Western Birds Journal

Volume 50, No. 1

Published January 1, 2019

Issue description

Volume 50, number 1 of Western Birds, published 2019

Articles

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    JEANNE TINSMAN, MARTIN MEYERS (Author)

    NEVADA BIRD RECORDS COMMITTEE REPORT FOR 2017

     In 2017, the Nevada Bird Records Committee reviewed 83 reports from the period 6 February 1940–1 November 2017; 66 were endorsed. Two new species, the White Ibis (Eudocimus albus) and the Arctic Warbler (Phylloscopus borealis) sensu lato, were added to the Nevada list following endorsement of the fist state records. The endorsement of a record of the Black Rail (Laterallus jamaicensis) completed our years-long project to have endorsed records for every species on the Nevada list that the committee reviews. The Nevada state list now stands at 489 species, while the review list contains 141 species and two subspecies.

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    THOMAS PATRICK RYAN, STACEY VIGALLON, DANIEL STEVEN COOPER, CHRIS DELLITH, KARINA JOHNSTON, LANA NGUYEN (Author)

    RETURN OF BEACH-NESTING SNOWY PLOVERS TO LOS ANGELES COUNTY FOLLOWING A 68-YEAR ABSENCE

     From 1950 through 2016, the Western snowy Plover (Charadrius nivosus nivosus) did not nest on los angeles county beaches. But between 16 april and 21 may 2017, up to four pairs initiated fie nests in los angeles county and one at a new site in orange county. Between 12 may and 15 June 2017, ten eggs hatched, including one incubated at a wildlife care facility. From these, a minimum of three chicks were known to have fldged. one nest was destroyed by high winds, a second by either high winds or possibly human disturbance. Plovers selected sites within or adjacent to areas protected by fenced enclosures. We protected all nests with mini-exclosures. We suggest that this recolonization was due to the combination of protection of potential nesting sites, protection of individual nests, and exceptional recent productivity at other nesting sites in southern california. The fenced enclosures provided essential protection from vehicles and encouraged accumulation of beach wrack around the nests and feeding areas. additionally, once nests were established, the placement of exclosures provided essential protection from native predators and pet and feral dogs and cats. Protection with both fencing and exclosures, combined with management to minimize disturbance, will be essential for maintaining this new nesting population.

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    KEVIN B CLARK, BRUCE RIDEOUT, KIMBALL L. GARRETT, PHILIP UNITT, BARRY OCONNOR (Author)

    HISTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL PATTERNS IN KNEMIDOKOPTES MITE INFESTATIONS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA BIRDS

     We investigated the causes of toe and foot loss and other deformities long observed in urban Brewer’s Blackbirds (Euphagus cyanocephalus) in southern California. Histopathologic evaluation showed that afflcted individuals suffered from infestations of mites compatible with Knemidokoptes spp. (scaly-leg mites). We developed a case defiition based on gross lesions in confimed cases and the scientifi
    literature to search two large ornithological collections for specimens exhibiting these lesions. in evaluating specimens among seven species of the family icteridae, we found 34 specimens in the two collections with lesions consistent with Knemidokoptes spp. Species afflcted included the red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus; 12 of 978 specimens), Brewer’s Blackbird (10/337 specimens), tricolored Blackbird (A. tricolor; 4/101 specimens), Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater; 4/828 specimens), and Great-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus; 4/224 specimens). the earliest cluster of California specimens dated to 1962. Fourteen of the 34 specimens exhibiting the condition were collected since 1999. no specimens of the yellow-headed Blackbird (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus; 0 of 214 specimens) or Western Meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta; 0/278) were found with the condition.

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    NEIL PAPROCKI, THERESA POPE (Author)

    BLACK ROSY-FINCH: UTAH BREEDING RANGE UPDATE AND SURVEY RECOMMENDATIONS

     The Black Rosy-Finch (Leucosticte atrata) is one of the least studied North American birds, owing to the inaccessibility and remoteness of its habitat (Johnson 2002). It breeds along cliffs and in talus in alpine areas from central Idaho east to western Montana and Wyoming, south to southern Utah, and west to Nevada and southeastern Oregon (Johnson 2002; Figure 1). The Wildlife Action Plan Joint Team of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (2015) has designated the Black Rosy-Finch a “species of greatest conservation need” in Utah because of inadequate understanding of its ecology and life history, particularly its breeding distribution. The species is threatened by climate change, as breeding habitat already constrained by mountain summits is predicted to rise in elevation (Romme and Turner 1991, Conrad 2015, Elsen and Tingley 2015). Here we summarize and update current knowledge of the Black Rosy-Finch’s breeding distribution in Utah and provide recommendations for survey protocols throughout the state.

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    RICK WRIGHT (Author)

    A WHITE-EYED SPOTTED TOWHEE OBSERVED IN NORTHWESTERN NEBRASKA

     Towhees visually—and in rare cases vocally—resembling the Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus) have been reported at least eight times this century in the Nebraska Panhandle (Silcock and Jorgensen 2018), far to the west of that taxon’s expected range. As a result of the resplitting of the Eastern Towhee and Spotted Towhee (P. maculatus) (AOU 1995), observers have begun to once again pay close attention to the appearance and vocalizations of the region’s towhees, a practice that had declined following the species’ earlier taxonomic lumping (AOU 1954).

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    RYAN P. O’DONNELL, KYLA GARTEN (Author)

    FIRST BREEDING RECORD OF THE EARED GREBE IN SONORA, MEXICO

     The Eared Grebe (Podiceps nigricollis) is the most widespread and abundant grebe worldwide, with a distribution that includes Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. In North America, the species breeds widely through the western and central United States and southern Canada. There is also a small, disjunct, and poorly known breeding population in the highlands of the volcanic belt of central Mexico (Wilson et al. 1988). Away from this population, breeding in Mexico is sporadic, with scattered records from Chihuahua, Nayarit, Jalisco, and Puebla (Dickerman 1969, Williams1982). A former breeding population in Baja California had been presumed extirpated (Huey 1928, Cullen et al. 1999), but recently breeding has been documented annually in Mexicali (Erickson et al. 2011, Mellink and Hinojosa-Huerta 2018). In Sonora, there are infrequent summer records but no previous breeding records (Russell and Monson 1998; eBird.org).

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    Lori Hargrove (Author)

    BOOK REVIEW: The Biology of a Desert Apparition: LeConte’s Thrasher (Toxostoma lecontei)

     This monograph is aptly titled for its ghostly topic, a bird that was largely hidden from science until the 1880s, and that continues to frustrate biologists and birders alike with its disappearing acts and ability to remain out of sight. As the author notes, “pairs would often vanish from view for a month or more at a time and suddenly reappear right where they were last seen.” Not only a xerophile, but an extremophile, the LeConte’s Thrasher lives in the hottest and driest deserts of the Southwest and spends most of its time on the ground.

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    John T. Rotenberry (Author)

    BOOK REVIEW: Trends and Traditions: Avifaunal Change in Western North America

     That species and communities respond to biotic and abiotic environmental conditions over both short and long time scales and small and large spatial scales is, I woulda ssert, a fundamental tenet of ecology. Describing the nature of the associations of bird distribution and abundance with environmental variables has formed the basis for much of avian ecological research for well over a century, with an increasing focus not just on the correlations but also elucidating the mechanisms (physiological, demographic, etc.) that account for those relationships. Importantly, there is also recognition that the underlying biotic and abiotic conditions that determine a species’ distribution are dynamic in space and time, and that because of myriad anthropogenic factors, those conditions are changing at a pace likely unprecedented in the evolutionary history of most avian taxa. It is this recognition that motivates current research in establishing how bird species’ abundances and distributions have changed through time, which environmental variables or suites of variables are associated with those changes, what mechanisms appear to drive those changes, and how we can use this knowledge to predict how species might redistribute themselves in response to continuing environmental changes in the future. The 25 chapters in this edited volume fi comfortably within this framework.

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    André F. Raine (Author)

    BOOK REVIEW: Far From Land: The Mysterious Lives of Seabirds

     Anyone who spends time working with seabirds inevitably starts thinking about what the birds get up to in the vastness of the sea. Where do they go when they head away from land, diminishing to a tiny speck in the distance? What are they doing out there? How on Earth do they manage to search for food in those trackless blue expanses, braving the winds and the waves, before returning home again? Before the advent of tracking devices, the majority of a seabird’s life at sea remained a mystery, but now—with the availability of an array of data loggers, satellite tags, geolocators, and other electronic devices—these mysteries are revealing themselves at a staggering pace. This new information forms the crux of Far From Land: The Mysterious Lives of Seabirds by Michael Brooke.

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    BLAINE H. CARNES, ABIDAS ASH (Author)

    EVIDENCE FOR SUSPENSION OF PREBASIC MOLT IN A WHITE-EYED VIREO

     in most migratory north american passerines the preformative and prebasic molts occur largely on the breeding grounds in late summer following nesting (Pyle 1997), but there are some exceptions to this pattern. some species initiate molt on the breeding grounds, then suspend it over migration, before resuming and completing molt in the nonbreeding range (Howell 2010). Within a species, populations may differ by latitude in the timing and location of molt, with southern populations breeding and molting earlier than northern ones (Pyle et al. 2018).

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    THANK YOU TO OUR SUPPORTERS

     The production in 2018 of two of WFO’s special publications, and the vigorous growth of our youth scholarship program, have been due largely to the impressive generosity of our members. The board of Western Field Ornithologists and the editorial team of Western Birds thank the following contributors for their fiancial support in 2018.