Ornithology Commons^™

Review Of A Guide To The Nests, Eggs, And Nestlings Of North American Birds, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

In 1978, during a visit to England, I purchased a copy of the first edition of this book, then called a field guide. It was written by Colin Harrison, published by Collins, and produced in standard field guide size. It never was effectively distributed in North America, which was unfortunate, because it was far better than the guide to bird nests by Hal Harrison in the well-known Peterson field guide series. Not only did it illustrate the eggs of about 550 species, in color and life size, but it also offered nestling paintings of nearly 150 species, plus numerous line …

In Memorium: Charles G. Sibley, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

Dr. Charles Sibley, who passed away in April 1998, is recalled and appreciated by a former student, lab assistant, co-worker, and colleague, who first encountered him at Cornell University in 1955, beginning a 43-year working relationship.

Birds Of The Cedar Point Biological Station Area, Keith And Garden Counties, Nebraska: Seasonal Occurrence And Breeding Data, Charles R. Brown, Mary Bomberger Brown, Paul A. Johnsgard, Josef Kren, William C. Scharf

Papers in Ornithology

The North Platte River valley (elev. ca 3300 ft/990 m) in Garden and Keith counties, Nebraska, has an avifauna of 305 species, the richest known north of Texas in the Great Plains. More than 25 years of observations, mist-netting, banding, and breeding-bird surveys by the authors and others have revealed 104 breeding, 17 probably breeding, and 184 transient, casual, and accidental species. Hybridization of eastern with western species is evidenced by intermediates between Rose-breasted and Black-headed grosbeaks, Indigo and Lazuli buntings, Eastern and Spotted towhees, Baltimore and Bullock’s orioles, and yellow- and red-shafted morphs of Northern Flicker; Eastern and Western …

Daffy But Dapper: A Serious Approach To The Comical-Looking Ruddy Duck, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

The punk rock star of waterfowl, a male Ruddy Duck displays an assortment of odd attributes, including a blue bill, stiff, spiky tail, and horns on its head. The instinctive attraction and fascination in reaction to the sight of a Ruddy Duck in breeding condition is perhaps as hard to understand as a teenager's compulsive reverence to some rock star. The Ruddy Duck has a football player's neck that is at least half again too large for its body, a dumpy body that is both shaped and colored like a partly flattened and rusty tin can, and an array of …

Beguiled By Birds: A Profile Of Paul Johnsgard, James L. Hayward, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

“I spent the first thirty years of my life learning to be a scientist, and the next twenty-five years of my life trying to become a humanist and an artist." Paul Johnsgard immerses himself in several worlds, but for the eclectic teacher, writer, artist, and scientist, these worlds merge in a burst of feathered movement, color, and shape. Johnsgard is beguiled by birds. As a professor of biological sciences at the University of Nebraska with full teaching responsibilities, Johnsgard has managed to write at least one or two books on birds each year. In 1986 I asked him if he …

Nebraska Fauna: American White Pelican, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

Few birds are more familiar to the average person than are white pelicans, but few Nebraskans also realize that thousands of these birds migrate through the state every year, and hundreds stop over to spend the summer on some of our larger lakes and reservoirs. No pelicans breed in Nebraska, but the nearest breeding area is only a short distance north of us, at LaCreek National Wildlife Refuge, near Martell, South Dakota. Since it requires three--or more probably four--years for white pelicans to become sexually mature, many of the immature birds simply stop off in Nebraska rather than completing their …

Common Goldeneye: Notes On Nebraska Fauna, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

0NE OF THE rewards for braving the remnants of a Nebraska winter by venturing out to newly thawed reservoirs, lakes and sandpits is the prospect of seeing a flock of common goldeneyes. Hard on the heels of winter, goldeneyes begin moving out of their wintering areas in the central and southern Great Plains and testing the waters to the north as as they become partially ice-free. Fair numbers of birds, sometimes in the thousands, often winter in western Nebraska, especially along the North and South Platte rivers, and in adjoining areas of eastern Wyoming and Colorado, but very few winter …

Buzz-Wings, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

In Nebraska, the species of hummingbird most likely to be seen, and indeed the only one likely to be seen in the eastern half of the state, is the ruby-throated hummingbird. This is the most widely distributed of all North American hummingbirds, and its breeding range covers virtually all of eastern North America north nearly to Hudson Bay. The nesting range includes most of eastern Nebraska, but only along the Missouri River is nesting at all regular. Nests have been reported as far west as North Platte. Ruby-throats typically arrive in Nebraska in early April, with about half of the …

Lead Poisoning Of Sandhill Cranes (Grus Canadensis), R. M. Windingstad, S. M. Kerr, L. N. Locke, J. J. Hurt

Papers in Ornithology

Two wild and two captive sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis) were diagnosed by National Wildlife Health Laboratory personnel as having died from lead toxicity. Ingestion of lead fishing weights by the wild cranes and of unspent .22 caliber shell cartidges by the captive cranes were responsible for these deaths. One crane force-fed lead pellets showed an increase of blood lead levels from 0.77 ppm to 23.8 ppm (wet weight) just before its death 15 days following exposure. Liver lead concentrations of sandhill cranes dying of causes other than lead toxicity are presented.

Aspects Of The Nesting Ecology Of Least Terns And Piping Plovers In Central Nebraska, Craig A. Faanes

Papers in Ornithology

Breeding habitat of the least tern is made up primarily of coastal beaches and inland river sandbars. Populations of the interior (Sterna antillarum athalassos) and east coast (S. a. antillarum) subspecies are now declining (Marshall et al. 1975, Duffy 1977, Jernigan et al. 1978) and the western subspecies (S. a. browni) is endangered (Wilbur 1974). Although coastal populations have received considerable attention (Wolk 1974, Atwood et al. 1977, Blodgett 1978), little research has been conducted on the interior race (Hardy 1957, Downing 1975).

The piping plover inhabits river sandbars and sand beaches and, like …

Whooper Recount: A Close Look At These Endangered Cranes Reveals That, While Their Numbers Are Increasing, Their Rate Of Increase Is Actually Declining, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

I have assembled figures for the 43-year period from 1938 through 1980, and have subjected them to various kinds of analysis. During this period, 220 young and 1,437 postjuvenile birds have appeared on the wintering grounds. This works out to an annual recruitment rate of 13.3 percent. (This is not exactly the same as the birthrate, of course, since the loss of eggs, chicks, and juveniles prior to arrival at Aransas is excluded.) The recruitment rate provides an estimate of the rate of maximum annual population increase. One hundred fifty-four birds that had been counted in any given year failed …

Teton Wildlife: Observations By A Naturalist, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

The diversity of wildlife in Grand Teton National Park and its environs draws millions to the valley of Jackson Hole every year, but few are the visitors who are able to observe individual species over the course of several seasons. Paul Johnsgard, a noted naturalist who has written many books on the waterfowl of the world, here integrates his own observations with those who have studied Teton wildlife in the past. The result is a compassionate, simple reconstruction of the lives of a few individuals from spring through early autumn.

Teton Wildlife describes the migration of a herd of antelope …

Review Of Observations Of Wildlife, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

Nearly everybody has a childhood hero, but only rarely do those heros survive the test of time to stand even taller in the mind's eye when approaching a halfcentury of one's own lifetime. Sir Peter Scott is a man of such stuff; his enormous artistic abilities and capacity for converting those talents into the environmental education of several generations of Britons, and toward the conservation of the earth's natural resources, cause him to stand uniquely alone in the international environmental scene. His book is an informal retrospective look at his own life, his artwork, and his concerns for conservation and …

Where Have All The Curlews Gone?, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

After a period of limited optimism, ornithologists are again in a state of uncertainty and doubt as to the existence of the elusive Eskimo Curlew. In spite of the ever increasing activities of bird watchers, no sightings have been reported from the Texas coast in the last decade, and the present status of this ill-fated bird is impossible to judge. Most of the persons who have summarized its sad story have come to the conclusion that uncontrolled hunting, particularly spring hunting in the Great Plains, was the single most important factor in its demise. Richard C. Banks of the U.S. …

Copulatory Behavior Of The American Bittern [Short Communications], Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

Describes the copulatory behavior of the American bittern, Botaurus lentiginosus, with line-drawings.

The Triumphant Trumpeter: Once Reduced To A Few Bevies, This Magnificent Swan Is On The Road To Recovery, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

Largest of all the swans and heaviest of North American birds, the trumpeter swan is on the increase. Once common and widespread over much of the western United States, the bird was a winter resident of the lower reaches of the Mississippi Valley, Louisiana, and Texas. During the last century, however, trade in swan-skins—-used to make powder puffs and writing and drawing quills—-and the sale of eggs to collectors had a heavy impact on the species. In the period from 1853 to 1877, for example, London sales of trumpeter swan-skins imported through the Hudson's Bay Company totaled nearly 18,000, an …

Review Of The Pheasants Of The World, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

This book, one of Delacour's three major monographs on avian families (the others being the Anatidae and, with Dean Amadon, The Cracidae), was originally published in 1951 but went out of print in the late 196Os, when it quickly became a collector's item. At the request of the World Pheasant Association, an avicultural organization concerned with galliform conservation, Delacour undertook a revision of the book, and a new colored plate has been prepared by R. David Digby. That Delacour, now in his late 80's, should undertake such a project at all is a testimony to the amazing vigor and enthusiasm …

Flight Of The Sea Ducks, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

Their migration routes have been charted. Their breeding biology is known. Their eggs meat and feathers have long been used by man. But eiders at sea remain an enigma.

Nesting in colonies that can number hundreds of birds, the eiders are among the most conspicuous of tundra-breeding birds. Although female eiders are a study in grays and browns that match the arctic tundra, the males are most boldly patterned in black and white, with striking green head colors. When the nesting season ends, the birds disperse over the vastnesses of the northern oceans, out of range of most human observers. …

Seventy-Five Years Of Changes In Mallard-Black Duck Ratios In Eastern North America, Paul A. Johnsgard, Rose Disilvestro

Papers in Ornithology

One of the most spectacular shifts in waterfowl dIstnbution patterns in North America is the degree to which Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) have come to replace Black Ducks (Anas rubripes) as the dominant breeding and wintering species in the eastern half of the United States and Canada over the past several decades. The reasons for these changes in the actual and relative numbers of Mallards and Black Ducks are doubtless many and probably include such factors as man-induced habitat changes, game management practices such as artificial stocking programs and changing hunting regulations, and possibly even climatic trends, …

Waterfowl Portraits, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

SINCE HIS days as a boy on the North Dakota prairies, Paul A. Johnsgard has "measured his winters, not by conventional time units, but in the days it took for the snow geese to return from their wintering grounds...." The author of five books: Song of the North Wind-A Story of the Snow Goose; Grouse and Quails of North America; Waterfowl- Their Biology and Natural History; Animal Behavior; and Handbook of Waterfowl Behavior, and of numerous articles in national magazines and over 40 technical papers, he is eminently qualified to capture in pen and ink the very essence of Nebraska's …

Quail Music: The Complex Calls Of A Bird Contain Clues To Its Evolution, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

Ethological research has revealed that the vocal communications of birds are highly specialized behavioral adaptations that can shed light on evolutionary processes. The calls of the quails of the New World are a good example. This group of birds includes some thirty species, about half of which are limited to the tropical forests of Central and northern South America. The other species are North American, ranging as far north as southern Canada. Morphological evidence favors the view that the most generalized, or “primitive,” of these species are the tree quails of Mexico’s moist mountain forests. The more open-country and arid-adapted …

Review Of Curassows And Related Birds, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

To contemplate the appearance of a new book dealing for the first time with an exhaustive coverage of an entire avian family is to evoke an excitement that is all too rare an occurrence for most ornithologists. This excitement is enhanced when the bird group is one of the least studied and yet, evolutionarily speaking, most significant of the galliform families, and when the authors are as well known and highly respected as Delacour and Amadon. Anticipation reaches its apogee when the contributing artists are as competent as Albert E. Gilbert, George M. Sutton, and David Reid-Henry. After reading the …

Natural And Unnatural Selection In A Wild Goose, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

Blue goose and snow goose color phases enable the species to reproduce efficiently in the harsh Canadian climate. But hunters, more eager than sporting, are upsetting this finely tuned pattern of survival.

Experimental Hybridization Of The New World Quail (Odontophorinae), Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

Hybridization experiments among six species of New World quail currently placed in four genera (Colinus, Callipepla, Lophortyx, and Oreortyx) involved the establishment of nine mixed-pair combinations. Seven of these combinations resulted in the production of F₁ offspring, and individuals representing five intergeneric crosses have been reared to maturity. These F₁ individuals exhibited a hatchability at least as high as occurred in parental species matings. In four of five intergeneric crosses, the hybrid females have laid smaller-than-normal eggs in spite of average or higher-than-average egg production, and a high proportion of eggs females laid have been …

A Summary Of Intergeneric New World Quail Hybrids, And A New Intergeneric Hybrid Combination, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

The exceedingly close affinities of the quail genera Colinus, Callipepla, and Lophortyx have been recognized for some time and have recently been emphasized by additional morphological (Holman 1961; Hudson et al. 1966), biochemical (Sibley 1960), and pterylographic (Ohmart 1967) evidence. Indeed, Holman has suggested that these three taxa might best be regarded as subgenera. Phillips et al. (1964) pragmatically merged Lophortyx with Callipepla; and Delacour (1961-1962) synonymized not only Lophortyx, but also Oreortyx and Philortyx, with Callipepla, yet retained Colinus as a separate genus. Although Ohmart (1967) questioned the validity of generically separating Lophortyx and …

The Masked Duck In The United States, Paul A. Johnsgard, Dirk Hagemeyer

Papers in Ornithology

Reports on the first-known accounts of masked duck breeding in the United States.

A Review Of Parental Carrying Of Young By Waterfowl, Paul A. Johnsgard, Janet Kear

Papers in Ornithology

A review of literature reveals that published accounts of parental carrying among waterfowl are numerous and of diverse origins. Parental carrying on the back while swimming has been reliably seen in three species of swans, two sheldgeese, and at least seven species of ducks. Parental carrying of young in flight has also been reported for at least 16 species representing seven of the generally recognized waterfowl tribes. The majority of such accounts have involved carrying the young in the bill, a possibility that is somewhat substantiated by reliable observations of egg or eggshell carrying by females of several species. In …

Foraging Dives By Surface-Feeding Ducks, Janet Kear, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

Recently, R. I. Smith (1966. Wilson Bull., 78:483-484) questioned, among other things, the occurrence of foraging dives by Pintails (Anas acuta). The authors note observations and published accounts of diving behavior of wild Pintails as well as a number of other surface-feeding species.

Distributional Changes And Interaction Between Prairie Chickens And Sharp-Tailed Grouse In The Midwest, Paul A. Johnsgard, Robert E. Wood

Papers in Ornithology

The "prairie grouse" of North America present an interesting example of the effects of human activities on breeding distribution patterns of birds, with resulting changes in geographic distribution and spacial isolation. Thus, the Heath Hen (Tympanuchus cupido cupido) was one of the most familiar birds to the early colonists, who relied heavily on it for food. Ultimately, loss of habitat caused the Heath Hen's extinction. When the vast tall-grass prairies west of the Appalachians were settled, Greater Prairie Chickens (T. c. pinnatus) were probably more plentiful, and greatly increased as woods were cleared and grain crops supplemented native grasses. With …

The Evolution Of Duck Courtship, Paul A. Johnsgard

Papers in Ornithology

The courtship of ducks is unusual in several aspects. In temperate zones it generally begins very early, usually on the wintering grounds, so courtship is not a manifestation of territorial proclamation and defense as is the case with many songbirds. Nor, because of its early initiation, is courtship closely correlated with gonad growth and fertilization; rather, pair formation is normally completed prior to the period of maximum gonadal activity. Therefore, reproductive behavior in ducks may be conveniently divided into an early phase of conspicuous displays associated with actual pair formation, followed by the later and less elaborate behavior patterns concerned …