Distraction Displays: Mass Breeding Bird Atlas 2

Cedar Waxwings

From The Department of Family Values

We allow the C, courtship, code to be used out of safe dates with the thought that some birds may "paly around" while in migration, but many will not.

Ducks, notorious "players" are excluded from this C code relaxation. For them, the C is only good during safe dates.

Recently someone saw waxwings doing their berry-feeding courtship ritual on Cape Cod. Hmm, that is really far from nesting for the notoriously late-nesting waxwing. Waxwings, you see, like to feed their young some bugs, but but mostly the young eat sugary berries. Those berries are available later in the summer, so, waxwings tend to be late nesters.

So why-oh-why would they be going through their courtship rituals now? Well, a quick peruse of Birds of North America (remember, this is must have resource for bird behavior lovers, the fee is quite low, and it is the best reference for all things BIRD) tells me that waxwings will do the berry feeding thing on migration. This helps them to establish a pir bond, and for the gentleman to keep an eye on the lady as they move into spring. Love is, indeed, a many splendored thing!

It is great to know that they do the courtship feeding on migration, and that we have enough eyes and ears out there to record this.

Well, I'd wait another month or so keep this as a C, but feel free to report them if you see them too. We can always reconfirm later in the year - but it would be nice to know if this is happening all the time. Our earliest C for Cedar Waxwing before this is May 21.

Remember, if you have a doubt, don't use a code for a species. If they are breeding, they will be near the same spot in a few more days, and chances are you'll be able to use a "cleaner code" on them.

Reading 02 from Norm the Carpenter

Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, and lasts at least 20 hours per block.

From Norm Levey, otherwise known as Lincoln Carpentry. Norm sums up the creeping addiction of atlasing here, and reports what you'll recognize as a typical-and-extraordinary experience while atlasing.

This post links to the Burlington Science Center blog - which is very cool.

 

Joan & Marj. -- 

Some progress is being made on the underperforming Reading 2; I am entering this morning's data presently, though I am in some perplexity about a great-crested f.c. that swept into the power line cut, picked up some fine nesting material, dropped it, picked up some more and moved to a perch, dropped it and repeated the behavior before leaving with NO nesting material in bill. This species is a Grail quest for me, having been unsuccessful confirming them in three plus years, but might enter it a CN unless you disagree.

Eventually, with some exploration, one falls in love with blocks one hates and it is happening with this one. There are some wild and woolly pockets tucked into a town that is gridded into quarter acre units with a small ranch or split level house on every one. The blue poly tarp ATV camps in the woods on conservation land give me pause, but so far no meth labs. But there are wonderful surprises here:

Reminder: Phenology Incidentals

Pheno-what? Who?

Phenology is the timing of events - like nesting, or tree flowering - in relation to climate events. BBA 1 collected data from 1974-1979, and left us with a fair smattering of dates of breeding for many species. We know that climate is changing, and we expect that this will cause some shifts in the dates that species initiate nesting. Our work with BBA 2 can collect a whole bunch of new dates for nesting, and now is the time to think about setting some records for early nest initiation dates. First, a wee bit of background.

Before we started the BBA 2 work we set a series of Safe Dates. These dates bound the likely breeding season (based on our knowledge from BBA 1, and from the VT Breeding Bird Atlas Safe Dates). Sightings made during those dates increase our confidence that a bird acting in way that is defined in our Possible or Probable codes, even without finding nests or young, is a likely breeders. Confirmed sightings always count - even if they are out of Safe Dates.

Fast forward to today. If we only collect dates of breeding activity from within the Safe Dates we will not be able to ensure that we are correctly bounding the BBA 2 breeding seasons - the phenology. We'd just "prove" that birds bred when we said they did. Thats no good.

So, we created a new type of Incidental, the Phenology Incidental. This is a place for you to enter all of the CONFIRMED or COURTSHIP encounters you have with species outside of the Safe Dates (COURTSHIP reports need to exclude ducks and gulls, and other species you feel may just be playing around), even if the species is already Confirmed in the block. We'd like you to enter as many early and late dates for each species in these categories that you can.

It is also OK to enter Phenology Incidentals for a species you suspect of breeding in the block, and are really surprised to find acting TERRITORIAL way before the Safe Dates. Be careful with this. We do not want a zillion migrant warblers entered here. Only use this for birds you think are breeding in the block. We will sort through them when the project is over, and we will toss the ones that we think are out of line - but this is a great tool for collecting what we see now.

For instance, Whips were apparently singing up a storm out in Eashampton last week (T). The atlasers whistled them in and got buzzed by the birds. If they are calling in another week they'd get a "S", but that still would not count - they are 4 weeks before Safe Dates! But we don't want to lose the info. We want that entered as a Phenology Incidental, and we want them to go out after Safe Dates and get them for real too.

Another example: yesterday I saw my first American Robin building a nest. It is already Confirmed in the block, and while not the earliest NB we have, it is still good data.

To enter a PI,

1. Log in to the data entry site,
2. Choose Enter and Incidental (on the bottom left of the My Atlas View Page)
3. Select the Observer, Type of Incidental (ahhhhh), Block, Detailed Location (you could add extra comments in here too), Year and Hours (if applicable). Hit Continue.
4. Fill in the card as usual. Edit, Hit Finalize.
5. Fill in a new one for each block. If you revisit, fill in a new one - it is important to hit Finalize after you fill it in - people tend to forget to do it later.

Q and A: Cooper's Hawks

Tertial Talk

Cautiously we wade into the dangerous swamp of molt terminology....

Not all birds present in your block are breeders - some are too young. Usually there are keys to their age in their plumage, and in their behavior. Believe me, years of late night discussions have gone into the art of understanding age by plumage, and great battles wage in the terminology used to describe molt (or moult) sequences and their proper terms. Cooper's Hawks present a great example. Also I apologise in advance to Steve N.G. Howell, Jerry Liguori, and Ken Parks.

Coops (and Sharpies and Goshawks) are not in their full adult, aka: definitive basic, plumage for two or more years, as they cycle from their natal down to full adult plumage. How they get there is fascinating (to some people), and mind-numbing to others. Here is a little synopsis...

(Image from L.A. Fuertes USDA Agriculture Yearbook, 1908)

Chimney Swifts

Its a Big Love in Chimney Swift Land

Chimney Swifts used to nest in great big dead trees that were hollowed-out by rot, and they probably also used nest sites along protected rocky outcrops or cave entrances. We've done a great job of replacing that habitat with our home chimneys and abandoned buildings, but we have complicated matters more recently by capping all our chimneys to keep rain and critters out of our living rooms.

Since they nest in deep dark holes on the top of builings they are (surprise!) hard to Confirm. Over the weekend we got the following question - which is timely...

Question - I have chimney swifts where I live. According to the map the border for Framingham 11 and 12 goes right through the middle of my neighborhood. I have seen them going in and out of chimneys on both sides of campus which puts them in both blocks. What more do I need to do to confirm these for the atlas?

Answer - They are really hard to Confirm – you can catch them collecting nest material (they fly through dead trees with their mouths open and grab branches – Crazy!), or go into the buildings and listen up the chimneys for the sound of begging young.

Chimney swifts are supposed to only have 1 pair nesting per chimney – which I am suspect of for no other reason than it seems wrong. They roost in groups, but are supposed to be singletons in the nesting season. They do have helpers at the nest, so more than two may go into a chimney - but there is only one nest per chimney. Let me know if you find more than one nest in a chimney."

Code Talking

So, if you have CHSW in the neighborhood, they are an X. If they are courting (flying around as a pair or trio wings held up) then it is a C (there is also a reference in Birds of North America to birds sitting outside a chimney and "gazing" which brings images of love-struck swifts to mind, but lets leave that one alone). If they enter the chimney, you have an N, if you find a nest in the hearth it is a UN. If you catch them breaking off twigs (which Simon saw last weekend) or flying with twigs in their bills it is a CN, and if you hear young inside a chimney they are NY.

There is more below the fold for those interested in the phenomenon of helpers at the nest.

 

Ruffed Grouse Herding Butterfly Watchers - Honest

From The Department of Intertaxa Oddness

Allrighty, out in the Wild West there is a topo called Hadley, and in that topo is a block called Hadley 1. In Hadley 1 there are some fine folks who look at butterflies (Juniper Hairstreaks seem to be their main quarry right now). They post to a very nice listserve, and that listserve is read by none other than our very own Mary Atlas Alice Wilson.

Mary Alice sent us down the path to puzzle out this story....

Well, there is a Ruffed Grouse with a finely tuned herding instinct who trots down the path with the butterfly folk. The grouse purrs as she/he goes, walking for a few hundred yards with them, sitting with them if they stop. Read the post to the listserve  - very entertaining.

Nothing about this sort of behavior in Birds of North America, but one old timer tells me that he heard of one in Minnesota ho did the same thing. Let us know if you have any experience with RUGR behaving this way.  

Oh yeah, she/he is called Groussey.                                                                  

Proposal To Change The Name To Bisonbirds

From The Department of Nomenclature and Bummers

Oh well, seems time to remind everyone that if you find cowbird eggs or young it confirms both the cowbird and the host species. In this case George McLean gives us some graphics to remind us.

There is a story I tell myself when I see this, a story told to me by one of the wizened and  grizzled old timers. It gives me cold comfort - but at least I don't dislike cowbirds like I used to. I propose we begin by changing the name to Bisonbirds.

The story goes like this: in the pre-Columbian US, cowbirds made their living following bison herds - this meant that they moved with the herds, the herds made seeds and arthropds available to the bisonbirds by their "delicate" traipsing and chowing.

In order for bisonbirds to reproduce, the bisonbirds had to adapt to the movable feast. They needed to eat but they still needed to mate, lay eggs somewhere, have the eggs incubated, and the young raised - and it is tough to tend a nest when the herd, and your food,  has moved on.

You can imagine that this could lead to some strong selection toward putting your eggs in someone else's nest, so you can move on with the herd. If you are able to lay eggs over a long period of time each year (which the female bisonbirds can do), you could slip an egg into another bird's nest, then another, then another and parasitize a bunch of nests as you follow the bison. Maybe, just maybe, if the eggs develop quickly (which they do), and the young can kick out the host species' young (which they do) one of your young might make it.

So, enter the most efficient land-clearing animals in history (Us), and bisonbirds, being opportunists (to say the least) are able to take advantage of Us as a pretty good surrogate for bison - heck, we did a great job of clearing land for crops and cows and homesteads and cities, and, and, and. This opens up deep forest (which bison never did) and allowed the bisonbirds to take advantage of new, evolutionarily naive, hosts, along with a bunch of other grassland/early sucessional birds that moved in with human-bison-surrogates.

So, bisonbirds are really good at what they do. It is worth remembering that they are native birds - just native birds gone wild with our help. They are clearly an unwanted addition to the eastern forests, but their story should be known.

 

Photo from http://www.panoramio.com/photo/21725009.

Important: Woodcock Safe Dates

From the Department of Standards and Inconsistencies

Alert Atlas folk in Essex County have pointed out that the Safe Dates for woodcock say April 15 in most places, and February 25 in other places.  Use the April 15 Safe Date. We will update the field checklists and post new .pdfs soon.

Courting ("peenting") woodcocks are "C". You only need to hear them once, unlike the "S" code, and you can use the "C" code out of Safe Dates - also unlike the "S" code.

The details of the error, for those of you who are like to know how sausage is made: We changed the Safe Date last year to try to capture Courting woodcocks. That discussion grew, and folks suggested that we change when we apply the Courtship  code, rather than change the Safe Dates (remember at one point we had a hairy code for Great-horned Owls - split during the year).

Anyway, it made more sense to allow us to use Courtship out of Safe Dates - but still keep the brakes on for the Possible and other Probable codes.

In 20 Years They'll Thank Us: Nest Phenology Reporting

Our data is great, but here is a way we can enhance the value of the Atlas 2 data - reporting early and late nesting records when we find Confirmations out of Safe Dates. For instance...

Mary Keleher, who, along with Blair Nikula, is a Regional Coordinator for the Cape, has had two volunteers report early-nesting behaviors in Eastern Bluebirds this week. This is a full month before any of the other NB or CN records we have in the Atlas data base (which has a pretty good sample size of 38 records of bluebird CN or NB, 711 total bluebird records, and 78,000 records total).

Last year we created a new type of Incidental to capture these early and late breeding reports, the Phenology Incidental. Just log in to the USGS website (notice the new, sleek login screen - ooh, ahh), go to My Atlas View, or just look along the left-hand menu for Incidentals (noticing the new, sleek side menus the USGS folks slaved over). Fill in the form, and under Type of Incidental select "phenology". Do this even if the species is already Confirmed in the block, and do it for as many Confirmed behaviors you spot out of Safe Dates.

Records of early and late nest initiation Confirmations can help determine what the breeding season actually is for a species (the Safe Dates were our best guess prior to the beginning of Atlas 2). Changes in nesting season (phenology) are often predicted by climate change models - but often those models can be long on predictions and short on actual data from the field. In 20 years, when Atlas 3 is underway, they will be thrilled that we collected information on early and late breeding species. Report those Confirmations!