Migratory Bird Treaty Act and its enforcement

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act prohibits capturing killing, selling, or otherwise endangering the well-being of migratory birds. It has rescued numerous species, including the snowy egret, which was hunted to the brink of extinction in the late 1800s but now has a U.S. population of more than a million today. Like all laws, this act is imperfect—for example, it contains no explicit exception for socially or economically vital activities that incidentally harm a small number of animals. However, because of smart management of the law and prosecutorial discretion, it has remained on the books for nearly a century with few changes. Undoing a law of such historical pedigree should be discussed and debated at length, but instead the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is at risk of being gutted with very little deliberation. Last week, Representative Jeff Duncan of South Carolina inserted a rider, a type of amendment, into the budget for Commerce, Justice and Science that would prevent federal prosecutors from enforcing the migratory bird law. While it may not pass—riders get inserted and then dropped in a lot of legislation—it could also make it through and render the Migratory Bird Treaty Act a dead letter. The move is the latest in a string of attacks on the act in recent years. In 2012, Representative Duncan proposed reducing fines for all energy producers that kill non-endangered migratory birds. In January, he introduced a bill to exempt all energy companies from prosecution for accidental killing of birds protected under the act.

Suggested text for people to write to their senators about the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the attempt by the current congress to block its enforcement.

Dear Senator: Please vote against the appropriations bill for Commerce Justice and Related Agencies unless the rider that blocks enforcement of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (Amdt 347) is removed from the bill. The MBTA is one of our most important wildlife protection laws and this rider would allow people to kill wild birds without any penalty whatsoever. Our wild bird populations are already under great pressure and many are in severe decline. Please do not block the USFWS from enforcing this important law that protects our wild bird populations.

This announcement was originally posted on the Waterbird Society's website. View the full announcement.

Variation in the Vocal Behavior of Common Loons

Common Loon photo by D. Poleschook

Mennill, D.  2014.  Variation in the Vocal Behavior of Common Loons (Gavia Immer):  Insights from Landscape-level Recordings.  Waterbirds 37 (Special Publication I): 26-36.

The song of the Common Loon (Gavia Immer) is one of the most evacuative of many areas of North America: spring would not be the same without this amazing song caring over northern lakes.  Using a custom-designed microphone array to collect landscape-scale recordings, Dan Mennill's bioacoustic analyses focused on understanding how their vocal output varied with time of day, time of year, and in response to variation in weather.  Common Loons showed significant diel variation in vocal output, producing more wail, yodel, and tremolo calls at night than during the day; the wail, yodel, and tremolo calls transmit significantly farther at night than during the day. These results provide quantitative details of Common Loon vocal signaling strategies, revealing that this species calls when abiotic conditions are ideal for long-range signaling. 

This article can be viewed at:  http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1675/063.037.sp105

The 39th Annual Waterbird Society Meeting 11-15 Aug 2015

WATERBIRDS 2015: CHALLENGES AND RESPONSES

Call for Symposia and notice of Waterbird Society Meeting, Bar Harbor, ME, 11-15 Aug 2015. This is an invitation to anyone who would like to propose a Symposium for the 39th annual Waterbird Society meeting. The symposium can be for a full (approximately 14 presentations) or half day (7 presentations). Currently, we have two full-day symposia scheduled on American Oystercatcher Biology and on Double-crested Cormorant Biology and Management and one half-day symposium on Behaviour and Conservation. The meeting is being held in conjunction with the American Oystercatcher Working Group, the Wilson Plover Working Group and the Northwestern Atlantic Marine Bird Cooperative. Meeting information including details on the venue, field trips, accommodations and special events are now posted on the Waterbird Society web site. Registration information is also on the meeting web site. 

Please contact ERICA NOL or JOHN ANDERSON by 31 Jan 2015 if you have suggestions for further symposia topics. Abstract submission for contributed papers and posters will be available shortly on the meeting web site..

Migration: Idiosyncratic Migrations of Black Terns

Black Tern by Bob Gress

Idiosyncratic Migrations of Black Terns (Chlidonias niger): Diversity in Routes and Stopovers.  Jan van der Winden, Ruben C. Fijn, Peter W. van Horssen, Debby Gerritsen-Davidse and Theunis Piersma. 37(2):162-174. 2014

By 2013, six of 27 Black Terns (Chlidonias niger) from four Dutch colonies that had received light level geolocators in 2010–2011 had been recaptured. All six recovered individuals migrated to West Africa, but whereas one individual flew there nonstop, the others made stops of varying length en route. These included flights of 2,000–6,000 km between major stopovers, achieving travel speeds over 1,000 km/day.  This paper showed that Black Terns are long-distance migrants with substantial individual variation in migration patterns, including the use of staging sites, stopover times and travel distances. The variation in itineraries may imply that the distribution of the marine resources they rely on are relatively unpredictable. It remains to be seen whether the variability seen here reflects differences in otherwise fixed individual strategies or whether Black Terns are truly highly flexible.

The Importance of Survey Timing on Shorebird Density Estimates at East Bay, Nunavut, Canada

The Importance of Survey Timing on Shorebird Density Estimates at East Bay, Nunavut, Canada.  Melanie Dickie, Paul A. Smith and H. Grant Gilchrist.  Waterbirds 37(4): 394-401.  Waterbirds is an International journal, publishing new information on shorebirds and promoting new data on waterbirds from around the world.  In the December 2104 issue, this study examined the timing of breeding on counts of five shorebird species during transect surveys at East Bay, Nunavut, Canada, from 2000 to 2010. The species were: Black-bellied Plover (Pluvialis squatarola), Semipalmated Plover (Charadrius semipalmatus), Ruddy Turnstone (Arenaria interpres), White-rumped Sandpiper (Calidris fuscicollis) and Red Phalarope (Phalaropus fulicarius). Transect counts varied widely among species and years, and transect counts were most strongly predicted by the density of nests found during more intensive surveys. However, after accounting for this variation, survey counts were influenced substantially by survey timing. Surveys carried out shortly after the median date of nest initiation (∼2 days after) corresponded most closely to the densities of found nests, and if surveys were not within several days of the median date, the discrepancy between the two estimates was large. Although neither nest densities nor transect surveys are believed to be a perfect indication of local population status, these results suggest that the nearly inevitable variation in survey timing could introduce substantial bias into density estimates.

U.S. Names Red Knot a Threatened Species

A tagged rufa red knot in Mispillion Harbor, DE.
Credit: Gregory Breese / USFWS

RED KNOT LISTING

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced federal protection for a subspecies of the Red Knot (Calidris canutus rufa), designating it as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.  A “threatened” designation means a species is at risk of becoming endangered throughout all or a significant portion of its range.   See listing information at: https://www.fws.gov/news/ShowNews.cfm?ID=306702E2-C4DB-EDF8-28653BB2E2D600F5

WATERBIRDS Table of Contents 37(3) September 2014

ARTICLES

Abundance and Trends of Colonial Waterbirds on the Large Lakes of Southern Manitoba.

Scott Wilson, Ron Bazin, Wendy Calvert, Terry J. Doyle, Stephen D. Earsom,

Stephen A. Oswald and Jennifer M. Arnold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . . .       233

Productivity and Chick Growth Rates of Royal Tern (Thalasseus maximus) and Sandwich Tern (Thalasseus sandvicensis) on the Isles Dernieres Barrier Island Refuge, Louisiana.

Tabitha M. Owen and Aaron R. Pierre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .      245

Suitability of Coastal Marshes as Whooping Crane (Grus americana) Foraging Habitat in Southwest Louisiana, USA.

Sung-Ryong Kang and Sammy L. King . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   254

A 24-Hour Time-Energy  Budget for Wintering American  Black Ducks  (Anas rubripes) and its Comparison to Allometric Estimations.

Orrin E. Jones, III, Christopher K. Williams and Paul M. Castelli. . . . . . . . .      264

Estimating Effects of Habitat Characteristics on Abundances of Three Species of Secretive Marsh Birds in Central Florida.

Bradley W. Alexander and Gary R. Hepp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    274

Comparison of Burning and Weed Barriers for Restoring Common Tern (Sterna hirundo) Nesting Habitat in the Gulf of Maine.

Juliet S. Lamb, C. Scott Hall, Stephen W. Kress and Curtice R. Griffin. . . . . . . . 286

Role of Benthic Substrate in Waterbird Distribution on Great Salt Lake, Utah.

Anthony J. Roberts and Michael R. Conover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    298

Dietary Segregation between Breeding Tern Species on the Persian Gulf Islands, Iran.

Farhad H. Tayefeh, Mohamed Zakaria, Hamid Amini, Jamshid Mohammadnejad,

Khosro Darnishi and Sirous Karami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .              307

Weather-related Winter Mortality of Eurasian Oystercatchers (Haematopus ostralegus) in the Northeastern Wadden Sea.

Philipp Schwemmer, Bernd Halterlein, Olaf Geiter, Klaus Gunther, Victor M. Corman

and Stefan Garthe. . . . . .. . . . .. . ... . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .                319

NOTES

Breeding Population of Red-legged Cormorant (Phalacrocorax gaimardi) along the Araucania Region Coast, South-central Chile.

Rodrigo Barros, Heraldo V. Norambuena and Victor Raimilla. . . . . . . . . . .          331

An Inexpensive Technique for Capturing Gregarious Wading Birds on their Foraging Grounds.

John N. Brzorad and Alan D. Maccarone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .         335

Tracks of a Stilt-like Bird from the Early Eocene Green River Formation of Utah: Possible Earliest Evidence of the Recurvirostridae (Charadriiformes).

Storrs L. Olson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .      340