Butterflies and Bird Bones

OSU FFW major specializing in wildlife science, naturalist, wildlife artist, and birder. Warning: This blog may contain pictures of dead animals and/or invertebrates.

[todaysbird]

hi !! i'm Chilean and i love birds !! (again)

look at these buff-necked ibises digging for worms! i wonder what makes some of them so pale and others so toasty? couid it be sexual dimorphism, age, season or diet?? or something else??

another pale one!

this one was young and learning how to dig for worms. mud all over the face. also toasty feathers!

the buff-necked ibis is a very pretty bird imo. they also laugh! their sounds are like laughter. the babies kinda sound like a grinder though. they like to stand on YOUR ROOF and you can feel their heavy footsteps on there and hear their grinder babies. very fun birds

Hmmm! They are SO cute, I appreciate the photos. I’ve been dwelling on what could have caused the color range - it’s possible that some of these are the similar Black-faced Ibis, but frankly, my knowledge of Chilean birds is limited. From what I gleaned from frantically Googling “buff-necked ibis color variations -ai” is that juveniles and adults differ in color, but I didn’t find an explanation for the very pale birds. Perhaps it is dietary, or another cause you mentioned? I’d be interested to see if any followers have insights!

[stranger-nature]

According to BOW:

It is polytypic, with a northern paler subspecies and a southern subspecies that together with the Black-faced Ibis of the Andes form a superspecies.

and

Very similar to T. melanopis, but has part of wing white; buffish of breast does not extend so far down neck, and is not crossed by grey band. Immature has head and neck narrowly streaked brown. Race hyperorius has paler neck and less white on wing.

So they are both highly variable across age class and have two subspecies which look different.

[afrotumble]

The symmetry of this turn in the air!

Yellow Warblers (Setophaga petechia) are small, agile birds known for their stunning ‘circle flight’ during nest-building.

These little guys perform a semi-circular flight to mark their territory.

[stranger-nature]

Photo © Glen Noyer, since you didn't bother to attribute it.

This caption is misleading. What is pictured is not a "circle flight" but the result of a rolling shutter used when photographing birds in flight which makes the wings appear distorted and warped. Note the smearing on the wingtips.

The actual "circle flight" Northern Yellow Warblers do is nothing so fanciful. A circle flight is when a male on territory does a direct flight towards a rival at the boundary of their territory, and right before reaching the rival they do a sharp semicircle to return to their perch.

Circle Flight. Termed “circle flight” by Burtt (158); called “circling” by Ficken and Ficken (167). Male flies from perch towards neighboring male or female at territory boundary, then turns away; flight path horizontal and semicircular; performed early season during territory establishment. Of 49 nonvocal encounters by unmated males, 16 included circle flights (167).

(From Birds of the World)

A reminder not to let the "wow cool picture" reaction turn off your critical thinking skills.

[inemberrain]

Absolutely gorgeous little gull from a gull facebook group im in! I just needed to share him with y'all!

[rabbitindisguise]

why is a little gull more surprising??

[stranger-nature]

Little gulls are much rarer than Bonaparte's in Ohio! In the Great Lakes region they breed in southern Ontario on the northern shores of Lake Erie and generally only show up on the southern shores of Lake Erie in the winter in small numbers.

[nemertea]

"I should submit more ebird checklists with counts instead of presence/absence checks, for science."

One day later:

help

[stranger-nature]

YOU WILL ESTIMATE THE NUMBER OF COOTS OR ELSE 🫵

Jokes aside using X is one of the worst things you can do when contributing to eBird besides just making straight up wrong identifications. This is a PSA to always try to estimate even if you are wildly inaccurate I promise you it will be more valuable data than an X count.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

thinking about the time some terf dipshit on twitter said "you weirdos will be saying TREES are a social construct next" and I got nerdsniped and waded in like "trees ARE a social construct. there is no fundamental binary characteristic that separates trees from other plants" and well, I'll spare you the details but the conversation ended with the dipshit yelling "PALM TREES HAVE WOOD" which is hilarious because "wood" actually does have a pretty unambiguous, binary definition and palms in fact do not qualify

[gamebird]

Reality. So much nuance.

[stranger-nature]

I got nerdsniped by the comments so I'm going to make this clear: I'm not sure who started this rumor, but no, palm trees are not grasses. Grasses (Poaceae) and palms (Arecaceae) are both in the monophyletic clade monocots, but this does not make them both grasses.

And yes, "tree" is a social construct just like "fish" is.

[csny]

lesbian of victory. and yea. it’s a animal

[stranger-nature]

I have great news

[babyfoxcollectionthings]

[moniquill]

the father who stepped up.

[stranger-nature]

Female sits on site, gives nest call. Male searches for single twig or stem, sometimes flying > 40 m. Brings material one piece at a time to female, who takes it in her beak and tucks it around her flanks or breast. Procedure is repeated, 1–5 times/min; bouts last 5–20 min, occurring in forenoon for 3–4 d. Nest materials include small twigs, roots, pine needles, straw, leaves, driftwood, seaweed, heavy grass stems, and feathers; nest consists of a cup loosely fashioned from these materials.

(via Birds of the World)

It seems this pigeon has decided this cat is a particularly sexy female pigeon and he needs to present her with sticks so she can build a nest.

[snailkites]

imagine wandering (allegedly unassisted) from Central America to Los Angeles, spending several months getting fed all-you-can-eat raw chicken behind the halal meat shop and Popeyes, having your location leaked to the media, having thousands of birders come gawk at you, going on another jaunt to the LAX airfield, and IMMEDIATELY getting apprehended by the feds and sentenced to live in the zoo. such is the life of the Lomita Popeyes Yellow-headed Caracara

[snailkites]

Red-tailed Comet (Sappho sparganurus)

A brilliant hummingbird belonging to tribe Lesbiini of subfamily Lesbiinae, the "coquette" hummingbirds. Primarily resident in the Andes from central Bolivia south into northern Argentina, as well as on isolated mountains of Córdoba.

Photo: Evelyn Henriquez ML503935561

[stranger-nature]

I see some interesting signs doing field work out in the country.

[snailkites]

(x)

listen, i love honeyeaters as much as the next guy. but why is the Spiny-cheeked Honeyeater Like That.

(x)

👁️👅👁️

[alonglistofbirds]

@stellersjaygould i am asking you about your hatred of clements :)

[stellersjaygould-deactivated202]

Apologies for not getting to this earlier (I was recovering from COVID & also just executive dysfunction innit) but ultimately I would have fewer issues with Clements if it wasn't effectively treated as a global standard due to its use by eBird & Merlin; my main issue with it is that it pretty drastically over-lumps taxa (Clements treats the Dark-capped Bulbul Pycnonotus tricolor as a subspecies of the Common Bulbul P. barbatus, the White-breasted Cormorant Phalacrocorax lucidus as a subspecies of the Great Cormorant P. carbo, the Burchell's Coucal Centropus burchelli as a subspecies of the White-browed Coucal C. superciliosus, the African Hoopoe Upupa africana as a subspecies of the Eurasian Hoopoe U. epops, & the Yellow-billed Kite Milvus aegyptius as a subspecies of the Black Kite M. migrans - the last one is especially egregious since the phylogenetic studies demonstrating that M. aegyptius & M. migrans do not form a monophyletic group are nearly 20 years old at this point*, & the IOC has recognised the Yellow-billed Kite as a species for over a decade). While not necessarily an issue in itself (taxonomies are naturally going to disagree regarding species limits just due to the inherent limitations of attempting to apply a discrete & binaristic taxonomic model to variation that is by nature continuous), the fact that Clements is so egregious about it & contradicts most other & more commonly used taxonomies means that citizen science data from eBird/Merlin or other Clements-based resources are limited in terms of their research utility because observational/occurrence data can't necessarily be trusted in terms of the taxon they actually represent, especially for sympatric taxa (e.g., how many eBird checklists listing sightings of the White-browed Coucal actually refer to Burchell's? How does a study attempting to use eBird data to quantify the range & occurrence of migratory or vagrant Black Kites in Africa & the Middle East distinguish these from much more locally common Yellow-billed Kites?), or as a record of out-of-range or vagrant sightings; it also means that biometric & ecological data such as body size, geographic range, habitat, diet, etc. listed by these resources can't always be taken as representative of the taxon as defined under a non-Clements taxonomy, & any species-level phylogeny using Clements is likely to either be incorrect (as in the case of Milvus kites, in which M. migrans as defined under Clements is paraphyletic) or omit potentially valuable phylogenetic information. Any conclusions or predictions made from studies using Clements-based resources are thus likely to be ultimately (& preventably) weakened in terms of their scientific reliability (or at least rendered non-comparable or non-generalizable to studies using IOC or other taxonomies), while studies may also end up losing out on vast amounts of potentially valuable citizen science data just because the taxon they're investigating isn't recognised or reliably differentiated from another species in eBird or other Clements-based resources.

On a more personal & petty level, I also really hate Clements' tendency to use completely different common names for species than either the IOC or local field guides, & often ones that aren't commonly used or recognised in the local vernacular (literally no hobbyist birder or ornithologist living or working in southern Africa is ever going to refer to the Jacobin Cuckoo as the "Pied Cuckoo", the Gorgeous Bushshrike as the "Four-coloured Bushshrike", or the Black Sparrowhawk as the "Black Goshawk"), which obviously makes things a lot more confusing for birders (& which is likely to only get worse with the new AOS & IOC decision to remove eponyms from species names) - I've been told by a number of people that Merlin is a decent birding resource in Europe & the Americas but virtually unusable in Africa because the taxonomy is just so different to that of the local field guides, & also because the data included for African & I would guess also Asian species tend to be far less complete, comprehensive, & up-to-date or of a much lower resolution than those for American & European species. (I'm not aware of & haven't investigated whether there's any systematic geographic bias in Clements' tendency to lump or split taxa, but I wouldn't be entirely surprised if there was - it might not be a coincidence that the lumped taxa I mentioned above are all African species - & if there is of course it isn't an issue unique to Clements or eBird either; the BirdLife International range maps for a couple of African raptors are straight-up demonstrably wrong). But the naming & lumping issues together obviously create quite a large accessibility barrier for amateur or inexperienced birders in the Global South trying to use eBird & Merlin (as well as making them just fucking annoying to use for more experienced birders), which probably in turn exacerbates the relative lack of checklist & photographic/audio recording data in eBird from Global South countries or for African/Asian endemic species & thus contributes to existing geopolitical bias.

(*Technically going by the major study that is typically cited regarding Milvus phylogenetic relationships (Johnson et al. 2005) the Yellow-billed Kite should be split into two species as extant populations do not form a monophyletic group either; more recent studies I can find [x, x] also seem to support two distinct non-sister lineages within M. aegyptius as currently defined, so it remains to be seen whether taxonomies will be updated in the future to reflect this).

[alonglistofbirds]

absolutely no need to apologise, hope you're feeling better now :)

and thank you for the in depth response! honestly when I first discovered Macaulay Library I assumed the taxonomy was just out of date, so I was surprised to find out it is in fact up-to-date, but with its own, weird system. I mean I know there will always be disagreements in taxonomy but sometimes it feels like Clements its being different for the sake of being different lol. To me its just irritating, I hadn't considered the effect it could have on research.

Clements mostly brought their albatross taxonomy in line with the IOC in their 2023 update (more albatrosses! yay!), but they also renamed the wandering albatross to snowy albatross which struck me as odd. I get that they want to avoid confusion between the former species complex and the current definition after the split, but the IOC has been using wandering albatross to refer to Diomedea exulans only for quite some time now. Doesn't this just make it more confusing? *sigh*

The geographical bias is disheartening but unsurprising :/ Have you noticed any similar issues with the IOC?

anyway you'll be pleased to hear that I have checked my list and can confirm it contains all the birds you mentioned :D I cross reference Clements because of ML, but my list is mostly based on the IOC.

[stellersjaygould-deactivated202]

Yeah, Clements does seem to be out of step with more or less all other commonly accepted taxonomies, which is why it's so irritating that eBird & Merlin insist on using it despite supposedly trying to be a global, centralized platform for ornithological citizen science data. (To their credit, both eBird & the Merlin app do at least appear to allow the option to use alternate/local common names for species where possible; from playing around with the settings I found that changing the language from the default English (United States) to English (South Africa) brings most of the common names in line with southern African field guides, which I suspect either my colleagues who complained about Merlin aren't/weren't aware of or else is a relatively newly-implemented feature, although the over-lumping is still an issue, especially when it means that the common name of a local (sub)species [e.g. Dark-capped Bulbul] is used as an alternate name for the entire lumped taxon [with which it is definitionally not synonymous]; it does also maybe raise the question of why eBird doesn't just use the IOC names & taxonomy or at least make them default for the apps). Re: the Wandering Albatross, I see that the IOC has also adopted the new name supposedly to avoid confusion with the species complex, although this rule doesn't seem necessarily to be applied consistently (e.g. the IOC uses the common name Tropical Boubou for Laniarius major sensu stricto despite this name also referring to the species complex including the Black Boubou L. nigerrimus, the Ethiopian Boubou L. aethiopicus, & the East Coast Boubou L. sublacteus. Interestingly enough, Clements & eBird recognise all four of these as distinct species despite my [possibly now out-of-date] southern African field guides lumping the Tropical Boubou with these other taxa & listing it under the name L. aethiopicus).

& while I can't say I'm aware of any quantitative investigation into geopolitical bias in lumping/splitting in the IOC taxonomy, I also wouldn't be particularly surprised if it exists, if just because biodiversity in Africa & Asia is systematically underestimated due to lower sampling effort & poorer resolution of biodiversity data as a result of the vastly limited infrastructure & funding resources in the Global South as opposed to the Global North; this is an obviously related but separate issue to cases in which the taxonomic, phylogenetic, or biogeographic data for African & Asian taxa [from citizen scientists & ornithologists living or working in Asia/Africa] exist but are just poorly integrated into international data repositories or platforms due to institutional bias or neglect by the international scientific community. (Likewise, while the common names recognised by the IOC seem to be mostly consistent with those used by local institutions or field guides, the IOC also isn't immune to making seemingly arbitrary or unnecessary revisions to common names that contradict with common usage, & of course the nomenclatural decisions reached by an international committee are ultimately dependent on the national & institutional makeup of the committee(s) such that Global South nations with poor representation in these international institutions & bodies are unlikely to have local naming conventions take priority in the case of proposed revisions; the IOC also doesn't typically recognise indigenous names for taxa unless these are anglicised or form commonly accepted English loan words, & makes a point of not recognising ""local"" names in the case of for e.g. Jamaican vernacular (nick)names for native taxa, which is a twofold issue of geopolitical bias against Global South ornithological institutions by the international community & [even within Global South countries] a systemic disregard for indigenous naming systems unless these are granted a sufficient level of formal recognition by [elite, colonial] scientific & academic institutions).

[alonglistofbirds]

ah I didn't realise that the IOC had also updated the name to snowy albatross, well at least they are consistent with each other now. (this led me to discover the v14.1 draft updates page of the IOC website which I didn't know existed! for anyone interested - https://www.worldbirdnames.org/new/updates/english-names/).

The same-name-different-definition thing is incredibly confusing, I got my brain twisted into knots trying to figure this out when cross-checking my original wikipedia list with the IOC, especially as that didn't even have the scientific names to compare.

disapointing that the IOC tends to avoid indigenous names. they are the international ornithological congress after all, why should english always be the default? (rhetorical). I try to include local names in my posts when I come across them, its a shame to miss out on all the brilliant bird names out there!

[stranger-nature]

@stellersjaygould

This is really insightful commentary for me, someone who has only birded in and has never left the US. What do you think of the IOU Working Group Avian Checklists? (https://www.internationalornithology.org/working-group-avian-checklists)

[snailkites]

Big news for bird names: American Ornithological Society to replace eponyms

AOS intends to change all offensive and eponymous (named after people) common names of birds in the USA and Canada.

Renaming these species will be done with involvement of the public and overseen by a new committee made up of ornithologists, social scientists, and communications and taxonomy experts.

AOS will work with the ornithological societies of Central and South America determine who in these regions will maintain stewardship of common English names.

AOS announcement: https://americanornithology.org/about/english-bird-names-project/american-ornithological-society-council-statement-on-english-bird-names

More information under the cut.

How do bird names work? Scientific names (binomials like Zonotrichia albicollis) are set by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. These names are meant to be unique, unchanging, and universally recognized. Common names, on the other hand, are more fluid. The American Ornithological Society is the recognized authority on English-language common names for North American birds, published in their annual Checklist.

The larger context. Ornithologists name birds after people to commemorate those individuals, but this create problems. What do you do when a common name is racist, or when a bird is named after someone who, frankly, sucked? AOS has changed bird names for both of these reasons already.

In 2000 AOS changes the common name of Clangula hyemalis from a racist word for Native women to Long-tailed Duck (although at the time, they denied it was because of "political correctness")

2021: AOS changes the common name of Rhynchophanes mccownii from McCown's Longspur to Thick-billed Longspur. McCown was a Confederate. The push to rename this bird was a flashpoint in the #birdnames4birds movement.

Why not decide one-by-one? Sometimes it's obvious. For example, John James Audubon was a grave-robbing, slave-owning racist; birds such as Audubon's Oriole and Audubon's Shearwater are named after him. Although the National Audubon Society has voted to keep their name ("won't someone consider the branding"), many chapters have changed their names, e.g. the Chicaco Bird Alliance. Other individuals with birds named after them are less well-known or clear-cut in how much they did or did not suck. Removing all eponyms, rather than debating who sucks on a case-by-case basis, will cut down on the arguments.

How will this actually happen? It's not yet clear. Any free-for-all-poll might result in some Birdy McBirdFaces. No timeline either. But it sounds like this really is happening!

[ceramicdove]

Dovekies are genuinely so awesome Look at this thing

[stranger-nature]

Everyone please take a moment to read the Merlin description of this bird

[todaysbird]

went to a place today supposedly really amazing, great, and splendid and known for being absolutely wonderful for birding so I admittedly had some hopes…. aaaand I didn’t see any birds at all unfortunately :/ Until I was leaving, and then I saw two chickens that had been let out of their coop. So…. Success?

Some days are quiet! Try the spot again at a different time maybe?

[stranger-nature]

Hi, I'm a birder and field tech working during summers and I have some tips to share. These may or may not apply to you depending on your general location.

Summer is the hardest (and often most boring) season for birding in most of the Northern Hemisphere. Spring migration is over so diversity is low and resident breeding birds are harder to get eyes on. It can be really dull sometimes. Here's some tips to maximize birding efficiency during the summer:

You want to get out as early as possible, at dawn if you can, and be in place when the dawn chorus starts. Midday is the worst time to go birding, evening is better, and morning is the best. If it sucks hit da bricks and check another location.

Riparian areas and marshes can be pretty productive and the ocean shores can be fruitful year round. Lakes and reservoirs are less productive this time of year so you won't see many gulls or ducks unless you're in higher latitudes, but in general where there is water there will at least be some birds.

Mountain birding can also be very productive during the breeding season, especially if you are in the US. Many species like Red Crossbill and Cerulean Warbler generally prefer high altitudes for breeding.

Deeper into the forest is not necessarily better. Many birds actually prefer the edge habitats of forests.

Check eBird's hotspot map to find spots around you that have been birded recently and see what species are being seen.

There are a lot of factors that go into the relative "birdiness" of an area at any given time. Weather, timing, seasonality, habitat, etc play a big role in finding birds. Try reading about the preferred habitats of birds you want to see and plan your birding trips accordingly. Some birds will frequent one habitat type and not others. Do some experimentation and see what you can find on your own!

[ziggystarling]

I'm doing field work again for the summer in North Carolina so I apologize for the lack of Zig and Co. content. My job this field season focuses on finding and atlasing breeding behaviors in any and all breeding birds in the Piedmont region. Here's an adorable fledgling Tufted Titmouse I found today that I only noticed because it was conspicuously hanging on the side of a tree.

[stranger-nature]

A gorgeous male Rainbow Darter (Etheostoma caeruleum) - Southwest Ohio, 4/23/2023

[stranger-nature]

@headlamprey Yep! This beauty and dozens of other species in my area alone. From darters to stonerollers to dace to shiners, and all you need is a net and a freshwater stream to find them!

I must say, despite the fact that I've lived here all my life I can say that Ohio is one of the least interesting states overall. However, Ohio is extremely biodiverse when it comes to freshwater fish (we also have a ton of crayfish species btw). Ohio has 170 native freshwater fish species compared with the paltry 67 native species in the entire state of California, or the measly 55 species native to Massachusetts. This map shows well the spread of diversity in the US:

(Source)

Sufficed to say the Midwest has some of the best freshwater fish diversity in the US, outside of the king of diversity that is the southeast (seriously, Alabama is one of the most biodiverse states in the whole country and it has 325 native freshwater fish species!)