Editors 
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American BIrding Association! 
A recent conversation with our Director of 
Publications, Bryan Patrick, yielded a rather 
surprising statistic: more than a few of our 
subscribers to North American Birds are not 
currently members of the American Birding 
Association! During a recession, most of us 
trim back expenses for non-essentials, and I 
suspect that many of our readers have done 
that recently. Hopefully, for some of us, the 
tide is beginning to turn back toward greater 
prosperity, and we can begin enjoying some 
of the pleasures we have denied ourselves in 
the past several years. In looking over the lat- 
est Birding magazine, with two richly illus- 
trated articles on Krider’s, Western, and Har- 
lan’s Red-tailed Hawks and intergrades — co- 
authored by Brian Sullivan, our Photo Editor 
at North American Birds — I could not imagine 
any of our own readers missing out on these 
very important pieces, or on the many fine 
book reviews (written by Bob Paxton, veter- 
an Regional Editor, plus many long-term 
contributors of articles and sightings to this 
journal), or the Photo Quiz, or the fine up- 
dates in News and Notes and the Sightings 
column. The Sightings column carries over 
in alternate months in Winging It, so that 
each month our readers can get a “jump” on 
the rarest of the rare species reported, well in 
advance of our own publication schedule. 
So, if your own financial winter is begin- 
ning to turn to spring, give ABA a ring at 
(800) 850-2473 and renew your support for 
this fine organization— and for these fine pub- 
lications that come with your membership! If 
you don’t know already, you’ll find out that 
great things are underway at the new ABA! 
Hiw regional editors 
We are please to announce the participation 
of several new Regional Editors on our 
teams in six regions. Chris Charlesworth 
(c_charlesworth@hotmail.com), an energetic 
birder and tour guide, has taken the helm in 
the British Columbia region and has gotten us 
caught up, providing a two-season report in 
this issue and the previous issue. Thanks, 
Chris! In this volume, our Associate Editor 
Alan Wormington (wormington@juno.com) 
has taken on double duty by writing the 
Spring Migration report, filling Matthew 
Holder’s spot. Josh Southern (joshsouth- 
ern79@gmail.com) joins Ken Blankenship in 
co-editing all four seasons for the Southern 
Atlantic region, beginning vHth the Fall Mi- 
gration 2009 issue. Since the Spring Migration 
2009 report, Jeff N. Davis (jdavis@harveye- 
cology.com) has covered the Doves through 
Wrentit section for the Northern California re- 
gion, taking over for Steve Glover, who served 
in the position for over a decade. In the Iowa 
& Missouri region, Walter Wehtje, Jr. (weht- 
jew@missouri.edu) will be writing the fall re- 
port, taking Bill Eddleman’s chair. Eddie Mas- 
siah (ebmassiah@hotmail.com), who lives in 
Barbados and is a very active birder there, 
joins our West Indies & Bermuda regional 
team. Yves Aubry, who has co-edited the 
Quebec since 1984, finishes his editing duties 
with this issue. During his tenure, he and col- 
league Jean Gauthier completed the remark- 
able book The Breeding Birds of Quebec (1995); 
in recent years, Yves has conducted surveys of 
Bicknell’s Thrush and Red Knot with the 
Canadian Wildlife Service. To all outgoing ed- 
itors — Yves Aubry in Quebec, Don Cecile in 
British Columbia, Bill Eddleman in Iowa & 
Missouri, Steve Glover in California, Matthew 
Holder in Ontario — we all thank you for your 
hard work and service. Job well done. And 
welcome on board, Chris, Alan, Josh, Jeff, 
Walter, and Eddie! 
Leach's, at last 
Our lead article on the Leach’s Storm-Petrel 
complex is a gauntlet cast down. To many of 
us, who already struggle to identify these 
sprites through salt spray and sunscreen, the 
idea of distinguishing among the different 
types of Leach’s Storm-Petrels at sea may seem 
a tall order. And, as the intrepid authors con- 
fess, the field identification of these taxa is still 
in its infancy. Before actually reading the arti- 
cle, try this first: look at the photographs, and 
see whether at least some of the distinctions 
described among the various “Leach’s” — in 
proportions and plumage — are clear. In most 
cases, they do seem to be. Then peruse the 
text of the article, and you’ll surely be engaged 
by the sleuthing and the field study that have 
gone into it. The limits of current knowledge 
are candidly spelled out by the authors, who 
no doubt will devote many more hours to the 
pursuit of storm-petrels off California and 
who have given the rest of us a big advantage 
in sorting out these birds for ourselves. 
I was delighted, in early September 2009, to 
be part of the Searcher pelagic trip that studied 
Leach’s Storm-Petrels (and other birds) daily in 
the deep waters off Southern California, a trip 
guided by Todd McGrath, Terry Hunefeld, and 
Dave Povey. As a novice in the deep water here 
(in fact, 1 had never seen a Leach’s anywhere in 
the Pacific!), I was very puzzled when 1 saw 
my first Chapman’s-type storm-petrel, over the 
Nine Mile Bank northwest of San Diego. Once 
1 had seen one relatively closely, Chapman’s 
became much easier to pick out; and a bit lat- 
er, when we encountered the larger Leach’s up 
nearer Point Conception, it was like looking at 
an old friend from the Atlantic. We were also 
lucky to see small numbers of the Townsend’s 
types, several white-rumped and one nice 
dark-rumped — and you could have knocked 
me over with a storm-petrel feather! These 
Townsend’s are genuinely small birds, quite 
unlike their larger brethren in many respects. I 
was prepared to be flummoxed by the varia- 
tion in the Leach’s we saw, and I instead came 
away more enthusiastic that Steve Howell, 
Todd McGrath, Terry Hunefeld, and Jon Feen- 
stra were onto something important. 
As with the best North American Birds arti- 
•cles, this one raises scores of questions that 
beg our attention. The biggest question, when 
I read the article, seemed to be: What does the 
cheimomnestes taxon (named “Ainley’s Storm- 
Petrel” in the article) look like at sea? When 1 
reviewed specimens in the collection at the 
San Diego Natural History Museum last Sep- 
tember (thanks to Phil Unitt), I found that 
cheimomnestes did not always leap out as dis- 
tinct from other taxa, particularly from indi- 
vidual chapmani that shov/ed some white in 
the uppertail coverts, but also from some so- 
corroensis. In general, the specimens did look 
intermediate between these taxa, but there 
appeared to be some overlap. Of course, birds 
in the field are very different from specimens 
in the museum tray, and so for the intrepid 
birders .who seek out Ainley’s — perhaps on 
their winter breeding grounds around 
Guadalupe Island, Mexico — there are still 
challenges that await. One may rightly, too, 
suspect that Leach’s that nest from Alaska’s 
Southeast to California’s Channel Islands — 
currently lumped as “kucorhoa," along with 
larger North Pacific and North Atlantic 
birds — could benefit from renewed research 
that attends not just to morphometries but 
also to vocalizations and genetics. It’s hard to 
believe that a dine is involved across such 
widely separated island groups. Among our 
Associate Editors, the current paper on the 
Leach’s Storm-Petrel complex off California 
generated vigorous discussion on the advisa- 
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NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS 
