Ecuador: Part I

We just returned from the tropics and the beautiful country of Ecuador. As it's name suggests Ecuador straddles the equator and is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. For birds alone the tiny nation of Ecuador boasts over 1,600 species, compare that to just over 900 for all of North America north of Mexico. The Northern Andes form the spine of Ecuador running along the middle of the country. To the east is the Amazon basin and to the west the Pacific coast and in Northwestern Ecuador is the Choco, a very biodiverse region with many endemic species, extending from Panama, through Columbia and into Ecuador.

Our trip began in the cloud forests of the Andean slopes of Southeastern Ecuador at the Jocotoco Foundation's Tapichalaca Reserve located in the Podocarpus National Park. Montane cloud forests form in areas where warm air masses cool as they rise in the face of high mountain slopes. Moisture condenses in these rising air masses and blankets the forested slopes in clouds, mist and rain. Cloud forests are some of the wettest environments on Earth and provide the perfect environment for moisture loving plants, especially mosses, bromeliads and orchids (see photo above left). Many of these plants are epiphytes, growing on the trunks and branches of trees (see photo right). Despite being near the equator the elevation of these forests keeps the temperatures comparatively mild year round. Our time at Tapichalaca was during the tail-end of the rainy season and rain fell regularly during our stay making the steep mountain trails a muddy slog through the forest.

The cloud forests of Ecuador are home to many unique animals. The near constant wet conditions provide an ideal habitat for high humidity loving animals such as frogs and land snails. Many bird species are also found exclusively in tropical cloud forests. The recently described Jocotoco Antpitta (Grallaria ridgelyi, see photo left) is a ground bird found only in a small area around the Tapichalaca Reserve. Birds like the Jocotoco Antpitta make the region a Mecca for birdwatchers around the globe. Other cloud forest specialties include the Black-billed Mountain Toucan (Andigena nigrirostris), the Hooded Mountain Tanager (Buthraupis montana) and Collared Inca (Coeligena torquata).

Steep mountain forests in the tropics remain some of of the most well preserved natural ecosystems in the world, however, threats to these seemingly inaccessible habitats remain. Greater awareness through research, conservation and carefully controlled ecotourism can help preserve these unique montane forests. Cincinnati Museum Center plans to organize future trips to Ecuador for area birders and other nature enthusiasts. This trip represents the initial exploratory forays into a new tropical montane biodiversity program. Stay tuned for upcoming reports from our expedition to Ecuador and news on future ecotourism opportunities to visit Ecuador with Cincinnati Museum Center scientists.

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Science and Religion

Listen to an excellent audio essay by Nobel Prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek on the nature of science and religion on the March 13 Nature Podcast. This essay does a good job in cutting to the heart of the current problems in reconciling science, like evolution, and religious faith.

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Browse the inverts

A collection inventory from the Cincinnati Museum Center's Invertebrate Paleontology Department is now available online on the museum's cincyevolution web site. The inventory is a simple listing of the genera contained within the collection. More of the CMC's natural history collection will be available online over the course of the coming year. Enjoy!

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Wing of the Week

Here's a new wing. This week we have the subtle browns and reds of the wing of the Bukidnon Woodcock (Scolopax bukidnonensis, topside of wing in the top photo and wing's bottom side in the bottom photo). This species was first described to science in 2001 by former Cincinnati Museum Center zoology curator Dr. Robert Kennedy (Kennedy et al. 2001 Forktail 17: 1-12). Woodcocks are an unusual group of forest and field dwelling shorebirds with rounded, dome-shaped heads and large eyes positioned on the top of their heads to give them a 360 degree field of vision. Recorded on the islands of Luzon and Mindanao in the Philippines, little is known about this secretive species. Dr. Kennedy first caught a single individual of this species on 22 January 1995 on Mount Kitanglad on the island of Mindanao in the Lanao-Bukidnon Highlands (hence the name given to this species of the Bukidnon Woodcock) and that specimen served as the type by which the species was described. Just another one of the important specimens in the Cincinnati Museum Center's Zoology Department documenting biodiversity on a global scale. For more on the unique avifauna of the Philippines check out Dr. Kennedy and coauthor's book 'A Guide to the Brids of the Philippines'. I'll have more on a relative of the Bukidnon Woodcock that lives in Ohio with the next installment of 'Wing of the Week'.


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A penguin in the hand...

Geoff Hill's visit to Cincinnati Museum Center was a huge success. With great turnout for his lecture in the Charles and Ralph Dury Lecture Series and about 300 showing up at the Amish Bird Symposium in Adams co., OH, lots of folks in the Southern Ohio/Northern Kentucky area got to hear about Geoff's exploration of the Choctawhatchee River and the hunt for Ivory-billed Woodpeckers (Campephilus principalis). I think Geoff had a great time during his trip to Cincinnati, but, I believe a highlight of Geoff's visit was a visit to the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden. The Cincinnati Zoo's Avian Conservation Program Manager, David Oehler, showed Geoff and I behind the scenes and we were able to get up close and personal with one of the zoo's Rockhopper Penguins (Eudyptes chrysocome, see photo right with Geoff Hill on the left and me on the right and penguin in Geoff's arms). Thanks to David Oehler of the Cincinnati Zoo, Regina Hall and Patrick Nugent of the Cincinnati Museum Center, Chris Bedel and all the organizers and sponsors of the Amish Bird Symposium for hosting Geoff during his stay in Cincinnati.

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Wing of the Week

OK, so this is more like a biweekly wing. In honor of the visit by Auburn University ornithologist Dr. Geoff Hill to the Cincinnati Museum Center this week on Feb. 28 to participate in the museum's Charles and Ralph Dury Lecture Series let's take a look at the wing of a Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus). Putative Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) sightings are often in actuality this common species of the woodpecker family. The difference is that on both the topside (top photo) and the bottom (bottom photo) of the Pileated Woodpecker wing there is no white on the trailing edge. Knowing what field marks to look for is absolutely critical for those looking to tick off an Ivory-billed Woodpecker from their life lists!

For those in the Cincinnati area I encourage you to attend the lecture by Dr. Geoff Hill on Feb. 28 at 7:30 at Cincinnati Museum Center to learn more about the hunt for the elusive Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Also, check out Dr. Hill's new book, 'Ivorybill Hunters: Search for Proof in a Flooded Wilderness', on the Ivory-bill Woodpecker search.
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Big Mouth!

Some very special spots on the globe reveal important clues to the history of life on Earth. Madagascar is one of these very special places. The continents are on plates that float on the more viscous lower layers of the Earth. Land masses split apart and collide. Often our geographic boundaries of land masses that are not in accord with their geologic boundaries. For example, what we define as the combined continent of Eurasia is actually comprised of land masses on different geologic plates. India is on a different plate than the rest of Asia and has been colliding with Asia for approximately the past 50 million years. This collision between the India Plate and the Eurasian Plate is pushing up the Himalayas. Prior to it's collision with Eurasia India was part of a single landmass that included Madagascar and the Seychelles.

The geological history of these places is not just reflected in the rocks but also in their plants and animals. For example, a recently discovered species of a palm, Tahina spectabilis, found in Madagascar has it's closest relatives in India. After the combined landmass of India, the Seychelles and Madagascar split from Africa it drifted into what is today Antarctica, which at the time was also connected to South America. This connection via Antarctica explains some odd biogeographic patterns. The large constricting snakes encompass two groups distinguished by their mode of reproduction. Boas are primarily confined to the Americas and give live birth while the pythons, found in Africa and Asia, lay eggs. Most boas are found in the Americas, but, two species of boa, very similar to the boas of Central and South America, are found in Madagascar. The distribution of the boas provides another clue to Madagascar's geological history.

Now, a new find by Susan Evans of University College London and her colleagues provides yet more clues to Madagascar's complex history. The anuran (frogs and toads) sub-family Ceratophrynae contains large predatory frogs found in tropical and subtropical forests in South America. These frogs are large, fat blobs with huge mouths. Often seen in the pet trade they are popularly known as "pac-man frogs" due to their characteristic "all-mouth" morphology (see photo of juvenile Ceratophrys ornata right). Ceratophryine frogs are sit-and-wait predators who sit on the forest floor camouflaged int he leaf litter waiting for large insects, or even small mammals to walk by. It seems that like the Boas the Ceratophryine frogs have, or once had, cousins from Madagascar.

Evan's team discovered a new species of Ceratophryine frog from Madagascar. The new species is described from fossil material from the Mahajanga Basin in northwestern Madagascar. Extant Ceratophryine frogs are very large frogs, but, this new species dwarfs the existing Neotropical species and indeed at 40 cm long and 20 cm wide is larger than the largest known extant frog, the Goliath Frog (Conrauna goliath). Due to it's broad bony head and it's imposing size and likely predatory habits, like those of other Ceratophryines, the researchers named this new species Beelzebufo ampinga, or "shielded devil frog". This imposing fossil dates to the late Cretaceous about 65-70 million years ago.

Beelzebufo ampinga's relationship to the South American Ceratophyines and it's place in Madagascar's history at the late Cretaceous presents a bit of a puzzle. The present day islands of Madagascar, the Seychelles and the sub-continent of India split from Africa as one land mass approximately 160 million years ago and began to divide into their present day land areas about 88 million years ago. Shortly, geologically speaking, after the split from Africa the Madagascar-Seychelles-India land mass was in contact with the Antarctic land mass, which was also connected with both South America and Australia, but, the timing and duration of this contact is debated. The common ancestor of the modern South American Ceratophryines and this new Malagasy Ceratophryine must have inhabited this ancient interconnected Anatarctic-South American-Australian-Indian-Malagasy continent.

However, evidence from genetics provides another puzzle. The genetic data suggest that the modern Ceratophryine group diverged from a common ancestor well after the late Cretaceous. This would mean that Beelzebufo ampinga arose well before the appearance of the Ceratophyrines and isn't a Ceratophryine at all but rather evolved it's "pac-man-like" characteristics independently of the modern Ceratophryine frogs. However, Evans provides some compelling evidence that Beelzebufo ampinga is indeed a member of the Ceratophryine clan which means that the genetic data is misleading or that the history of these southern land masses is not as expected with much later and perhaps longer connections between Madagascar, Antarctica and South America. Beelzebufo ampinga is yet another dramatic example of the complex history of the Earth and surely will help us better understand the drifting continents and the distribution and evolution of plants and animals.

Read more about this finding at the Nature News website and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Happy Darwin Day!

Today is the 199th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. Born on this date in 1809 (coincidentally the same day as Abraham Lincoln) Darwin eventually would revolutionize biology. The idea that life shares a common ancestry and changes over time preceded Darwin, but, until Darwin's theory of natural selection, no one had yet posed a viable mechanism by which evolutionary change occurs. Darwin's deceptively simple idea was based on a few very basic premises; populations vary, their variations can be passed from parent to offspring, and some variants leave more progeny than others. Some individuals leave more progeny than others owing specifically to how their characteristics perform in a given environment relative to other traits in the population. This is natural selection, and it remains a central idea in modern biology explaining everything from the beaks of finches to the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Darwin's monumental contribution to the life sciences was recognized by the scientific community almost immediately. So important were Darwin's ideas to the advancement of science that he was buried in Westminster Abby near that other of Britain's fathers of modern science, Issac Newton. Placing Darwin's remains in Westminster alongside Newton was a recognition that Darwin's theory of evolutionary change was as important as an accomplishment as Newton's ideas on gravity and optics. Today evolution remains the central organizing principle in the life sciences, a testament to Charles Darwin's scientific genius.

Next year will be the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species. Next year look forward to exhibits and other activities at Cincinnati Museum Center, and scientific institutions and museums around the globe, celebrating Darwin's scientific accomplishments and the central role of evolution in helping us explain the natural world.

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Wing of the week

OK, it's been a little more than a week but here's the latest wing of the week. This time it's another Philippine species but a less brightly colored bird, the Luzon Scops Owl (Otus longicornis). There are many species of Scops Owls in East and Southeast Asia and this is one of the endemic Otus species from the Philippines. It's not as flashy as the kingfisher wing from last week but I still think the patterned brown wings of owls are absolutely beautiful.

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New species of sengi

What is a sengi? Sengis are also known as elephant shrews. Found exclusively in Africa, elephant shrews are small, terrestrial mammals found in grasslands and forests. The sengi's diet consists of insects and other terrestrial invertebrates. Sengis have long thin legs, long tails and a long flexible snout that they use to sniff out their prey. Just as the Flying Lemur's name has proven unexpectedly appropriate as new DNA evidence has shown they are the closest cousins to the primates, so too is the sengi's other common name. Recent comparative genetic studies suggest that sengis are members of a very old mammalian superorder, the Afrotheria. As the name suggests the Afrotheria originated in Africa and the group consists of a strange assemblage of mammalian orders including aardvarks, golden moles, sea cows and manatees, hyraxes, tenrecs, elephants and elephant shrews. Just as the Flying Lemur neither truly flies nor is truly a lemur, elephant shrews are neither elephants or shrews. However, their unexpected place in the Afrotheria along with the elephants does give some truth to the sengi's other common name, the elephant shrew.

Sengis belong to the order Macroscelidea and there are 15 recognized species, OK, make that 16. The Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania are a major center of biodiversity. Compared to other animal groups like insects or marine invertebrates there are few recent cases of terrestrial vertebrates new to science. However, the Udzungwa Mountains have seen an explosion of new species. Several amphibians, reptiles, a partridge, a shrew and even a new species of monkey have been described from the Udzungwa Mountains in recent years. Add to that list a new species of sengi. Francesco Rovero of the Trento Museum of Natural Science in Trento, Italy and colleagues describe a large forest sengi from the Udzungwa Mountains. This new snegi is called the Grey-faced Sengi (Rhynchocyon udzungwensis) and at about 1.5 lbs (710 g) it is the largest sengi species. The Grey-faced Sengi was found in moist montane forests and bamboo thickets where they forage for insects and build nests of loose leaves at the base of trees. This new member of the sengi clan shows that the Udzungwa Mountains are an evolutionary hotspot deserving of the highest conservation priority.

To see a photo of this new species taken with a laser triggered camera-trap see Discovery News and read the original paper in the Journal of Zoology.

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Wing of the week

I'll try to put a new spread wing photo up every week. To start things off here's a beautiful example from the kingfishers (family: Alcedinidae), the White-throated Kingfisher (Halcyon smyrnensis). Here are photos of the top (top photo) and bottom sides (bottom photo) of the right wing from a specimen collected in the Philippines by former Cincinnati Museum Center curator Dr. Robert Kennedy. Enjoy!


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Bird banding

It's been a long time coming but I finally have my federal master bird bander permit. Bird banding, or "ringing" as it is known in Europe, involves placing some unique identifier on a bird's leg. People have been banding birds for about four centuries, most typically using metal bands and lengths of chord or string. Recapture of banded birds can provide valuable information about the life history and movements of birds. Along with collecting, bird banding was a central activity in the history of ornithology and it continues to be a major research tool in ornithology today.

Systematic and organized bird banding began in the United States about a century ago and today banding is regulated by the United States Geological Survey's Bird Banding Laboratory. Permission to band birds for individuals is obtained through a master bird banding permit. Application for the master banding permit is a lengthy process and applicants must demonstrate a legitimate scientific and/or educational reason to band birds. Bird banding can be focused on a particular species or done more generally to provide long term distribution and abundance data of local avifauna. Numerous anatomical measurements and other data are recorded for each bird to obtain, among other things, data on plumage and morphological variation, age structure and sex ratio. Once a scientific purpose has been established for a banding program an applicant's training and ability to identify, capture and handle birds is assessed. All applicants are required to provide references from master bander permit holders in order to assess the applicants credentials as a bird bander. Typically most master banding permit holders spent some time as a subpermitee under a master permit holder. If applicants request permission to capture birds with mist nets or collect blood samples additional authorization for these somewhat delicate and difficult practices is required. Currently there are about 2,000 master bander permit holders in the United States and most are from universities and governmental conservation and research agencies. Holding a master banding permit is therefore a great privilege and responsibility and for me an important part of my growth as an ornithologist.

The latest bird banding program at Cincinnati Museum Center (CMC) began this past weekend at Cincinnati Country Day School (CCDS) with CCDS faculty member and CMC adjunct curator Francisco Borrero (see photo above of Francisco removing a bird from a mist net). We had two upper school students show up on a very cold Sunday morning to put up a mist net near a bird feeder on school grounds. So, what was the first bird to be caught under the auspices of my hard won USGS master banding permit? It was a male House Sparrow (Passer domesticus), band number 2291-69601 (see photo left). House sparrows are an abundant species in urban and suburban settings. They are not native to North America but instead introduced from Europe. The first bird recorded in my banding records is not the most exotic of species but a neat little bird none-the-less. Other birds banded on my first official outing as a master bander included blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata), Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis), European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) and the Eastern Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor, see photo below).


Students seemed to enjoy the chance to handle wild birds (see photo right) and were a big help on processing the birds and recording data. Hopefully bird banding on the campus of CCDS will attract more participation among the CCDS upper and middle school student body. Data gained through bird banding can serve as an excellent introduction to field-based science and we hope students will take full advantage of opportunities at CCDS and CMC and participate in bird banding and other field biology programs. Who knows? Maybe some of the students learning how to catch, measure and band birds in this program will themselves be holders of master banding permits someday?

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Darwin Day Celebration and Evolution Sunday

Next month marks the 199th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. Darwin (and coincidentally Abraham Lincoln) was born on February 12, 1809 and since 1994 universities, museums and other public institutions have marked the date with various events to commemorate the career of one of the greatest scientific minds in history. This day has been dubbed Darwin Day and is celebrated around the world with events that recognize Darwin's contributions to our understanding of the natural world. Lectures, museum exhibits, nature hikes, public discussion forums and other activities are planned this year at places like Case Western Reserve University, University of Pennsylvania Museum, The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, and The North Carolina Botanical Garden. Next year will be a major milestone marking the bicentennial of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species and major events are planned at museums, universities and research centers around the globe.

To coincide with Darwin Day a group of concerned Christian clergy started Evolution Sunday in 2006. Evolution Sunday grew out of an effort lead by Butler University dean Michael Zimmerman to bring together Christian clergy to combat the misrepresentation of both science and religious faith in the evolution/creationism debate. The result was the Clergy Letter Project, a statement affirming that there is no fundamental conflict between the science of evolution and the acceptance of the Christian faith. To date over 11,000 Christian leaders have signed on to the Clergy Letter Project including theologians from colleges, universities and seminaries the Ohio/Kentucky/Indiana tri-state area, including Xavier University, Lexington Theological Seminary, Centre College and the Earlham School of Religion. During Evolution Sunday congregations around the country take the time to discuss what evolutionary biology means to their faith. This open dialog between science and religious faith is exactly what is needed in the evolution/creationism debate and the participation of the scientific community in these events is critical. As Darwin Day and Evolution Sunday approach I'll try to add more posts about Darwin, creationism and the impact of evolution on society at large.

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Another successful trip to Taiwan

We had a great time in Taiwan this year and now that I'm back and the holidays are over and it's a new year I can sit back and reflect and think about the next trip! To the right is the poster advertising Bailey and my talks. Really I can't thank the Taiwan Endemic Species Research Institute, Director Tang and Ornithology Department Head Yao Cheng-te enough for their support during this trip. Also, Professor Lee Ya-fu and the National Cheng Kung University in Tainan hosted me for another talk in the Biology department and I thank them for that opportunity. In addition to seeing and photographing lots of great birds my colleagues and I built some really exciting plans for future collaborations. Taiwan is not only a fantastic place for the mountains, forests and birds but also because of the people. "Xie-xie nin" to all my colleagues in Taiwan who make my time there so enjoyable and productive.

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National Academy of Science and evolution

In the USA the most prominent and influential of scientific organizations is arguably the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The Academy began in 1863 and the original act of congress creating the Academy was signed by president Abraham Lincoln. The charter members included some of the greatest American scientists of the day including the Harvard geologist and zoologist Louis Agassiz. Membership in the NAS is by election and being voted a member of the Academy remains among the highest honors bestowed on an American scientist.

So, what does the single most prestigious, prominent and influential scientific organization in America have to say on the evolution/creationism debate? Today the NAS released a press statement showing unequivocal support for evolution and decidedly against any notion of creationism or intelligent design as a valid scientific endeavor. NAS president Ralph Cicerone said, "The study of evolution remains one of the most active, robust and useful fields in science". NAS published a new book, Science, Evolution and Creationism, for the general public, especially science educators, school boards and policy makers, dealing with the evolution/creationism debate (the pdf version is available online for free) and tomorrow there will be a live webcast on the topic of evolution/creationism. To quote the NAS book, "Biological evolution is the central organizing principle in modern biology". So if there was any question in one's mind as to the consensus on biological evolution look no further than the most prestigious scientific organization in America, the National Academy of Sciences.

see also news on this story at the ABC News.com Science and Society blog.

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Mountain barriers

Mountains are important engines of evolutionary change. A mountain range can present a formidable barrier to movements of animals and divide populations, preventing them from exchanging genes with one another. The division of a single population into two by the gradual introduction of some geographic barrier, like the uplift of a mountain chain, is known as a vicariant event. Vicariance is an important process in evolutionary change and is responsible for much of the biological diversity we see today.

Taiwan has, by all appearances, an excellent example of a vicariant event dividing a single ancestral population into two separate species. The bulbuls are widespread Old-World family of birds (Pycnonotidae). Taiwan has several members of this avian group including the Chinese Bulbul (Pycnonotus sinensis), a widespread bulbul in East Asia, found both on the island of Taiwan and in Mainland China (see photo left). The Chinese Bulbul's name in Mandarin Chinese is "Bai Tou Wang" which means "white headed old man" after the characteristic white patch on the back of the head. This bird is abundant at low elevations throughout Western and Northern Taiwan where it is considered a crop pest. Farmers often leave fine nets up around their fields that snare these birds in flight and they are left to die hanging tangled in the mesh of the net. A little cruel, yes, but this practice is tolerated largely due to the fact that prohibitions against netting wild birds can be difficult to enforce due to a variety of reasons. Also, the netting occurs in agricultural areas where most of the birds killed in these nets belong to very widespread and common species.

There is also another very similar bulbul is found on Taiwan. This is one of the 16 endemic avian species found on Taiwan, the Taiwan or Styan's Bulbul (Pycnonotus taivanus), found on the east side of the Taiwan Central Mountain Range. This bulbul is very similar to the Chinese Bulbul with a notable exception being the lack of white on the back of the head (see photo right). Because these two species occur on either side of the Taiwan Central Mountain Range they appear to be a classic example of speciation due to a vicariant event, in this case the uplift of Central Taiwan. Different species divided by mountain ranges, bodies of water or other geographic features is a common occurrence among birds and in Taiwan we can see this on a relatively small scale.

However, the two species do have a zone of contact in Southern Taiwan where their ranges overlap and they hybridize so their genetic isolation is incomplete. Taiwan and Chinese Bulbul seem to be a case of vicariance in action but recent work suggests that despite their differing appearance there are few genetic differences between these species. These birds are great subjects for future research and genetic comparisons of these species can potentially tell us much about how new species form.

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The Hilton it ain't...

Watching the Discovery Channel you may think of field biologists in far flung corners of the globe tracking down rare plants and animals in exotic locations. Not all field biology takes place in exotic, "wild" locales. Often the subjects of one's research are pretty ordinary suburban organisms like Grey Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) or House Sparrows (Passer domesticus), but, sometimes research does take you far afield into more adventurous settings.

But, what is often left out is just how dirty and difficult field work can be. This weekend's field expedition across Taiwan's south cross highway to the east side of the Taiwan Central Mountain Range was about as unglamorous as field work gets. We managed to find a tea plantation that allowed us to stay in the workers quarters on the cheap (see photo left). Normally during the height of the tea harvest there are 50 plus workers staying in this modest building. Luckily save for the farm manager and a couple workers we were the only people staying on the farm. The sleeping area consisted of a concrete floor and a raised platform where we all slept on moldy comforters. The kitchen doubled as a storage room/office and we ate instant noodles lunch and dinner with some pork or boiled cabbage on the side and bread for breakfast. I'll leave the bathroom undescribed to spare the reader the more graphic unpleasantries of fieldwork.

However, life aways has trade offs and spartan living conditions are balanced by seeing some great birds, getting some good data and enjoying some spectacular scenery (see me in photo right). Somehow the birds, the scenery and the camaraderie of one's colleagues stick in my mind a little more than the living conditions and this keeps me coming back to the beautiful mountains of Taiwan. Sleeping on hard surface or eating a steady diet of cabbage and instant noodles are sometimes worth it to see these fantastic views and incredible wildlife.

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Another shrike!

This trip seems to be the year of the shrike. In addition to the common species found on Taiwan during this time of year, the Brown Shrike (Lanius cristatus) and the Long-tailed Shrike (Lanius schach), we found another member of the Lanius clan. The Bull-headed Shrike (Lanius bucephalus, see photo left) is a rare vagrant to the island of Taiwan. They are more commonly found wintering in mainland China after their breeding season in Manchuria, the Korean Peninsula and Japan. This was a lucky find. We ran across this lone male Bull-headed Shrike while surveying birds on the east side of the Taiwan Central Mountain Range on a tea plantation at about 4,900 feet elevation. These birding surveys are important as they document the movements and distribution of birds during different times of the year. Knowing about bird distributions and movements are critical in understanding different ecological and evolutionary processes in avian species and long term data can potentially tell us about the ecological effects of global climate change. Maybe Bull-headed Shrikes will be a more common sight in the future? Maybe not? We'll need lots of keen eyed birders to keep watch for these and other rare vagrants.

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Shrikes, killer songbirds

Most songbirds we encounter are mild-mannered little birds that eat seeds or small insects. Members of the shrike family (Laniidae) are exceptions to that rule. Shrikes prefer open habitat where they survey their surroundings from a high perch for passing prey items. Top of the menu are large insects, like grasshoppers, and often other vertebrates like lizards, mice or small birds. To kill vertebrate prey shrikes have a special adaptation, the tomial tooth, an extension of the upper mandible that shrikes use to dislocate the neck vertebrae of their prey. Falcons have evolved a very similar structure independently of shrikes and use it in much the same way to dispatch their prey. Shrikes are also famous for keeping larders of their prey for later. A shrike's larder consists of large insects and vertebrate prey impaled on thorny bushes and trees or in some areas on barbed wire fences.

We've seen many shrikes during this latest trip to Taiwan with two species making up all the sightings, the Brown Shrike (Lanius cristatus, see photo above taken at the Aogou wetlands on Dec 10) and the Long-tailed Shrike (Lanius schach, see photo right taken near Yuanshan on Dec 8). There are only two species of shrike in all the Americas and neither of American species are found on the island of Taiwan. Eurasia and Africa are the strongholds for shrike diversity with most of of the 28 species in the genus Lanius occurring on these continents. Brown Shrikes are winter migrants but Long-tailed Shrikes can be seen all year on Taiwan. Lanius shrikes are common but still great birds to see on any trip to Taiwan.

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The crane! The crane!

Cranes are popular birds in the far east with an important place in Chinese, Korean and Japanese art and culture as symbols of peace and harmony, so when they show up unexpectedly in places where they aren't normally seen it can be a big deal. On December 7 during this year's trip to Taiwan, with University of Minnesota student Bailey McKay, we had the good fortune of seeing four wintering Red-crowned Cranes (Grus japonensis) in the agricultural fields around Jingshan. The sighting was easily made from the roadside with binoculars and a spotting scope gave excellent looks at this beautiful bird. A single adult plumage individual was in a grassy field along a river filled with Black-crowned Night Herons (Nycticorax nycticorax) and other waders. A short drive around the corner from this bird revealed three more individuals (2 in adult plumage and 1 in juvenile plumage, see photo left. I know it isn't the greatest photo but the birds were very far away.). This was a big surprise as it was only the third record for Red-crowned Crane in Taiwan and the first such sighting in four years. Prior to the last sighting four years ago there were no records of this species for over 60 years! All previous sightings were of solitary individuals making this year's sighting the largest known wintering population of Red-crowned Cranes in Taiwan to date.

Local birders were already on the scene when we arrived at this site. In Taiwan birding is a major pass time and a half a dozen birders with 2,000 dollar spotting scopes and a 600 mm lenses on a 10 mega pixel digital camera is not an unusual occurrence, particularly in the winter when there are many different vagrant and transient migratory birds. Typically the first person to spot a rare bird are on their cell phones and within the hour birders from around the island are packing their gear and on the way. Our presence at the crane site attracted a lot of attention even by non-birders and soon after our arrival a line of locals had formed waiting to catch a glimpse of the cranes through Bailey's spotting scope (see right photo). One never knows what will turn up in the winter in Taiwan! Taiwan is a great place for these rare vagrant migrants and a great place to meet many enthusiastic, friendly birders.

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