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My feelings about shorebirds came back to me a few days later, as I observed a mixed group of peeps and Dowitchers at Mecox Inlet, eastern Long Island, not far from where Peter Matthiessen once observed the shorebirds of Sagaponack, the stars of the first pages of his classic The Shorebirds of NorthAmerica (1967).
The second edition of the National Geographic Complete Birds of NorthAmerica, 2nd Edition has one of the longest book names in bird bookdom: National Geographic Complete Birds of NorthAmerica, 2nd Edition: Now Covering More Than 1,000 Species With the Most-Detailed Information Found in a Single Volume.
A recent proposal ( 555 ) to the AOU’s South American Classification Committee deals with newly published information about relationships within the sandpiper family, Scolopacidae, and what it means for the classification of these wonderful, fascinating birds. But let’s take a look at how things are shaping up for the future.
Fortunately for you, though, when I got home I found a review copy of National Geographic Backyard Guide to the Birds of NorthAmerica by Jonathan Alderfer and Paul Hess ready and waiting to be dissected for your delectation. The target audience of this book is not the jet-setting hardcore birder, or even the dedicated local lister.
Importantly, the paper offers support for the hypothesis that the ancestor of the entire clade came to NorthAmerica by way of Beringia — the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska exposed at various times through Earth’s history. The wood-warblers are coming into focus , and the sparrows are getting their own family.
From his name is derived the name of the order Piciformes , the family Picidae , and the genus Picoides (as well as the genii Picus and Piculus , which include no North American members). As a woodpecker, he was associated in Italian myth with the god Mars, with agricultural fertility, and with bird-related divination.
NorthAmerica is home to many amazing bird species, including several which require a special effort to see and appreciate. In the summer, they are the highest altitude breeding songbird in NorthAmerica. So let’s look at this sampler, shall we? Want to see Painted Bunting on a Naturalist Journeys tour?:
The family has representatives throughout the forests NorthAmerica, Eurasia (including North Africa), and Indomalaya. In NorthAmerica, we have, traditionally at least, four species, the most familiar of which is the White-breasted Nuthatch ( Sitta carolinensis ).
One of the sweetest subsections of the duck family has to be the sawbills, formally known as mergansers. Mergansers are a family of diving waterfowl in Merginae , the seaduck subfamily of Anatidae. Anyway, the hoodie is the only merganser endemic to NorthAmerica. Notice the sawbill?
The family Ardeidae consists on long-legged, long-necked, long-beaked, water birds called waders in NorthAmerica or maybe just herons, egrets, and bitterns everywhere else. It’s a massive family with worldwide distribution, so I’ll be expecting a tsunami of submissions for this one.
This year’s National Family Pack Walk will prove, once again, that it’s not your average walk in the park. additional pack walks will take place nationwide September 23–30, with the help of the Animal League of NorthAmerica. Scooby-Doo, Cesar Millan, four-legged friends and their pet parents from around the U.S.,
I’m focusing on Turkey Vultures here because they are undoubtedly the species most birders in NorthAmerica (the home of 10kB) are most familiar with, but the name vulture applies to birds found around the globe. Old World Vultures are nestled within the family Acciptridae along with the hawks and eagles.
Anyone who has gone bird watching in NorthAmerica, however, knows another kind of phoebe, a bold little genus that turns up with remarkable frequency from the arctic circle to the equator. Phoebes are proud members (at least they seem so) of the Family Tyrannidae , the tyrant flycatchers.
They are part of a family of New World Quail which includes Gambel’s, Mountain, Scaled and Montezuma Quail, as well as the Northern Bobwhite. The family stays very close to cover for several weeks, getting bolder as the young develop. The family group pictured below has been visiting my yard recently.
The Pygmy Nuthatch ( Sitta pygmaea ) is a non-migratory bird that lives primarily in Ponderosa and Jeffrey Pine forests in western NorthAmerica. They are one of the few cooperatively breeding passerines in NorthAmerica and a third of the breeding pairs have 1–3 male helpers, usually progeny or other relatives.
But the new second edition of Watching Sparrows * by Michael Male and Judy Fieth, who have a whole series of bird films already produced or in production , not only kept me staring at the screen but drew in family members to see what I was watching, to say nothing of my cats, who were enthralled by the sparrows singing on screen.
This group — dubbed the bombycillids , from the waxwing genus and family name — appears to fall near kinglets and a large group containing thrushes and muscicapids (Old World flycatchers and chats) in the passerine tree. Spellman et al. Cedar Waxwings are pictured above in a lovely image by Minette Layne.). ” Spellman et al.
It’s mid-July, which among other things means that those of us in NorthAmerica are starting to check local mudflats for returning shorebird migrants and waiting impatiently for the AOU to hurry up and create five species from the Clapper-King rail complex (the reasons for which we covered last year ).
I am puzzled as to why Gulls and Terns are almost passed over, with less than two pages of text devoted to a family description and only six species accounts (four gulls, two terns). Family follows family with no page break, making this section a little dense. Woodpeckers are a family of focus for Tuttle-Adams.
In NorthAmerica, that is. The ABA currently lumps the Mangrove Warbler and Golden Warbler with the Yellow Warbler (the IOC lumps Mangrove and Golden Warbler together but splits them from the Yellow Warbler that breeds in NorthAmerica.) As you travel south, everything gets all higgledy-piggledy.
I recently returned from my family’s annual spring trip to Florida, and unlike years previous I didn’t get any special time set aside to bird this time round. I guess our early March time-frame is a tad on the early side for them to return from South America, so you can imagine I was pretty stoked to see this one.
” And then I found out that bird song doesn’t just belong to the males, that there are female birds who sing too, only not so much in NorthAmerica, and my mind was blown.**. They’re just like us–they talk with their hands (er, wings) and their feet and some are even crafty!” And, that’s it.
This particular species is not native to New Zealand (similar to its status in NorthAmerica). A European Starling in New Zealand made the news this week. The woman in the video found it as a chick at a few days old and hand reared it. In areas where starlings are introduced, the laws for keeping them as pets are relaxed.
I’m a big fan of the antelopes, a group that is most commonly associated with Africa but which also occurs in Asia and, if you stretch the term to be cladistically meaningful, Europe and NorthAmerica. By this I mean applying the term antelope to cover all of the family Bovidae, which would include the sheep, goats and ox.
Towhees are large, ground-hugging sparrows that occur only in NorthAmerica. Earlier this month, I came across a family of Spotted Towhees (Olive-backed) with a couple of other strange aspects. They belong to either the Pipilo or Melozone genera, or perhaps both, as their taxonomy is still a point of contention.
They fly from extreme northern NorthAmerica to the southern tip of South America and are seldom seen perched during migration. Another cool fact was learning that the Barn Swallows has started to breed in South America since the 80s. They are still among the coolest birds on my list. Photo Alfredo Begazo.
In all of NorthAmerica, only one avian species serves as both the beloved mascot of seven states as well as the totem to two professional sports teams (and an infinity of amateur ones!) The family Cardinalidae encompasses a plethora of New World passerines. Rather, this icon is extremely adaptable and eye-catching.
I still know my audience - this is primarily a blog read by birders in NorthAmerica, who see the term “squirrel” as little more than a synonym for house sparrow, starling, pest and cholera. Germany, like most of Europe and very much unlike NorthAmerica, is home to only one species of squirrel.
The Chestnut-crowned Antpitta is one of the most beautiful in the family The endemic Brown-banded Antpitta is rather drab but far from common The uncommon Chestnut-naped Antpitta is only found in Ecuador, Peru and Colombia The vulnerable Bi-colored Antpitta was only discovered in 1999 in Ecuador.
These bark-burrowing beetles, which apparently hitched a ride in cargo shipments from their native Asia, have been starving the ash trees of eastern and midwestern NorthAmerica to death for a dozen years now. With all due respect to Maria von Trapp, combating the greatest infestation that U.S. Enter the woodpecker.
We will announce a group, family, or genus of birds and elicit superior web writing and images on the designated topic. Content covering nuthatches outside NorthAmerica are especially welcome. We’re not looking for recent links to random posts; we all get plenty of that on Facebook and Twitter.
Species Accounts in both titles are arranged loosely in ABA Checklist order, with some flipping around of order within each family. So, each guide has an individual personality. inches, the books can be easily carried in a large pocket or small backpack. This is clearly done to allow readers to view similar species opposite each other.
And now we enter into a family of birds more or less unknown to non-birders. And truth told, over the years they’ve been something of a square peg for ornithologists too, not fitting precisely into any of the known families of birds. A Family of Little Grebes – YC Lee, Bird Ecology Study Group.
This is the first identification guide that I know of that covers Mexico (technically NorthAmerica but rarely included in North American raptor guides) and Central America. Like Peterson’s Hawks of NorthAmerica, 2nd edition (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), which Clark co-authored with Brain K. klak-klak, keeear!,
I mention all of this because we in NorthAmerica, especially the southern part of NorthAmerica, have storks too. The Stork family has roots all the way back to the Paleogene, 40-50 million years ago, and while storks are epic aerialists, capable of covering long distances, an ocean might be too much to ask.
The Trogon family (and order, since the order only includes one family) is quite widespread, being found in all the tropical (and some subtropical) regions of the world. So far, one third of my weekly outings have involved trogon sightings, with their distinctive calls being heard on a few other trips. Those are good numbers.
It sports the intense purple back and head of its close relative, the Purple Martin , which is found in much of NorthAmerica (summer) and South America (winter). Motmots definitely make up one of the bird world’s glamour families. The Orange-breasted Bunting is one of Mexico’s most beautiful endemics.
It breeds across much of NorthAmerica, is present year-round in the Caribbean, northern Central America, and the west coast of northern South America, and in winter is found across the rest of Central America. By the next day, when I returned, the entire Killdeer family had vacated the premises.
They portray the nesting cycles of Mallard, Red-tailed Hawk, and American Robin, illustrating the various ways in which birds create families. Do they have families too and do they take care of them? Some of the chapters focus on a specific bird, most are about bird families like hawks, tanagers, wrens, etc.,
Guiding aside, Howell is a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences and the author of many books, including Petrels, Albatrosses, and Storm-Petrels of NorthAmerica (Princeton). Howell and Fabrice Schmitt: both of them are international bird tour leaders with WINGS.
Many Neotropical families and genera have some of their northernmost members here, such as the spinetails ( Rufous-breasted Spinetail ), Tangara tanagers ( Azure-rumped Tanager ), and guans ( Horned Guan ). This is a fascinating area of transition. In short, the mountain birding in Honduras promised a slew of cool new birds.
In many ways the weaver family is for Africa are similar beasts to the pseudowarblers of NorthAmerica (sometimes called wood-warblers). If anything, some of the weavers take being gaudy to levels unimagined by America’s ‘weavers’, especially when you consider the widowbirds, bishops and malimbes.
I have been a fan of the Kaufman Guides since I bought the Field Guide to Butterflies of NorthAmerica , for a birds and butterflies trip to Colorado. It is the perfect reference source for the family on a trip or living in New England. It is the perfect field guide for the beginning naturalist.
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