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New Avian Discoveries

Subject: New Avian Discoveries
From: Scott Connop <>
Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 10:01:25 -0500
As an addendum to my earlier post on playback use, I would like to alert
some of the folks here on the procedure for documenting new and rare
species. This is something that has changed with time and is still an
evolving subject.

Traditionally, birds were documented and described via the barrel of a
gun. Good optics were nonexistent for a long time, but even with their
advent in the last 50 years, it is the documentation of specimens that
are used solely for the purpose of proving the existence of any bird.
Where this became critical was in the conservation of species. Like it
or not, it is at the species level that our governments move. The
splitting of the California Gnatcatcher from the Black-tailed
Gnatcatcher is as good an example as any. Many developers and business
interests have been mortified to learn that this species split, once
added to the endangered species act, now constitutes a major headache as
its primary habitat happens to be on some pretty pricey real estate.
Globally, this is also the case. If you want to move any government
towards conservation of a species, you have to prove it is a species in
the first place. There is some variation in the standards, but it is
generally considered that 20 specimens of a species are needed to
adequately describe a species formally to science. Hear me, that is 20
bodies. John Moore brought up the point of Jocotoco Antpitta. A point of
contention here is, how do we justify collecting 20 bodies when we don't
have a clue as to the abundance of the bird? This is where the use of
playback comes in. In order to protect this bird, which is just as shy
as any other antpitta, it would be nice to have another way to inventory
them. Photographs and videos help immensely, but you would never have
the quality necessary to carry in a scientific journal unless you could
photograph it inside and out. Playback could help achieve this where no
other form of approach would work (just look at the dearth of commercial
video for antpittas, in general). And whatever you think about playback,
it is not hard to argue that the bird's response to it would be better
for its health than being on a collecting table. For many on this list,
the practice of collectings birds probably hits a nerve quickly, but,
folks, this is how it is done. When a bird is discovered in a range
extension, proper documentation of its song would be preferable to
terminating it. Many birds sing so infrequently (Orange-cronwed Manikin,
Hazel-fronted Pygmy-Tyrant, just to throw around a couple of names) that
playback is the only way to induce them to sing or show themselves for
proper ID.

And then there are tapaculos.....avian mice of the undergrowth. Twenty
years ago, there was 11 recognized species of the genus Scytalopus.
There are now over 40. How did this happen? Voice! Tour leaders were
among the first to recognize the incredibly subtle variation in this
group and ornithologists studying the genus have used voice primarily
for identifying this diversity. Yes, they have taken specimens, but we
are a little less neanderthal now and we are starting to accept voice
records IF the user bothered to get a good visual to back up the
recording. With tapaculos, this demands playback. You won't get it any
other way, guaranteed by those who have struggled with these
bewilderingly similar little rats.

I know these examples might seem extreme to some, but there are many
in-between cases. I would like to advocate sound-oriented documentation
more, and see less bodies in a museum. With that said, all of the
wonderful field guides available today are courtesy of those bodies, and
all of us recognize the huge conservation edge of having these texts
available. I would simply like to keep it to a minimum. Mist netting is
the other technique routinely used for documentation, and, from personal
experience, I would say it is far more traumatic to a bird than a
playback encounter. And with that said, I do not believe, from my
experience that playback encounters are very traumatic, unless someones
takes a bird out of its routine for a lengthy period of time. Playback
mimics nature, if done judiciously. We can argure that it would be nice
to leave the little beauties alone all together, but that is not going
to happen. A soundscape artist may not need to see his subject that
completely, but a birder always wants to see a bird so that it is
identifiable to him/her. And it is the growth of the birding community
that has spawned so many international conservation efforts. I will deal
with temperate zone species more in a separate post, but I want to give
everyone here a feel for what goes on out there and why playback needs
to be discussed comprehensively. It needs to be advocated properly.
There are too many places banning it as a kneejerk reaction instaed of
through considered discussion (as an example, it drives me nuts that
tape recorders are banned in Monteverde, but all of the tour guides
whistle in quetzals, etc). We are a resource, and we need to be
responsible about what we put online for others to quote.

Scott Connop



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