Birding News and Features
American Bird Conservancy petition to regulate the wind industry
American Bird Conservancy (ABC) was recently quoted in an article on wind power and Golden Eagles that has resulted in several responses. We wish to clarify our position, which we believe was misrepresented by quotes taken out of context.
eBirding your Christmas Bird Counts
December 14 will begin the 112th Christmas Bird Count (CBC) season, and the first big weekend of counts will be 17-18 December. The Christmas Count is the largest and longest-running ornithological citizen science project. Its data are a great complement to what we are collecting in eBird, and indeed the CBC has paved the way for eBird in many respects. It is not a problem to enter data in eBird and then submit it for the CBC too, since the two projects are collecting data in similar ways, but at different scales. eBird can be a great way to store your sector-level data and compare it from year to year.
Good Whimbrel News Update (Mostly)
The report of the illegal shooting of two Whimbrels (Machi and Goshen) that were part of a migration study, and which had been tracked via satellite for 2 years was posted to the VA Bird List on September 13 and 14, 2011. The following is an update from Fletcher Smith (research biologist with The Center for Conservation Biology of The College of William & Mary / Virginia Commonwealth University).
"After arriving in Guadeloupe on Tuesday afternoon, a local conservation official and I went to the Port-Louis swamp where Goshen was shot. We made a brief tour of several of the primary hunting locations, noting roughly 10 hunters on a hot, sunny, windless Tuesday evening.
19th annual Eastern Shore Birding and Wildlife Festival
Its not too late to register for the 19th annual Eastern Shore Birding and Wildlife Festival. Spots are still open for many of the trips. There are few places where the true scope of fall migration is more apparent then the Eastern Shore of Virginia as raptors, shorebirds and songbirds pour down the Delmarva Peninsula The festival offers opportunities to check out some of the best birding locations on Eastern Shore - including private properties not typically open to the public. Register online at http://www.esvafestivals.com/.
Virginia Important Bird Areas Conservation News - Focus on Team Warbler, the Atlantic Flyway Initiative and Saltmarsh Habitat and Avian Research Project (SHARP)
Audubon in Virginia has several conservation projects to highlight during this season: one of our most exciting is an international partnership between Richmond Audubon Society, Panama Audubon Society National Audubon Society and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) called: Team Warbler — From Chesapeake Bay to Panama Bay and Back — Cross Cultural Connections Supporting Sustainable Communities. Working under a Community Engagement grant from VCU, championed by Cathy Viverette, VCU Life Sciences Research Associate, this project seeks to connect students, researchers and Richmond Audubon in the Chesapeake Bay watershed to Panama Audubon in the Panama Bay watershed to raise awareness of and better understand the Prothonotary Warbler.
VSO Honors Two Virginia Ornithologists
At its Annual Conference in May 14, 2011, the Virginia Society of Ornithology honored Dr. Mitchell A. Byrd with establishment of “The Mitchell A. Byrd Award for Scientific Achievement.”
To United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Re: Comments on Draft Voluntary Land-Based Wind Energy Guidelines
May 1 , 2011
The members of the Board of Directors of the Virginia Society of Ornithology would like to comment on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s “Draft Voluntary Land-Based Wind Energy Guidelines”. We urge the USFWS to make these guidelines mandatory, not voluntary. We feel that the construction of wind energy projects should not occur in certain areas where high concentrations of wintering and migrating Golden Eagles exist in the eastern United States. This species is protected by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and The Migratory Bird Protection Act, and these laws should be upheld. We recommend that you develop siting criteria based on a risk assessment mapping system that would be implemented to identify areas of high risk for eagles. Implementation of this mapping system would prevent construction of wind turbines in locations where eagles are found at high concentration.
VSO 2011 Annual Meeting Harrisonburg, Virginia May 13–15
The annual meeting of the Virginia Society of Ornithology will be held May 13 – 15 in Harrisonburg located in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. Hosted by the Rockingham Bird Club and headquartered at the Holiday Inn the meeting will feature a banquet, field trips, exhibits, vendors, a technical paper session, and the VSO’s annual business meeting. The banquet speaker will be Dan Cristol, professor of Biology at the College of William and Mary. More details here. »
750,000th Bird at Kiptopeke Hawkwatch
More Bird Habitat at Kiptopeke
On October 8th, a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held to officially open the newly-acquired "Taylor Pond" area at Kiptopeke State Park. It was made possible through the efforts of those pictured and also singer/songwriter/environmentalist James Taylor, who donated proceeds of a concert held in Virginia Beach. Pictured, from the left are: Fred Hazelwood, District 1 State Parks Manager; Sam Sweeney, Kiptopeke Park Manager; Steve Parker, The Nature Conservancy; Willie Randall, Northampton County Board of Supervisors; Jack Humphries, Eastern Shore Master Gardeners; Laura McKay, VA Department of Environmental Quality, Coastal Zone Management; David Johnson, Director, VA Department of Conservation and Recreation and Daniel Jordan, Assistant Park Manager at Kiptopeke. Trees and other native plants were installed in recent weeks, which, in addition to the freshwater pond, will provide crucial stopover resources for migrant birds at this globally important natural area.
eBird gets a supercomputing kick from TeraGrid
Thanks to your continued participation the data analysis potential of eBird is growing rapidly. Through collaboration with partners in the DataONE network at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, eBird was recently awarded 100,000 hours of supercomputing time on the National Science Foundation’s TeraGrid system. This powerful computer system will help Lab scientists and colleagues model bird migration phenology at the population level based on eBird data. The process will involve combining bird observations with remotely sensed variables such as landcover and greening index to predict bird movements and to explore how migration timing might change under different climate scenarios. This exciting story was recently profiled in Nature.
Central Piedmont IBA Survey Summary
The Central Piedmont Important Bird Area (IBA), Virginia’s 20th IBA, is composed of a patchwork of farmlands, fallow fields and forests that provide a home for many threatened bird species. Some key species that call this IBA home include the Prairie Warbler, Kentucky Warbler, Louisiana Waterthrush, Wood Thrush and Grasshopper Sparrow, all B1 species of Continental Conservation Concern. The IBA also hosts significant numbers of at least 4 out of the 10 species recently identified by the National Audubon Society as the Top 10 Common Birds in Decline: Northern Bobwhite (#1), Eastern Meadowlark (#6), Field Sparrow (#9), and Grasshopper Sparrow (#10). The Northern Bobwhite has also been classified as an A1 species of Global Conservation Concern.
CVWO Adopts Lower Delmarva IBA
Coastal Virginia Wildlife Observatory has adopted the Lower Delmarva Important Bird Area (see article below on adopting IBAs in Virginia). The Observatory is already very active on the lower Eastern Shore, providing free daily public education to visitors during the August-November bird migration period, at its songbird banding, hawk banding and hawkwatch research stations at Kiptopeke State Park. The lower Delmarva is a bird concentration area of global significance. The Observatory also collaborates with the State Park, the Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge and other organizations about habitat management and conservation issues.
2009 Virginia Plover Summary
Submitted by:
Carissa Smith1, Alex Wilke2 and Ruth Boettcher3
1Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries
Wildlife Diversity Division
27270 Baylys Neck Road
Accomac, VA 23301
Carissa.Smith@dgif.virginia.gov
2The Nature Conservancy
Virginia Coast Reserve
PO Box 158
Nassawadox, Virginia 23413
awilke@tnc.org
3Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries
Wildlife Diversity Division
PO Box 476
Painter, VA 23420
Ruth.Boettcher@dgif.virginia.gov
Piping Plover and Wilson’s Plover Population Estimates and Distribution
The 24th Annual Virginia Plover Survey (VPS) was conducted from June 1 - June 9 to obtain statewide breeding population estimates for the federally threatened Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus) and the state endangered Wilson’s Plover (Charadrius wilsonia). VPS participants examined all suitable nesting habitats in coastal Virginia to locate breeding pairs of Piping Plovers and Wilson’s Plovers. Seventeen ocean-facing sites were included in the survey covering an estimated 194 km of Virginia coastline along with two inshore sites on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. A third inshore site, Plum Tree Island National Wildlife Refuge was not surveyed this year due to logistical difficulties. During the 2009 survey a total of 182 Piping Plover breeding pairs and 9 unpaired single adults (single adults that did not appear to be defending a territory, mate, nest or brood) were observed (Table 1).
Volunteer Birders Needed!
This coming May, the Virginia Important Bird Areas (IBA) Program will be conducting survey efforts within the Central Piedmont Important Bird Area, Virginia’s 20th IBA!
Please support our efforts by taking time to bird the Virginia Piedmont during our four day survey period from Friday, May 14th through Tuesday, May 18th, 2010. Please review the information below for more details and thank you in advance for your help!
Subscribe to eBird Alerts!
We are very excited to introduce a new feature: eBird Alerts! By going to the eBird Alerts page from "View and Explore Data" you can view a list of all the national-level rarities recently reported in North America and Canada. These are defined by the ABA Codes, which we explain below. You have the option to subscribe hourly (!), daily, or just to visit this page and click to see the results from the past seven days. In the near future, we hope to add similar alerts for birds you "need" (i.e., birds not already on your eBird list) for a given state or province. So please, sign up for our ABA Alerts to keep up on what rarities--like Ivory Gulls--are being reported around the country!
Adopt an Important Bird Area
The Important Bird Areas (IBA) Program is an international bird conservation program being implemented on every continent, with 48 states participating in the United States. The aim of the program is to identify a network of sites that are essential for sustaining naturally occurring populations of bird species, and to protect or manage these sites for the long-term conservation of birds, other wildlife, and their habitats. For a site to be recognized as an IBA it must meet criteria based on bird concentrations, threatened species, or species assemblages representative of priority habitats.
The Virginia Important Bird Areas are on eBird!
The staff of the Virginia Important Bird Areas (IBA) Program is pleased to announce that Virginia’s IBAs are now on Virginia eBird! In a very important step for Virginia’s Program, 19 of Virginia’s 20 IBAs have been integrated into Virginia eBird, with the newly-delineated Central Piedmont IBA to be incorporated soon.
