Vol. 42 No. 4 (2011) | Western Birds

GARY H. ROSENBERG, KURT RADAMAKER, MARK M. STEVENSON (Author)

ARIZONA BIRD COMMITTEE REPORT, 2005–2009 RECORDS

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In this its seventh report, the Arizona Bird Committee reviews 501 records and updates the Arizona bird list through 2009, adding 12 species: the Black-vented Shearwater, (Puffinus opisthomelas), Black Turnstone (Arenaria melanoleucapha), Lesser Black-backed Gull (Larus fuscus), Royal Tern (Thalasseus maximus), Tufted Flycatcher (Mitrephanes phaecercus), Couch’s Kingbird (Tyrannus couchii), Gray-collared Becard (Pachyramphus major), Brown-chested Martin (Progne tapera), Sinaloa Wren (Thryothorus sinaloa), Winter Wren (Troglodytes hiemalis), Brown-backed Solitaire (Myadestes occidentalis), and White-winged Crossbill (Loxia leucoptera). The records of the Gray-collared Becard, Sinaloa Wren, and Brown-backed Solitaire are the first accepted for the United States, and that of the Brown-chested Martin is the first for the western United States. Acceptance of the Brown-backed Solitaire in Miller Canyon, Huachuca Mountains, in 2009 prompted reevaluation and acceptance of the record of this species in Madera Canyon in 1996, in spite of the unanswered question of the bird’s origin; the Brown-backed Solitaire is popular as a cage bird in Mexico, but the individuals seen in Arizona were in the species’ mountain forest habitat and remote from plausible sources of escapees.

ANDREW B. JOHNSON, SABRINA M. McNEW, MATTHEW S. GRAUS, CHRISTOPHER C. WITT (Author)

MITOCHONDRIAL DNA AND METEOROLOGICAL DATA SUGGEST A CARIBBEAN ORIGIN FOR NEW MEXICO’S FIRST SOOTY TERN

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We report the first documented record for the Sooty Tern (Onychoprion fuscatus) in New Mexico and the fourth for the region of the southern Rocky Mountains and trans-Pecos Texas. The bird was found dead in moderately fresh condition on 8 July 2010 in the Laguna Grande area, near Carlsbad, Eddy County. It was brought to the Museum of Southwestern Biology where it was preserved as a study skin. A DNA analysis comparing the sequence of the specimen’s mitochondrial control region to a published population-genetic dataset on this species found that the sequence of the New Mexico tern was a perfect match with previously sequenced haplotypes from Puerto Rico and Ascension Island and ~2% divergent on average from all Sooty Terns previously sequenced from the Pacific and Indian oceans. Measurements of the specimen are consistent with a Caribbean origin. We surmise that this individual was carried inland from the Gulf of Mexico to southeastern New Mexico by the remnants of Hurricane Alex.

ABRAM B. FLEISHMAN, NAOMI S. BLINICK (Author)

NORTHERLY EXTENSION OF THE BREEDING RANGE OF THE ROSEATE SPOONBILL IN SONORA, MÉXICO

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The Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja) lives in coastal wetlands from the southern United States south through Middle and South America. On the Pacific coast of the United States and northwestern Mexico, it is a local summer visitor and post-breeding wanderer, rare in Sonora (Russell and Monson 1998), very rare on the Baja California peninsula (Howell and Webb 1995, Amador and Ramirez 1996), and casual and irregular (primarily immature birds in the post-breeding period) in southern Arizona (Monson and Phillips 1981) and California (California Bird Records Committee 2007). The Roseate Spoonbill is currently a regular summer resident in Sonoran estuaries at least as far north as Estero Santa Cruz in Bahía Kino.

ELIZABETH A. MOHR (Author)

MALE-PLUMAGED ANNA’S HUMMINGBIRD FEEDS CHICKS

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With few exceptions, the literature on hummingbirds reports that the male hummingbird courts, copulates, and moves on, uninvolved in any part of the subsequent nesting process. There are only two published reports of adult male hummingbirds feeding chicks. In 1954, Ernst Schäfer reported that in Venezuela he had observed and photographed a male Sparkling Violet-ear (Colibri coruscans) feeding a single nestling (Skutch 1973). Schuchmann (1999:506) dismissed this report as unlikely on the grounds that it “might easily have been misinterpretation” because the Sparkling Violet-ear is monomorphic. In 1970, in her yard in Napa, California, Clyde (1972) observed a male-plumaged Anna’s Hummingbird (Calypte anna) feed a solitary chick left in a nest after the first chick had fledged and the female tending the nest had disappeared. This observation is often recounted in the literature without comment (Russell 1996:16, Johnsgard 1997:55) or is dismissed as “highly doubtful, since male-like plumage has been reported in a variety of female hummingbirds” (Tyrrell 1985:105). Stiles and Martinez (1992) expressed skepticism about the reports by Schäfer and Clyde because of the lack of unequivocal sexing.

WILLIAM M. IKO, ROBERT J. DUSEK (Author)

SEVERE BILL DEFORMITY OF AN AMERICAN KESTREL WINTERING IN CALIFORNIA

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During a recent survey for West Nile virus in wild birds around the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge, Imperial County, California (Dusek et al. 2010), we captured a female American Kestrel (Falco sparverius) with a severe bill deformity (Figure 1). The kestrel was captured on 9 March 2006, at 08:45, approximately 0.25 km south of the intersection of West and Lindsey roads (33° 08' 42' N, 115° 26' 59' W) and 6 km east-northeast of Calipatria. It was caught on a bal-chatri trap baited with a domestic mouse (Berger and Mueller 1959), as were all the 208 kestrels captured during this study. The bird was initially perched on a high transmission line running along Wiest Road and was caught within 10 minutes of our setting the trap. In examining the bird, we observed that the maxilla beyond the cere was missing. The upper bill structure from the palatine process, which included part of the maxilla, the entire premaxilla, and the external rhamphotheca (the hardened keratin layer covering the premaxilla) was missing rostral to the bird’s cere and nares (Threlfall 1968, lucas and Stettenheim 1972, Proctor and lynch 1993). The epidermal layer of the cere appeared to have fused over the remaining area between the nares where the upper bill normally would have been. The deformation did not appear to be recent or related to our trapping, as there were no obvious abrasions or open wounds in the region surrounding the nares and oropharynx or signs of recent trauma surrounding the oropharynx area. Both nares were clearly defined, and the tongue protruded from the open oropharynx area. After completing the physical examination, measurements, and obtaining a blood sample for testing for West Nile virus, we released the kestrel at the location of capture. After its release, we monitored the kestrel’s behavior for approximately 30 minutes but did not observe any additional hunting.

MIKE McDONALD (Author)

BOOK REVIEW: Population Demography of Northern Spotted Owls

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The Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina), listed as a threatened subspecies in 1990, has been at the center of forest-management controversies in the Pacific Northwest for more than three decades. The political battles fought over the conservation of the owl and its habitat, and the effects of those battles on the regional economy, are a familiar story. Those battles are barely mentioned in “Population Demography of Northern Spotted Owls,” the new monograph in the Cooper Ornithological Society’s Studies in Avian Biology series. The authors instead present the results of their analyses of demographic data from throughout the range of the subspecies, information that is certain to figure heavily once again in the scientific and political debates.

JARED WOLFE, PETER PYLE (Author)

FEATURED PHOTO - FIRST EVIDENCE FOR ECCENTRIC PREALTERNATE MOLT IN THE INDIGO BUNTING: POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS FOR ADAPTIVE MOLT STRATEGIES

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In the family Cardinalidae, the prealternate molt varies in extent from none in the Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) to including all secondary coverts, three tertials (secondaries 7–9), and four central rectrices in the Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea; Pyle 1997a, b). But replacement of primaries during the prealternate molt has not been documented within the family. In fact, in North American landbirds as a whole, replacement of primaries during definitive prealternate molt is rare, so far documented only in the Yellow Warbler (Dendroica petechia), Nelson’s Sparrow (Ammodramus nelsoni), Bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus), and Lesser Goldfinch (Spinus psaltria; Pyle 1997a, Willoughby 2007, Pyle and Kayhart 2010). Pyle and Kayhart (2010) postulated that prealternate molt originally evolved from the need to replace bleached and dysfunctional feathers, and that colorful alternate plumage is a result of subsequent sexual selection. Here, we present evidence from a wild living Indigo Bunting for an eccentric definitive prealternate molt in which outer but not inner primaries are replaced (Pyle 1997b, 1998).