THE CHANGING SEASONS: OSCILLATIONS 
Gown’s Longspurs out of range are less frequently reported than 
Chestnut-collareds or Smith’s; one in Grand Forks County, North 
Dakota 19-20 May was the only extralimital bird this season. As 
with the pipits, my impression has been that range-edge records of 
migrant longspurs have been largely the product of patient, careful 
searching, and perhaps too, on the continental level, of lectures and 
articles on this beautiful group of birds, by experts such as Lehman, 
Dunn, and Kaufman, to name a few. All longspur species show a 
tendency to start and stop migration abruptly, depending on weath- 
er conditions, and spring seasons with see-sawing temperatures 
and late-season snowstorms can produce impressive aggregations, 
such as the 150,000 Lapland Longspurs counted moving north- 
ward at Minot, North Dakota 14 April during a warm-up, or the 
many thousands of Laplands that swirled around feeding stations 
and “blanketed backyards” during a cold snap 13 May around 
Whitehorse, Yukon, depicted on the first page of this essay. 
South ^ Morth 
Although Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks continue to be poster- 
birds for the “Southern Birds North” crowd — with records this sea- 
son from Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Illinois, Iowa, 
Missouri, Kansas, plus new locations in all the Gulf coast states 
and in Oklahoma and nesting (again) in Tennessee — ibises are still 
the most widespread wanderers and northerly pioneers, outdoing 
even kites. Black Vultures, and Black-necked Stilts for the breadth 
of their peregrinations. In the apt words of former regional editor 
Henry T. Armistead, “Everyone gets a piece of the action” (Table 
2). While Glossy Ibis (Figure 6) continues to forge trails westward 
and northward. White-faced Ibis has become a fixture in the Mid- 
west and East in recent spring/summer seasons, and extralimital 
records continue to push the envelope in the cooler months in 
both Plegadis. Hybrids are now widely reported, as White-faced 
Ibis take up residence in Glossy Ibis colonies (Figure 7) and vice- 
versa. Spring 2009 continued the spread of both species into new 
areas of the interior, including many places where nesting of one 
or both species has never been confirmed. (To a lesser extent, this 
pattern has started to develop in White Ibis as well.) The chilly 
spring, however, meant that records of wandering ibis is southern 
Canada were fewer this year, and in general, White-faced Ibis 
seems to be charging a bit harder in the past few seasons than 
Glossy, as the table suggests. 
In the southern-central part of the continent, where both Ple- 
gadis are expanding into new areas with each year that passes, it has 
become difficult to track their spread or summarize them here in 
tabular form (eBird, help!). In Alabama and Mississippi, about 20 
Glossies were reported, including birds well inland, and the first 
confirmed Mississippi nesting for White-faced Ibis came from Ya- 
zoo National Wildlife Refuge 20-25 May: 10 adults! Eight Glossies 
were in Nebraska 23 April-17 May, and in Colorado, there were a 
dozen reports of Glossy, but fewer than half were documented (and 
three reports of hybrids were not documented). We should point 
out that identification of some ibises can be very tricky, and so com- 
mittees’ insistence on documentation is by no means untoward! 
West of the Mississippi River, White-faced Ibis numbers contin- 
ue to rise in many areas, sometimes dramatically: up 14 between 
13 Iowa locales 24 April-22 May; a top count of 42 in Holt Coun- 
ty, Missouri 9 May; over 300 at Elkhead Reservoir, Colorado 25 
April; 60 at J. Clark Salyer N.W.R., North Dakota 5 May; 75 nests 
in Arizona’s Parker Valley 31 May; 31 between four western Wash- 
Table 2. Selected records oi Plegadis ibis and apparent hybrids mentioned is the regional reports, spring 2009 . 
Glossy Ibis 
New Brunswick (2 singles) 
Not provided 
Glossy Ibis 
Avondale, hi 
12 April 
Glossy Ibis 
Bitter Lake N.W.R., NM 
12 April-16 May 
Glossy Ibis 
Dickey County, ND 
13 April 
Glossy Ibis 
Village Creek Drying Beds,TX 
14 & 25 April 
Glossy Ibis 
Bosque del Apache N.W.R., NM (2) 
16-21 April 
Glossy Ibis 
near Bishop, Inyo County, CA 
19 April 
Glossy Ibis 
Socorro, NM 
21 April 
Glossy Ibis 
Sangamon County, IL 
21 April 
Glossy Ibis 
Plains Flats, PA 
22-23 April 
Glossy Ibis 
Hornsby Bend, TX 
24 April 
Glossy Ibis 
Topton, PA{11) 
24 April 
Glossy Ibis 
Cheyenne Bottoms, KS 
24 April 
Glossy Ibis 
Hackberry, NE 
24April-t- 
Glossy Ibis 
Zuni, NM 
26 April 
Glossy Ibis 
Lake Avalon, NM 
27 April 
Glossy Ibis 
Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce, Quebec 
3 May 
Glossy Ibis 
Lubbock, TX 
5 May 
Glossy Ibis 
Cabarrus County, NC (well inland) 
5-7 May 
Glossy Ibis 
Fayette County, IL (2) 
7 May 
Glossy Ibis 
Fort Sumner, NM 
8 May 
Glossy Ibis 
Richland W.M.A.,TX 
8-16 May 
Glossy Ibis 
Sedgwick County, KS 
9 May 
Glossy Ibis 
Alfalfa County, OK (7) 
17 May 
Glossy Ibis 
ParkerValley,AZ(1 &2bird5) 
2U31 May 
Glossy Ibis 
Malheur N.W.R., OR (fourth state) 
23 May 
Glossy Ibis 
Alamosa County, CO 
23 May 
Glossy Ibis 
St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Is. 
23 May 
Glossy Ibis 
McLean County, ND 
26 May 
White-faced Ibis 
Lake City, FL (2) 
through 24 March 
White-faced Ibis 
Hernando County, FL 
17-22 March 
White-faced Ibis 
Ipswich/Essex, MA 
7-10 April 
White-faced Ibis 
Bellrose, IL (2) 
10 April 
White-faced Ibis 
Saul's Fish Farm, AR (inland) 
17 April 
White-faced Ibis 
Snow Hill, MD 
18 April 
White-faced Ibis 
Prime Hook N.W.R., DE 
18-19 April 
White-faced Ibis 
Berlin, MO 
18-27 April 
White-faced Ibis 
Big Stone County, MN (8) 
25 April 
White-faced Ibis 
Long Point, KY (third state record) 
25-26 April 
White-faced Ibis 
Wayne County, Ml 
25April-1SMay 
White-faced Ibis 
Scarborough, ME 
26 April 
White-faced Ibis 
Cahokia Mounds S.P., !L (2) 
27 April 
White-faced Ibis 
Frog Bayou W.M.A.,AR (20) 
30 April 
White-faced Ibis 
Jamestown, Rl 
3-5 May 
White-faced Ibis 
Beaver Swamp W.M.A., NJ 
3-7 May 
White-faced Ibis 
Dodge County, Wl 
9 May 
White-faced Ibis 
Cape May, NJ 
9-30 May 
White-faced Ibis 
Forsyth N.W.R.,NJ 
15-19 May 
White-faced Ibis 
Monroe County, Ml (2) 
15 May-h 
White-faced Ibis 
Manchester, MA 
19 May 
White-faced Ibis 
near Arkansas City, AR 
21 May 
White-faced Ibis 
Washtenaw County, Ml 
21 May 
White-faced Ibis 
Tuscola County, Ml 
21-22 May 
White-faced Ibis 
American Bottoms, IL (3) 
27 May 
White-faced Ibis 
Berrien County, Ml 
28 May 
V(/hite-faced Ibis 
Chincoteague N.W.R.,VA 
30 May 
Glossy X White-faced hybrid 
Washington Fields, UT 
21 April 
Glossy X White-faced hybrid 
Red Slough 
21 April 
Glossy X White-faced hybrid 
Hackberry, NE 
24 April-l- 
Glossy X White-faced hybrid 
Bear River refuge, UT 
27 April 
Glossy X White-faced hybrid 
Parker Valley, AZ 
31 May 
Unidentified dark ibis 
Brown County, MN 
17 April 
Unidentified dark ibis 
Greene County, IN 
2 May 
Unidentified dark ibis 
Chicago, IL 
8 May 
Unidentified dark ibis 
Montgomery County, TN 
9 May 
Unidentified dark ibis 
Point Pelee, Ontario 
11 May 
378 
NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS 
