DUNCANVILLE, TEXAS — This morning, something happened to me that’s never happened before. I awoke to the call of a White-winged Dove.

I’d been expecting the doves to show up eventually; I’d seen them only a few blocks away from my apartment. And after the initial wake-up call this morning, I saw them several times throughout the day, and often heard their calls.

For years, I’ve thought that white-wings say, “Who cooks for you?” I know that’s what Barred Owls are supposed to say, but the rhythm of certain white-winged calls is nearly identical.

Mourning Doves, Great-tailed Grackles, starlings, cardinals, House Finches, and mockingbirds all sang in the sunshine too. Spring is coming!

DUNCANVILLE, TEXAS — Here are a few updates on recent stories:

Grenada Dove (Grenada Dove’s existence threatened by sale of park)

BirdLife International says that despite mounting pressure, Grenada’s government is still considering the sale of a national park to a resort company. The government, apparently, wants to have its cake and eat it too. Meanwhile, an excellent post by Nic Winkler in Grenada reminds us that the issues at stake are very complex and their consequences far-reaching. Good on you, Nic.

Texas GBBC results (A few more cowbirds for the GBBC)

I said earlier that Texas probably recorded more species than any other state during this year’s Great Backyard Bird Count. But between continuing checklist submissions in and ongoing data review, Texas and California are neck and neck. The final tally could swing either way.

Reviewers sorting through the Texas results have disqualified several wacky reports. Perhaps the most bizarre was the report of a Passenger Pigeon!

I intend no unkindness to new or inexperienced birders, but this sort of absurdity is one reason that “citizen science” is looked down on by some. Reports of long-extinct or far out-of-range species are relatively easy to detect and eliminate, but the submission of such reports suggests that countless subtler errors are slipping through. However, organizers of events like the GBBC apparently believe that the risk is acceptable, that the benefits outweigh the confusion, and that millions of records aggregated over the years can in fact tell us something about our birds — even if someone did try to report a Passenger Pigeon from Conroe, Texas.

DNA barcodes (1,000 new bird species?)

Will a recently published paper usher in a whole new round of splits and lumps? Well … it appears that the original intent of the paper has been distorted by media coverage and hasty conclusions, as Bob Powell pointed out on BirdChat. In response to a message on Texbirds last night, I posted the following:

Unfortunately, some of the news stories and headlines that this research has inspired are misleading. This headline (”Genetics Reveal 15 New N.American Bird Species”) is particularly bad.

From the original paper’s abstract: “DNA barcoding seeks to assemble a standardized reference library for DNA-based identification of eukaryotic species. The utility and limitations of this approach need to be tested on well-characterized taxonomic assemblages.”

In other words, the researchers were testing the validity of the “barcode” idea by comparing their results against a relatively accepted standard. When their results differed from the standard, they tried to come up with hypotheses to explain the inconsistencies.

One hypothesis was that there could be unrecognized species in North America (surprise!). But that doesn’t mean that it’s the right answer, or the only answer.

Science can’t be stuffed into a headline.

The paper has generated discussion in all the major online birding communities, and some birders have had nothing but harsh words for the barcode project.

Bird blogs around the world

Today, I added several more bird blogs to my blogroll. My blogroll is not intended to be an exhaustive list; rather, it presents the blogs I enjoy reading regularly. As the number of bird blogs grows, I’m left wondering how many more I’ll be able to handle. Though I am a child of the computer age, I am still amazed that I have instant access to prose, poetry, photos, audio, and video of birds and birders from Estonia to Australia and Nunavut to Antarctica!

For a look at some of the recent bird-related posts from around the blogosphere, have a look at I and the Bird #43. This edition is hosted by Tai Haku, who regularly posts spectacular images of Caribbean marine life.

DUNCANVILLE, TEXAS — It is difficult to express how completely the world changes between Dallas and Tyler. Towering pines, rich in color and scent, contrast with gnarled mesquite and thorns. The change in bird life is more subtle but just as real.

I heard Pine Warblers trilling in the trees just east of Tyler, and with more time or better luck I could have had Brown-headed Nuthatches too. Great-tailed Grackles, on the other hand, were absent from the parking lots in town.

Disappearing into the pines, a road tempted me to round the next bend, and the next…. Tufted Titmice sang, and woodpeckers called.

I spent the afternoon with Jason, my college birding confrere, and his family. Late in the day, I headed west again and discovered that the winds had altered the sky.

Powerful winds carried dust from the Panhandle to blot out the sun, reduce visibility, and color the sky a surreal brown. The dust cloud spanned hundreds of miles and showed up on satellite images. Here, the dust obscures Lake Tawakoni. I, uh, didn’t get any water birds there.

The East Central Texas Forests form a narrow transition zone between the pine forests to the east and what used to be the Blackland prairies. I’ve been looking for ways to explore these deciduous woodlands, but there seems to be very little public land, at least in the northern part of the ecoregion.

DUNCANVILLE, TEXAS –

Brian and I visited Cedar Hill State Park this afternoon. This feather’s intricate detail caught my attention. I think it must have come from one of the Aythya diving ducks.

Brian spotted this early blooming shrub, which we later learned is Forestiera pubescens, the elbow bush or spring herald. Brian’s eyes are good for more than plants, though. He spotted a roadrunner later!

DUNCANVILLE, TEXAS — A paper titled “Comprehensive DNA barcode coverage of North American birds” recently appeared in Molecular Ecology Notes and may cause a whole new wave of splits and lumps in the bird world.

The authors suggest that, of 643 North American bird species sampled, fifteen currently recognized species actually contain populations with significant genetic differences. This, of course, suggests that the populations have not interbred for quite a long time, which could make them different species under the Biological Species Concept.

Extrapolating their results, the authors suggest there could be 1,000 as-yet unrecognized bird species around the world.

But before you get carried away by visions of armchair lifers, read on. The team’s research also suggests that some populations currently recognized as species (like some of the big gulls and various waterfowl) are very, very similar genetically.

It will be interesting to see how the ornithological community reacts to these data. One of the problems with Charles Sibley’s work, for example, was that he assumed genes change at relatively predictable rates as populations diverge, which apparently is not true.

That, as you can see, has bearing on this new study. Can we define bird species solely by measuring their genetic divergence from one another? Probably not, and the authors of the paper do not advocate such a simplistic approach. But all the same, this study probably foreshadows more big changes to come. If nothing else, it’s good news for the field guide publishers, who will not run out of excuses for new editions for many more years.

This research on birds is part of the Barcode of Life project, which I had not heard of before today. Apparently, the idea is to reduce DNA samples to a string of digits that is unique for each species.

This “barcode” encodes only a tiny fraction of all the information contained in a species’ DNA, of course, and I’m left wondering how scientists know which sections to choose. If you had a very short, incomplete list of my sister’s and my physical attributes, you might conclude that we were the same individual. In fact, you’d be looking at all the wrong things. However, I’m sure this objection is due to my ignorance of the process and not a problem with the theory.

Speaking of misunderstandings, when I first read this article’s description of a futuristic handheld device that allows identification of any species, I imagined Star Trek explorers scanning alien forests for life signs. (”Yep, my scans show three Blackburnian Warblers and a Scarlet Tanager. What’d you get?”) Surely, though, what the author means is that such a device could identify a species based on a DNA sample, which is a bit different from Star Trek but still pretty cool. Ever wonder what kind of bird a feather came from? Help could be on the way.

Yes, we live in interesting times my friends.

Articles:

• Comprehensive DNA barcode coverage of North American birds (The original paper, requires subscription.)
• New bird, bat species revealed by extensive DNA barcode studies (EurekAlert!)
• Genetics reveal 15 new N.American bird species (Reuters)
• Biodiversity study reveals 15 new bird species in Canada and U.S. (Discovery Channel)