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GBBC; Regulator bookshop; Chachalacas



Hi Carolinabirders,

The Florida listserv mentions that the first Swallow-tailed Kites just
arrived on their way back from South America. Something to watch for, even
if they're not due back up this way for another month or so...

Just found out that the Regulator Bookstore on Ninth Street - the same
place that had Dave Sibley in for a book-signing last spring - now has
their stock on-line at
http://www.regulatorbookshop.com/
There's a surprising variety of bird-finding titles for a non-specialty
store, ranging from Giff Beaton's "Birding Georgia" to David Tipling's
"Top Birding Spots in Britain and Ireland" and a whole bunch of others.
They have a bunch of the "Birding By Ear" titles and other CDs, both of
Sibley's recent books, several bird calendars, and the silly but
impressively accurate "Field guide to Birders" that came out not long ago.

On Thu, 21 Feb 2002, Paula Jeannet Mangiafico wrote:
>
> I'll be the first to admit to posting many idiotic queries and comments
> (including the recent one about my suprise at seeing bluebirds wintering
> here), but I'm glad I never posted this one:  8 or 9 years ago, when I had
> just started birding in any sense of the word, I thought I saw a Chacalacha
> (sp??) flap into a tree in the NC mountains.

I agree that, in the mountains, this had to be a Wild Turkey. However,
didn't I hear somewhere that an introduced population of Plain Chachalacas
had become established on some island along the SC or Georgia coastline?
They're pretty weak flyers, so I guess the likelihood of one straying to
the mainland is pretty low, but if all those pacific islands could get
colonized by rails...

On Thu, 21 Feb 2002, James Coman wrote:
>
> Its fun to try to figure out what they actually saw, but I admit that the
> "Willow Ptarmigan" has me stumped. White Leghorn pullets, maybe? Guinea
> Hens?

Given the big rash of wierd sightings, I'm not convinced that these were
really a matter of novice birders misidentifying things. I could believe a
couple of birds along these lines, but the ones Alan brought up included
17 species and over 70 individual birds, most of them unlikely candidates
for confusion; I mean, the kind of people who would confuse a Northern
Hawk-Owl with any other species are generally the ones who don't know that
Northern Hawk-Owls even exist. My guess is that either Cornell's computers
had some kind of mix-up, or that somebody was playing a joke. 1999 was the
first year of the GBBC, so their ability to catch obvious boners wasn't
nearly as developed yet...

Two things catch my eye on this year's tallies. First, three Western
Tanagers in NC! I don't think I've heard of even one being reported this
year. And second, the SC total has an Acadian Flycatcher report; if this
is really an Empid and not a Phoebe, I would guess that a western vagrant
like Dusky or Hammond's might be about as likely as an Acadian in
February!

Good birding,

Josh


Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)

jsr6@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/