TAKE NOTHING FOR GRANTED

We now take for granted the success of two of our most common, weed species of bird in America, the House Sparrow and the Eurasian Starling. Both birds are in trouble in England where intensive agriculture and pesticides have altered the landscape and habitat. Loss of old-fashioned hedgerows may have hurt the sparrow along with other rural species like Yellowhammer. Read here for details.

Back in the 18th Century when Gilbert White was observing and writing about the Wiltshire countryside the Wood Pigeon was a scarce bird. The drop in forest hunting and the bird’s adaptation to city parks has changed all that. As large as our Band-tailed Pigeons, they’re now are as common as Rock Pigeons over much of England. The abundance of Collared-Doves in suburban England does not seem to have hurt the Wood Pigeon.

LOST AND FOUND

Species come, and species go. But virtual extinction occurs when a species is undiscovered by man, or when it goes decades without being found. For two birds we have good news. They’re still here!
Herdon’s Babbler is first on our back-from-the-dead list. Click here for full story. It’s been rediscovered in Myanmar.
The babbler family is full of dark brown skulking birds. The only one who lives in the New World is our Wrentit, and any Oregon or California birder can tell you they are easy to hear in coastal scrub, but to see one…
The rail family has suffered mightily around the world. Many species have gone extinct in limited habitat, like Pacific island chains. Many others have suffered from human encroachment and draining marshes. Just recently a dedicated ornithologist has proved the Zapata Rail survives in Cuba. Click here for details.
If you want to see some rare and even endangered birds on your next trip outside the U.S., contact PIB.

PARTNER TO PUBLISH GREAT GRAY OWL BOOK

One of Partnership for International Birding’s founding partners is publishing a book om the Great Gray Owls of the Pacific Slope. Harry Fuller, PIB co-founder, and photographer Peter Thiemann have worked on this book for two years. It draws together many of Peter’s fine photos of the Great Grays in action. It also includes much information of the world’s southernmost population of this phantom bird. The Great Gray Owl is notoriously difficult to survey for and to track during nesting season. Yet once found the owl is aloof and easy to observe because it ignores mere humans, far preferring to concentrate on voles and pocket gophers. The Canadian population concentrates on lemmings.

The book covers the GGOs in California, Oregon and Washington State–a population largely overlooked in most previous books on the species and even in widely distributed general field guides. Many books still in print describe Great Grays as a “boreal species” yet the authors have verified breeding populations along the Pacific Slope that summer where temperatures regularly climb above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
The book will also include original, detailed breeding range maps for the species in the three Pacific States. If you’d like to see nesting Great Gray Owls near a meadow full of wildflowers in the glorious Cascades Mountains, contact PIB about a trip to Oregon. Some bonus birds will include Vaux’s Swift, Williamson’s and Red-breasted Sapsucker, White-headed & Lewis’s Woodpecker, Hermit Warbler, Wrentit, Black Tern, Tricolored Blackbird and White-tailed Kite.

If you’re interested in the owl book, email Harry Fuller at: atowhee@gmail.com
GGO photo by Karl Schneck.