Birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. 3rd edition

Birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. 3rd edition

Herbert A. Raffaele, Clive Petrovic, Sergio A. Colón López, Lisa D. Yntema & José A. Salguero Faria
Princeton University Press | 2021
224 pp. | 14 x 22 cm
Softback | $24.95 / £20.00 | ISBN: 9780691211671

First published in 1983, ‘Raffaele’ is the standard field guide to the birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. My previous copy is the revised 1989 edition, which follows the format of most guides of its era, with plates grouped in a single block, a number of them monochrome, both measures to save on colour printing costs; many of the paintings are works of art rather than comparative depictions. Three decades later, the 3rd edition places full colour illustrations opposite the text so that all information on a particular species can be gleaned at a glance from an open spread. Species are grouped by habitat to facilitate comparison of similar species. This may be slightly disconcerting to users who have only just got used to wildfowl appearing at the beginning of a field guide, and on this subject I agree with Steve Howell (Howell et al. 2009, 2012) that we should strive to follow a “field-friendly sequence of families”. But that is only a passing comment; this guide is small enough that a particular group of birds will quickly be found by flicking through the pages, something facilitates by the flexible cover.

Raffaele is joined by four co-authors for this edition, two of them well-known in Puerto Rican ornithological circles and two authorities on the birds of the US and British Virgin Islands. The contribution of each is not described but one can probably assume that status and distribution reflect the most current knowledge. The artists are, with one exception, new, and paintings are of a high standard. Taken together, visitors should have little trouble identifying most of the birds of the territories. As with the rest of the Neotropics, the visitor would still be well-advised to take along a standard North American field guide.

In the 30 odd years since the last edition, the number of species recorded has increased by a quarter!The guide covers all 347 species now on the checklist. Helpfully, vagrants and hypothetical species are relegated to the rear of the book, which allows the main body to focus on those species most likely to be encountered. Taxonomy largely follows AOS, departing in a few cases such as the splitting of Eastern Tringa (semipalmata) inornata and Western Willet T. (semipalmata) inornata, Puerto Rican (Loggerhead) Kingbird Tyrannus (caudifasciatus) taylori, and Puerto Rican (Lesser Antillean) Pewee Contopus (latirostris) blancoi. For the first time, local names are included, as well as standard English names, and they also receive their own index. This will surely be welcomes by local birders and naturalists.

Introductory chapters provide analyses of the avifauna and its changes over time, geography and biogeography, and conservation, while potential birding destinations are suggested at the end of the book.

Even with the increase in the number of species covered and supplementary information, this guide is about the same size and weight as its predecessor, and—unlike many field guides to the megadiverse Neotropics—it really is a portable reference. This is the obvious choice for anyone visiting either Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands. The improvements on the previous edition are such that those in possession of a 1980s vintage would be wise to invest the very modest cover price to equip themselves with this new guide. It will also be a mandatory purchase for students of the wider West Indian avifauna. The authors and artists are to be congratulated on producing a handy, accessible guide that will doubtless help further the conservation of the birds of these territories.

Naturalized Parrots of the World

Naturalized Parrots of the World

Stephen Pruett-Jones (ed.)
Princeton University Press | 2021
304 pp. | 18.5 x 26.2 cm
Hardback | £35 / $45 | ISBN: 9780691204413 

As a group, the parrots (Psittaciformes) are highly threatened, with 16 species already extinct and 29% of the rest—118 of the 404 extant species recognised under BirdLife International taxonomy—now threatened with extinction, 20 of them in the highest threat category, Critically Endangered. Habitat loss, persecution of these (largely) seed predators as pests, and direct hunting of the birds for food, are some of the causes of decline, but the pet trade has been a major driver that has also led simultaneously to the establishment of exotic populations of a number of species, often far from their native range. This book is the first to provide a detailed overview of naturalised parrots, with half of the book focussing on distribution and ecology, and the other providing case studies. It is a welcome overview and point of entry into a fascinating subject. 

The first part of the book covers subjects of relevance like the parrot trade, distribution, genetics of established populations, parrot-human relations, conservation, ecological impacts, management and so on. These are well-compiled, very useful summaries, amply referenced and illustrated with numerous tables and graphics. There is plenty of good, hard information here about everything from population trends to economic impacts. Each chapter has been written by notable specialists in the topic at hand, and the chapters are individually well laid out, all including summary conclusions. The graphs and tables are generally helpful and display information at a glance. The figures at a global scale are, however, sometimes of insufficient size to adequately convey detail. For example, Fig. 2.1 on p. 30, which shows world distribution of naturalised parrots, is too small to feasibly show most Caribbean islands, including Puerto Rico, which harbours self-sustaining populations of at least eight species of exotic parrot. The same figure omits Venezuela, with its well-known urban populations of Rose-ringed Parakeet Psittacula krameri in Caracas. 

The case studies take up the second half of the book and either focus on species—Rose-ringed Parakeet and Monk Parakeet Myiopsitta monachus, the two most widespread—or geographic areas like the USA, Europe, the Hawaiian Islands, South Africa and Australia. Again, Rose-ringed Parakeet populations are not indicated in Venezuela, or even Puerto Rico (where first reported in 1979) or indeed anywhere else in the West Indies. These chapters are good primers those who wish to inform themselves about the real impacts of naturalised parrots, given the ongoing debates about whether such species should be controlled. There is plenty to absorb here and extensive reference sections are provided. 

This is a much needed compilation of information on the world’s naturalised parrots. Although aimed primarily at the ornithological and conservation community, there will be much here for the amateur enthusiast to enjoy. The care taken in the production, with high-quality paper and a pleasing design, does the content justice and makes this an ideal gift. A very worthwhile publication that will be a major reference for years to come.

Flight Identification of European Passerines and select landbirds

Flight Identification of European Passerines and select landbirds

Tomasz Cofta
Princeton University Press WILDGuides | 2021
496 pp. | 16 x 24 cm
Paperback | £38 / $ 45 | ISBN: 9780691177571

Ever since its inception at the turn of the millennium, the WILDGuides series has repeatedly broken new ground in field guide concepts and production. From the championing of photographic guides and use of digital artwork, to coverage of overlooked taxonomic groups, the series has made a name for pushing the frontiers of field guide capability. The current title certainly follows that precedent. We have enjoyed flight identification guides to non-passerines for decades, but the practicalities of producing an illustrated guide to smaller, fluttery passerines are considerable. And would the birding public need or want such a guide? Well, the gauntlet has quietly been taken up and the book is out. I suspect WILDGuides have done it again by publishing another indispensable guide that we did not know we needed.

This is a large and detailed guide, slightly larger than Britain’s Birds and about the same weight. The book treats 205 passerines and 32 non-passerines, approximately one third of the number covered there, which gives some idea of the amount of space afforded each species. The book goes into considerably more detail on its subject than any other available guide, providing a wealth of information that will be of immediate interest to the vismig and nocmig communities, but with wider appeal to all keen birders who strive to improve their field identification skills.

 

This is one book that benefits from a careful read of the introductory sections, which advise on how to use the guide and set out an important framework for analysing passerines in flight that covers structure and shape, colouration, flight characteristics, flock dynamics and vocalisations. These sections are worth studying because they break down the components that comprise each species’ flight signature and reinforce a habit of running through this checklist in order to identify birds. They also establish definitions that are used in the species identification accounts. Much of this information will be new to the average user and is worth digesting before proceeding to the species accounts. It is worth at this point noting the author’s credentials. I first came across Tomasz Cofta’s striking bird illustrations while reviewing drafts of The World's Rarest Birds in 2012, when he stepped in to provide images of those 75 species that were so rare that no photograph existed. But, by his own account, Cofta has spent thousands of hours observing migrating birds, has ringed almost 100,000 individuals and published a hundred articles (mostly in Polish journals), so he should not lack the authority to produce such a book.

Each species account is typically constructed around digital artwork depicting the species from the side above and below supplemented by a gallery of photographs, 2400 in all, obtained under field conditions. The less than studio quality of the photographs, sometimes taken at odd angles, often backlit, occasionally blurry, counterbalances the meticulous precision of the paintings by capturing the sort of glimpses that one might snatch in field observations. That is not to say that many of the photographs are not of excellent quality. The combination of clean, precise artwork and field photographs works well in giving an idea of the flight jizz of most species.

The text is surprisingly detailed, longer than some field guide texts. Who would have guessed that there was so much to say about small birds in flight? There is a lot to digest here, and I confess I am still in that process, slowly reading through species of interest in order to assimilate new information.

Efforts have been made to compare similar species, so, for example, the section on thrushes nicely distinguishes each species on a combination of differences in tail length, flapping rate, flight-wave and flock size even without a the need to obtain a hint of colour.

Sound is at least as important as visual clues in identifying flying birds, and Cofta gets as close as it is possible to get in a book to a comprehensive description by triangulating transliterations of calls, sonograms, and a single QR code link to sound recordings hosted on the Princeton University Press Soundcloud website. Sonograms are a very powerful tool that have grown in popularity. They were virtually unheard of in British birding circles before the publication of the first volume of BWP in 1977, which confounded many buyers by including them. Perhaps the biggest boost to their popularity has come from the growing popularity of nocmig, where identification of flight calls by sonograms is routine. The only other other field guides that attempt comprehensive coverage of bird vocalisations by sonograms that I am aware of are Nathan Pieplow’s excellent Peterson field guides to North American birds, and I would love to see an equivalent for the Western Palaearctic.

In sum, this pioneering guide is a formidable reference tool for identifying passerines in flight. It will deepen the understanding of anyone interested in the subject, particularly vismig and nocmig enthusiasts, but also the garden patch birder straining to determine the identity of the smaller birds that fly over the house. A strong recommendation for anyone wanting to push their personal frontiers of bird identification.

References

Cramp, S. et al. (1997–1996) Handbook of the Birds of Europe, the Middle East And North Africa Volumes 1–9. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Hirschfeld, E., Swash, A., & Still, R. (2013) The World's Rarest Birds. Princeton University Press WILDGuides, Oxfordshire.

Hume, R., Still, R., Swash, A. R., Harrop, H. & Tipling, D. (2020) Britain’s Birds. An Identification Guide to the Birds of Great Britain and Ireland. 2nd ed. Princeton University Press WILDGuides, Oxfordshire.

Pieplow, N. (2017) Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds of Eastern North America. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston.

Pieplow, N. (2019) Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds of Western North America. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston.

Book review: The Birds of Cuba. An Annotated Checklist

The Birds of Cuba. An Annotated Checklist. BOC Checklist Series: 26

Arturo Kirkconnell, Guy M. Kirwan, Orlando H. Garrido, Andy D. Mitchell & James W. Wiley
British Ornithologists’ Club | 2020
472 pp. | 15.4 x 24.5 cm
Paperback | £44.99 = $ 61 | ISBN: 9780952288671

My first visits to Cuba were in 1995 and 1996, as a consultant to the World Conservation Monitoring Centre and United Nations Development Programme respectively, to work with Miguel Vales and a team of Cuban scientists at the Centro Nacional de Biodiversidad (CeNBio-IES) on the national Biodiversity Country Study, one of the first requirements of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. This was during the período especial, the 'Special Period' of adverse economic conditions triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, and it was a real eye-opener for me. Even though everything from toilet paper to fuel, and beef to coffee had disappeared from daily life, and despite our conservation work being frustrated by the US embargo on the country (Nairobi funds were routed through Washington were frozen, while California-based Esri were threatened with fines for attempting to supply the GIS package Arc Info), I found Cubans remarkably hospitable, making me feel most welcome, sharing their extremely limited resources unselfishly and even going out of their way to find a vehicle to take me birding outside La Habana in the Sierra del Rosario Biosphere Reserve. One of my most poignant memories was being shown one lunchtime a Gundlach specimen of the extinct Cuban Macaw Ara tricolor—the sole example held in Cuba—that (I learned from this new checklist) has subsequently been lost, probably stolen. At that time, few foreign birders visited Cuba, the majority of them Canadians or Europeans. The embargo was a disincentive to US tourism, but some birders and ornithologists from that country nevertheless succeeded in visiting the island.

Since then, I have been back several times, and particularly since 2014, tourism flourished as US-imposed restrictions were relaxed, a welcome policy that culminated in the restoration of direct flights in 2016. Although there has been a reversal of political rhetoric under the retrograde policies of the Trump regime, I am hopeful that a more pragmatic future awaits. At any rate, there seems no better time to publish a revision of the Cuban avifauna, something that had not been attempted—leaving aside the more summary treatment in Garrido and Kirkconnell’s field guides to the birds of Cuba (2000, 2011)—since Garrido and García’s Catálogo de las aves de Cuba published in 1975. I was honoured to be asked to review the new checklist for the next issue of the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club.

TEXT TO FOLLOW AFTER PUBLICATION. 

 

For more information on birds and birding in Cuba, you could do worse than read Seeing Cuba’s endemic birds and other specialities.

 

Book review: Britain’s Birds. An Identification Guide to the Birds of Great Britain and Ireland. Second Edition

Britain’s Birds. An Identification Guide to the Birds of Great Britain and Ireland. Second Edition, fully revised and updated

Rob Hume, Robert Still, Andy Swash, Hugh Harrop & David Tipling
Princeton University Press WILDGuides | 2020
576 pp. | 15 x 21 cm
Paperback | £20 / $ 35 | ISBN: 9780691199795


Despite commencing birding at a time when painted plates in field guides left quite a lot to be desired, I have been slow to entirely embrace photographic guides. My first was the Collins Bird Guide, “a revolutionary field guide” to the birds of Britain and Europe, and it provided a welcome additional source of visual material at a time when good quality photographs of birds were not readily available, but I certainly never pressed it into action as a field guide. The first publishers that seemed to be dealing with the limitations of photographic material in order to take full advantage of growing photographic libraries were WILDGuides in the UK and Kenn Kaufmann in the USA. Both were skilfully manipulating selected images in order to compensate for different light conditions, standardise postures and eliminate artefacts of the photographic process. Both publishers now have a long list of titles covering a wide range of taxonomic groups, some of which have were sorely lacking in identification literature, and many of these guides are now standard identification works. However, the United Kingdom’s avifauna is very well covered by a dizzying number of field guides, some of them amongst the best guides to any avifauna in the world. A new guide launched onto this crowded field has to be very good indeed if it is to make any significant contribution. And Britain’s Birds, published in 2016, is, and it has.

I have had the first edition by my bedside since that time. I typically pick it up at the end of the day to resolve queries arising from the day’s encounters, and one consultation generally leads on to another. After 40+ years of birding, I still get puzzled or excited by something every day, and this book helps me resolve doubts. It seems fitting that the first author, Rob Hume, has been a familiar name from YOC/RSPB magazines since I began birding. Rob’s co-authors together have truly formidable experience, not only on this topic, but in photography, design and the production of field guides. So the user is in very safe hands indeed.

Britain’s Birds is a large, comprehensive field guide, approaching the size of many of the standard Neotropical guides that cover avifaunas several times as large. At 1.44 kg and nearly 600 pages, it could be reasonably argued that this is not a field guide at all – indeed, my first edition has never seen sun, shower or the shady inside of a backpack – but then again, British birders of my generation were schooled to leave all references at home, but rather to take detailed field notes, something that I dutifully abide by to this day; and indeed, being of a similar vintage, this is the process suggested by the authors.For those who feel daunted by such a tome, or really do want a portable guide to take into the field, watch out for my review of the companion British Birds, A Pocket guide.

Why so large? The authors cover all 631 species on the British and Irish lists as of the end of 2019, using BOU/IRBC taxonomy which is in turn adopted from the IOC World Bird List (note that, as Nigel Collar has pointed out, IOC denotes the “international ornithological community”, not International Ornithological Congress). Another 33 species are also covered. So a page per species is about what one would expect for a visual guide to birds.

A typical species account

What about content? All regularly occurring species are typically treated by a page of coverage which includes text, photographs and a map. Birds are presented in their habitat, giving an additional clue to their characteristics. Scarcer species receive less space, while problematic groups, such as gulls, enjoy expanded comparative sections. All plumages are included, depicted with 3,591 photographs.

Maps are derived from current BirdLife International base maps, which were originally compiled by BirdLife International and Handbook of the Birds of the World (the latter now defunct). They are a generous size that is easy on the eye and permits high resolution. Arrows indicate broad migration routes. Status, seasonality and population data appear above the map, and habitat information below, allowing the user to determine almost at a glance the chances that a particular species has been seen.

Text is concise and, for me, achieves that tricky balance between providing enough description to clinch identification and avoiding extraneous detail. The team’s field experience is much in evidence, with expert insight being employed to craft succinct accounts that incorporate much distilled identification knowledge. Capitals, bold text and italics help navigate the sections.

Any downside? Having written field guides myself, I have renewed respect for those who take on such a task, and am now strangely reluctant to pick holes in the work of others. The production of a work like this is a massive undertaking, and all field guides contain errors, many of them spotted the day after the galleys go to press. However, I would be hard pressed to find much to complain about with this field guide, and remarkably uncharitable to draw attention to anything I found. I had already consulted the first edition on a daily basis, and – barring one unfortunate but conspicuous photo mix-up in my first printing – errors were few and far between, and the overall utility of the guide simply swamps any gripes. This edition has corrected the few oversights I had found and has improved the already high overall quality in every respect. Doubtless Chris Batty’s role as an identification consultant will have eased the burden of verification (he kindly gave me the benefit of his formidable knowledge on one of my own field guides). As far as field guides to the British avifauna are concerned, Svensson et al.’s Collins field guide and this current volume have, for me, become the two standard works the I reach for first, and their very different approaches complement each other nicely. If I need to delve beyond them, I reach for Witherby, BWP, van Duivendijk, Beaman and Madge, Harris et al. or the relevant standard monograph.

Given that I view this as a must-have for anyone with an interest in identifying the birds of the UK, whatever their level of expertise, the question then becomes, “Should owners of the first edition replace it with the second?”. That’s a hard question to answer, and depends as much on the strength of one’s bookcase shelves and the tolerance of one’s cohabitants as any technical factors. The current edition incorporates 800+ new photos, layout has been improved in key places and the entire production looks to have been revised with a fine tooth comb. And, of course, the list of taxa covered is bang up to date, reflecting the February 51st BOURC Report. So American ‘Taiga’ Merlin (columbarius) and Shorelark (alpestris group) are covered, as are other splits and additions over the past four years.

This is yet another ground-breaking field guide from the WILDGuides imprint, and an outstanding guide to Britain's birds for observers of all levels. At a retail price of £20, this is an absolute bargain. The authors and all contributors are to be heartily congratulated.

___________________

A typical double-spread species account, in this case for Dunlin Calidris alpina, showing the major plumages encountered in Britain and Ireland, along with subspecific variation. This is a variable species, and a standard, common 'yardstick' shorebird, so the coverage will be useful for beginners as well as those who want try to determine which subspecies they are seeing. Note the map indicating migration routes, and table showing the months during which different subspecies may be encountered. All relevant information can be taken in at a glance.


The double-spread devoted to the White/Pied Wagtail Motacilla alba complex has been completely overhauled in this edition. I still find alba hard to clinch, despite having read and re-read all of the literature, coupled with hours spent staring in monochrome at borderline individuals, so have already interrogated these pages several times. Photographs have been selected to help people like me. Note the inclusion of personata, new to Britain since the book's first edition.

Ducks in flight: handy double-spread guide to fieldmarks. The images are first class, and the spread has been slightly improved since the first edition, with subtle eye-guiding lines linking images of the same species. Similar comparison spreads are provided for other groups that requite critical flight identification, for example gulls, shorebirds, raptors – even larks.

Particularly tricky identification challenges are sometimes addressed by means of an extra page or two, in this case examining the similar Apricaria golden plovers. Not quite as much has been made of differences in leg length/proportion and head pattern as I might have suggested, but nevertheless the key identification characters are well covered.

Book review: two new guides to the birds of Colombia

Field Guide to the Birds of Colombia
Miles McMullan
Rey Naranjo (Bogotá) | 2018
432 pp. | >5,000 colour figures, maps.
Softback | £49.99 / $65 / $115,000 COP | ISBN 978-9588969626

Guía ilustrada de la avifauna colombiana
Fernando Ayerbe Quiñones
Wildlife Conservation Society (Bogotá) | 2018
410 pp. | 212 colour plates, 1,932 maps.
Softback | $120,000 COP (apparently unavailable outside Colombia) | ISBN 978-9585461031




Just finished my review of two exciting new guides to the birds of Colombia, to be published in Neotropical Birding 26...

TEXT TO FOLLOW ONE YEAR AFTER PUBLICATION.

Red Knot (Calidris canutus rufa) resighting in Venezuela and Canada

Red Knot FELG9HL, Falcón, Venezuela, 29 Mar 2019. Photo: Gianco Angelozzi

On 29 March, a team of ornithologists working on a Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network project (Sandra Giner, Virginia Sanz, Gianco Angelozzi and I) were carrying out International Shorebird Censuses on the Punta Maragüey spit on the western coast of Falcón with Jose Ochoa. Gianco was able to get close to a flock of several hundred Red Knot (Calidris canutus rufa) moulting into breeding plumage, and using our best optics - a superb new Kowa scope donated in 2018 by Cley Spy - to pick out and photograph seven flagged individuals, of which only FELG9HL was legible; this bird also carried a geolocator (Gianco's photograph attached - more here).

Red Knot FELG9HL, Ontario, Canada, 20 May 2019. Photo: photographer unknown

Today I checked the bird's whereabouts and found that it had been photographed (attached - photographer unknown) 52 days later on 20 May in magnificent full breeding plumage at a reservoir W of Townsend in S Ontario, Canada. This elucidates only part of the jigsaw puzzle of migratory connectivity for this threatened shorebird, and quite appropriate given that this Manomet / WHSRN work is financed by Environment Canada. Next stop for these birds will be the high Arctic. The earliest data available for FELG9HL come from 30 May 2011 in Delaware, so the bird is perhaps 10 years old and will have made this journey as many times.

Book review: Birds of Central America: a field guide

Birds of Central America: Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama

Andrew C. Vallely & Dale Dyer
Princeton University Press | 2018
584 pp. | 16 x 23.5 cm | 260 colour plates, 1261 maps
Softback | £40 / $49.50 | ISBN: 9780691138022

Just finished my review of the superb new guide to the birds of Central America, to be published in Neotropical Birding 25...

Thanks to Princeton University Press for providing a review copy.

Published review below, PDF here.

Until recently, field guides for Central America were getting rather long in the tooth, although such masterworks as Howell & Webb (1995), Stiles & Skutch (1989), and Ridgely & Gwynne (1989) never become obsolete. The situation was remedied by the first field guides to Belize (Jones 2003) and Honduras (Gallardo 2014), followed by pocket guides to Costa Rica (Garrigues & Dean 2007), Panama (Angehr & Dean 2010) and Nicaragua (Chavarría-Duriaux et al. 2018; see review, page 88) published by Zona Tropical/ Comstock Publishing Associates (latterly imprints of Cornell University Press), and by the Peterson guide to Northern Central America (Fagan & Komar 2016). The present volume, as the first field guide to the entire Central American avifauna, fills the gaps left by El Salvador and Guatemala and brings the identification literature for the remaining countries up to date.
     A decade in production, the book covers the 1,261 bird species that had been documented in the political region of Central America as of August 2017, an avifauna comparable in size with that of a typical South American country – quite a daunting undertaking. Each of the 1,194 bird species of what the authors define as the ‘core avifauna’ is accorded a main species account, while a further 67 ‘marginal, dubious and hypothetical species’ are relegated to an annotated appendix.
     The region is delimited politically rather than biogeographically, so Vitelline Warbler Setophaga vitellina, a West Indian species found only on the Swan Islands and (extralimitally) on the Cayman Islands, is included. Taxonomy and order broadly follow American Ornithological Society (AOS). There are some logical departures, such as treating Audubon’s Setophaga auduboni and Goldman’s Warblers S. goldmani as separate from Yellow-rumped Warbler S. coronata, or recognising Azuero Parakeet Pyrrhura eisenmanni as distinct from South American Painted Parakeet P. picta.
     The main accounts comprise carefully distilled, concise identification texts and good-sized distribution maps (29 x 36 mm) on the left, with plates on facing spreads. Layout is intuitive, facilitating cross-referencing to the facing page. For species that exhibit geographic variation northern/western subspecies appear on the left-hand side of the plate and eastern/southern subspecies on the right. Plates are the most realistic of any guide to this region, accurately capturing the jizz and plumage of all groups. Birds are usually shown in profile to facilitate comparison, but the illustrations have a pleasing three-dimensional quality and the plates themselves are works of art. The antbirds and furnariids are spectacular. The figures are large and fill each plate, leaving minimal blank plate.
     Critical groups such as shorebirds, tyrant flycatchers and warblers are very nicely illustrated, the latter with both breeding and non-breeding plumages. There should be no need to carry an additional guide to the birds of North America. It is no surprise to learn that both artist and author spent a great deal of time in museum collections, especially the American Museum of Natural History, checking and comparing specimens. The depth of their research is apparent in the quality of the entire book. It may take a while for the eye to adapt to the lack of colour saturation of the plates, particularly for some groups like vireos and thrushes. However, I find the artwork very pleasing.
     In the introduction, the authors set out their reasons for not labelling figures with subspecies names; having examined the full range of geographic variation they felt that a more general description of geographic variation was more appropriate. Given the diligence with which the authors examined museum specimens, I would have liked to have seen scientific names of subspecies specified, which I think would have added clarity to accounts of, for example, Willet Tringa semipalmata, Short-billed Dowitcher Limnodromus griseus, Osprey Pandion haliaetus, Dusky-capped Flycatcher Myiarchus tuberculifer and Northern Rough-winged Swallow Stelgidopteryx serripiennis.
     Text focuses squarely on the task of identification. In the interest of brevity, it omits information on aspects of life history except where they aid identification. An introductory line on regional and global status precedes the main identification text, which is followed by a short section covering geographic variation where appropriate. Notes on habits indicate habitat preference, the favoured habitat stratum (canopy vs understorey, etc.), and distinctive features of behaviour. The final section describes vocalisations. The compilation of accurate distribution maps across seven nations must have consumed an inordinate amount of time. I could find no obvious oversights, although unfortunately Turquoise-browed Eumomota superciliosa and Blue-throated Motmot Aspatha gularis maps have been transposed during layout. The authors have wisely treated records on popular online platforms with caution, which will ensure that the distributional data provides a solid baseline for future work.
     Compressing practical information on the identification of 1,200 species into one volume demands a good-sized book. This one is about the size of old guides such as Stiles & Skutch or Ridgely & Gwynne, and weighs 1.3 kg. Yes, for those who want to carry a pocket guide, it is bulky, and also heavy. And it is likely that many visitors will be inclined to pass it over in favour of a lighter guide. In my opinion that would be a mistake. I much prefer to carry a dependable, authoritative reference and will gladly have this in a backpack in preference to a smaller guide. At the very least, for those who will not be taking it in the field, it should be an essential reference for consultation back at camp or at the hotel.
     So, an excellent addition to the literature on the birds of Central America with strong text and plates. This new guide becomes the benchmark for the region and acts as a worthy geographical complement to Howell & Webb (1995), with a slight geographic overlap. The authors deserve the highest praise for a magnificent achievement.

Christopher J. Sharpe 

REFERENCES
Angehr, G. R. & Dean, R. (2010) The birds of Panama. Ithaca, NY: Comstock Publishing Associates.
Chavarría-Duriaux, L., Hille, D. C. & Dean, R. (2018) The birds of Nicaragua: a field guide. Ithaca, NY: Comstock Publishing Associates.
Fagan, J. & Komar, O. (2016) Peterson field guide to birds of northern Central America. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Gallardo, R. J. (2014) Guide to the birds of Honduras. Honduras: Mountain Gem Tours.
Garrigues, R. & Dean, R. (2007) The birds of Costa Rica: a field guide. Miami, FL: Zona Tropical.
Howell, S. N. G. & Webb, S. (1995) A guide to the birds of Mexico and northern Central America. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Jones, H. L. (2003) Birds of Belize. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Ridgely, R. S. R. & Gwynne, J. A. (1989) A guide to the birds of Panama, with Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras. 2nd edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Stiles, F. G. & Skutch, A. F. (1989) A guide to the birds of Costa Rica. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Book review: Antpittas and Gnateaters

Antpittas and Gnateaters

Harold F. Greeney
Helm (Bloomsbury) | 2018
496 pp. | 18 x 24.7 cm | 24 colour plates, 250 colour photographs
Hardback | £50 / $65 | ISBN: 9781472919649

Just finished my review of Harold Greeney's magnum opus, to be published in Neotropical Birding 24...

Thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for providing a review copy.

Published review below, PDF here.

This book is quite obviously a labour of love and, for anyone familiar with the author’s huge body of published work, it could never be anything but thorough. Harold Greeney is unashamedly a natural historian, a term that has regrettably become unfashionable in our modern world. This book does indeed read in places like a work of the Victorian era, with all the positive connotations that this implies, and venerable 19th and early 20th century names like Sclater, Godman, Salvin, Hartert and Hellmayr crop up repeatedly. The feel is maintained by the extensive excerpts from original descriptions that preface some of the species accounts, setting a tone of wonder and discovery that befits a group about which so much remains to be unearthed.
     Distributional information forms a major part of this work. Maps are a model of clarity, with base cartography showing national borders and major rivers upon which known ranges are carefully mapped. A very useful innovation is the inclusion of marked type localities. As Greeney is at pains to point out in the introduction, researching distribution “was one of the most time-consuming aspects of this work”. The maps are based on a vast compilation of records, comprising specimen data, publications, and voucher records held at archives such as xeno-canto (https://www.xeno-canto.org/) and the Internet Bird Collection (https://www.hbw.com/ibc). The half-a-billion records in the increasingly popular (and powerful) eBird system (https://ebird.org) have also been evaluated, with sight records employed cautiously, emphasising to eBird users the utility of supporting unusual records with voucher audio or visual material. In painstaking detail, sight records have routinely been verified by correspondence with the observers. The source of all records is provided; as the author admits, he did not want to condemn future revisers to repeat the process by obscuring the primary data beneath interpretative accounts. These data will be passed over by many readers, but for perhaps as many others they will be a gold mine to be exploited again and again. They are the sort of feature that sets this monograph apart from so many other similar titles covering other bird families, and their inclusion can only be applauded.
     We have established that the library and museum research has been extraordinarily thorough. But Greeney’s credentials as a field ornithologist are second to none. Texts are thoroughly underpinned by hard scientific data, but Greeney contributes much original observation of his own. For example, referring to Plain-backed Antpitta Grallaria haplonota, he relates “A pair that I observed in the foothills of Ecuador (chaplinae) appeared to increase song rates in response to darkening skies...”, a trait that will be familiar to anyone who has spent time with the species, for example, in Rancho Grande Biological Station, Venezuela, where its haunting song is a feature of the soundscape during misty hours. Indeed, much life-history information, such as nesting data, seasonality, plumage and moult, is here published for the first time. Some of this is recounted in a way that captures the naturalist’s joy at observing the events, such as Greeney’s personal account of a Tawny Antpitta Grallaria quitensis adult relieving its incubating mate on a snow-bound nest.
     Taxonomy follows the American Ornithological Society, with one minor departure in the recognition of Grallaria fenwickorum rather than G. urraoensis for Urrao Antpitta, in adherence to International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature regulations. The author recognises that some of the ‘species’ treated are therefore obvious species complexes, the component subspecies of which will in all likelihood, once the evidence is formally marshalled, be elevated to species level. Obvious examples are the Rufous Grallaria rufula and Tawny Antpitta G. quitensis complexes, which potentially comprise seven and three species respectively; the Sierra de Perijá taxon saltuensis of northeast Colombia and northwest Venezuela is perhaps the clearest case in point, originally assigned to G. rufula when described more than 70 years ago, with the remark that it “it seems possible that it may be a distinct species”. All seven current subspecies of Rufous Antpitta are illustrated and, since all 156 taxa recognised in the book are treated separately and in detail, disentangling the taxa in future will not prove too much of a challenge.
     With the sheer volume of information included here, it is no surprise that the odd minor error has crept in. The text states (p. 436) that the range of Slate-crowned Grallaricula nana “does overlap with Sucre Antipitta [G. cumanensis] in the east [of Venezuela]”, from which the crucial word “not” is missing. More seriously, subspecies labels have been incorrectly placed on the map for Plain-backed Antpitta Grallaria haplonota, surely a slip-up at the layout stage. But such things should not trouble us.
     Plates are of the high quality we have come to expect from David Beadle, and are a pleasure to peruse. In this case one definitely can judge the book by its (stunning Crescent-faced Antpitta Grallaricula lineifrons) cover. Photographs of live birds are provided for all currently recognised species, except for Elusive Grallaria eludens and Grey-naped Antpittas G. griseonucha, where specimens are substituted. Not surprisingly, given the author’s track record of publishing nest descriptions, many of the photos are of nests, nestlings or fledglings – all of which will be excitingly unfamiliar to many readers.
     This is one of the best-researched avian monographs ever published, and leaves little to desire in the coverage of its subject. In fact, it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that everything we currently know about this group is contained within this book, so the only factor in deciding whether or not to acquire it is whether antpittas and gnateaters are of interest to the potential purchaser. Given the almost cult interest in these enigmatic cryptic birds, which to judge by the growing number of feeding stations is on the increase, I am confident that the book will sell itself.

Christopher J. Sharpe

Book review: Birds of Nicaragua: a field guide

Birds of Nicaragua: a field guide

Liliana Chavarría-Duriaux, David C. Hille & Robert Dean
Comstock (A Zona Tropical Publication) | 2018
480 pp. | 14 x 21.7 cm | 1332 colour illustrations, 9 colour photographs, 810 maps
Softback | £32 / $39.95 | ISBN: 9781501701580

Just finished my review of the handy new guide to the birds of Nicaragua, to be published in Neotropical Birding 24...

Thanks to Cornell University Press for providing a review copy.

Published review below, PDF here.

Nicaragua has long been in the shadow of its neighbour, Costa Rica, partly due to decades of political instability fuelled by proxy war. During the last century, grouped with El Salvador and Honduras, it was often overlooked by travellers and birders, or given a wide berth. It still slips under the world-listers’ radar simply because it has no endemic species. This is a terrible shame since the country has so much to offer, arguably more than any other in the region. It holds the largest continuous block of tropical forest north of Amazonia, habitats that are better preserved than those in neighbouring countries, a respectable 750+ species of bird (vs 925 for Costa Rica) and is the Central American country where exciting new discoveries can most realistically be expected. Without a doubt, the lack of a modern field guide has not helped the country promote its avian riches. Now that has been remedied, first by a pioneering 2014 bilingual guide (Martínez-Sánchez et al. 2014; on which Liliana Chavarría-Duriaux was a co-author), and now by this Zona Tropical offering.
     The guide covers 763 species, with full accounts accorded to every species that is known to have occurred, including vagrants such as Pacific Golden Plover Pluvialis fulva, Black-capped Petrel Pterodroma hasitata and Tawny-collared Nightjar Antrostomus salvini. An appendix provides shorter text and thumbnail illustrations of 43 species that are likely to be found in future, or whose claim to form part of the avifauna rests on a single sight record, thus helping future-proof the book to some extent. Some sight records have apparently been rejected on available evidence, as with a March 2014 sight record of Sinaloa Martin Progne sinaloae, although for this species whose winter range is unknown (quite possibly Amazonia), it would seem at least plausible that it might migrate through Nicaragua. Taxonomy follows the American Ornithological Society; differences with the increasingly popular Clements and International Ornithological Congress lists – much favoured by eBirders and world-listers respectively – are not mentioned, but neither are they difficult to determine.
     All information pertinent to a species is provided on a single page spread, making the guide quick to use in the field. The book itself is slightly larger (about 2 cm taller) than Zona Tropical’s popular Costa Rica predecessor (Garrigues & Dean 2007), which puts it on the borderline of what might be called a ‘pocket guide’, but it is otherwise fairly similar in style and layout, all wrapped in the identical type of standard soft cover.
     Text is concise, albeit a little longer than that of its Costa Rican counterpart, and clearly emphasises characters for field identification. Care has been taken to describe distribution, status and seasonality in sufficient detail for critical use. Descriptions of voice are always idiosyncratic, and in some cases I am not sure my ears are quite attuned to those of the authors. For example, I have trouble matching the description of a “rhythmic 4-phrase song” for Pale-vented Pigeon Patagioenas cayennensis with the classic ‘Santa Cruz’ mnemonic that my brain ascribes.
     The 2014 Nicaragua guide lacked maps, relying instead on range descriptions. This Zona Tropical guide breaks new ground, with large, colour-coded maps that permit the instant narrowing-down of possibilities. Despite their size, the maps are rather broad-brush, doubtless reflecting the resolution of the information the authors had at their disposal, especially the paucity of museum collections made in Nicaragua; their source is not specified beyond “years of field research”.
     Robert Dean’s plates originally appeared in Garrigues and Dean (2007), but there are many new illustrations depicting females, birds in flight, tail patterns and so on. All boreal migrants are illustrated, cutting down on the need to carry a North America field guide. As users of previous guides featuring Dean’s work will know, the paintings are well-suited to the purpose of practical identification, showing diagnostic field marks.
     Zona Tropical publications have made a niche for themselves with a series of well-produced field guides to Central American biota, and this latest addition will occupy a prominent place in their portfolio. I very much hope that birders will be persuaded to visit Nicaragua, and tour companies will eventually welcome it into the suite of orthodox tour destinations. With the appearance of this handy guide, crafted with love as well as expertise, there should be no excuse.

Christopher J. Sharpe 

REFERENCES
Garrigues, R. & Dean, R. (2007) The birds of Costa Rica: a field guide. Miami FL, USA: Zona Tropical.
Martínez-Sánchez, J., Chavarría-Duriaux, L. & Muñoz, F. J. (2014) A guide to the birds of Nicaragua/Nicaragua – una guía de aves. Magdeburg, Germany: Verlags KG Wolf.

Birds of Vietnam goes to press

Birds of Vietnam, the second title in the Lynx and BirdLife International Field Guides series has gone to press. More details can be found on the book's Lynx webpage. Sample page spreads are available for download too. This pioneering publication is the first ever field guide to the avifauna. The new flexicover version is available at a discount and with free worldwide shipping until 20 December. More information to follow soon...

Lynx and BirdLife International Field Guides at Birdfair

Lynx Edicions is launching the Lynx and BirdLife International Field Guides series at Birdfair. If you're going to be there, come along to our stand for a chat with two of the ornithologists in charge of this collection: Guy Kirwan on Saturday and me on Sunday. More information here.

Birds of Thailand is out!

Birds of Thailand, the first title in the Lynx and BirdLife International Field Guides series has gone to press. More details can be found on the book's Lynx webpage. More information to follow soon...

Book review: Listening to a Continent Sing by Don Kroodsma

Listening to a Continent Sing. Birdsong by Bicycle from the Atlantic to the Pacific

Donald Kroodsma
Princeton University Press | 2016
336 pp. | 16 x 24 cm | 125 line illustrations
Hardcover | £22.95 / $29.95 | ISBN: 9780691166810

Listening to a Continent Sing documents a ten-week cycle trip made by Don Kroodsma and his son David across the USA from the Atlantic to the Pacific – east to west against the wind in order to best take advantage of the advancing season – “lingering and listening to our continent sing as no one has before”. A taste of the coast-to-coast journey, made during the summer of 2003, can be found in the NPR clip Searching Out 'The Singing Life of Birds', recorded a couple of years after the trip. The author's pure joy, his sense of wonder and curiosity, combined with scientific rigour, so evident in Elizabeth Arnold's interview, are qualities that infuse the resulting book. The text takes the from of a travelogue, but it is more immediately an exploration of rural back routes, a celebration of nature, and a wonderful appreciation of bird song. As a travel diary, it is an easy and entertaining read. But for those who want to take the subject further the book serves as an introduction to learning bird song: the QR codes sprinkled throughout link to 381 recordings that really bring the trip to life and are a great way for the reader to gain familiarity with some of North America's finest songsters. This and much more material is provided on the author's Listening to a Continent Sing companion website. A handful of recordings make up an audio archive documenting some of the characters that the cyclists met en route and their relationship with birds: family store owner Charles Haupt on his Purple Martins in Charles City, Virginia, bubbly Park Naturalist Terry Owens on the avian delights of Breaks Interstate Park, far western Virginia, or Rev. James R. Love on his local birds (maintaining that birds sing because they are happy) in Eastview, Kentucky.

Listening to a Continent Sing will be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in the outdoors, by cyclists (David Kroodsma is himself an experienced cyclist and author of The Bicycle Diaries), and above all by birders. I have only just begin reading the book, but I already suspect that it will turn out to be one of the outstanding popular bird books of the year.

***

Don Kroodsma at work in the Mérida Andes. Photo: Don Kroodsma

I first met Don Kroodsma in 1995 when he had quickly acquired a reputation as an eccentric gringo professor studying, together with student Viviana Salas, endemic Mérida Wren Cistothorus meridae, a scarce bird restricted to a tiny range in the Venezuelan Andes. This species was a key target for visiting birders and was not all that well known ecologically, so I was surprised to find that Don knew so much about the population at the head of the Santo Domingo valley: where to find them, how many territories there were (over a dozen!), and of course how many songs formed the repertoire of each male... He was a fount of fascinating information on the species – and one of his tips helped us obtain superb views of the bird, which can be a tricky business when the weather is inclement.

A year or two later, I was lucky enough to be invited to take a Cornell LNS bird sound workshop with Don, Greg Budney and Dave Ross at the joint ABA/AFO conference in Costa Rica. Their combined experience was formidable and really got me hooked on professional sound recording (prior to that I had been using a cheap and inadequate Sony video microphone feeding into a budget dictaphone).

Being taught by one of the world’s experts in bird vocalisations together with one of the premier recordists was a real privilege. On our field trip to Tipantí National Park we were accompanied by a friend of Don’s, the late Dave Stemple (husband of children’s author Janet Yolen), with whom I was later to spend a lot of time recording bird songs and through whom I kept in contact with Don.

In 1998 I was able to repay Don for his efforts in teaching the workshop, when, while living in Managua, I noticed that the Three-wattled Bellbirds Procnias tricarunculatus of the Nicaraguan highlands sang very differently to their Costa Rican relatives that I knew fairly well. I suspected that Don might be interested in this, and through Dave, I was able to send Don some extended sound recordings of the Nicaraguan birds, which helped him document song learning in a suboscine passerine. This exciting discovery is described in Don Stap's Birdsong. A Natural History.

Over the years I have kept up with Don’s research – he is, after all, an authority in the field of bird song and his discoveries demand to be read by anyone with an interest in bird vocalisations. I was able to procure a copy of the superb The Singing Life of Birds and occasionally come across radio interviews. Another NPR interview, with Terry Gross, Understanding Birdsong — and Its Fans was made on the launch of The Singing Life of Birds. A useful 2009 interview in the ABA's Birding magazine contains plenty more links to cuts of North American birds.

“There’s this wonderful Zen parable. If you listen to the thrush and hear a thrush, you’ve not really heard the thrush. But if you listen to a thrush and hear a miracle, then you’ve heard the thrush.”

— Don Kroodsma in Searching Out 'The Singing Life of Birds' (NPR interview with Elizabeth Arnold, 13 June 2005)

Neotropical Birding 17 is out!

Neotropical Birding 17 is printed and has been available at the UK Birdfair since Friday. I was there today and enjoyed seeing the Neotropical Bird Club stand. This issue has been assembled in record time – six weeks – but is nevertheless one of the most satisfying numbers I have put together. Photos of what will now be recognised as a "new" species of owl for North America (Strix sartorii), the article on Sierra de Perijá and the nice image of Pterodroma–Stercorarius interspecific social dominance mimicry (ISDM) are my highlights. I had some really nice unsolicited comments from people at the Birdfair - thank you all! 

Welcome to issue 17 of Neotropical Birding! 

You've heard of Africa's Big Five and Big Seven, but the average birder prefers the Big Six. Where in the world? Of course, it's the Paraguayan Chaco. Our veteran ornithologists Paul Smith and Rob Clay take us on a tour that targets the Chaco Big Six – figuratively, although they will literally be taking a group there on one of our regular NBC Fundraising tours later this year. They might even throw in a couple of extras that could one day make a Paraguayan Big Eight!

For a break from the heat, try some Andean birding in the isolated mountain range of Perijá on the Colombia-Venezuela border. This little-visited and relatively neglected range has been explored with some difficulty from the Venezuelan side, resulting in some remarkable discoveries in recent years. Travelling to the Colombian side, Trevor Ellery takes us to ProAves' newly-established Chamicero del Perijá (Perija Thistletail) Reserve. The lodge gives access to birds that were the stuff of dreams about only three or four years ago, including what will almost certainly be recognised as an endemic “Rufous” Antpitta, Grallaria (rufula) saltuensis, as well as the eponymous thistletail.

The second of our Birding Sites is the Río Bigal Biological Reserve in eastern Ecuador, a favourite of Juan Freile, Vincent Mouret and Mathieu Siol. Nestled in the Andean foothills, the reserve enjoys the best of both worlds, with a heady avifaunal mix of Amazonian and Andean species – and some really special birds characteristic of these elevations like the poorly-known, but stunning Pink-throated Brilliant Heliodoxa gularis.

In our last issue, Steve Howell examined Markham's Storm Petrel identification at sea. This time Fabrice Schmitt dispenses with the dramamine and takes us to recently-discovered Markham's Storm Petrel breeding colonies in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. The nest sites of Ringed Storm Petrel remain a mystery – but for how long?

Sticking with seabirds, Alex Lees, Fabio Olmos and Alberto Campos go pelagic birding off the coast of NE Brazil. Their targets? Trindade Petrel Pterodroma arminjoniana tops a list that could include just about anything. Their article includes quite a few species for which there are only a handful of Brazilian records.

But if a handful of records is not exclusive enough, and you have a penchant for those really elusive birds, then they do not come much more enigmatic than Mexico's mystery Cinereous Owl Strix (“varia”) sartorii. Birding at the Cutting Edge, Nathan Pieplow and Andrew Spencer present the first photographs and sonograms, and tell us all about one of the most exciting encounters in North American birding for some time.

Our Globally Threatened Bird, the Colombian endemic Chestnut-capped Piha Lipaugus weberi, was only discovered in 1999 and is already Endangered – perhaps even Critically Endangered. This reinforces an idea that crops up with alarming regularity in Neotropical Birding: species becoming extinct even before we know them.

Alex Lees' invites you to “Get your lists out!” one last time for his final thoughts on Splits, lumps and shuffles. This is the column that turns everyone into an armchair taxonomist, providing fuel for arguments over the sanity of the AOU or IOC, Clements or HBW / BirdLife. Birdwise, it's the usual suspects once again: Pyrrhura parakeets, woodcreepers and Splitalopus. But should you have been paying more attention to those Grey-necked Wood Rails and Red-crowned Ant Tanagers – a probable future armchair tick or two for anyone who has been to both Central and South America?

As ever, Jez Bird brings us his regular NBC Conservation Awards Update. NBC continues to finance vital projects to conserve Neotropical Birds. Please join the Club if you would like to support our valuable work.

And finally, I would like to thank all our contributors, many of whom supplied unique material to meet a very tight schedule, writing articles, answering requests and sending photographs directly from the field. Thank you for sparing the time to make NB17 possible. I owe a special debt of gratitude to those who provide first class text and images for every issue, helping us unconditionally – you know who you are, and our readers do too!

Happy Neotropical birding!

Christopher J. Sharpe, Senior Editor

Neotropical Birding 17: contents

Sharpe, C. J. (2015) Welcome to issue 17 of Neotropical Birding. Neotrop. Birding 17: 2–3.

Schmitt, F., Barros, R. & Norambuena, H. (2015) Markham’s Storm Petrel breeding colonies discovered in Chile. Neotrop. Birding 17: 5–10. [Oceanodroma markhami, Oceanodroma hornbyi, Oceanites gracilis] E-mail: fabrschmitt at yahoo dot com

Lees, A. C., Olmos, F. & Campos, A. (2015) Here be gadflies: pelagic birding off north-east Brazil. Neotrop. Birding 17: 11–18. [Pterodroma arminjoniana, Calonectris
borealis, Oceanodroma leucorhoa, Stercorarius pomarinus; nice image of Pterodroma–Stercorarius interspecific social dominance mimicry (ISDM)] E-mail: alexanderlees at btopenworld dot com

Lees, A. C. (2015) Splits, lumps and shuffles. Neotrop. Birding 17: 19–27. [resume of recent publications on taxonomy and systematics concerning multiple taxa] E-mail: alexanderlees at btopenworld dot com

Sharpe, C. J. (2015) Chestnut-capped Piha Lipaugus weberi. Neotrop. Birding 17: 28–31. E-mail: sharpebirder at gmail dot com

Pieplow, N. & Spencer, A. (2015) Finding Mexico’s mystery owl—Cinereous Owl Strix (varia?) sartorii. Neotrop. Birding 17: 34–39. [Strix sartorii, Strix varia, Strix fulvescens] E-mail: npieplow at gmail dot com

Smith, P. & Clay, R. P. (2015) Birding the Paraguayan Dry Chaco—The Big Six. Neotrop. Birding 17: 40–46. [Eudromia formosa, Chunga burmeisteri, Dryocopus schulzi, Strix chacoensis, Spiziapteryx circumcincta, Rhinocrypta lanceolata] E-mail: faunaparaguay at gmail dot com

Freile, J.F., Mouret, V. & Siol, M. (2015) Amidst a crowd of birds: Birding Río Bigal, Ecuador. Neotrop. Birding 17: 47–55. [E Andean Ecuadorian foothill specialities, e.g. Heliodoxa gularis] E-mail: jfreileo at yahoo dot com

Ellery, T. (2015) The Serranía del Perijá—an exciting new destination in Colombia. Neotrop. Birding 17: 58–67. [Perijá endemic taxa, e.g. Metallura iracunda, Metallura tyrianthina districta, Coeligena (bonapartei) consita, Grallaria ("rufula") saltuensis, Scytalopus perijanus, Asthenes gularis, Synallaxis unirufa munoztebari, Anisognathus lacrymosus pallididorsalis, Arremon perijanus, Atlapetes (latinuchus) nigrifrons] E-mail: trevor_lotan at hotmail dot com

Jeffers, R. (2015) Club news. Forthcoming NBC fundraising tours. Neotrop. Birding 17: 70. 

Bird, J. (2015) NBC Conservation Awards update. Neotrop. Birding 17: 71–74. [Vultur gryphus, Pyrrhura griseipectus] E-mail: jezbird at gmail dot com

Neotropical Birding 16 is being distrbuted

Our Spring issue is a little tardy this year to match the lateness of the season...

Welcome to issue 16 of Neotropical Birding! 

We're straight into the thick of it in this issue with Alex Lees' regular Splits, lumps and shuffles column, which once again trawls the murky depths of Neotropical systematics and taxonomy. This issue includes a sobering image of two recently-described and likely extinct Brazilian furnariids. How many taxa are we losing before we have time to catalogue them?

Fortunately, our Globally Threatened Bird, the Endangered Speckle-chested Piculet Picumnus steindachneri looks set to escape their fate and may turn out to be more widespread than previously suspected. Woodpecker nut Gerard Gorman has photographs.

Our first Identification Workshop focusses on at-sea Identification of Black and Markham’s Storm Petrels. The latter is a Data Deficient species, the conservation status of which is confounded by identification challenges. Its true status is only just becoming clear and happily it may turn out to be of minor conservation concern. Steve Howell is our guide, and provides our cover photo of the coveted Markham’s Storm Petrel. A very different identification pitfall is the result of pollen staining, as illustrated by mysterious Euphonias in French Guiana.

The LSU team that achieved last year's Peru Big Day record provide a blow-by-blow account of what it is like to be Birding at the Cutting Edge.

Our compilation of recent published and unpublished records, Neotropical Notebook, is collated for the last time by Guy Kirwan. His team of collaborators are Dušan Brinkhuizen, Diego Calderón, Bradley Davis and Jeremy Minns.

NBC continues to raise money to finance projects that conserve Neotropical Birds. Jez Bird tells us about this year's award winners and the continuing benefits of projects financed in the past in NBC Conservation Awards Update. Your contribution to NBC helps Award recipients give something back to the Neotropical birds we all enjoy.

We round off the issue with a Book Review of one of the most exciting bird books of the past year: the first volume of the HBW and BirdLife International Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World.


Happy Neotropical birding!

Christopher J. Sharpe, Senior Editor

Neotropical Birding 16: contents

Sharpe, C. J. (2015) Welcome to issue 16 of Neotropical Birding. Neotrop. Birding 16: 2.

Lees, A. C. (2015) Splits, lumps and shuffles. Neotrop. Birding 16: 4–15. [resume of recent publications on taxonomy and systematics concerning multiple taxa] E-mail: alexanderlees at btopenworld dot com

Gorman, G. & Sharpe, C. J. (2015) Speckle-chested Piculet Picumnus steindachneri. Neotrop. Birding 16: 18–21. E-mail: gerard at probirder dot com

Howell, S. N. G. (2015) Identification of Black and Markham’s Storm Petrels off Peru. Neotrop. Birding 16: 22–26. [Halocyptena (= Oceanodroma) melania, Oceanodroma markhami].

Deville, T., Pelletier, V., Claessens, O. & Ingels, J. (2015) Euphonias using pollen make-up: an identification pitfall. Neotrop. Birding 16: 27–31. [Euphonia minuta, Leiothlypis peregrina] E-mail: tanguy.deville at gmail dot com

Seeholzer, G., Harvey, M., Lane, D. & Angulo, F. (2015) LSU Peru Big Day 2014. Neotrop. Birding 16: 33–42. [specialities of Alto Mayo region, NE Peru] E-mail: seeholzer.glenn at gmail dot com

Kirwan, G. M., Brinkhuizen, D., Calderón, D., Davis, B. & Minns, J. (2015) Neotropical Notebook: published and unpublished records. Neotrop. Birding 16: 43–62. [resume of recent records concerning multiple taxa] E-mail: gmkirwan at aol dot com

Bird, J. (2015) NBC Conservation Awards update. Neotrop. Birding 16: 63–67. [Amazona
vinacea, A. oratrix] E-mail: jezbird at gmail dot com

Sharpe, C. J. (2015) Book review: HBW and BirdLife International Illustrated
Checklist of the Birds of the World. Volume 1. Neotrop. Birding 16: 68–69. E-mail: neotropical.birding at neotropicalbirdclub dot org html PDF

 

 

First Chiffchaff of the year and Willow Tit at Thompson Water

Singing Chiffchaff Phylloscopus collybita

A quick lunchtime picnic at Thompson Water was rewarded with the first Chiffchaffs Phylloscopus collybita of the year: at least three or four males singing and chasing around the anglers' area. An unfamiliar song, reminiscent of that of several antbirds – a rather deliberate three second series of downslurred pure-tone notes repeated seven or eight times on same pitch: piu-piu-piu-piu-piu-piu-piu-piu – proved to be a Willow Tit Parus montanus. This bird showed a well-marked pale secondary panel.