Woodcock mother and chicks at Magee Marsh, Ohio, 6 May 2013 (photo by Charlie Hickey)
We had so much peregrine news this week that Throw Back Thursday is a day late. Today, at last, I can talk about a different bird.
Male American woodcocks (Scolopax minor) returned to Pennsylvania in late February or March and immediately set up their courtship “stomping” grounds. At dusk they’d strut and peent, then launch into the air with whistling wings to claim territory and attract a mate.
By the end of April dancing time is nearly over because the females are nesting and their eggs will hatch soon. When they hatch, the chicks will be as well hidden as the eggs.
At Magee Marsh, Ohio in May 2013 this woodcock family was hidden in plain sight. I couldn’t see them no matter how hard I tried! Read more in this vintage article: Woodcock Family
p.s. I’ll be hiking out of cell range for most of today (28 April 2017) so I won’t be able to respond to your comments for at least six hours. The peregrines had better behave while I’m gone!
Northern mockingbird missing his tail, near Phipps Conservatory, March 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)
There’s a bossy northern mockingbird near Phipps Conservatory who shouts his song and chases all the birds but he’s missing something — his long expressive tail.
Tails are used in flight, of course, but they’re also an important communication tool for mockingbirds.
“Look at me!” says the mockingbird as he struts with his tail cocked up, wags it to one side during confrontations, and fans it in his parachuting flight display.
Without a tail he looks silly, drooping his wings while he raises his tiny tail coverts. So far the ladies aren’t impressed.
Tail-less northern mockingbird near Phipps Conservatory, March 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)
I wonder how long it will take to grow back his tail.
Carolina chickadee in North Carolina (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Last week I wrote about Pittsburgh’s Puzzling Chickadees and promised to tell you why we have fewer black-capped chickadees every year. The reason is: Our winters are getting warmer.
The Pittsburgh area is squarely in the contact zone where black-capped (Poecile atricapillus) and Carolina chickadees (Poecile carolinensis) meet and hybridize. Black-capped chickadees can survive cold winters so they live north of the zone. Carolinas cannot; they live in the south.
In 2010 David Sibley drew the contact zone for his Distinguishing Black-capped and Carolina Chickadees article. Click on the screenshot to see his original map and zoom it for your area. The map is about 7 years old.
Screenshot of David Sibley’s map of black-capped and Carolina chickadee contact zone approximately 2010. Click on the map to see Sibley’s original article and zoom the map for your area.
Seven years make a difference. During that time the zone moved north almost 5 miles. Here’s why:
Chickadees don’t migrate but young birds disperse to find a breeding territory. The easiest territory to claim is an “empty” place where there aren’t competing birds of the same species. For Carolina chickadees, that place is on the northern edge of the contact zone.
In 2000-2002 and 2010-2012, Robert Curry and his team measured winter temperatures and conducted DNA tests to identify chickadees in study plots north, south and inside eastern Pennsylvania’s contact zone.
The studies showed that over the 10-year period winter average low temperatures moved north 0.7 miles per year. They also found that female Carolina chickadees are dispersing further than their usual 0.6 miles. They’re moving 0.7 miles northward in lock-step with climate change.
What does this mean for you?
If you live on the northern edge of the contact zone your chickadees can change in a year or two from 100% black-capped chickadees to a mix including Carolinas and hybrids. On the southern edge it’s just as interesting as the black-cappeds disappear.
Black-capped chickadee (photo by Chuck Tague, prior to 2007)
24 March 2017
A PABIRDS discussion about chickadees in North Park reached this surprising conclusion: If you think you’ve seen a black-capped chickadee in Allegheny County, think again. They’re hard to find and there are fewer every year. The reason why this is happening makes our chickadees harder to identify than your typical backyard bird.
Pittsburgh’s chickadees are puzzling because we live in the contact zone where black-capped (Poecile atricapillus) and Carolina (Poecile carolinensis) meet. When the two meet they hybridize. Females of both species prefer Carolina males for extra-pair copulation(*). The birds cross and back cross until the gene pool is really mixed up. Though they can hybridize the species remain distinct.
Black-capped and Carolina chickadees are usually identified by range — black-cappeds in the north, Carolinas in the south — but in the contact zone they’re hard to tell apart and the hybrids have traits of both. Some look like one species and sound like the other. Robert Curry and his team at Villanova University study chickadees in eastern Pennsylvania’s contact zone and have found that the only reliable way to identify them is by DNA test!
Here’s a black-capped and Carolina chickadee side by side, linked from Robert Curry’s Lab website. You can see that the black-capped is larger, more colorful, and has a relatively longer tail …
Black-capped Chickadee (left), Carolina chickadee (right). (Image linked from Robert Curry’s Lab Research website. Click on the image to see the original in context)
So why are black-capped chickadees hard to find in Allegheny County? Why are there fewer every year? Because the chickadee contact zone is moving north in step with our warming climate! (more on that next week)
I used to assume that “north of the rivers” was reliable black-capped territory but not any more. In these maps from Neighborhood Nestwatch data, Bob Mulvihill plotted four years of banding black-cappeds (red), Carolinas (blue) and hybrids (green) within 50 miles of Downtown Pittsburgh. Neighborhood Nestwatch didn’t use DNA tests; they measured the birds.
Map of black-capped, Carolina and potential hybrid chickadees banded at Neighborhood Nestwatch in southwestern Pennsylvania (map courtesy Robert Mulvihill)
As you can see, the Carolinas and hybrids have (roughly) reached I-76 and jumped east of it in Monroeville. Look at all the green dots — hybrids! Click here for more of Bob’s chickadee maps including two zoomed in on northern Allegheny County.
(*) p.s. extra-pair copulation: Chickadees are socially monogamous but not sexually monogamous. In the hybrid zone, all the females prefer to mess around with Carolina males.
(photo of black-capped chickadee at top by Chuck Tague. Black-capped and Carolina side-by-side photo is linked from Robert Curry’s Lab website. Map of southwestern Pennsylvania Neighborhood Nestwatch chickadees: black-capped, Carolina and hybrid-sized by Robert Mulvihill, used by permission.)
Silver-throated tanager, Cherrie’s tanager, yellow-crowned euphonia, Las Cruces, Feb 2017 (photo by Jon Goodwill)
When I visited Costa Rica this month I saw more tanagers than I’d ever seen before … but some of them weren’t really tanagers.
Tanagers (Thraupidae) are the second largest family of birds on earth but their membership is constantly in flux as DNA tests move birds in and out of the family every year. In the photo above, all three birds used to be Thraupidae but one of them moved out in 2012.
Thanks to photos from fellow travelers Bert Dudley and Jon Goodwill, and from our guide Roger Melendez, here are tanagers we saw in Costa Rica, both true and false.
True Tanagers whose names include the word tanager:
Blue gray tanager (Thraupis episcopus), seen everywhere on our Costa Rican trip.
Blue gray tanager (photo by Jon Goodwill)
Cherrie’s tanagers (Ramphocelus costaricensis) were plentiful at Las Cruces Biological Station. Here’s a male, in velvet black and orange with a blue-gray beak, perching next to a female.
Cherrie’s tanager, male and female (photo by Jon Goodwill)
Summer tanager (Piranga rubra). Another cardinal relative.
Summer tanager (photo by Jon Goodwill)
“False” Tanagers that used to be in the Tanager family, though “tanager” is not in their name.
The yellow-crowned euphonia (Euphonia luteicapilla), pictured at the top with two true tanagers, was in the Tanager family (Thraupidae) until 2012 when he became a Finch (Fringillidae). This didn’t affect the euphonia’s life but it scrambled our field guides.
Yellow-crowned euphonia (photo by Roger Melendez)
As you can see, the Tanager family can change in a flash!
Last year I reported that common grackles usually return to my city neighborhood on March 5.This year they’re ahead of schedule. They arrived here in Pittsburgh on Tuesday February 21 and even earlier at Moraine State Park, 45 miles further north, on Sunday, February 19.
The grackles are two weeks early!
I noticed them when I heard them “skrink.”
Click on last year’s article below to watch the grackles puff and squeak on video.
Long-tailed silky-flycatcher at Cerro de la Muerte, Costa Rica (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
On a birding trip to Costa Rica:
This bird with unusually silky feathers is only found in the mountains of Costa Rica and western Panama.
The long-tailed silky-flycatcher (Ptiliogonys caudatus) is one of four birds that used to be in the Waxwings’ family. Like their former relatives, long-tailed silky-flycatchers eat fruit, flycatch for insects, and flock together in the non-breeding season. They also have a fondness for mistletoe berries just like North America’s only Silky-flycatcher, the phainopepla.
This blurry photo from Wikimedia Commons gives you an idea of how easy it is to find a long-tailed silky-flycatcher if you’re in the right habitat.
Long-tailed silky-flycatcher (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
I think I’ll see one today. We’re birding at Cerro de la Muerte where these photos were taken.
(photos from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the images to see the originals.)
Resplendent quetzal leaving nest hole (photo by Joseph C Boone via Wikimedia Commons)
On a birding trip in Costa Rica:
Today we’re traveling up-mountain to 7,000 feet above sea level to San Gerardo de Dota, the cloud forest home of the resplendent quetzal. This legendary trogon is the national bird of Guatemala and a must-see species for birders visiting Costa Rica.
Resplendent quetzals (Pharomachrus mocinno) live in moist, cool, mountain rainforests from southern Mexico to Panama where they eat fruits in the avocado family. Both sexes have iridescent green bodies but the male has a deep red breast, a helmet-like green crest, and a magnificent long green tail.
Their genus name, Pharomachrus, means long cloak and refers to the male’s “tail” which is actually four long upper tail covert feathers. At 30+ inches, they can be three times the length of the male’s body — so long that when he enters the nest hole his tail remains outside. In the photo above, a male is leaving the nest while his tail is still going in!
Legends of the resplendent quetzal date back to Mayan and Aztec cultures where he was considered the “god of the air” and a symbol of goodness and light. In Guatemalan legend the quetzal guided Tecún Umán in his fight against the Spanish conquistadors. When Tecún Umán died, the quetzal’s breast became red from his blood. The quetzal is also a symbol of freedom because he could not be kept in captivity, dying so quickly in a cage.
And so tomorrow I will have my fingers crossed, hoping to see this resplendent bird.
Resplendent Quetzal, Costa Rica (photo by Francesco Veronesi via Wikimedia Commons)
(photos from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the images to see the originals)
The olivaceous piculet (Picumnus olivaceus) moves among the trees like a nuthatch, using his tiny bill to dig out and eat ants, termites, beetles, and cockroach eggs.
He lives in a wide variety of habitats from Guatemala to northwestern Peru and is a specialty at the Esquinas Rainforest Reserve where we spent the day yesterday.
Like the golden-crowned kinglet, his name is longer than his body.
(photo by Neil Orlando Diaz Martinez, Bogotá, Colombia via Wikimedia Commons; click on the image to see the original)
White-necked jacobin, Costa Rica (photo by Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren via Wikimedia Commons)
On a birding trip in Costa Rica:
Hummingbirds! Costa Rica has 50 species plus four extremely rare ones. All of them are year round residents except for one: our own ruby-throated hummingbird.
This makes it hard to pick two hummingbirds to highlight during my trip so I’ll go with two that have exotic names.
The white-necked jacobin (Florisuga mellivora) is a medium sized hummingbird that forages in wet lowlands and foothills to 3,300 feet. As with other hummers his name is based on his appearance. “White-necked” comes from his white neck patch. “Jacobin” refers to his hood, similar to that of Dominican friars. (Click here to see.)
Why isn’t he called a “white-necked Dominican?” Well, Jacobin was the French name for the Dominicans because their monastery was attached to the Church of Saint-Jacques in Paris. Unfortunately a political movement wiped out that innocent meaning. During the French Revolution a group of radicals met at the Dominican monastery to plan their Reign of Terror. The Jacobins terrorized France from 1792 to 1794.
At six inches long the violet sabrewing (Campylopterus hemileucurus) is the largest hummingbird in Central America. Common from 3,300 to 7,900 feet, some descend to lower elevations at this time of year.
Violet sabrewing, Costa Rica (photo by Sonja Pauen via Wikimedia Commons)
Male violet sabrewings are very violet and though you can’t see his wings in this impressive photo, they’re the reason he’s called a “sabrewing.” Cornell’s Neotropical Birds site explains:
In the male, the outermost primaries are thickened and somewhat flattened and are curved at an angle; this combination of features resembles a sabre.
There’s one cool thing about this bird that I’ll miss, even if I see one. During the breeding season, which corresponds to the rainy season May to October, the males gather in leks of four to twelve birds to sing and attract the females. Wow!
(photos from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the images to see the originals)
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