BirdWatching Field of View

Friday photos: Coquettes

jkuczynski — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:07:00 GMT

Few hummingbirds are as fancy as showy coquettes. Colorful, crested, frilled, tufted, and oh so festive, they are jewels of Central and South America. We found the photos below in our online galleries.

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Read about the many other collections of bird photos we’ve featured on our blog.

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Last week’s Friday photos: Northern Hawk Owls

Festive Coquette: This bird, photographed by Rodolfo Eller in Ubatuba, São Paulo, Brazil, seems to be showing off its dotted cheek tufts. It occurs across much of South America.

Frilled Coquette: Rodolfo Eller photographed this bird as well, in Resende, Rio de Janeiro. Frilled Coquette is found only in Brazil.

Tufted Coquette: Spectacular red-topped Tufted Coquette occurs across northern South America, and it’s a highlight of every trip to the Asa Wright Nature Centre on the island of Trinidad, where IPMCanada snapped this photo.

Rufous-crested Coquette: This photo, taken in Moyobamba, Peru, by Guia Calles, shows that a crest can sometimes look like a crown.

Black-crested Coquette: This streaked beauty is native to Central, not South, America (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico). Bump took the photo at the Hanging Bridges near La Fortuna, Costa Rica.

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Last week’s Friday photos: Northern Hawk Owls

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9 Whooping Cranes will be released on Alabama refuge

Matt Mendenhall — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:13:00 GMT

Nine young Whooping Cranes that flew from Wisconsin to Alabama behind ultralight planes last fall will not be led to refuges in Florida but instead will be released on Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge near Decatur, Alabama.

(Right: An Operation Migration ultralight pilot leads Whooping Cranes. Photo by rowrlm)

In December, the birds and the crew from Operation Migration who lead them south arrived in northwest Alabama. They could not proceed farther due to 10 days of weather delays, and then most of the crew took a break for Christmas. Around the same time, a dispute over federal rules regulating pilot pay grounded the operation into January. On January 9, the Federal Aviation Administration granted a waiver, giving the pilots the go-ahead to complete the migration.

But the weather again did not cooperate. The birds and planes were not able to proceed, and on the few good days they had for flying, the cranes would not stay with the planes. So instead of continuing to attempt flights into February, the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership has decided to transport the birds by truck 70 miles to the Wheeler refuge.

The move may happen tomorrow, or "as soon as humanly possible," says Liz Condie, communications director of Operation Migration.

At Wheeler, the birds will be housed temporarily in one of OM's top-netted travel pens. Handlers need to attach permanent bands to the cranes' legs. After a few days of acclimation to their new surroundings, the birds most likely will be released onto the refuge, she says.

Five adult Whoopers and two juveniles from the direct-autumn-release project are currently on the refuge, and approximately 10,000 Sandhill Cranes have spent the winter there as well. WCEP officials believe the young cranes will fly back to Wisconsin in March, when the other birds in the eastern population migrate north. —Matt Mendenhall, Associate Editor

In other news about Whooping Cranes:

A crane died after being found with a broken leg in western Indiana

As many as five Whoopers are spending the winter in central Kansas

The Whooping Crane made a top-10 list of species most at risk due to natural-gas and oil development

Ivory-billed Woodpecker is extinct, say two teams of researchers

Matt Mendenhall — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:50:00 GMT

Two groups of scientists studying museum specimens and sightings of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker have reached the same disappointing conclusion: The iconic bird is extinct. Each team described their findings in papers in the February 2012 issue of the journal Conservation Biology.

The first team, led by biologist Nicholas Gotelli of the University of Vermont, studied 239 Ivory-bill specimens collected from 1853 to 1932. The researchers concluded that the chance that the species persists today is 0.0064 percent. Said another way, the odds of finding a living Ivory-bill are less than 1 in 15,625.

(Right: John James Audubon painted the Ivory-billed Woodpecker after collecting specimens. In Birds of America, he described the species as "common.")

Gotelli and his colleagues also considered whether additional searches would improve the probability of discovering the Ivory-bill. They evaluated evidence from searches conducted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in 2006-07 “at four sites deemed to be among the most promising for relictual populations” of the bird: the Congaree River in South Carolina; the Choctawhatchee River in Florida; the Pearl River in Louisiana and Mississippi; and the Pascagoula River in Mississippi.

The Cornell team searched for Ivory-bills and censused all the bird species at each site, counting a total of more than 31,000 individuals of more than 55 species. The numbers of species and individuals the Cornell group encountered can help answer the question of whether further searches are warranted, Gotelli writes. His paper defines “a practical stopping rule for deciding when to abandon the search in a particular site.” It’s a question of assessing the costs of conducting searches with the potential reward of finding one more species.

“A simple, empirical stopping rule is to stop searching when each observed species is represented by at least two individuals,” Gotelli writes. The formula means that further searches at the Congaree River site are not warranted because the Cornell team reported observing more than 15,000 birds, and each of the 56 species it reported were found at least twice. The birds seen and heard at the other three locations included a handful of species encountered only once, but, Gotelli writes, “the probability that the next individual censused would represent a new species was very low.”

Gotelli’s specimen analysis also considered when the Ivory-bill would have gone extinct based on hypothetical population sizes from 1929 to 1932. A population of 100 birds would have lasted no longer than 1980, and a population of 1,000 birds would have gone extinct by 1996. To have survived until 2008, Gotelli suggests the population would have had to be 50,000 in 1932. Ivory-bill expert James Tanner, in his seminal report The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, estimated that the late 1930s population was in fact 22 birds.

(Left: Ivory-bill specimens displayed in a Massachusetts museum, 2007. Photo by Matt Mendenhall)

A second team of investigators, led by Andrew Solow, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, analyzed 29 so-called uncertain sightings of the species since 1946, including headline-generating reports from the Pearl River in 1999, Cache River NWR in Arkansas in 2004 and 2005, and the Choctawhatchee River in 2005. Solow's paper describes a statistical method that “is the first to treat uncertain sightings in a formal way, neither simply excluding them nor simply treating them as valid.” Solow’s group concludes that “the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is extinct,” but the researchers don’t provide an estimate for when extinction occurred.

The new papers follow three studies published in 2010 that also found the species is almost certainly extinct. They estimated extinction to have occurred by 1948, 1965, and, if recent controversial sightings were accepted, 2010.

Gotelli says his team and Solow’s worked independently but reached a similar conclusion.

“It is easy enough for skeptics to pick apart a single statistical analysis,” he says. “Statistical analysis of non-experimental data is, after all, an indirect form of inference, and the results always depend on the assumptions of the model and the kind of data that are used. But in this case, you have two independent teams that are using different data sets (for the historical analysis, we excluded everything except for valid, dated, geo-referenced specimens, whereas Solow's analysis included other kinds of observations, such as photographs) and completely different statistical models, but they arrive at the same qualitative conclusion (persistence is improbable). These analyses are also consistent with earlier statistical studies published by Chris Elphick, Dave Roberts, and other colleagues. Taken collectively, the results of these multiple independent investigations make a powerful case that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is extinct.”

I asked two well-known Ivory-bill searchers, Jerome A. Jackson and Bobby Harrison, for their reactions to Gotelli and Solow’s papers.

Jackson (right), a professor and the former Whitaker Eminent Scholar in Science at Florida Gulf Coast University, is the author of In Search of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker and a June 2002 Birder's World article, "The Truth Is Out There." In 2006, he famously referred to Cornell’s claims about sightings in Arkansas as "faith-based ornithology."

"I think their conclusions are fairly sound and their approaches interesting and complementary," Jackson says of Gotelli and Solow. "Both have to be taken at face value and with the understanding that assumptions of other factors remaining constant over time simply are not met. Lots of things change over time: the number of competent scientists/birders in the field, the quality of optics, accessibility of habitat, etc. That's the weakness in such modeling.

"Other factors, if added in to these studies, might suggest an even higher probability of extinction," he adds. "For both studies, I think there is a social/psychological factor involved — all of those sightings in the 1960s and again in 2004-2005 were not independent, and following an initial report each time, later sightings were certainly influenced by earlier ones. People see what they want to see or what they believe to be out there."

Harrison (left) is a nature photographer and professor of photography at Oakwood University in Alabama. Along with kayaker Gene Sparling and Living Bird Editor Tim Gallagher, Harrison claimed to have seen an Ivory-bill in Arkansas in 2004. Their sighting spurred the Cornell Lab to launch a large search and to report in the journal Science that the bird was still alive.

“They can do all the math they want, but that doesn’t negate what I’ve seen,” Harrison says of the recent papers. “I have seen Ivory-bills six times and have seen at least two different birds.”

Still, he doesn’t blame anyone for not believing his reports. “If I hadn’t seen them myself, I may have problems believing as well.” He said his last sighting was in 2008, and he continues to search, hoping for definitive video or photographic proof. —Matt Mendenhall, Associate Editor

See a map and descriptions of 21 Ivory-bill sightings from 1944 to 2004

Read our 2007 interview with Bobby Harrison

See a list of the articles we’ve published in print and online about the search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker

Friday photos: Northern Hawk Owl

jkuczynski — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:50:00 GMT

Of the 19 species of owl that breed in North America. Four of them -- Snowy Owl, Northern Hawk Owl, Great Gray Owl, and Boreal Owl -- are northerners. Today we’re showcasing reader photos of the yellow-eyed, finely barred, and very cool Northern Hawk Owl. The five pictures below came from our photo galleries.

Submit your photos to our galleries.

See photos of Snowy Owls.

Read how owls migrate.

Read about the many other collections of bird photos we’ve featured on our blog.

See the contents of our February 2012 issue, on newsstands now.

Last week’s Friday photos: Great places to go birding

Alert: Ted Busby came across this tail-raising owl in Ontario. It stayed in the area for most of the winter.

Snow stance: It was dark and snowy when newfoundlander61 snapped this photo of an owl on Amherst Island, south of Millhaven, Ontario.

Itch: This owl was using its large foot to adjust a few feathers. Alaskabirdwatcher took the photo in Alaska.

Close-up: RichardDmann photographed this owl from his parents’ kitchen window. The bird was perched in a spruce tree 30 feet away.

Lookout: Many birders enjoyed this owl. Tfordcan photographed it as it balanced on a tree in Regina, Saskatchewan.

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Last week’s Friday photos: Great places to go birding

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Prepare for spring by planning and building birdhouses

Chuck Hagner — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:30:00 GMT

When winter temperatures dip to season lows and finches that will breed in the far north dominate our attention at our feeding stations, it can be painful to think too hard about spring. Gardeners find it therapeutic to pore through seed catalogs. Birdwatchers who want some escapist fun may open field guides and study warblers or shorebirds long in advance of their actual arrival. If we get inspired to work on a bird-attracting project, it usually involves setting out new feeders or shoveling up seed shells. But this is the right time to start one project in anticipation of spring -- planning and building birdhouses.

The first step is to assess what birds you can reasonably expect to attract in your backyard habitat. The most perfect box won’t attract a chickadee if you live in a little house on the prairie. Bluebirds need large openings such as an orchard or a large pasture would afford -- they won’t visit a little birdhouse in the big woods. You may already have a good idea of what birds you could attract. If not, members of a local birding club or a knowledgeable person at a local bird-feeding store may be very helpful.

Birdhouses of all colors, shapes, sizes, and materials are easily found on the Internet. Unfortunately, a great many of these are intended to appeal to uninformed people, not birds. Metal and cheap plastics are inappropriate building materials for songbird nestboxes -- they transfer heat and cold too readily. Perches beneath entrance holes are very attractive to House Sparrows, but native birds don’t need them. Even if you are like me, with a soft spot for House Sparrows and their cheep cheep cheep-ing, it’s not a good idea to subsidize them -- they compete aggressively against Purple Martins, bluebirds, and other cavity nesters that face too many problems as it is. And European Starlings can wreak havoc for nesting woodpeckers and other cavity nesters.

If you like working with wood, an excellent source of birdhouse plans with easy-to-follow directions and a wealth of tips about how to place them to attract and be most beneficial for target species is Carrol L. Henderson’s book Woodworking for Wildlife, published by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and available through bookstores everywhere. Although the book focuses on birds of the upper Midwest, much of the information is relevant just about anywhere.

Several researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology are studying chickadees and have their best success attracting and keeping track of nesting chickadees using the “nest tubes” favored by chickadee researchers in many places. These are built from PVC pipes. (A Cornell nest tube is above. At right, chickadee eggs nestle inside a nest tube.) The plans Cornell researchers use are available on the Lab’s website. Daniel Mennill at the University of Windsor offers a slightly different plan.

If you use either of these plans, make sure you drill ventilation holes. You’ll have your best luck attracting chickadees if you fill the box with clean wood shavings for them to excavate.

If you start planning your nest boxes now, they’ll be ready to set up in time for this year’s nesting. Temperatures may be frigid right now, but planning for nesting birds may be just the thing to warm our hearts. -- Laura Erickson, Contributing Editor

Laura Erickson writes the column "Attracting Birds" in every issue of BirdWatching Magazine.

Read Laura's article about feeding chickadees to help them survive the winter.

Read more about Laura Erickson.

See the contents of our February 2012 issue, on newsstands now.

Friday photos: Great places to go birding

jkuczynski — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:13:00 GMT

One of the best things about birdwatching is getting to visit beautiful places. The amazing scenes below are examples. Visitors to our website submitted them to our People and Places gallery. We hope you enjoy them!

Submit your photos to our galleries.

Read about the many other collections of bird photos we’ve featured on our blog.

See the contents of our February 2012 issue, on newsstands now.

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Last week’s Friday photos: Thrashers

Montana: MiaM took this serene early-morning shot in Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. She was in the lower lake in the Centennial Valley.

Wisconsin: This monument in Wyalusing State Park commemorates the last Passenger Pigeon in Wisconsin, shot in Babcock in September 1899. Jjreiter took the photo.

Wyoming: This Common Raven opened the zipper on a snowmobiler’s backpack to look for lunch! Online member Light in the Valley took the photo at Fountain Paint Pots in Yellowstone National Park.

Texas: Jburd stopped to take this shot of the sun setting over Sabine Pass, bordering Jefferson County, Texas, and Cameron Parish, Louisiana.

Florida: Viera Wetlands, near Merritt Island south of Titusville, never seems to disappoint birders. Online member Wahoo Woman snapped this image.

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Last week’s Friday photos: Thrashers

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Friday photos: Thrashers

jkuczynski — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 21:38:00 GMT

Of the five thrashers pictured below, only Brown breeds east of the Mississippi. The other four -- Long-billed, Sage, Curve-billed, and California -- are old friends who make us feel at home in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and other western states. We picked the photos from our online galleries.

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Read about the many other collections of bird photos we’ve featured on our blog.

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Last week’s Friday photos: Black-capped Chickadees

Brown Thrasher: This fluffed-up bird was grooming in a tree when Helena snapped its photo.

Long-billed Thrasher: Online member Wahoo Woman photographed this thrasher as it was about to take a drink in South Texas.

Sage Thrasher: This boldly marked beauty was photographed in northern Utah by MiaM.

Curve-billed Thrasher: This bird and its mate were building a two-story nest in a cholla cactus. Jaygee1 took the photo in Tucson, Arizona.

California Thrasher: RLewis0727 found this bird singing at Sweeney Ridge in San Mateo County, California.

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Last week’s Friday photos: Black-capped Chickadees

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Operation Migration, Whooping Cranes may fly again on Thursday

Matt Mendenhall — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:17:00 GMT

An Operation Migration ultralight pilot leads Whooping Cranes. Photo by rowrlm

The Federal Aviation Administration announced today that it has granted an exemption to Operation Migration that will allow pilots to continue to aid the Whooping Crane migration. The agency posted the news on its Facebook page.

"Normally, the FAA limits light sport aircraft and pilots to personal flights without compensation," wrote the FAA. "Because the operation is in 'mid-migration,' the FAA is granting a one-time exemption so the migration can be completed. The FAA will work with Operation Migration to develop a more comprehensive, long-term solution."

OM, on its Facebook page, thanked the public for its support; many birders and crane enthusiasts had posted messages in the last week asking the agency to grant an exemption to a rule governing pilot pay.

Joe Duff, OM's chief executive officer and lead pilot, told me the news is a "relief so the birds don't have to be held up any longer." He also noted the exemption is valid through the end of March.

He said the pilots and ground crew will now reassemble in Alabama and will be ready to fly in a few days. "It looks like the earliest day for decent weather is Thursday," he added. --Matt Mendenhall, Associate Editor

January 5: Cranes spend 24th day grounded in Alabama because of FAA pilot-pay rule

'Certain persons of interest' being pursued in latest Indiana Whooping Crane shooting

Matt Mendenhall — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:45:00 GMT

Whooping Crane 6-05 stands in a field in southern Indiana while crane 37-09 forages. The photo was taken December 29, 2011, the day before 6-05 was found dead of a gunshot. Photo by Dan Kaiser

Yesterday I wrote about the delay in this year’s ultralight-led Whooping Crane migration. While we wait to hear the outcome of that case, we’re also keeping tabs on the latest shooting of a Whooping Crane — the eighth in the last year.

Law-enforcement officers in Indiana are pursuing “certain persons of interest” in the December 30 shooting death of a Whooping Crane in Jackson County, in south-central Indiana, said Phil Nale, a conservation officer with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.

Nale has been working overtime investigating the crime, and now he has been joined by Special Agent Buddy Shapp of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Shapp investigated the November 2009 shooting of a crane in Vermilion County, Indiana.

Yesterday, the state’s Turn In a Poacher program announced it is offering a $7,500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the crane’s death.

TIP launched the Whooping Crane Fund with a $2,500 commitment, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service immediately matched it with a $2,500 donation. The Humane Society of the United States and its Humane Society Wildlife Trust Fund also added $2,500.

“Whether the shooting was accidental or not, responsible sportsmen and women of Indiana will not tolerate the thoughtless killing of a protected species,” said Doug Featherston, a TIP board member and representative of Indiana Quail Unlimited. “The TIP Citizens Advisory Board has unanimously decided to offer a reward 10 times the normal amount to motivate citizens to come forward with any information that will lead to the quick arrest and expeditious prosecution of the perpetrator."

The U.S. Attorney’s Office of Southern Indiana has offered its full support in the prosecution of the individuals responsible for killing the crane. The attorney’s office took heat from birders and crane enthusiasts last year when the young killers of the bird in Vermilion County received the most lenient penalty ever in a crane shooting.

Contributions to the reward fund can be made by sending a check payable to Indiana Whooping Crane Fund, c/o Lt. William Browne, DNR Law Enforcement, 402 W. Washington St., Room W255-D, Indianapolis, IN 46204.

In the course of chasing leads in the shooting, Nale said he has also been educating people about the differences between Sandhill Cranes, which are abundant in southern Indiana in winter, and endangered Whooping Cranes. They number approximately 104 in the eastern flyway and just under 600 in the world. Even hunters who know the differences between the species, however, cannot hunt Sandhills in Indiana. It's illegal. So far only Kentucky allows hunting of Sandhills east of the Mississippi River.

“When I say they [the Whooping Cranes] are really rare, that doesn’t always get people’s attention because they’re familiar with Sandhills, but when I tell them that each of these birds has been banded by the federal government, that gets their attention,” he said.

The crane that was shot was known as 6-05. It was a male that was part of the 19-bird ultralight class of 2005. According to Journey North, in recent years it had spent time with a variety of birds in the eastern population, including several from the direct-autumn-release class of 2009. In the days before the shooting, 6-05 had been with crane 37-09, a female from that group. The two were not yet considered a mated pair because the female is too young to breed successfully.

Dan Kaiser, a volunteer monitor and occasional tracker with the International Crane Foundation’s tracking team, found 6-05’s carcass a few miles northwest of the town of Crothersville. Dan is also an accomplished photographer of cranes and other birds; we’ve published a few of his photos of Whoopers in past issues of Birder’s World/BirdWatching.

He told me he found the bird in a cornfield about 200 yards off a road.

“I had been monitoring the Whoopers for some time. Normally I check on them once a week or so, however, I am off work due to carpal tunnel surgery. So it's been pretty frequent that I am able to do the monitoring. There were five in Jackson County at the time, including the pair 37-09 and 6-05.

“On Friday, December 30, I found 37-09 without 6-05. This immediately raised an alarm as they are always together. In fact, I had seen them together the previous day. 37-09 was trying to approach another pair: 41-09 and 32-09. They kept chasing her off. After several attempts to join the pair, who were in a cornfield, 37-09 flew off and I followed, hoping to find 6-05.

“6-05 had a weak transmitter, so it took about five hours before I found him. His transmitter was so weak, I had to be within a quarter-mile to get a signal. Ironically, he was only about three-quarters of a mile from 41-09 and 32-09, where the hunt began.”

Anyone with information about the shooting should call TIP at 1-800-TIP-IDNR (800-847-4367). —Matt Mendenhall, Associate Editor

Read about the October 2011 shootings of two Whooping Cranes in Louisiana.

See a video from the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership about crane shootings.

See a video from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service titled “Be Sure Before You Shoot.”

Friday photos: Black-capped Chickadees

jkuczynski — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:27:00 GMT

Black-capped Chickadee is a curious species and can be a lot of fun to watch at your feeders. Take a look at these fabulous photos from our online galleries of the birds eating, landing, and just hanging around.

Submit your photos to our galleries.

Read about the many other collections of bird photos we’ve featured on our blog.

See the contents of our February 2012 issue.

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Last week’s Friday photos: Northern Cardinals

Num num! This chickadee was filling up on sunflower seeds in krzirsh’s backyard in Lemont, Illinois.

Spread ’em! You can see every flight feather on this chickadee photographed by paddler. He took the image in his Hibbing, Minnesota, backyard.

Good eats: Cooperii found this chickadee feasting on a sunflower on his family farm in Cabot, Vermont.

Who’s there? RichardDmann snapped this photo of an inquisitive bird peering into his camera lens at Hawrelak Park in Edmonton, Alberta.

Precision: This bird had its landing gear ready, and May Haga had her camera ready to take its picture just before the bird landed on a branch.

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Last week’s Friday photos: Northern Cardinals

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Cranes spend 24th day grounded in Alabama because of FAA pilot-pay rule

Matt Mendenhall — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:59:00 GMT

Operation Migration, the group that has taught young Whooping Cranes a migration route from Wisconsin to Florida for the past 11 years, has voluntarily grounded its current migration in northwest Alabama while it waits for the Federal Aviation Administration either to grant or deny its application for a waiver to a rule that governs pilot pay.

The group’s attorney, Charles R. Barnett, made the request in late December after a complaint from former OM pilot Chris Gullikson spurred the FAA to investigate the group and its pilots. The ultralight planes OM uses to lead young cranes from Wisconsin to Florida are licensed as light sport aircraft, and ultralight pilots are licensed under FAA’s sport-pilot rule. It states that sport pilots may not be compensated to support the operations of a business, but OM pays its pilots.

Joe Duff, OM’s lead pilot and chief executive officer, said the group’s pilots are hired and paid for other responsibilities associated with the migrations — building pens, monitoring birds, maintaining aircraft — and that they volunteer their time as pilots. According to a statement posted on OM’s website today, the explanation satisfied an FAA Flight Safety District Office (FSDO) office that investigated OM’s flight operations in 2010. “We were told by the FSDO director that ‘no further action would be taken,’” writes David Sakrison, head of OM’s board of directors. “Based on that ruling, we began the 2011 season.”

In November, after the 2011 migration had begun, the FAA sent letters of investigation to each pilot. When the group arrived at its regular Christmas-break stopover in Franklin County, Alabama, it halted the migration in hopes the waiver would be granted over the holiday period. FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford said the agency has received the waiver application and is considering it but could not say when a decision would be made. Today Duff said he’s hoping for a ruling within the next week.

The pilots were notified yesterday that they will not have their licenses suspended or revoked for past flights with the birds. The issue now is whether they can fly with the birds in the future.

“The rule wasn’t written to stop a wildlife reintroduction project,” Duff said. “It’s designed to prevent a non-profit or a church group from offering flights as fund-raising tools.” FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Cory also noted that “only commercial pilots can fly for hire.”

“Maybe we should have applied for a waiver sooner,” Duff said, “but based on the best advice I had, we felt it wasn’t necessary.”

Gullikson declined to be interviewed about his complaint, and FAA spokesman Lunsford said the agency cannot release the complaint because the investigation is ongoing. Gullikson joined OM in 2005 as a pilot and crane handler and continued flying with the group through early 2010.

Meanwhile, the nine juvenile cranes OM is leading south this year have flown just over half of the 1,285-mile journey. They are being kept in OM’s traveling pen and are being cared for as always by crane handlers. So far, they’ve been in northwest Alabama for 24 days. The period may sound like a long time, but Duff said it’s not unprecedented. In recent years, the birds have been held in a pen before completing the last leg of the migration to Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge in Florida to prevent territorial older birds in the population from harming the juveniles.

Duff said the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership’s rearing and release team is working this week on a “Plan B” in the event that FAA denies OM’s bid for a waiver. He said WCEP could decide to transport the birds about 50 miles from their current location to Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge, a 35,000-acre bird sanctuary between Decatur and Huntsville where they would eventually be released. Or they could be trucked in crates to the two Florida refuges — Chassohowitzka and St. Marks — that they were being led to. If they do not fly with ultralights for almost half the trip to Florida, however, it’s unknown if the young birds could find their way back to Wisconsin in spring.

In his petition, OM’s attorney Barnett noted that time is of the essence. “The current migration is still over 600 miles from its destination and so far has expended approximately $650,000.00 in contributions from private citizens,” he wrote. “Releasing the young Whooping Cranes at the halfway point would jeopardize the project and the welfare of the birds.” —Matt Mendenhall, Associate Editor

Photo: An ultralight flies with Whooping Cranes at Necedah NWR in Wisconsin. Photo by Matt Mendenhall

Read past blog articles about Whooping Cranes.

Read our 2007 behind-the-scenes account of the crane recovery project.

Countdown: Our 10 most popular blog posts in 2011

Chuck Hagner — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 17:35:00 GMT

Warblers, owls, hummingbirds, eagles, mist-netting, new books -- we covered that and lots more on this blog in 2011. Below are the 10 most popular stories of the year.

10. Checklist math: How four Yellow-rumped Warblers equal one Butter-butt
Published June 15, 2011, at 10:12 AM
Around the time the American Ornithologists' Union was considering whether to split the Yellow-rumped Warbler into two, three, or maybe even four species, I explained not only how the white-throated Myrtle Yellow-rump differs from yellow-throated Audubon's but also how northern Audubon's warblers look different from southern Audubon's (the so-called Black-fronted Warbler of Mexico and Goldman's Warbler of Guatemala). Read this post.

Read how the AOU later thoroughly reorganized the wood-warbler family tree.

9. Ask BirdWatching Magazine: "Do owls migrate?"
Published August 11, 2011, at 11:47 AM
In response to a question posed by reader David Ruehl of Sanford, Florida, I described what we know, and what we don't know, about the annual movements of the 19 owls that breed in North America. Read this post.

8. Friday photos: Five favorite hummingbirds
Published June 17, 2011, at 11:05 AM
Editorial Associate Julie Kuczynski prepares our weekly Friday Photos features. This one, showcasing excellent photos of Black-chinned, Ruby-throated, Calliope, Broad-tailed, and gleaming Rufous Hummingbirds, was the most popular of the whole year. Read this post.

7. Beyond the webcam: Open water and plentiful food beckon to Decorah Bald Eagles
Published July 2, 2011, at 1:20 PM
After the Bald Eagles had left their much-observed nest in Decorah, Iowa, I attempted to predict just where the young birds might fly when they finally left the nest tree. I did this by describing where other young eagles from other nests went during their "period of great exploration." Read this post.

6. An interview with Richard Crossley, author of the new ID guide
Published March 2, 2011, at 12:57 PM
Shortly after publication of Richard Crossley's much bally-hooed bird-ID guide, we asked the author to tell us about it. We asked where the idea for the book came from, how much he had altered the photos he included, whether he was able to find photos of every bird in every plumage, and other questions, including whether he thinks American birders are inferior to English birders. Read this interview.

5. How safe is mist netting? First large-scale study into bird-capture technique finds little risk to birds
Published June 29, 2011, at 6:00 PM
Birds are rarely injured or killed by mist nets. That determination was the result of an important study published at the end of June in Methods in Ecology and Evolution, the journal of the British Ecological Society. With this blog post, Associate Editor Matt Mendenhall became one of the first to report it. Read this post.

4. New research: Archaeopteryx was not a bird
Published July 27, 2011, at 12:00 PM
In another dramatic post on a topic with foundation-shifting ramifications, Matt described not only a fossil bird that, incredibly, is about five million years older than Archaeopteryx, the so-called first bird, but also why researchers, just as incredibly, no longer even believe that Archaeopteryx was a bird. Read this post.

3. Kenn Kaufman describes his new Field Guide to Advanced Birding
Published April 6, 2011, at 2:11 PM
Kenn Kaufman, one of our contributing editors, published a long-awaited revision of his 1990 classic in 2011. Shortly before the guide appeared in bookstores, I asked him not only to compare the two guides but also to tell how birding had changed, for better and for worse, in the intervening 20 years. The resulting interview revealed as much about publishing, birding, and the author himself as it did about his excellent new book. Read this interview.

2. Killers of Whooping Crane in Indiana receive probation, $1 fine
Published April 19, 2011, at 1:31 PM
Shortly after the sentencing of the adult man and juvenile who shot and killed a Whooping Crane in Indiana in 2009, Matt reported the unsettling news that the shooters' punishment would amount to nothing more than a slap on the wrist. The crane killed had been the first female in the eastern migratory population to hatch a chick and raise it to independence. Read this post.

1. Oldest known wild bird returns to Midway Atoll to raise chick
Published March 8, 2011, at 1:09 PM
It's not often that you get to read about the oldest known wild bird in the Northern Hemisphere. In March on our blog, you could do that and see a photo as well. No wonder Matt's story about Wisdom, a 60-year-old Laysan Albatross, was the most popular blog post of the entire year! Read this post.

Read how Wisdom survived the tsunami caused by the Japan earthquake.

From all of us at BirdWatching magazine, thank you for reading, and Happy New Year! -- Chuck Hagner, Editor

Friday photos: Northern Cardinals in the snow

jkuczynski — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:06:00 GMT

We love to see the eye-popping red of a Northern Cardinal against an all-white snowy backdrop here in southeastern Wisconsin. You too? Readers sent the redbird photos below to our photo galleries. Please send us your shots!

Submit your photos to our galleries.

Read about the many other collections of bird photos we’ve featured on our blog.

See the contents of our February 2012 issue.

If you just got a new Kindle Fire or if you have a Barnes & Noble Nook Color, Nook Tablet, or Nook app for Android or iPad, you can find the February issue available for those devices.

Last week’s Friday photos: Winter birds

Winter perch: You can almost smell the pine in this photo of a male Northern Cardinal. JimD1 snapped the image.

Two of a feather: These red beauties were sitting together on a cold winter day in Melissa H’s backyard.

Lady snowbird: The snow was blowing when BigChuck saw this female holding fast to a small stump in his backyard.

Good hair day: Online member Yia Yia Birder took this shot of an alert cardinal with its crest raised in Roanoke, Virginia.

All together: Roy Neher found these cardinals on a branch in his backyard during a snowstorm. They were waiting their turn at his feeders.

Share your photos!

Visit our photo galleries.

Read about the many other collections of bird photos we’ve featured on our blog.

Last week’s Friday photos: Winter birds

“Like” us on Facebook!

We occasionally choose our Friday Photos subjects by polls conducted on Facebook. Why don’t you join the fun? “Like” us on Facebook.

Friday photos: Winter birds

jkuczynski — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:00:00 GMT

The hardy birds below don’t mind the cold. You may spot one in your backyard this winter, so keep a lookout! If you see one, please take its picture! Then post your photo in our online photo galleries. The snaps below are from the galleries.

Submit your photos to our galleries.

Read about the many other collections of bird photos we’ve featured on our blog.

See the contents of our February 2012 issue.

If you just got a new Kindle Fire or if you have a Barnes & Noble Nook Color, Nook Tablet, or Nook app for Android or iPad, you can find the February issue available for those devices.

Read about our newest contributing editor -- Laura Erickson.

Read about the new writers of our bird migration column -- the project leaders of eBird.

Last week’s Friday photos: Birds in snow

Red Crossbill: gbotello found this brightly colored bird in his backyard in Flagstaff, Arizona, after snow had fallen last February.

Black-capped Chickadee: This chickadee posed proudly on a snowy evergreen bough in LindaP57’s backyard.

Pine Siskin: bellou spied this Pine Siskin as it waited to feed at a feeder in Saint-Redempteur, Quebec. It had puffed up its feathers to keep warm.

Common Redpoll: When this handsome redpoll stopped by online member chickadee.ca’s backyard, the temp was -40°C.

White-winged Crossbill: Look close: The upper mandible of this White-winged Crossbill crosses to the left of its lower mandible. Ted Busby found the bird at the Mill of Kintail in Almonte, Ontario.

Share your photos!

Visit our photo galleries.

Read about the many other collections of bird photos we’ve featured on our blog.

Last week’s Friday photos: Birds in snow

“Like” us on Facebook!

We occasionally choose our Friday Photos subjects by polls conducted on Facebook. Why don’t you join the fun? “Like” us on Facebook.

eBird project leaders to write column about bird migration

Chuck Hagner — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:32:00 GMT

Back in April I was delighted to announce a new partnership between this magazine and the American Bird Conservancy. In every issue since, ABC's column "Eye on Conservation" has helped us keep you up to date on a wide assortment of birds of conservation concern: Laysan Albatross on Midway Atoll, Northern Spotted Owl in the Pacific Northwest, Red Knot in Delaware Bay, Cerulean Warbler in the Appalachians, and the Kiwikiu, Palila, Akepa, and other birds in Hawaii. You can find "Eye on Conservation" here.

Now I'm just as happy to announce an additional new partnership. Starting with our February 2012 issue, "On the Move," our regular column about bird migration, will be prepared by Marshall Iliff, Brian Sullivan, and Chris Wood, the three dynamic project leaders of eBird. Until this issue, the column had been written by migration expert Paul Kerlinger.

I'm sure you know about eBird, the real-time online checklist launched in 2002 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society. Gathering the sightings of recreational and professional birdwatchers into a single easy-to-use web-based database, it has quickly become one of the largest biodiversity data resources anywhere. You can read more about how to use eBird, and why you should do so, here.

Read a recent article in PLoS Biology by Iliff, Sullivan, Wood, and others about eBird and citizen science.

In addition to being eBird project leaders, Marshall, Brian, and Chris are also widely published researchers, accomplished tour leaders, and expert birders with their fingers on the pulse of American birding. I'm delighted to be able to share with you their up-to-the-minute insights about the seasonal movements of North America's birds.

Marshall has worked on three state records committees, served as a regional editor for two different regions for the quarterly journal North American Birds, and done ornithological fieldwork across the U.S. and in Mexico. He's even studied migration on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. You may know Marshall as a birding tour leader -- he's guided trips as far away as Kenya for Victor Emanuel Nature Tours -- and he's won a reputation as a formidable Big Day birder who holds all-time records for Maryland and Texas.

Brian has conducted fieldwork throughout North America for the past 20 years, and he's written and consulted on many books and popular and scientific publications on the continent's birds. He is currently working on the forthcoming Princeton Guide to North American Birds. In addition to serving as eBird project leader, he is also the photo editor for the Birds of North America Online and for the journal North American Birds, and he's a talented bird photographer in his own right.

Chris, too, is a leading authority on bird identification and distribution in North America. He's worked as a research associate with the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory and, like Brian, has written and consulted on a wide assortment of popular and scientific literature on North American birds. He too is working on the forthcoming Princeton Guide to North American Birds. When his eBird duties give him a free moment, he leads tours to birding hotspots in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Central America for WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide and works as the regional editor for Colorado and Wyoming for North American Birds. He edits the ABA's online photo quiz and the quiz that appears in Birding, the ABA journal. And, oh yeah, he also holds all-time species-viewing records for the U.S. and state records in Colorado and Texas.

Marshall, Brian, and Chris's first column -- describing three birds you can see in January and February -- will appear in "On the Move" in our February 2012 issue. You can pick it up on newsstands after January 3. -- Chuck Hagner, Editor

Read about Laura Erickson and her new column, Attracting Birds.

See a collection of reader photos of birds in snow.

Read the ABC's column, Eye on Conservation.