Ed Forum birdwatching 2008

EHocking · Mar 13, 2008

Kotatsu said:
A general question to Americans:

We are thinking of subdividing the US into areas for greater clarity. What would be natural --- preferably faunal --- regions?

Eric:
Why is it that there's always some family placed out of alphabetical order at the end of the list? It used to be Threskiornithidae, then Columbidae and Muscicapidae, and now it's Estrildidae.

Vaguaries of Excel 2007 - I'm yet to work out what the h*ll's going on. There has to be some undisplayed characters or formating that's screwing things up. It happens with my Lat/Long look up table as well.

I know of one workaround and that is to physically retype the problem entries. Shoot me your latest update when you're ready and I'll try the workaround on it.

Hokulele · Mar 15, 2008

OK, I finally confirmed the cormorant.

Pelagic Cormorant - Phalacrocorax pelagicus - March 9, Pusan, S. Korea

And a couple of new ones that can be listed as March 15, Pusan, S. Korea (Pusan is the name of the city).

Red-collared dove - Streptopelia tranquebarica
Brown Shrike - Lanius cristatus

bruto · Mar 15, 2008

Nothing new in sightings, but I saw snow geese in Benson, Vermont, flying north, yesterday, and on the way to my current visit in Connecticut, saw turkey vultures in Sheffield, Mass, which means that they're on their way north. I thought also, though I could be wrong, that I saw some red-winged blackbirds! Could spring really be on its way?

flume · Mar 15, 2008

Kestrel said:
Today I happen to be in North Carolina. Spotted what looked like a new bird for the list:
Pipilo erythrophthalmus Eastern Towhee

The scientific name is already on the list as Rufous-sided Towhee (an obsolete name, now split into two species) and was spotted in Nevada. I suspect that sighting should have been Pipilo maculatus Spotted Towhee instead, since the Eastern Towhee doesn't hang out in Nevada.

Oops - I guess it's time to buy new editions of my bird guides :-(

chillzero · Mar 15, 2008

Thank you to RedIbis for sending me this way. I'm less of a twitcher and more of a snapper.

chillzero · Mar 15, 2008

Oh, one of my favourite scottish birds:

Puffin (Fratercula arctica) - 7th June 2007.
http://chillzero.smugmug.com/gallery/4464864_8yMUd#262698431

Elizabeth I · Mar 15, 2008

I swear to goodness I saw a purple finch, Carpodacus purpureus, yesterday in San Antonio, Texas. If that's what it was, the poor lost thing is on the very western edge of its winter range. Maybe he was just stopping through on his way back north.

Kotatsu · Mar 15, 2008

I will update the list appropriately tomorrow, as I have a visitor from Uzbekistan tonight (Uzbek cooking!).

Jeff Corey · Mar 15, 2008

Elizabeth I said:
I swear to goodness I saw a purple finch, Carpodacus purpureus, yesterday in San Antonio, Texas. If that's what it was, the poor lost thing is on the very western edge of its winter range. Maybe he was just stopping through on his way back north.

It's hard to tell the difference between a Cassin's Finch (Carpodacus Cassinii) and the Purple. But San Antonio appears to be at the eastern edge of the Cassin's winter range. Was it a male? The backs are more brownish than red in the Cassin's.

Elizabeth I · Mar 16, 2008

Jeff Corey said:
It's hard to tell the difference between a Cassin's Finch (Carpodacus Cassinii) and the Purple. But San Antonio appears to be at the eastern edge of the Cassin's winter range. Was it a male? The backs are more brownish than red in the Cassin's.

Yes, it was a male, and just now I looked up the purple, Cassin's and house finches on the Cornell page, and the one I saw definitely had more pink on his chest than the Cassin's finch seems to, and it was more raspberry red than tomato red, which seems to be how the house finch is marked.

Tricky Bird IDs: House Finch, Purple Finch, and Cassin's Finch

Even allowing for my newbie status, I'm still going to insist it was a purple finch. (Why isn't there a hard-headed smilie?)

Kotatsu · Mar 17, 2008

I'll start updating the list now, and you should have a new version in your mail by this afternoon, Eric. If anyone else wants the raw list, feel free to send me a PM or request it here.

I can also add a new species to the list!
Water rail Rallus aquaticus was bleating a few times when I saw my Uzbekistanian visitor off at the airport last night! Apparently, there were ten of them calling within 100 metres at a place near here this week, but now we have 10 cm of snow suddenly, so the birds will likely stop singing for a while...

Kestrel · Mar 18, 2008

Saw some nice birds over the weekend, but no new species for the list.
Driving home from work today (March 17) I spotted:

Falco peregrinus Peregrine Falcon

This was in Colorado, USA.

BTW - Peregrine Falcons can be found in New York City.

Kotatsu · Mar 18, 2008

I have now added these, for the 4th of March, as previously discussed. However, I have a few comments:

RedIbis said:
Herons- Great Blue, Night, Louisiana, Green, and tri-colored

Louisiana Heron and Tri-colored Heron appears to be the same species.

Green Heron may not be split from Green-backed Heron in Clements', but I have that book at home now, so I'll check that later on.

RedIbis said:
Ibis

Which species of ibis is this? It appears you have two different species in Florida (compared to NONE in Sweden

).

I have also added birds reported by Hokulele, Kestrel, chillzero, bruto (though not the Red-winged Blackbirds) and myself. Since she insists, I have also added Elizabeth I's finch. To me, at least, the comparative pictures she posted seem to make it easy to discern between the species, if you see them well enough. The National Geographic Society's Field Guide supports this, and also places where I believe San Antonio is within the range of the Purple, but outside the range of Cassin's.

Other than that, I am getting a cold... otherwise, I would have been out in the archipelago this weekend watching birds... Oh well... Hopefully I will be healthy again on Friday, when my father and I will go watch the cranes at Lake Hornborga. That should hopefully give us another 20 species or so. We're also planning to go watch the Black Grouse if they have started lekking, this may give an addition ten species or so.

Kotatsu · Mar 18, 2008

Persistent rumours claim that the list ahs now been updated at the usual place. New for this update is the order of the species listing, which is now ordered by Order, then Family. As always, if you find any flaws or omissions, please report it here. Eric found a few during this update, which have been fixed.

Kestrel · Mar 19, 2008

Today's (March 18) new species from Colorado, USA

Phalacrocorax auritus Double-crested Cormorant

Hokulele · Mar 19, 2008

Regarding the web page, my poor brown shrike is yelling at people on both the table and list pages.

Kestrel, how the heck do you keep spotting cormorants and gulls in Colorado? Is there some inland sea I am unaware of?

RedIbis · Mar 19, 2008

Kotatsu said:
I have now added these, for the 4th of March, as previously discussed. However, I have a few comments:

Louisiana Heron and Tri-colored Heron appears to be the same species.

Green Heron may not be split from Green-backed Heron in Clements', but I have that book at home now, so I'll check that later on.

Which species of ibis is this? It appears you have two different species in Florida (compared to NONE in Sweden ).

.

For clarification: The only Ibis I've spotted is the White Ibis.

Louisiana and Tri-colored are the same. Mea culpa. Replace one with the Little Blue. So the list of Herons I see on a daily basis in C. Florida is Great Blue, Little Blue, and Louisiana.

I saw a Roseate Spoonbill soaring in the sky, high above the Hillsborough River, today. I've only seen them on the ground feeding. I also saw White Ibis in formation. I don't believe I've ever seen that before either.

Kotatsu · Mar 19, 2008

Kestrel said:
Today's (March 18) new species from Colorado, USA

Phalacrocorax auritus Double-crested Cormorant

This has been added.

Hokulele said:
Regarding the web page, my poor brown shrike is yelling at people on both the table and list pages.

This was due to an oversight on my part in the list, and has been corrected.

Hokulele said:
Kestrel, how the heck do you keep spotting cormorants and gulls in Colorado? Is there some inland sea I am unaware of?

Could it be the Mississippi and its various subsidiaries?

RedIbis said:
For clarification: The only Ibis I've spotted is the White Ibis.

Louisiana and Tri-colored are the same. Mea culpa. Replace one with the Little Blue. So the list of Herons I see on a daily basis in C. Florida is Great Blue, Little Blue, and Louisiana.

I saw a Roseate Spoonbill soaring in the sky, high above the Hillsborough River, today. I've only seen them on the ground feeding. I also saw White Ibis in formation. I don't believe I've ever seen that before either.

This has been added. I would also like to express my hatred of living in a country which doesn't have spoonbills. I have seen the European species twice so far (2006 and 2007), though.

Also, from the next update and onwards, the words "European", "Eurasian", and "Common" will be omitted from the birds bearing these names. This is because these names have been added rather arbitrarily so far, depending on if the reporter used them or not, and it was easiest just to search for the ones that had these words in them and erase them than to look through the list and add where needed. Doing so will of course lend a huge European bias to the list, and this upsets people, say so, and I will put them back. I do this mainly out of laziness, but also because I think it looks ugly with those words in front of most European birds; it is not done to offend the overly sensitive. Personally, I think new names should be given to birds which require this to be added to birds. We usually don't have them in Swedish.

Also, Eric: the scientific names in the list should be in italics^^.

EHocking · Mar 19, 2008

Corrections made to the web page - just need to update the map/graph.

Simple to do at the moment - as I don't have to update the Gallery pages.

Kotatsu · Mar 19, 2008

Well, if you have that much free time, you can always clean up after me again. When I added Bruto's snow geese, I actually wrote "Snow geese", which shows up as a separate species. This is because all previous reports erroneously were placed in the genus Branta for some reason. It should be Anser, I guess, unless Clements has them in Chen. I will check this when I get home.

Pheasant is also listed twice, for some reason. There may be a space or something in the name column, if that matters. In fact, there are several ones that are listed twice, the difference being "European", "Common", and so on. Does the list not count according to scientific name?

Notes to myself:
Also check what Clements call Larus dominicanus as there are too many "Black-backed Gull".
Also: House finch or Papayabird?
Are American Warblers placed in Parulidae in Clements?

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