northern Waterthrush and the Louisiana Waterthrush are moved from the genus Seiurus to the genus Parkesia.

Analysis of the DNA of larkspurs and snow buntings has revealed that they are not very closely related to the sparrow family, the Emberizidae, in which they were formerly classified.  A new family, the Calcariidae, is established for these birds.  Regularly occurring members of this new family in Maine are Lapland Longspurs and Snow Buntings.

If you would like to see the full report of the Check-list Committee, the article appears in the July 2010 issue of the Auk, Volume 127, pages 726-744.

Early North American Bird Field Guides

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1934 was an important year for birding in North America. That is when Roger Tory Peterson published A Field Guide to the Birds, a seminal guide for identifying the birds of eastern North America in the field.

Peterson was an accomplished artist and prepared all the plates used in his guide. However, the revolutionary aspect of the guide came to be the use of arrows on the bird portraits to indicate important characteristics for the identification of each species.

This guide sold its first run of 2,000 copies in less than a week. The importance of these and subsequent Peterson guides can hardly be overstated in improving the skills of birders and in bringing new birders into our fold.

However, the Peterson guide did not spring from a sudden inspiration. There were field guides prior to Peterson, most of which are little known now. Several of these were authored by women.

Florence Merriam lived in San Diego and developed an interest in bird identification near the turn of the 20th century. Her brother, Hart Merriam, headed the federal Bureau of Biological Survey; field biology was a family interest.

At the time, the major guide to North American birds was Robert Ridgway’s Manual of North American Birds. With more than 600 pages and over 100 plates of drawings of the various parts of birds, Ridgway’s guide was a resource to be consulted after a birding expedition, not carried into the field. The text was technical and dry.

Perhaps influenced by the daunting Ridway text, Florence Merriam published Birds through an Opera-Glass in 1889. This guide is much more welcoming than the dense text of Ridgway. If you visit googlescholar.com and search for the title, you can see selected pages of the book. It is delightful and decidedly non-technical. For instance, here is a portion of the account of the Chimney Swift: “And what a noise these swifts make in the chimneys! Such chattering and jabbering, rushing in and scrambling out! If you could only get your spyglass inside the chimney.”

A line drawing served as a visual aid to identification for each species but the drawings were rather crude. Merriam considered her guide to be a failure because she claimed that only about 90% of birds can be identified with an opera-class. The others (like flycatchers and vireos) she claimed needed to be shot to be identified.

Merriam followed up her first book with Birds of Village and Field in 1898. She provided technical material in small type at the beginning of each count and then devoted the rest of the space to anecdotes in a larger, more inviting font. The wood engravings Merriam used as illustrations were quite useful. The full book can be seen on GoogleScholar

Mabel Osgood Wright was a New Englander and a contemporary of Florence Merriam. In 1895, she published Birdcraft, a field guide to 166 species of eastern birds. Wright cobbled together images from Aududon and other bird artists with photographs of fine bird art onto 15 color plates. The color of the plates was reproduced poorly and the illustrations were not detailed enough to be useful for tricky identifications. Nevertheless, this book went through at least nine editions over the next three decades.  The book was too large to serve as a field guide. Rather it was an accessible reference to be conferred after a birding expedition.

Neltje Blanchan published Bird Neighbors in 1897. Blanchan’s guide was a photographic one. However, the photos were of stuffed birds, often in poses that were decidedly not lifelike. Blanchan’s volume was large like Wright’s book, certainly not small enough to carry into the field.

The first successful pocket guide to bird identification was Bird Guide: Land Birds East of the Rockies by Chester Reed . The guide as first published in 1906. Copies are available for download at http://openlibrary.org/. Reed was an artist and his paintings of birds were quite good. For his Bird Guide, he had selected paintings photographed as viual aids to identification..

The account for each species covered identification features, song, nesting structure and the geographic range of the species.

Roger Tory Peterson received a copy of the Reed Bird Guide when he was in the seventh grade. The National Audubon Society was giving copies to all members of the Junior Audubon Club. The Reed guide was Peterson’s first field guide and must have inspired him to produce even a better field guide 28 years later.

The inspiration for this article was a 2009 article by Thomas Dunlap in Forest History Today See his article for a fuller treatment of the topic.

[Originally published on July 18, 2010]