GREENE CO., MO. — The 48th supplement to the AOU’s checklist has been published. You can download the PDF from the AOU’s site. A summary of taxonomic and nomenclatural changes follows:

1. The committee reversed its 1998 decision and moved Cathartidae (New World vultures) out of Ciconiiformes (storks, etc.) back into Falconiformes (hawks and falcons). It appears that evidence for the stork-vulture link was not as strong as the committee originally believed.
2. The Palearctic Bean Goose (Anser fabalis) is split into two species: Taiga Bean-Goose (Anser fabalis) and Tundra Bean-Goose (Anser serrirostris). Apparently, the both species have been recorded in North America, though the committee acknowledges that identifying previous records may be problematic.
3. Cuban Black-Hawk (Buteogallus gundlachii), is given full species status. It was previously considered conspecific with the Common Black-Hawk (Buteogallus anthracinus).
4. Black-and-white Hawk-Eagle is moved out of the monotypic genus Spizastur into Spizaetus, where it is placed immediately after Ornate Hawk-Eagle (Spizaetus ornatus).
5. Yellow-legged Gull (Larus cachinnans) is split into Yellow-legged Gull (Larus michahellis) and Caspian Gull (Larus cachinnans). “Birds in our area were identified (Wilds and Czaplak 1994) as belonging to the michahellis group, which retains the English name Yellow-legged Gull,” writes the committee.
6. The kingfisher genus Ceryle is re-split into genera Ceryle and Megaceryle. North American species affected are the Belted and Ringed kingfishers, which are both placed in Megaceryle.

So no real surprises here. Any thoughts?

DUNCANVILLE, TEXAS — Last Thursday, Brian and I attended Dr. Bruce Beehler’s lecture in Fort Worth. Dr. Beehler is an authority on New Guinea birds (he wrote the book) and took part in the now famous Foja Mountains expedition in western New Guinea.

That expedition, which documented potentially dozens of new species and garnered international media attention, was the topic of Dr. Beehler’s presentation last week. Dr. Beehler showed some of the photographs that have already circulated widely on the web and elsewhere (e.g., here and here), but coupled with his awe-filled and at times humorous narrative, the photographs seemed to take on a life and significance much greater than I’d experienced before.

We were looking at the first photographs ever taken of the Golden-fronted Bowerbird, and standing before us was the man who had taken them, and had even held the birds in his hands. He said the birds were so tame that he had sat a few feet away as a male displayed for a female at his bower.

As for the honeyeater the expedition described, Dr. Beehler is calling it Melipotes carolae after his wife, Carol. He’d long dreamed, he said, of getting to name a new species. He also used the English name Wattled Smoky-Honeyeater.

Dr. Beehler has wanted to visit the Foja Mountains longer than I’ve been alive. Several years ago, on a flight over the mountain range, he spotted a small interruption in the canopy, a boggy spot where there were no trees. He recognized that little bog as a place — perhaps the only place — where a helicopter could land. Sure enough, that’s exactly where a chartered helicopter dropped off the team in December 2005.

Much is made of the fact that the Foja Mountains forest is pristine and rarely visited. But Beehler’s book, “Birds of New Guinea,” has something to say about that: “What to any outsider’s eye is nothing but trackless rainforest is, to the Papuan, someone’s family property.”

Indeed, the Papasena and Kwerba Mamberamo peoples claim portions of the Foja Mountains as traditional lands, even though they do not appear to have ventured up into the mountains for decades.

In preparation for the expedition, scientists spent time with the local people: living with them, talking with them, and eating with them. The people needed to see “that we weren’t in a hurry all the time,” said Dr. Beehler, and “that we’re just regular folks.” The importance of relationships in Melanesian culture can hardly be overstated.

All too soon, the lecture was done, and Brian and I went to the front to ask for an autograph in my “Birds of New Guinea,” which was my constant companion in every corner of PNG. Dr. Beehler seemed pleased to see the book (it is out of print), and Brian commented that his copy is still in PNG and has Menya bird names written all over the pages. I asked Dr. Beehler about the new edition, which is supposed to be in preparation, but he hemmed and hawed without giving a definitive answer.

I wanted to ask more about the Foja Mountains birds — the Parotia bird-of-paradise, for example. It was included without comment in P. carolae in “Birds of New Guinea,” but now that the birds have actually been observed and photographed, Dr. Beehler seems to believe they deserve full species status. I wanted to ask why, but the event’s high-strung organizer insisted on hurrying his friend away to dinner.

There is so much to see. There is so much to learn. I guess that’s what tomorrow is for.

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 — 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)

DUNCANVILLE, TEXAS — I don’t put a lot of stock in claims about the size of birds. There are two reasons for this: I’ve screwed up too often (”Ooo, kestrel … or … ahh … Barn Swallow.”) and I’ve seen others screw up too often (”That’s way to big to be a mockingbird.”). Yes, both examples are true stories. Size can be extraordinarily deceptive, and relying on your impressions can get you in trouble — it certainly has me.

So, when I saw Jim Stevenson’s photo of two Common Loons this evening, I exclaimed out loud. Have a look at the size difference between those birds! The bird on the left is tiny.

The photo prompted much discussion on Texbirds today, and I’m shamelessly collating the high points here, after others did all the research.

A paper published in The Auk in 1921 proposed that Gavia immer elasson be recognized as a subspecies of Gavia immer. “Elasson,” a footnote explained, was from a Greek word meaning “smaller.” Rejecting the name “Common Loon,” the author proposed that these remarkably small loons be called Lesser Black-billed Loons. (Read the full paper: Description of a New Loon.)

The birds’ subspecific status was fairly short-lived, however. Just over 30 years later, a paper in The Condor argued that a wide range of measurements taken from birds all across North America present “a patently impossible distributional pattern” for the alleged elasson and that Gavia immer should again be considered monotypic. (Read the full paper: Status of the Lesser Common Loon.)

And with that, the Lesser Common Loon faded back into relative obscurity. I for one hadn’t heard of it until today.

I’ll be looking at loons a little more carefully from now on, that’s for sure.