End-of-Season News Note2007–2008 Project FeederWatch

Following a decade with very few reports of Eve-

ning Grosbeaks in the North-east, many FeederWatchers were

pleased to host these large, gre-garious finches this season. Several participants reported seeing them at their feeders for the very first time. This was also a big year for Com-

mon Redpolls, especially in Illinois and Ohio. One Common Redpoll was

even seen at the feeders of Ann Ellen and James Tuomey in El Prado, New Mexico—

a state record! Speaking of state records, a Streak-backed Oriole spent several weeks visiting the feeders of Connie and Al Kogler in Loveland, Colorado. This Mexican species had never before been recorded in Colo-rado. Find photos and more information about these two state records in the News

section of the FeederWatch website, www.feederwatch.orgwww.feederwatch.org. Look for more details about Project Feeder-Watch’s 21st season in Winter Bird

Highlights, sent to all project participants in October.

Submit your countsSubmit your counts

April 4 marked the end of another FeederWatch season. If you have already submitted your Feeder-

Watch counts from the 2007–08 season, thank you! If you still have data to submit, you may report your counts on-line through August or via paper data forms at any time. We will use data submitted prior to May 31 in analyses to be published in Winter Bird Highlights. You may view preliminary summaries by visiting the Explore Data sec-tion of the FeederWatch website.

Time to renewTime to renew

Please take a moment to renew your participation for next season. With each additional year in the project,

your counts become more valuable to researchers study-ing the distribution and abundance of feeder birds. By renewing now, you will save FeederWatch the costs of sending follow-up renewal notices. Thank you for your continued support. Please renew your participation in Please renew your participation in FeederWatch today by following the instructions on FeederWatch today by following the instructions on the back page of this letter.the back page of this letter.

Data in actionData in action

Few invasive bird species have demonstrated the ability to

colonize continents as rapidly as the Eurasian Collared-Dove, which con-quered much of Europe during the last cen-tury. Introduced in Florida in the early 1980s, this species is now rapidly expanding its range across North America. FeederWatchers from Miami to Washington State reported Eurasian Collared-Doves during this past FeederWatch season. The species has yet to reach the Mid-Atlantic States and the Northeast, but if the current expansion continues, Eurasian Collared-Doves will soon be among the most common feeder birds everywhere in the United States.

Information submitted by FeederWatchers is critical for understanding the impact of this invasion on ecosys-tems and populations of native doves. Cornell researchers are currently analyzing FeederWatch data to document the patterns of the colonization and to evaluate the impact of Eurasian Collared-Doves on other feeder birds. The research will be presented at a major scien-tific meeting this April. An update on the results will appear on the Feeder-Watch website and in Winter Bird Highlights

next fall.

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Dovekie blown in from the North AtlanticDovekie blown in from the North Atlantic

In October, look for Winter Bird Highlights, a summary of the 2007–08 FeederWatch season,

mailed to all project participants.

When a nor’easter blew through Newton, Mas-sachusetts, this FeederWatch season, it brought

with it an unusual but unmistakable visitor to Anne Simunovic’s backyard. A Dovekie, displaced from its home in the North Atlantic, showed up at Anne’s feed-ers about ten miles west of Boston Harbor—the first Dovekie ever reported to Project FeederWatch.

The bird arrived on gusty winds that reached 25 miles per hour in the midst of a storm that produced eight inches of snow, sleet, and rain (on top of eight inches of snow already on the ground from a previous storm). Anne and her husband hap-pened to be looking out the kitchen window when the storm-driven seabird did a belly-landing on the snow in their backyard. She wrote, “It was fascinating to ob-serve this little storm vagrant: like a mini-penguin when upright but

mostly hunkered down exactly like the illustration in The Sibley Guide to Birds.”

Resembling penguins with their distinctive black and white colors,

webbed feet, and upright stance, Dovekies are the smallest member of the Puffin family. Anne described her visitor as “a small, elongated rugby ball” with wings “clearly designed for swimming.”

In the summer, it would not be unusual to stumble across a

Dovekie in northwestern Greenland, where an esti-mated 30 million of the “Lit-tle Auks” reside during the breeding season. Although they breed along high arctic

Winning photo in Living Bird’s digiscoping photo contest—taken by FeederWatch participant, Gary Mueller.

New project assistant New project assistant

FeederWatch wel-comes a new proj-

ect assistant, Genna Knight. She has taken on the responsibilities of Megan Whitman who has moved on to lead the Lab’s Home Study Course in Bird Biology. Genna joined the project in No-vember and has been providing participant support by phone and email, helping to process the many pho-

tos submitted by participants, and scanning paper data forms. We are delighted to have her, and we wish Megan all the best in her new position.

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FeederWatcher wins photo contestFeederWatcher wins photo contest

Project FeederWatch participant Gary Mueller from Rolla, Missouri, won Living Bird’s digital photo con-

test with his photo of a female Baltimore Oriole shown below. Living Bird is the magazine of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and is sent to all Lab members. The contest invited readers to send in photos they had taken with a digital camera through a spotting scope. Congratulations, Gary!

Tim G

allagher

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FeederWatch featured on Martha Stewart ShowFeederWatch featured on Martha Stewart Show

The Martha Stewart Show helped give Project FeederWatch a boost this season. Martha Stewart invited project leader David

Bonter to appear in October to talk about the project and about bird feeding. Find links to videos of his appearance on the Feeder-Watch home page (www.feederwatch.orgwww.feederwatch.org).

Thanks to the fall appearance, Project FeederWatch saw nearly 1,200 additional participants sign up, bringing the total of registered participants to more than 13,000 in the U.S. (see map below for lo-cations). Thanks to new and veteran participants for supporting the project and helping us monitor bird populations!

coasts, they typically spend their winters over the open Atlantic Ocean in search of food between Newfound-land and the Gulf of Maine.

On rare occasions, Dovekies show up along the east coast of North America, usually due to strong east-erly winds that push them inland. One of the largest recorded inland movements occurred during the winter of 1932–1933 when large numbers of Dovekies washed up along the entire eastern seaboard and rained down on the streets of New York City.

Anne suspected the Dovekie in her backyard was rare for her inland Massachusetts town and a captive of the nor’easter. Despite several attempts, the bird was unable to take flight. Instead, it

spent its time preening, hunkering under the shelter of a neighbor’s garage, and wandering around the icy puddles in Anne’s yard and driveway.

“At one point I went out to check on where I had last seen it, but it wasn’t there. When I turned around to re-

turn to the house, I nearly stepped on it, so still and well camouflaged against the black driveway with its patches of snow and ice,” she said.

Anne consulted with experts and searched field guides in an effort to care for the bird, but un-fortunately, the exhausted Dovekie did not survive beyond its second day in Newton. Sadly, most pelagic species blown inland never make it back to sea. Anne donated the Dovekie to the ornithology curator at Harvard’s Museum of Compara-tive Zoology.

Dovekie found dead the morning after it appeared in the yard of Anne Simunovic in Newton, Massachusetts. A Dovekie in breeding plumage shown on opposite page.

Anne Sim

unovic

Locations of participants registered for the 2007–08 FeederWatch season. (Alaska and Hawaii not to scale)

Step 2. Send $15 ($12 for Lab members) annual fee

Step 1. Choose which Research Kit you would like to receive

Three easy steps for renewing your FeederWatch participation

Your early renewal helps us plan how many kits to print and saves us the cost of sending another reminder. We’ll transfer the savings into research and project improvements. Thank you!

• The Renewal Kit* contains a welcome letter, instruction booklet, paper data forms, and Bird Watching Days calendar. You will have the option of using online or paper data forms for data entry.

• The Online-Only Kit* contains a welcome letter, Bird Watching Days calendar, and tally sheet. Note: With this kit you may onlyonly submit data online. You will receive NONO paper data forms.

Your kit will be delivered in the fall.

• By mail. Send your personal check or credit card information using the enclosed re-newal card. Indicate which Research Kit you would like and return the card with your payment information in the enclosed envelope.

*Please note that renewing FeederWatchers do not receive the FeederWatcher’s Handbook or the Common Feeder Birds poster so be sure to save them from your current kit. In addition, participants who choose the Online-Only option do not receive the

instruction booklet or the paper data forms. Every FeederWatcher has access to the instruction booklet and information from the FeederWatcher’s Handbook on

the Internet. All FeederWatch participants receive the year-end report, Winter Bird Highlights, published in October, and a one-year subscription to BirdScope, the newsletter

of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Step 3. Renew by May 31

Illustrations by Julie Zickefoose

• Over the Internet. Sign up using a credit card (VISA, Mastercard, DISCOVER, or American Express) over our secure server at www.feederwatch.orgwww.feederwatch.org by clicking on the Join/Renew but-ton. Indicate which Research Kit you would like on the sign-up form.

Note: a tax-deductible contribution to FeederWatch above your $15 renewal fee will help fund bird research and conservation at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Thanks for your support!