Life List: A Birding Podcast

30/07/2024

I introduce you to the Andean Storm-Petrel (Oceanites barrosi)!!!! We have just had our paper published that clarifies the relationship of the various Wilson's type Storm-petrels and describes a new species nesting in the Andes above Santiago in Central Chile. Imagine that high up over one of the largest cities in the southern hemisphere, storm-petrels fly daily from the ocean to the high mountains. Birders see them when watching the full moon over the city. It is amazing that this cryptic species was right under everyone's noses during all of this time.
We suggest that in the genus Oceanites, which currently has 3 species, there are a total of 7 species! The various taxa we suggest should be elevated to species have substantial genetic differences. But more importantly, they are ecologically different, with possible breeding areas in very different places. Some are on islands as is typical, others are inland in desert, while others are inland in mountains. The Antarctic breeder (Antarctic Storm-Petrel) is the only one that thus far is known to migrate to the northern hemisphere. Those Wilson's Storm-Petrels that you see in the northern hemisphere, are thus far, Antarctic Storm-Petrels (exasperatus). The other populations are shorter distance migrants, or residents as far as it is known, but believe me.... not much is known.
This will create some identification nightmares unfortunately, as some of the species level taxa we suggest should be elevated are not visually identifiable at this point. But more importantly, three of these species have not had their nesting areas described yet, and for the other species many of the colonies are unknown so far. The conservation issues are complex when you don't know where they breed or how many there are!!!
This is the link to the paper: https://mapress.com/zt/article/view/zootaxa.5486.4.1

18/07/2024

Lots of stuff in the new taxonomic supplement out today. Link below for those who want the info straight from the source. One particular bit that I was super happy to see was the separation of the House Wren into many species, this is one of those topics I have been chatting about for some time, and was involved in the original proposal before the genetic information was published. It was not originally accepted, but now with molecular backing, it was. In particular, the wrens on the Lesser Antilles and the Cozumel Wren are super different looking, with respect to mainland House Wrens and to each other. Great to see that we have now a clearer picture of biodiversity in the Caribbean. https://academic.oup.com/auk/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ornithology/ukae019/7716004

17/07/2024

episode is up!
Here’s some of our gang working the cliffs at St. Paul Island. Around us at this location were hundreds of nesting alcids, Northern Fulmars, & Red-legged Kittiwakes.
Listen in to hear us discuss bears, birds, & more.

24/06/2024

Good on ya James! We are all part of the Birding Militia.

Metallica's James Hetfield has said that he's "obsessed" with bird watching and has "probably six bird feeders".

21/06/2024

I have focused on some of the rare birds (vagrants) we saw in Utqiaġvik (Barrow) but the stars of the show are the local breeders. Among them is the Pomarine Jaeger, the commonest jaeger this year up there. The numbers of Pomarines vary year to year as their abundance depends on the number of lemmings (a rodent) that are present. The "Pom" has a really different ecology from the other two jaegers, they arrive in the Arctic and then make major wandering movements looking for areas of good food. This nomadic pre-breeding behavior is the norm in Pomarines, the other two jaegers do not seem to do this. They then settle to breed, later than many other species, in areas of good food availability.
This individual shows a lot of the identification features: a cap that extends down below the eye to the chin/jaw line. Central tail feathers that twist. An orange toned base to the bill. A spotty or barred looking breast band. A second flash of white at the base of the primary coverts, not just on the primary bases.
This particular individual has pale streaking on the underside of the wing, suggesting it is an old immature, a 3d or 4th cycle. Adults have entirely unmarked dark wing linings.

Lovely birds and in the Arctic they fly with a leisurely style, entirely unlike when they are at sea. They can even be mistaken for a Short-eared Owl given their slow and graceful flap style. Sometimes they will "kite" like an American Kestrel when in the Arctic. So many birds we see in the south that breed up here, behave entirely differently when at the breeding grounds vs what we see down south.

21/06/2024

Clifford who is the narrator and driver in this neat video was our guide and driver up to see the Polar Bears at Point Barrow. He gave us a lot of insight about living up in the Arctic, and this nicely done video gives a super idea of what it is like, and also how community is so vital when you are living in such an isolated place. I wish his business well, and hope he gets to help more and more people through his driving.

"It’s hard to get to Barrow. We’re at the top of the world. It’s the northernmost point in the United States. There’s no road access. We’re 260 miles from th...

19/06/2024

Another good one up here in Utquiagvik (Barrow), Alaska. On our Hillstar Nature - Alvaro's Adventures code-share tour. This is a Common Snipe, not the typical Wilson's Snipe in North America. The Common Snipe is found in northern Europe and Asia, and is super rare on the Alaskan mainland, it is more of an expected vagrant of the islands. The key differences are that the Common has a white trailing edge to the secondaries and white tipping on the upperwing. The underwing is strongly and evenly barred on Wilson's, but on Common there are unbarred white areas on the underwing. When winnowing, the Common shows the one outer tail feather, a broad feather, spread and isolated from the tail. Wilson's would show two isolated outer feathers, and they are narrower. The ground call we heard was also a different cadence. A rare and difficult species to identify, but fortunately we got some good photos. This individual had been around for some time up here.

18/06/2024

Can't help myself, the Polar Bears were awesome today. Five out at the point (Point Barrow), and then another one that George Armistead found on the opposite side of town. But the first two at the point were great, very close at first and then they made their way out on the ice. The way these huge animals can move on ice that is breaking up was amazing to see, they can make tracks easily on this habitat. What an absolute star of a creature. Bird of the day were the bears. This is on our Life List: A Birding Podcast code-share tour with Alvaro's Adventures and Hillstar Nature. George is returning next year if you are interested!!!!

17/06/2024

We’re idiots. But we’re your idiots 🤪 And we’re having a great time in with some great friends

16/06/2024

Lifer alert: Hey !!
George & Alvaro got lifer .behrens in Nome. Looking forward to recording an overdue ep with Ken. In a couple days Al, George & Ken will all be in Utqiagvik.

10/06/2024

So I admit that I had never heard of the Thunder Birds!!! From Australia. These are extinct birds that were thought to be related to one of the big flightless ratites, like the Emu. But a new fossil clears up that these huge critters were actually giant geese. Hey, and guess what, Hawaii had huge flightless geese too back in the time. BTW, if you have pet geese, don't feed them..... too much.... if you know what I am saying.
Link below about the Thunder Birds. But because my brain is weird, the moment I heard about thunder birds from Australia, I though about AC/DC. But as we are talking about evolution, here are farmers from Finland, to entertain you with their new take on the old.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Ao-iNPPUc&list=RDjhOwbIUS5fw&index=18

https://newatlas.com/biology/giant-thunder-bird-skull-genyornis-newtoni/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Ao-iNPPUc&list=RDjhOwbIUS5fw&index=18

Finnish band called Steve'n'Seagulls plays AC/DC's awesome song called Thunderstruck. Recorded by Jaakko Manninen Photography.STEVE´N´SEAGULLS PATREON is ope...

10/06/2024

We have talked about Canada being the birthplace of Hawaiian Pizza. Who knew?

On this day in 2017, Sam Panopoulos died.
Born in Greece in 1934, he came to Canada and opened the Satellite Restaurant in Chatham, Ontario.
It was there he invented Hawaiian Pizza. His goal was to create a pizza that was sweet and savoury.

En ce jour de 2017, Sam Panopoulos est décédé.
Né en Grèce en 1934, il est venu au Canada et a ouvert le restaurant Satellite à Chatham, en Ontario.
C'est là qu'il a inventé la pizza hawaïenne. Son objectif était de créer une pizza sucrée et salée.

06/06/2024

We will see if we can get a copy of this paper and talk about it on the podcast. We mentioned this big vagrant arrival event last fall, now there is an explanation for what exactly happened.

Alexander C. Lees, Andrew Farnsworth, Shannon R. Curley and James J. GilroyAbstractAutumn 2023 saw the biggest single arrival of Nearctic landbirds ever recorded in Britain and Ireland, with around 99 individuals of 27 species. This paper examines the likely causes of this unprecedented event, inclu...

31/05/2024

Keen on seeing thousands, actually hundreds of thousands of Common Murres? Tufted Puffin? Throw in California, Steller's sea lions and Northern Fur Seals, and how about whales?
Our first two trips to the Farallon Islands are at the end of June, out of Sausalito on the superb, stable catamaran - the Outer Limits. Farallon trips often sell out - so grab a spot.
https://www.alvarosadventures.com/pelagic-dates-2024.html

29/05/2024

The showiest penguins in the world, in massive colonies, and eye to eye looks with the "Great" Albatrosses as well as many island endemic birds, and the most diverse seabird fauna anywhere in the world. Add to this some great whale possibilities and colonies of marine mammals that we will have great opportunities to enjoy and photograph. This is where we will be in December of this year, the Subantarctic Islands of New Zealand and Australia. There are cabins still available, but very few!! If you have considered this trip in the past, do it this year with Alvaro Jaramillo and George Armistead. We will make it fun, and informative, and we are not going in 2025, so THIS is the year. It is no hype to say that this is one of the most amazing, impressive, and life changing nature trips available anywhere on earth. Come and join us - [email protected] photo of Royal Penguin by S. Blanc (Heritage Expeditions). https://www.alvarosadventures.com/subantarctic-of-new-zealand-and-australia.html

25/05/2024

This is from Wong et al. 2021 - Arctic terns from circumpolar breeding colonies share common migratory routes. Marine Ecology Vol. 671: 191–206, 2021.
It summarizes nicely southbound migration in Arctic Terns from various different colonies from all over the Arctic. Keep in mind that the routes do not all go to the poles because much of this data is from light sensors tracking, and 24 hour daylight does not give you a chance to calculate a position.
Southern Alaska populations go over land in South America and cross to the Atlantic! Northern Alaska stay in the Pacific. Maritimes bird cross to Europe/Africa before moving south on the other side of the ocean along the Brazilian coast! Scandinavian birds wrap around Africa and head down the Indian Ocean. Crazy crazy, all of it. What is neat is how many routes are used by different populations. The Brazil rouge, the Africa route, these are Arctic Tern highways. I do wonder what the Russian birds would do, I bet they go south along the west coast of the Americas. Just a guess.

17/05/2024

.brown is back from with Latest Ep she tell us about her time there

15/05/2024

You may want to be involved in the re-naming of birds, or just want to support the process. Please fill in the form below with your interests, or just to send comments regarding the process. You do not need to be a member of the AOS, but membership is open to anyone, and you get to read the journals and get all "scienced up" to impress your birding friends. Please forward this to other pages.

As part of an effort to address past wrongs and engage more people in the enjoyment, conservation, and study of birds, the American Ornithological Society (AOS) is undertaking a pilot project to determine new English common names for an initial set of six species of North American birds. These inclu...

15/05/2024

I am waiting for the paper to read the details. The basic bit is that the Giant Hummingbird is two species. This is something that has been suggested in the past, with a migratory southern form and a resident northern form. The data clarify that the split between the two is deep (a long time ago). What is puzzling, and I don't know the details is that they give the northern one a new name. Yet there already is a name for that one, peruviana. The only thing I can imagine is that they sequenced the type and it is part of gigas, and not peruviana. Otherwise, I would imagine that peruviana would stand as a name for the northern one?

Researchers strapped tiny backpacks to hummingbirds to study migration and discovered the world’s largest hummingbird species is distinct from another type of giant hummingbird.

12/05/2024

Our first pelagic of 2024, and we see a Laysan Albatross. Woohooo!!. Conditions were poor with fog and low wind, but we did well out there with lots to see and some nice cetaceans too - Minke Whale, Risso's Dolphin, Humpback Whale. Apart from the rarer species - Laysan Albatross, late Black-legged Kittiwake we saw breeding plumaged Red and Red-necked Phalaropes, many Black-footed Albatross, lots of Sooty and Pink-footed Shearwaters and the regular alcids. Weird was seeing offshore Elegant Terns. They are traditionally rare in spring, and never offshore. On two counts they were off, it must be something about ocean conditions to our south. Lots and lots of By-the-wind-sailors (Velela). Awesome day out - come and join us on one of our 2024 trips. https://www.alvarosadventures.com/pelagic-dates-2024.html

10/05/2024

What a morning. My best ever local visual migration day out here in the county. I admit that I have not rushed out on other days when east winds have hit in spring, but for some reason I was plugged into it today. I went up to Skylawn, on the Santa Cruz mountains and it was happening from the start. Chris Hayward was up there too, and we joined forces looking at the birds going over. No photos but Olive-sided Flycatcher in visual migration was neat, along with a few W Wood-Pewees, Bullock's Orioles etc. Over 100 Lazuli Buntings and a ton of Western Tanagers, with a few Western Kingbirds and a couple of fly by Townsend's Warblers. Both eagles! What a morning. Here is the list: https://ebird.org/checklist/S173064870

06/05/2024

Photo by Jim Holmes.

In our latest episode chats with Adam Walleyn, an extremely experienced and well-known guide who has led birding & wildlife tours across the world. On his latest adventure, he crosses deep into the wilderness of the Darien Gap at the Panama and Colombia border. While there they encountered this fascinating and beautiful animal known as the Chocoan Bushmaster. It is extremely venomous, however, and in order to get back to their camp, they had to move the snake off the trail to cross. Listen in as Adam details this as well as other amazing adventures while on the trail in pursuit of birds.

01/05/2024

OK, I was looking at some of the photos of the Oregon Blue Rock-Thrush and it occurred to me that it looked different than the one on the Farallon Islands. I think these are two different birds.
The two top photos are Farallons (Heather Williams, Jason Talbott), the bottom two are Oregon (Michael Sanchez).
The Farallon bird has a darker wing, with much more restricted pale tips to the alula, and greater coverts. The angles are poor, but the Oregon bird appears to have more noticeable darker bases to the scapulars creating a scaled look to the blue there.
On the rufous: The Farallon bird has two noticeable parallel and very similar pale tips on the right side near the blue of the breast. Nothing similar on the Oregon bird. The different angles of the undertail coverts are difficult, but have a look. The Farallon bird has almost no pale tipping, only on the longest. While the Oregon bird has more widespread and noticeable pale tipping.
I think there is enough here to say that these are two different individuals. Ignore the differences in the tones of blue and rufous, as these may be due to light or the cameras used. They could also be real, but that it more likely to be an effect.

01/05/2024

Godwit Days up in Humboldt County, California last weekend was a good time. Lots of nice folks, great vendors, superb field trips and birding. I highly recommend it to any of you who have not been there before, it is in April. We had some superb birding with Rob Fowler and our group up at Horse Mountain. Sooty Grouse was a highlight, but also goodies such as Townsend's Solitaire (hadn't seen one for a while), and this really nice MacGillvray's Warbler. The "Mac" is a shy warbler, not all that rare but usually difficult to see. Easterners might recognize it as a western counterpart to the Mourning Warbler. It has the white above and below the eye unlike the Mourning, and less black on the breast. In a great view, the longer tail and shorter undertail coverts also help to separate it from Mourning. For us here in California, a Mourning would be a hugely rare find!

26/04/2024

Since Blue Rock-Thrush is making the birding headlines (one now on the Farallon Islands, same or different one a few days back in Oregon), people have wondered about the BC record from the 90s. This was an astounding record when first published, and I think that at the time some folks were too flabbergasted to even consider that it could be a wild bird. The original publication is super hard to find, so I scanned it here for those of you who are interested, it was published in Birders Journal in 1997. Check out that they mention an Alaska sight record from 1996 as well.

17/04/2024

Question out there for those more intimately familiar with the natural history of the Middle East. This huge and disastrous (for humans) rainfall in Dubai, I assume is great for plants and wildlife. I assume? Not knowing the area all that well, it may be a silly question. But are there areas that may flower, like the flowering desert in Chile which occurs now and then when rain is high? Any nomadic bird species that may show up, and which might they be?

Heavy rain batters the UAE and Oman, causing flash floods that have killed 20 people since Sunday.

14/04/2024

Crows are increasing in SF and the Peninsula. The clearest data point is here on the coast where we used to have NO crows, but where they are now common. Ravens are still more common, but they are nearing parity in some areas on the coast.
On the other hand, it is odd that they chose to look at crows as a proportion of all birds. That is weird. Also the comments from experts out East may not fully apply here. The reason is that for ever there have been coastal and urban crows in Monterey, and their behavior there has always been odd. Almost more like what we once knew as Northwestern Crow. Monterey Crows forage on the beach, intertidal, are highly social and I have heard (no direct evidence) of some semi-colonial behavior there. I have often wondered if local adaptations by crows in the last few decades opened up a brand new set of areas where they were once absent or at least uncommon, where they now flourish. Part of this may have been this coastal Monterey Crow genes or culture that got passed on? Just putting it out there.

San Francisco birders counted more than 2,600 American crows in one day last year, setting a city record for the species.

13/04/2024

Fox News on CNN??? This article caught my eye and I just gave it a quick read. There is a bunch of stuff here, and I am not sure any of it is new. Although it may be more conclusive data that what has been known before. First of all, these south american "foxes" are not foxes, they are more closely related to wolves, jackals, coyotes than they are to the Vulpine foxes. Some now call them South American Zorros, which I like as a name. Some lineages have gone extinct, including the Warrah, or Falkland Wolf which used to be out there on those islands.
But the idea that these zorros were domesticated by local peoples is not new. There are actually two specimens of these dogs taken from Selk'nam villages that are still in museums in the south. The DNA of these specimens allies them to the Culpeo, the larger of the southern species of Zorro. Not to domesticated dogs. Look at the Wikipedia article on "Fuegian Dog" for more information and what some of these dogs looked like. The Selk'nam people would hunt collaboratively with their dogs.
Not fake news, but also not all that new either. Perhaps better backup now with newer techniques, and it clarifies that these domesticated zorros were more widespread than just down in Tierra del Fuego.
If you are really into this stuff - the first DNA paper was in 2013 in the journal Quarternary International. Google the title - "Molecular identification of a Fuegian dog belonging to the Fagnano Regional Museum ethnographic collection, Tierra del Fuego"

Evidence from a Patagonian burial dating back about 1,500 years hints at a close connection between a hunter-gatherer and the extinct fox species Dusicyon avus.

12/04/2024

New Ep is up with the team chatting to “Finch Czar” Matt Young. We cover Red Crossbill call-types & variation, and discuss finches more widely as a group. Tune in & tell us how you like the finch chat.