Today 12 TAS birders set out to see what we could find in Pierce County on a drop-dead beautiful sunny day. I had scouted the saltwater spots over the last few days and except for the King Eider not much was terribly interesting so we decided to try some other areas. After meeting at the Hwy 512-I5 park and ride we headed for the Mountain View Cemetery marsh and oak woodlands. Raptor’s ruled the early morning, with two Peregrine Falcons spotted right off by Richard Smethurst and later Red-tailed hawk, Cooper’s hawk were seen as well. The second Cooper’s cooperatively sat on a small tree on the edge of the oaks area and kept the sparrows hunkered down while we enjoyed great views.
Next stop was at American Lake. First we went to the Camp Murray Boat Launch site and relocated the Canvasbacks that I had seen yesterday, and soaked up the sunshine as it started to warm up. Over at Harry Todd Park we got nice comparison looks at Mew, California and Ring-billed gulls. Love it when nearly all the gulls are adults. No hoped for Boneparte’s flock to search through for Little gull, but more sunshine, waterfowl and gulls made it a nice quick stop.
Next we headed for Mount’s Road where a Greater Yellowlegs was the best find. My favorite stop of the day was the last one, as the sun really warmed everyone up and we sorted through a nice flock of Golden-crowned sparrows and located a White-throated sparrow. It was seen really well by everyone, and several photos were obtained. This one is by Kathleen Miller.

We also had great looks at Fox Sparrow, some of these were even singing.
We ended the day about 1:20 PM. It was really fun to get out with a group of experienced birders on a day when the weather could not have been nicer.

Join ABC on Wednesday, December 2, 6:45 pm, featuring Sievert Rohwer, Curator and Professor Emeritus of the University of Washington Burke Museum present: “Molt and Avian Life Histories”

Lecture Location:Pierce County Administration Center & Library. 3005 112th St E, Tacoma, WA 98446, Just E of Waller Rd and S of H512.

Price: $10, payable at the door.

Another blockbuster guest speaker for ABC! Dr. Rohwer has won numerous awards for his studies and theories, and he is willing to share what he’s learned with us!

For Dr. Sievert Rohwer, birds have played a central role in developing and testing theories of life history evolution, particularly those involving tradeoffs between reproduction and survival. Yet studies of avian life histories have seldom considered the importance of molt and feather quality as drivers of avian life history evolution. Instead, the period of molt in the annual cycle is generally ignored or unstudied with respect to molt constraining avian reproduction and evolution. Consider the survival cost of feather replacement. Flight performance is impaired during molt, yet no one has ever measured the effect of molting on survival, even though a complete molt takes 1-2 months in a small warbler, and most large birds cannot replace all their flight feathers annually. His talk will focus on how we determine the rules of flight feather replacement and on how large birds can and cannot accommodate their need regularly to renew their flight feathers.

Another important take-home message of this talk is the value of modern collections of extended wings for exploring these ideas. Beginning in the mid 1980s, the Burke Museum pioneered the development of saving an extended wing from every new bird specimen added to its collections. For large birds that cannot be collected in numbers, extensive salvage programs have developed a uniquely valuable wing collection that has supported many discoveries about the rules of flight feather replacement and how these rules affect avian reproduction and life history evolution.

Brief Bio:

Ph.D. University of Kansas. 1971.

Curator of Birds and Professor of Biology, University of Washington 1972.

Dr. Rohwer studies evolutionary ecology and behavior, mostly of birds, with interests in avian coloration, adoption of unrelated offspring by replacement mates, avian hybrid zones, brood parasitism, phylogeography, and life history implications of feather renewal. “Under my curatorship the ornithology collections at the Burke Museum became internationally distinguished, with the largest collection of extended wings in the world and the second largest collection of avian tissues in the world.”

Honors:

2006. AOU Elliott Coues award recognizing “extraordinary contributions to ornithological research.”

2011. Cooper Society Katma Award for “formulation of new ideas that could change the course of thinking about avian biology.”

Please join us and invite other interested individuals. For questions, contact Kay Pullen at kaypullen@me.com.

I think there are still 2 slots open on the TAS trip I’m leading Sat from 8 AM – about 1 PM. Plan is to see recent interesting e-bird Pierce County sightings or look for birds I or other participants want to see. Should be fun. Sign up on the TAS site if interested.

Ed Pullen

Report on BRUCE BEEHLER event, Nov 5, 2015:

ABC was very fortunate to snag Bruce Beehler to address the group and interested members of the public on November 5, 2015. Dr. Beehler is the Research Associate/Division of Birds, National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution, and the world’s expert on birds and wildlife of New Guinea, having made numerous trips there over the years and co-editing the essential birding guide to this remotest of islands.

The University of Puget Sound hosted this event, thanks to Tahoma Audubon past board member and director of the Slater Museum, Peter Wimberger. Jerry Broadus of ABC, a board member of Tahoma Audubon, introduced Bruce, and then the fun began!

Bruce started out with descriptions of the terrain (no roads possible!) and the people and customs. Having met Bruce now, we can see how his friendliness and interest made him friends everywhere he went, which was certainly necessary in some of the more remote areas such as the mountains of western New Guinea. Landing strips and helicopter pads are the only points of contact for much of this area. Aerial photos brought this home to us. Out of the trees, it could be very hot, but quite bearable in the shade, if a little damp.

The slide show then switched to flora and fauna. Even the flowers (world’s largest Rhody flower!) and rats (the largest in the world, reminiscent of Conan Doyle’s “giant rat of Sumatra!”). But the birds — Wow! From huge (Cassowary) to a miniature parrot! And two POISONOUS showy birds, which were personally tested by one of Bruce’s colleagues. Wouldn’t want that job! Although the exact poison is known, the mechanism of how it made it from plant to bird is still unknown.

Amazing bower birds and birds of paradise just amazed us! One bird of paradise was “discovered” several decades ago by identifying feathers in a native’s headdress! The Raggiana Bird of Paradise is New Guinea’s national bird — sure puts the Bald Eagle to shame!

Bruce told us the amazing story of having 60 Minutes do their famous piece on him and his work in New Guinea, sending the late Bob Simon out there with him plus a full camera crew shipped in from Africa. Bruce was amazed at the professionalism and the silent acceptance they all had of the obvious hardships and how they got the job done. Bruce’s contacts saved the day for the TV crew when their helicopter failed to materialize, though, as Bruce was able to get one right away from his contacts. This TV experience turned out to be a pivotal experience in Bruce’s career, rocketing him to stardom, so to speak. And well deserved! Bruce used some of their film footage in his presentation, and it was great!

Bruce brought along a few copies of his books for sale. THE BIRDS OF NEW GUINEA: SECOND EDITION sold out to our group within 5 minutes. Luckily he brought more copies of his newer book, LOST WORLDS, ADVENTURES IN THE TROPICAL RAINFOREST, which includes New Guinea and lots of Bruce’s other expeditions.

The full house gave Bruce a round of applause and a bunch of interesting questions.

Click on the image below to enlarge:

Join ABC on Dec 2, 6:45, at the Pierce County Administration Building, 3005 112th St E, just E of Waller Rd and S of H512, for this special event, Molt and Avian Life Histories, presented by Sievert Rohwer, Curator and Professor Emeritus of the University of Washington Burke Museum!

From Professor Rohwer: Birds have played a central role in developing and testing theories of life history evolution, particularly those involving tradeoffs between reproduction and survival. Yet studies of avian life histories have seldom considered the importance of molt and feather quality as drivers of avian life history evolution. Instead, the period of molt in the annual cycle is generally ignored or unstudied with respect to molt constraining avian reproduction and evolution. Consider the survival cost of feather replacement. Flight performance is impaired during molt, yet no one has ever measured the effect of molting on survival, even though a complete molt takes 1-2 months in a small warbler, and most large birds cannot replace all their flight feathers annually. My talk will focus on how we determine the rules of flight feather replacement and on how large birds can and cannot accommodate their need regularly to renew their flight feathers.

Another important take-home message of this talk is the value of modern collections of extended wings for exploring these ideas. Beginning in the mid 1980s the Burke Museum pioneered the development of saving an extended wing from every new bird specimen added to its collections. For large birds that cannot be collected in numbers, extensive salvage programs have developed a uniquely valuable wing collection that has supported many discoveries about the rules of flight feather replacement and how these rules affect avian reproduction and life history evolution.

Brief Bio: Ph.D. University of Kansas. 1971. Curator of Birds and Professor of Biology, University of Washington 1972.

Honors:

2006. AOU Elliott Coues award recognizing “extraordinary contributions to ornithological research.”

2011. Cooper Society Katma Award for “formulation of new ideas that could change the course of thinking about avian biology.”

I study evolutionary ecology and behavior, mostly of birds, with interests in avian coloration, adoption of unrelated offspring by replacement mates, avian hybrid zones, brood parasitism, phylogeography, and life history implications of feather renewal. Under my curatorship the Ornithology collections at the Burke Museum became internationally distinguished, with the largest collection of extended wings in the world and the second largest collection of avian tissues in the world.