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Winter Bird Highlights 2015, Is Brought to You by U.S Winter Bird Highlights FROM PROJECT FEEDERWATCH 2014–15 FOCUS ON CITIZEN SCIENCE • VOLUME 11 Focus on Citizen Science is a publication highlight- FeederWatch welcomes new ing the contributions of citizen scientists. This is- sue, Winter Bird Highlights 2015, is brought to you by U.S. project assistant Project FeederWatch, a research and education proj- ect of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Bird Studies Canada. Project FeederWatch is made possible by the e are pleased to have a new efforts and support of thousands of citizen scientists. Wteam member on board! Meet Chelsea Benson, a new as- Project FeederWatch Staff sistant for Project FeederWatch. Chelsea will also be assisting with Cornell Lab of Ornithology NestWatch, another Cornell Lab Janis Dickinson citizen-science project. She will Director of Citizen Science be responding to your emails and Emma Greig phone calls and helping to keep Project Leader and Editor the website and social media pages Anne Marie Johnson Project Assistant up-to-date. Chelsea comes to us with a back- Chelsea Benson Project Assistant ground in environmental educa- Wesley Hochachka tion and conservation. She has worked with schools, community Senior Research Associate organizations, and local governments in her previous positions. Diane Tessaglia-Hymes She incorporated citizen science into her programming and into Design Director regional events like Day in the Life of the Hudson River. Chelsea holds a dual B.A. in psychology and English from Bird Studies Canada Allegheny College and an M.A. in Social Science, Environment Kerrie Wilcox and Community, from Humboldt State University. Project Leader We are excited that Chelsea has brought her energy and en- Rosie Kirton thusiasm to the Cornell Lab, where she will no doubt mobilize Project Support even more people to monitor bird feeders (and bird nests) for Kristine Dobney Project Assistant science. Welcome, Chelsea! Denis Lepage Senior Scientist Cover: Northern Flicker by Gary Mueller Join Project FeederWatch! Below: Curve-billed Thrasher by Pam Koch Anyone in the United States and Canada with an in- terest in birds and a feeder to watch is welcome to join. Help scientists monitor winter bird populations while you learn more about the birds in your neigh- borhood. To join, contact the FeederWatch office in your country. United States Cornell Lab of Ornithology 159 Sapsucker Woods Road Ithaca, NY 14850 1-800-843-BIRD (2473) [email protected] www.feederwatch.org Canada Bird Studies Canada P.O. Box 160 Port Rowan, ON N0E 1M0 1-888-448-BIRD (2473) [email protected] www.birdscanada.org/pfw.html 2 FeederWatchers help researchers study mobbing behavior in backyard birds BY CEDAR MATHERS-WINN, CORNELL LAB OF ORNITHOLOGY Janelle Morano Janelle f you have ever seen a group of look for differences in the calls. Ibirds clustered around a rap- Predators closest in size to their tor and calling excitedly, then you prey are most threatening. Black- have probably seen what is known capped Chickadees have been as a “mobbing” event. Many com- shown to change their mobbing mon birds are known to behave ag- calls according to the sizes of dif- gressively toward predators, often ferent predators,1 but very little is approaching and even diving at a known about the mobbing calls of threatening hawk or owl while giv- Blue Jays, a species of particular in- ing characteristically harsh “mob- terest to this study. bing calls.” The sound of mobbing In addition to understanding the birds can draw quite a crowd, often information contained in mobbing attracting many different species to calls, the researchers hope to gain join the cause, and can sometimes insight into how this information even harass the predator enough to is shared and interpreted among drive it away. multiple species. There is evidence The calls given by mobbing spe- that many different species listen to Robotic owl used to elicit mobbing calls cies are extremely conspicuous, from backyard feeder birds. and understand each other’s mob- but the information birds commu- bing calls and that information in nicate with mobbing calls is not well known. A re- those calls transmits substantial distances through search collaboration between Christopher Clark, at networks of eavesdropping birds.2,3 Future research the Cornell Lab, and Erick Greene, at the University of will attempt to decipher how far and fast information Montana, aims to elucidate the context and meaning travels, who listens, and how this information is inter- of these calls. Toward that goal, researchers Janelle preted. Morano and Cedar Mathers-Winn, of the Cornell 1Templeton, C., Greene, E., and Davies, K. 2005. Allometry of Lab’s Macaulay Library, spent the winter conduct- alarm calls: Black-capped Chickadees encode information about ing experiments with the backyard birds of Project predator size. Science, 308:5730, 1934–1937. FeederWatch participants in and near Ithaca, New 2Templeton, C. and Greene, E. 2007. Nuthatches eavesdrop on York. Researchers recorded the mobbing responses variations in heterospecific chickadee mobbing alarm calls. PNAS 104:13, 5479–5482. of feeder birds to two robotic mounts—a large Great 3 Horned Owl and smaller Eastern Screech-Owl. In the Magrath, R. D., Pitcher, B. J., and Gardner, J. L. 2009. An avian eavesdropping network: alarm signal reliability and heterospe- coming months, they will analyze the data collected to cific response. Behavioral Ecology 20:4, 745–752. Your Legacy for Birds Contributing data to Project FeederWatch is an important way to leave a lasting legacy. A pledge of financial support through a gift in your estate plans is a way to help ensure that FeederWatch thrives into the future. To learn more about planned giving, please visit us at birds.cornell.giftplans.org or donate to FeederWatch by visiting www.feederwatch.org and clicking on the “Donate” button on the home page. Snow Bunting by Iris Macpherson by Bunting Snow 3 Photos, from left to right: Judy Eberspaecher, Missy Mandel, Robert Salter, Nick Saunders, Melissa Penta. The bird on the left is a classic dark, streaky Common Redpoll, while the bird on the far right is a snowy, small-billed Hoary Redpoll. But many birds lie in between these two extremes. New research suggests Common–Hoary confusion may be justified. How many species of redpolls are there? Cornell Lab researchers look at redpoll DNA BY GUSTAVE AXELSON, CORNELL LAB OF ORNITHOLOGY eederWatchers lucky enough to find different? The variation we see in plumage and size is probably not a matter of genetic variation but of redpolls at their feeders often search genetic expression. It’s rather like how two humans hopefully for the elusive Hoary might have the same gene for brown hair, but one per- F son’s hair might be lighter than the other’s—that gene Redpoll. But new research by two scientists is being expressed differently. In the same way, Hoary at the Cornell Lab presents genetic evidence and Common redpolls have remarkably similar sets of that reopens questions about the species sta- genes, but those genes are expressed differently, caus- ing the plumage and bill-shape differences we see. tus of the Hoary Redpoll, long thought to be In addition to looking at DNA from a variety of red- a distinct species from the Common Redpoll. poll specimens, Mason and Taylor sampled redpolls from a large flock that had gathered in a fellow Cornell In a recent paper1 Nicholas Mason and Scott Taylor Lab employee’s backyard in Cortland, New York. If of the Cornell Lab’s Fuller Evolutionary Biology Hoary and Common redpolls had long been separate Program showed that Hoary Redpolls and Common species, then the birds sampled should have mostly fit Redpolls were nearly genetically identical. “Based on neatly into two categories, both by visual appearance the samples of DNA we examined for Common and and genetically. Instead, Mason said, “We did not find Hoary redpoll, they’re probably best treated as a sin- distinct characteristics to separate the redpoll types, gle species,” Mason says. but rather a continuum, or a progression, of physi- Mason and Taylor looked beyond the plumage into cal traits, and many redpolls were somewhere in the strands of the birds’ DNA in the most extensive look middle.” ever at the redpoll genome. Whereas previous genetic In nature, one of the key differentiators among dis- analyses of redpolls looked at just 11 regions of the ge- tinct species is assortative mating, that is, members of nome (at most), Mason and Taylor examined 235,000 a group breeding with each other more often than they regions. breed with members of another group. According to The duo compared DNA from 77 redpolls, includ- Mason, when it comes to Hoary, Common, and Lesser ing specimens from museums around the world. They redpolls, “There are no clear-cut genetic differences, found no consistent differences in DNA that distin- which is what we would expect to see if assortative guishes Hoary Redpolls from Common Redpolls. mating had been occurring for a long time.” Instead, Furthermore, another redpoll species found in Mason says the world’s three redpoll species seem to Europe—the Lesser Redpoll—also had extremely sim- be “functioning as members of a single gene pool.” ilar DNA sequences. This extreme similarity among Excerpted from March 30, 2015 post on the Cornell Lab’s All all the redpolls stands in marked contrast to stud- About Birds Blog: blog.allaboutbirds.org. ies of other groups of birds—such as Black-capped 1Mason, N.A. and Taylor, S. A. 2015. Differentially expressed and Carolina chickadees—which show differences at genes match bill morphology and plumage despite largely undif- many regions of the genome. ferentiated genomes in Holarctic songbird. Molecular Ecology, How then can Hoary and Common redpolls look so 24:12, 3009–3025.
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