IOANA SERITAN
Associate Editor, Birding magazine
Before we get into our regular Birding Online content, please consider joining the ABA in nurturing our young birder community through Young Birder camps, online resources, and the Young Birder of the Year program by contributing to the Nesting Season Appeal for Summer 2017!
Welcome to Birding Online! Here, all ABA members can access the extended online content from the June 2017 issue of Birding magazine. The complete issue, containing both print and online content, can be found at:
aba.org/birding-magazine-june-2017
The June 2017 cover features a beautiful photo of a Laysan Duck from Megan Dalton. The cover is an excellent teaser for the article within by Jason A. Crotty about this endemic Hawaiian species. Last year, ABA members voted overwhelmingly to welcome Hawaii into the ABA Area. Since then, the ABA Checklist Committee has been hard at work to integrate Hawaiian species to the ABA Checklist. Their process will be explained in the upcoming Birder’s Guide to Listing & Taxonomy. The Laysan Duck is just one of the many species that birders can find on the gorgeous Hawaiian islands, and this article breaks down the duck’s life history and conservation status magnificently.
Cover image of Laysan Duck by Megan Dalton. Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, Hawaii; September 2015.
Our cover may feature a Hawaiian species, but that isn’t the only region we travel to in this issue. In June’s Featured Photo, Priscilla Lai and her colleagues challenge us with an LBJ (or “little brown job”) from northeastern Alberta. You can see the photo itself here, then join the conversation on the ABA Blog, before reading the authors’ own analysis.
Featured Photo, June 2017. Photo by Laura Meyers.
The extended online content for News and Notes takes us to the continental United States with Paul Hess’s article about the impacts of climate change on breeding birds at Powdermill Nature Reserve in Pennsylvania. You can read this online section here, as well as the two sections that were also published in print.
As always, the Book Reviews in your print Birding take their full forms online. You can click here to flip straight to the first review in the online issue. You can also read Grant McCreary’s review of Hummingbirds by John C. Arvin here on the ABA Blog. Next is W. Ross Silcock’s review of Birds of Montana by Jeffrey S. Marks, Paul Hendricks, and Daniel Casey, which you can find here on the blog. The final review comes from Daniel Lewis, reviewing Extinct Birds of Hawai’i by Michael Walther, which is here on the blog. (Lewis’s review also brings us full circle, back to Hawaii!)
And as always, you’ll have the most fun exploring the issue for yourself! Click on any title or photo in the Table of Contents to be directed to the matching article. Another interesting read comes from Amar Ayyash, with his discussion of the possible lumping of Thayer’s Gull into the Iceland Gull complex. Stay tuned for upcoming announcements from the American Ornithological Society and the next Birder’s Guide to Listing & Taxonomy to learn the fate of the proposal.
If you’re still reading, thank you! I’d like to take another moment to remind you that the Nesting Season Appeal is coming to a close. The ABA runs a lot of great programs for young birders – a number of which I benefited from myself, so I can tell you they really do have a lot of impact. Your contribution will go towards Young Birder camps, the Young Birder of the Year program, and online resources for young birders, all of which my friends and I can tell you are truly fantastic. You can read a bit more about my story here – and if you are able to donate at this time, you can donate here. Thank you for your consideration!
