THE CHANGING SEASONS: THINK PINK 
Figure 9. Historically unknown as a breeding species in New Mexico, Cedar Waxwings 
have, since 199S, been found nesting in five northern counties. This season brought addi- 
tional breeding events, including this female brooding young at Simon Point below Nava- 
jo Dam, San Juan County on 17 June 2009. Photograph by Tim Reeves. 
Figure 1 6. This Alder Flycatcher was found by the photographer near Saylorville Reservoir 
in Dallas County, Iowa on 29 June 2009 (here 8 July). On 16 July, an adult Alder Flycatcher 
and a recently fledged young bird were found near a nest. This represents the first nesting 
record for the species in iowa. The nearest nesting known populations are in northern 
Minnesota and Wisconsin. Photograph by Stephen J. Dimmore. 
gon, and Washington.) But most records of va- 
grants, and even wanderers inland, from Texas 
to Louisiana and up the Mississippi River, do 
not come together into especially neat pat- 
terns, and most records north of about 36° N 
are singular, many of them also rather old. In 
the early 1990s, I remember predicting, in the 
Cayuga Bird Club Newsletter, that Roseate 
Spoonbill would turn up in New York’s Cayu- 
ga Lake Basin; well, a pink blob has yet to ma- 
terialize at Montezuma National Wildlife 
Refuge, but it seems a far less far-fetched 
proposition now almost 20 years later. After 
all, back in 1990, an ibis of any sort was a great 
rarity in the Finger Lakes region! How times 
change — ibises of various stripes are annual 
visitors around the southern Great Lakes, and 
Canada now has a spoonbill record (from lon- 
gitude 76.4° W; Ithaca, New York is at longi- 
tude 76.5°). Next stop Greenland? 
The rapid northward expansion of the Pk- 
gadis ibises, including the establishment of 
many new nesting locations, is certainly aided 
by their adaptability: they forage readily in 
many sorts of wetlands, including muddy agri- 
cultural fields. Their expansions began humbly, 
as a scattering of birds in spring or in post- 
breeding dispersal, but have then surged sud- 
denly, becoming virtual invasions, first to the 
north, then westward in the Gulf into Texas, 
then again strongly northward and westward 
(Patten and Lasley 2000). White Ibis have be- 
gun popping up more frequently inland and 
farther north, though much more recently. 
White Ibis too seem flexible in their foraging: 
in many parts of their range, at least where they 
are not hunted for food, they can be tame back- 
yard birds, allowing close approach as they 
probe wet suburban lawns and farm fields for 
earthworms. The more specialized foraging 
habits (and food requirements) of Roseate 
Spoonbill, however, would seem to limit its 
ability to establish an inland presence like that 
of the Plegadis ibises. In our frontispiece, the 
young spoonbill that gave Virginia its first doc- 
umented record was rather approachable as it 
fed on tadpoles in a farm field puddle. So per- 
haps assumptions about spoonbills’ limited 
adaptability are not entirely accurate, and their 
flights may some day produce nestings away 
from the coastal plain of the Southeast. If va- 
grant Brown Pelicans seem oddly comfortable 
in interior settings in recent years, why not the 
occasional spoonbill or two? 
Subtly shifting ranges 
The phenomenon of species expanding north- 
ward has been well publicized, and there is 
also much attention in recent years to species 
withdrawing northward (or 
upslope) as the climate 
warms. But other bird 
species, often those associat- 
ed with riparian corridors, 
have been spreading south- 
ward in recent years, and 
these are not as often consid- 
ered. This season, both 
Cedar Waxwing (Figure 9) 
and American Goldfinch 
continued to make conspic- 
uous inroads as nesters in 
New Mexico; Rhode Island 
confirmed its first breeding 
Pine Siskins; Horned Larks 
sang in the Florida Panhan- 
dle; Gray Catbirds apparent- 
ly nested in extreme south- 
western Louisiana; and the 
discovery of an isolated pop- 
ulation of Black-throated 
Green Warblers in western 
Georgia extends that species’ 
breeding range a bit farther 
south. A few nonpasserines, 
too, seem to be pioneering 
new sites to the south of core 
range, among them Ruddy 
Duck — documented nesting 
in South Carolina and possi- 
bly Mississippi and lingering 
in Florida, Pennsylvania, 
Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, 
Tennessee, Arkansas, Okla- 
homa — and Common Mer- 
ganser, which has shown 
southward gains from New 
York through Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Mary- 
land, Virginia, and now West Virginia and 
probably South Dakota. A nesting of Northern 
Pintail on the Virginia coast was also very un- 
usual. Perhaps because such birds are not as 
conspicuous as a pelican, whistling-duck, 
spoonbill, flamingo, or jabiru when noted out 
of range, or perhaps because they are familiar 
visitors at other times of year in these loca- 
tions, they get much less billing in local publi- 
cations and on listserves. 
Empidonax flycatchers make a good case in 
point. Although hardly a “think pink” tropi- 
cal-drink sort of genus, their various range 
shifts in recent years have been of real interest. 
Because Alder Flycatcher is a notoriously late 
spring migrant (with reports this season of 
mostly northbound birds from New Mexico, 
Montana, Kentucky, British Columbia), it can 
be difficult to tell a prospector from a migrant; 
a singing bird in Putnam County, Indiana 24 
June was judged a migrant, though it fell be- 
tween usual spring and fall migration periods 
for this latitude. And because Alder nests 
across a lightly populated swath of the conti- 
nent, we rarely read about the species’ status 
in the core of its range, though it is said to be 
“doing well” in the Atlantic Provinces, during 
the current Maritimes Breeding Bird Atlas 
project, with strong counts from routes in 
Labrador. But this species has shown signs of 
nesting south of range edge in recent years. In 
addition to territorial individuals in three 
Ohio counties this season, a well-documented 
nesting in Iowa (Figure 10) was over 500 kilo- 
meters south of typical range edge in the west- 
ern Great Lakes states, and one singing in Av- 
ery County, North Carolina 11 June was in a 
new location for nesting, though nesting was 
not confirmed there. Willow Flycatcher, 
which has shown comparatively modest range 
changes in recent years, was found singing in 
VOLUME 63 (2009) • NUMBER 4 
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