This year’s Tucson Festival of Books was a great success–not the least thanks to the participation of Jon Dunn, who took part in a panel discussion with Elizabeth Rosenthal on the history, significance, and future of the field guide.

As consultant, editor, and author of a number of field guides (along with innumerable articles on identification, distribution, and classification), Jon gave us some one-of-a-kind insights into the birth and evolution of the National Geographic guides and the other important references he’s responsible for.

The audience of about 60 birders and book lovers was enthusiastic, and Jon was, characteristically, patient and thorough in answering their questions, ranging from how to choose a field guide to how to make that difficult jump from beginner to “intermediate” birder.

Afterwards, Liz and Jon signed books at the Tucson Audubon stand.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Jon generously agreed to lead a Tucson Audubon bird walk at Sweetwater Wetlands Sunday morning; books were signed, birds were sighted, and everyone was impressed–no surprise to those of us who know him–at how fine a morning in the field with Jon Dunn can be!

Jon with Robert Meredith, Liz Payne, and Darlene Smyth at the 2010 Tucson Festival of Books.

So how do WINGS leaders spend their time when they’re not leading tours?

In the field, of course, birding and learning–and contributing to conservation by participating in such activities as “birdathons.”

Rich Hoyer’s Voyeurs will be going head to head with Gavin Bieber’s High Rollers in Tucson Audubon’s annual event.

Where will you be birdathoning it this spring?

Southeast Arizona. Photo: Rich Hoyer.

Chris Wood and Jessie Barry are the primary leaders for the 2010 Young Birders’ Event August 12-15 in Ithaca, NY.

Applications are due April 15. You can read more about last year’s exceedingly successful meeting on line at the Cornell Lab’s website.

Will Russell and David Sibley have returned from Thailand, where they were studying Spoon-billed Sandpipers at the traditional site at Pak Thale in the northern Gulf of Thailand.  They saw multiple birds every day, with a maximum of six.

Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Thailand. Photo: Jon Dunn.

Will writes: “From the point where six Spoon-bills were visible at once, by spinning slowly around one could also see about 300 Eurasian Curlews, one Far Eastern curlew, 50 Black-tailed Godwits, 10 Bar-tailed Godwits, six Ruffs, 250 Great Knots, 15 Red Knots, six Nordmann’s Greenshanks, 20 Common Greenshanks, 30 Spotted Redshanks, 400 Marsh Sandpipers, 300 Curlew Sandpipers, six Dunlin, 400 Little Stints, 20 Long-toed Stints, 15 Broad-billed Sandpipers, five Common Sandpipers, 30 Pacific Golden-Plovers, 10 Black-bellied Plovers, 100 Kentish Plovers, 150 Greater Sand-Plovers, 80 Lesser Sand-Plovers, and one Malaysian Plover–all from that single point.”

David and Will also encountered Jon Dunn and the WINGS Coast to Highlands group.  “Lucky Jon,” they’d taken to calling him: the first bird Jon  looked at on getting out of the the van was a Spoon-billed Sandpiper!

Our friend Robert Straub writes from Xalapa, Veracruz:

On behalf of the members and officers of the Club de Observadores de Aves de Xalapa, thanks very much to you and to WINGS for the generous donation made in October 2009 after the ABA Conference in Xalapa.

We’ll be using the largest part of the funds to support a community group in Oaxaca that is protecting and monitoring a breeding colony of Military Macaws. They’ll be using the funds to help purchase a spotting scope and tripod, necessary tools for their work.

The macaw site is near Tecomovaca, Oaxaca, about 100 km northeast of Oaxaca City and about 75 km southeast of Tehuacan, Puebla. The group is from a town on the southern edge of the canyon, and the volunteers walk a long way to their observation sites, where they monitor the macaws and make sure they are safe from people who are hoping to illegally capture and sell a bird. We know the site, and can confirm that the work is hard and the conditions are rough.

This group, and another on the north side, are doing good work. In addition to protecting the birds from hunters, they work with biologists and ornithologists and are developing tourism programs to assist their communities economically. Their guiding hope is to educate visitors to respect and protect these wonderful birds.

And the COAX connection? Each year we organize a field trip to see the nesting macaws in the wonderful landscapes of this very impressive canyon. The walls of the canyon are nearly vertical, and in places probably a sheer 1,000 feet above the creek below, where the macaws nest in small cracks and holes in the canyon walls. We camp in cabins at the base of the canyon, then set out at about 4:00 am, in the dark, so that we can be on top at sunrise.

Our arrival is greeted by the loud calls of the macaws reverberating off the canyon walls as they leave, often in pairs, to feed for the morning; a few hours later we watch them return to feed their young. One year we were able to watch a fledgling macaw tentatively perch outside its nest, thinking of making its inaugural flight. This was perhaps its first venture outside of the nest, and we watched the bird on its very narrow perch, with 1,000 feet to the creek below, but it couldn’t work up the nerve to take off on that day!

A young Military Macaw perches tenuously outside its nest while its parent looks on. Photo: Robert Straub / COAX.

WINGS is delighted to have helped a local community protect its natural heritage. It’s thanks only to the efforts of conservationists and scientists “on the ground” that we still have birds to see….

There is a Bare-throated Tiger-Heron in Hildago County, Texas, discovered and photographed today.

This isn’t totally unexpected, but still a terrifically exciting way to end the birding year!

A series of articles using data collected during last year’s Cornell Project Feederwatch is on line now.

White-crowned Sparrow, here photographed on Gavin Bieber's New Mexico tour, was the fourth most frequently observed species on southwestern Feeder Watches.

There’s still time to join this important citizen science undertaking for 2009-2010. Sign up and see if your feeder birds make it into next year’s edition of Winter Bird Highlights!

Of the making of many books there is no end–a good thing for traveling birders.

Princeton UP has published a new photographic guide to the birds of Jamaica, making birding this island an even richer experience. The lead author is none other than Ann Sutton, our host for parts of Rich Hoyer’s April and October tours.

One of Jamaica’s most prominent zoologists and conservationists,  Ann has written extensively about the island’s birds for more than thirty years.

Wild Turkey, Nebraska. Photo: Rick Wright.

The first Wild Turkeys brought to Europe were sent back from Mexico by Cortés in 1519. According to the Handbook of the Birds of the World, domestic turkeys were “well established” in Spain and in England by 1541–so well established, in fact, that the Jamestown colonists actually brought turkeys along with them when they sailed for Virginia in 1607, making that the first North American bird to travel west across the Atlantic.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Oaxaca is famed the world ’round for its richly historic culture and for some of the best birding in Mexico. This year’s Oaxaca Birding Marathon, held over the last of October and the first of November, provided eloquent testimony to the area’s birding potential, with 406 species (!) recorded over two and a half days by 23 participants led by our friends Eric Antonio, Roque Antonio, Edgar del Valle, and Manuel Grosselet.

Among the birds tallied were 39 endemic and 28 nearly endemic species.

Lesser Ground-Cuckoo. Photo: Manuel Grosselet.

The weekend’s list was a riotous jumble of great birds: Boucard’s Wren, Dwarf Jay, Dwarf Vireo, Aztec Thrush, Chesnut-sided Shrike -Vireo, Townsend’s Shearwater, Rosita’s Bunting, Red-breasted Chat, Sparkling-tailed Hummingbird, and on and on.

Rosita's Bunting. Photo: Manuel Grosselet.

Manuel and his colleagues are already planning their next marathon. And here at WINGS we’re looking forward ourselves to our next visit to Oaxaca and Chiapas with Steve Howell and Rich Hoyer in March.