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Letter from the Editor

As many of you know (unless our e-mails went straight into your spam filter), there has been a great deal of spirited discussion about the future of this and sister ornithological societies in this rapidly changing world. After hours and hours of committee work, teleconferences, web chats, tweets, and facebook exchanges (both likes and dislikes) the editorial board has come up with the following resolutions and opinions with respect to the future of The Auklet:

1) The proposal to change the name The Auklet to boost readership has been tabled for the moment. The primary issue is that no one really liked catchy and effective names like “The Baby Ibis” or “The Journal of Really Important Ornithological Research.” A final alternative (AAAAAA The Ibis) also was considered and rejected. “The Murrelet” is not available. So, we are in other words, stuck with The Auklet … although… “The Baird’s Sparrow” has a nice ring to it.

1) The journal will from this day forward cease publishing anything that is either applied or contains too much statistical analysis (unless it can unequivocally be demonstrated that there is a serious flaw in what was done, e.g., see below).

2) New species descriptions will be accepted, but we will no longer consider superspecies, or race descriptions no matter how good your analysis is.

3) New geographic records will be accepted; pending acceptance in e-bird and e-bird accession numbers must accompany submission.

4) Genomic data for any manuscript must be submitted in its entirety and the authors will be responsible for page charges.

5) We have discussed electronic submissions, but since it may be possible to actually trace back submissions on-line to those who wrote them, we feel this is an unwarranted step into the modern age for our August journal.

We respectfully share these decisions with all of you. Should you wish to make a comment do so, and hopefully it will filter back to us in a way that we will decide whether or not it has merit. Please keep those submissions coming, because if you do not, who will? Sincerely, The Auklet Baird’s Sparrow editors

Invited Essay Why no one painted birds in Lascaux Caves Gerrard Le Oisillon. Bordeaux Institute for Gastronomic Genomics

A previously overlooked aspect of the wonderful Lascaux Caves is that there are no birds. How could this be? These drawings are Paleolithic in age and thus are some 17000 years old, but we all know humans love birds. The Egyptians mummified millions of birds and yet they are the ones who made Sacred Ibis sacred; the Mayans? Quetzals; Aztecs? The eagle eating the snake; North American Indians, Sandhill Cranes and so on. So what gives with these guys in Lascaux and why has no one picked up on this before? I do not really know, but below I put forward several testable hypotheses. 1) These folks were just early mammalogists. OK, this is hard to

refute, but they did not paint any rabbits, rats, bats, or shrews in these caves, so if they were mammalogists, they were not that good.

2) Birds are harder to paint. Again this hypothesis holds some

water, although almost any kid can make “vees” in the back of his fingerpainting painting. True, the available color palate would have made it hard to paint a Eurasian Kingfisher, but not a Eurasian Reed Warbler or Rook.

3) There were no birds in the Lascaux region at this time. Crazy

you say? Everyone loves birds and yet these folks failed to paint anything ornithological in these caves. Maybe they were not smart enough to catch birds and had eyesight that was so bad they could not make them out. It seems to me this is a plausible hypothesis if you take these cave walls to represent a sort of primitive vertebrate E-bird. Now I know some people would disagree and say this is “art.” Once again, how much bird art is there today compared to mammal art? Artists like to paint birds better than mammals so this supports my argument well.

In summary, I conclude that it is quite likely that birds were rare or absent from this region 17,000 years ago. As humans record everything around them, I doubt they wouldn’t have skipped over our feathered friends. Possible reasons remain elusive, but I’m sure someone can develop a model that will fit this hypothesis.

Research Insipid speciation in the House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) H. Bumpus Jr. Indiana Cooperative Genomics Institute.

We studied populations of House Sparrows in parking garages in Detroit, Milwaukee, and Chicago. By analyzing parking garage surveillance video we were able to observe a variety of behaviors and develop time budgets. These time budgets support our argument that insipid speciation is indeed going on in what we think will be a model system in the future.

Evidence for behavior shifts leading to speciation, are often difficult to come by outside of the Galapagos Islands. We report House Sparrows are basically everywhere, but their recent arrival deep inside parking garages across North America has presented the opportunity for novel behaviors to develop. Methods:

We surveyed 457 parking garages between 4 April 2011 and 16 September 2012. We analyzed 16,343 hours of surveillance video obtained from garage managers, and we were able to observe a variety of behaviors and develop time budgets, although in some cases images were so blurry that we couldn’t decide if the birds were really House Sparrows or Sphinx moths attracted to the garage lights. Results and Discussion: We observed a variety of forging maneuvers by House Sparrows. Most common was the “trash can dive”, followed by the “Cheeto shuffle,” the “concrete hop-and-glean,” the “peck-at-the-fire-suppression-spray-head,” and finally the “grill glean.” Females seemed to prefer the grill glean, especially in the summer months and on reduced parking fee days. Males preferred the Cheeto shuffle, and using bomb calorimetry we determined that one mid-sized Flamin’ Hot Cheeto had about as many calories as several grain of millet (and a lot more carotenoids, unpubl. Data).

50% of foraging bouts involved trash cans or bags of fast food left on garage floors. 24% of the foraging bouts involved Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. 5% of foraging maneuvers involved pecking at front car grills. Cigarette butts made up 4% of observed foraging bouts. For example, this is dramatically distinct from that reported by Homeless (1993) who studied House Sparrows in Grant Park, Chicago. In his study, 53% of observations in involved trash cans and cigarette butts made up 7% of the foraging bouts. Homeless’ study predates the appearance of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos so this is a new dietary item for these birds. We are working on the House Sparrow genome to identify the mutations that allow this to be such a prevalent part of the diet of these birds.

Opportunities for future research are substantial and we strongly

feel this represents a model system for speciation in the future. Let’s face it, the days of flying between islands are over and parking garages are everywhere. As long as no one figures out how to charge the birds $22 a day to park, these habitats offer unlimited space that is largely free of competition and predation pressures encountered in the outside world. We predict morphological changes could reduce plumage dimorphism under low light conditions and possible behavioral evolution where by loud chirping gets replaced by some other repetitive but more mechanical type of call. Finally, the addition to the diet of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos needs to be assessed in greater detail perhaps with cage experiments (I.A.C.U.C. committee approval is pending at this time). Acknowledgments:

We thank the many parking attendants who accepted the story that were studying speciation in House Sparrows and there let us into the garage for free. This work was supported by NSF-DEB 2242445 to Dr. Lee, which covered the $18-24 dollar a day rates we had to pay at other garages. We also thank the Detroit Police Department for not prosecuting us for running through a payment barrier outside the Joe Louis Arena garage. Citations: Homeless, B. 1993. Sweet dreams in the park, except for those pesky sparrows. The Starling 37:259-265. The Hoatzin is a bird: A genomic perspective A. Opistho. Suriname Institute of Genetics, Paramaribo Abstract, Results, and Discussion: We have gathered 3,500,000 base pairs of DNA sequence for Hoatzin and compared this genome to those of representative species of the sixteen other families that Hoatzin has been associated with previously (see supplemental data pp. 2-22). We have determined after exhaustive analytical analyses using Department of Defense super-computers that the Hoatzin is indeed a bird, anyone saying otherwise is full of it. The complete data set for this project is available at http://datadatadata.su.gov (but be warned, the file is about 12 gigabytes). Now that we know the Hoatzin is truly a bird we intend to study its basic biology a little bit.

Announcing D-bird: the database for avian data of defecation and pellet production. Y. Roadkill, D. Ceased, E. M. Balmed. Texas Institute for Non-evolutionary Genomics Abstract: Building on the successful establishment of e-bird as a tool for ornithology, we have developed D-bird, which is an on-line database where the public may record defecation and spitting up of birds (a.k.a. regurgitation) on their own and add then to a growing database of such events. Results and Discussion: Obviously this project has major implications for improving our understanding of many biological aspects related to defecation and pellet production (D&PP). Such as; how the heck all these exotic plants are getting around? Or what is that on my windshield? In addition we may be able to track insect outbreaks and truly verify whether all this information about whether or not birds matter really holds any water. We are in the process of trying figure out how to make this something users will view as competitive with the opportunity to have yard lists, year lists, county lists etc.... By taking a photo of the excrement, participants to D-bird will be able to upload photos to professionals at the Texas Institute for Non-Evolutionary Genomics (TINEG) who may be able to tell them “yup, looks like bugs.” Future efforts will involve development of on-line identification tools and web keys along with a pilot project for bar coding samples shipped to TINEG. Where by we hope to use genomic tools to provide researchers both the host involved in D&PP and the species of plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi in the sample. Priority will be given to samples believed to come from particularly rare and endangered producers. At the present time we suspect getting this to seeds versus other materials may be all we can hope for, but hey, is this is better than most of those human ancestry for-profits can do. Initial results of the Stephen Island Wren genome project N. Christchurch, A. Gonner, B. Catlover. Stephen Island Lighthouse and Institute of Applied Genomic Research. We present results of the Stephen Island Wren genome project whereby the entire genome has now been sequenced (1.5 million Bp). Once decessimated by feral cats, we anticipate being able to bring the species back to life in the next four years. Initial discussions with a certain large pet food corporation regarding the possibility of marketing a portion of these newly constituted birds as cat toys seem promising.

Profits from this collaboration will provide funding to complete the Stephen Island Wren project as well as embark on our next project, to determine the genome of the dusky seaside sparrow (which we anticipate to have about 7-15 substitutional differences from living seaside sparrows across the 1.5 million base pairs of their respective genomes). If our “all natural” cat toy business succeeds, we also plan to embark on projects geared toward altering destructive bird behaviors that threaten individual survival. For instance, we propose to find the gene that makes male Red-winged Blackbirds dive-bomb people near the nest site so that we can figure out how to turn it off. Then we intend to look for the gene that makes American Robins sing at 3:00 AM so we can turn off that behavior as well. Finally, we have a proposal submitted to try to make Kirtland’s Warblers less site faithful in the breeding season so that birders across the country no longer have to trek all the way to Central Michigan to see them.

Can birds be taught manners?

On the Need for Standardization of Common Names II. Dealing with the Passerines N. R. Problem. Rhode Island Institute for Genomics and Climate Change

After such successful recommendations as changing Inca Dove to Aztec Dove, the newly established Committee on Common Names has ruled on a number of important issues in the Passerines, a.k.a. perching birds. Our particular goal was to better tie common names to true breeding regions, habitats, and appearances. Because some “non-perching” birds also perch, we recommend that Passeriformes be recognized in general terms as “Those small jobs that are bigger than most hummingbirds, but smaller than a toucan.” Non-passerines will simply be recognized as “Everything else that is a bird.”

I. Cerulean Warbler becomes Tennessee Warbler II. Tennessee Warbler becomes Greenish Warbler III. Greenish Warbler becomes whatever other name the

Europeans wish to choose. IV. Prairie Warbler becomes Palm Warbler V. Palm Warbler becomes Yellow Wagtail VI. Yellow Wagtail becomes whatever name the

Europeans wish to choose. VII. Connecticut Warbler becomes Southern Canada

Warbler VIII. Cape May Warbler becomes Central Canada Warbler IX. Blackpoll Warbler become Northern Canada-and-

Alaska Warbler X. Canada Warbler becomes Mostly-Canada Warbler XI. Magnolia Warbler becomes Yet-another-Southern

Canada Warbler XII. Cliff Swallow becomes Cliff-and-Bridge Swallow XIII. Tree Swallow becomes Bluebird Nest-box Swallow XIV. Purple Martin becomes House Martin XV. House Martin becomes whatever name the Europeans

wish to choose. XVI. Based on recently published research, House Sparrow

split into House Sparrow and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos Sparrow (Passer cheetoi)

During organization of collection for this meeting and clearing work spaces for researchers, a file folder was discovered behind cases labeled "Auklet Editor". The following transmittal letter and 2 brief manuscripts were included. The current editor was surprised that the accompanying cashiers check was still accepted by the bank.

From the Auklet Archives: 14 Dece mber 1996 Dr. Peter Lowther AOU Progra m Coordinator The Field Museu m Roosevelt Road at Lake Shore Dri ve Chicago, IL 60605-2496 U.S.A. Dear Dr. Lowther: We earnestly entreat your benign consideration of the enclosed manuscript, which expands our ornithological knowledge, viz. Spizella breweri breweri . We feel these observations are worthy for publication in "The Auklet", the A merican Ornithologists' Union annual re view of ornithological research. Thank you very much for your fa vorable assistance in co mmunication of these works to appropriate editorial officers of the A merican Ornithologists' Union. The appropriate trans mittal fee that you requested is enclosed. Very truly yours,

j|Ä ^xxÄxÜj|Ä ^xxÄxÜj|Ä ^xxÄxÜj|Ä ^xxÄxÜ W. Keeler Jr Wilbur F. Keeler Wilbur F. Keeler, Jr. 12½ Senate Street Jumbo, Ohio 45807

Brewer's Sparrows in Ohio. -- For more than 20 years, the writer has made numerous observations of a Brewer's Sparrow (Spizella breweri breweri Cassin 1856) that has nested yearly at the author's residence, "Bird Acres," at 12½ Senate Street, Jumbo, Ohio. Previously in this journal (Keeler 1975), the writer reported observations made during 1974 on the nesting of this Brewer's Sparrow which was accompanied and assisted by an adult House Sparrow (Passer domesticus domesticus Linnaeus 1758). Remarkably, this Brewer's Sparrow has returned yearly to nest. Most frequently the bird selected its traditional nest site, the space between the air conditioner and the window sill of the upstairs bedroom window at the author's home. Very little is known about nest site selection by birds. Incredibly enough, the House Sparrow has continued to accompany and assist the Brewer's Sparrow. With a distinctive black bib to identify it as a House Sparrow, the companion of the Brewer's Sparrow was evidently a male. Seasonally, this House Sparrow often behaved in an odd manner towards the Brewer's Sparrow, chirping loudly and dragging its wings in an odd manner. At other times its wings appeared to be perfectly normal. The House Sparrow was never seen to build a nest for itself. Very little is known about avian diseases. These two birds remained together for over 22 years, a remarkable observation of both longevity and companionship. The author occasionally saw other Brewer's Sparrows in Jumbo, Hardin County, Ohio, but the bird which bred at the author's residence was never seen with a mate. Perhaps the Brewer's Sparrow's unusual nest site affected the bird's ability to obtain a mate. It's perseverance in attempting to nest without a mate was, perhaps, the fact that encouraged the House Sparrow to continue its assistance from year to year for such a long time. Very little is known about helping by normally non-helping species. The AOU Checklist of North American Birds (1983, p. 701) does not include Ohio in the range of the Brewer's Sparrow (Spizella breweri breweri Cassin 1856). However, the writer has frequently seen this species in the vicinity of Jumbo, Hardin County, Ohio, often in the company of House Sparrows (Passer domesticus domesticus Linnaeus 1758), and a few other Ohio localities, including, of recent note, Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio, on 16 August 1995. The writer has seen Brewer's Sparrows also in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, in 1989; in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, on 12 October 1982; and in Ames, Story County, Iowa, on 26 June 1992. Apparently Brewer's Sparrows maintain a sporadic and rare distribution throughout the east, possibly aided by interspecific helping behavior of House Sparrows. Very little is known about causes of avian distribution and its affects on interspecific companionship and helping. The writer would like to thank the author's wife, Mrs. Wilbur F. Keeler, currently of Tampa, Florida, for urging long-term continuation of

these Brewer's Sparrow observations. The author also greatly appreciates the encouragement from editor of this journal to expand these observations, after the writer's distributional notes, first sent to the Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas Project, were kindly returned by the OBBAP Coordinator as undeliverable. -- WILBUR F. KEELER, 12½ Senate Street, Jumbo, Ohio 45807. Accepted 19 Sep. 95. First confirmed breeding record of Brewer's Sparrow for Ohio. -- For more than 20 years, the writer's father, Mr. Wilbur F. Keeler, Sr., has made numerous observations of a Brewer's Sparrow (Spizella breweri breweri Cassin 1856) that has nested yearly at the author's boyhood residence, "Bird Acres," at 12½ Senate Street, Jumbo, Ohio. During these many years, neither the writer's father nor the writer made the critical observation to document nesting, namely the occurrence of eggs and/or young. The usual nest site, behind an air conditioner in an upstairs window, was difficult to access. In addition, the fact that the Brewer's Sparrow had no mate, cast doubt on actual breeding even though a nest was built, often with the aid of a House Sparrow (Passer domesticus domesticus Linnaeus 1758). On 27 May 1995, the writer heard apparent "begging" calls from the vicinity of the upstairs air conditioner. With the aid of a 20 ft extension ladder, the writer set out to investigate the source. When the ladder was set against the house, the Brewer's Sparrow was seen to leave the nest. When the writer reached the nest, one bird flew off weakly, but another was captured in the nest. This young was identified as a Brewer's Sparrow as clearly indicated by is plain underparts and stripes on its back. The adult Brewer's Sparrow must have been a female because of the presence of Brewer's Sparrow young in the nest. Since she was never seen with a mate, her successful nesting points to sperm storage as means for ensuring fertile eggs. Apparently this Brewer's Sparrow mates on the wintering grounds before returning to Jumbo, Ohio, to nest. Very little is known of sperm storage in birds. Apparently, the Brewer's Sparrow's mate does not migrate. Such a mating system, for which a female migrates to the breeding range to nest, with a helper of another species, while the male remains behind, the writer proposes to call migrationalpseudomonogyny. The writer would like to thank the author's father, Mr. Wilbur F. Keeler, for encouragement in undertaking this study. -- WILBUR F. KEELER, Jr., 12½ Senate Street, Jumbo, Ohio 45807. Accepted 19 Sep. 95. Ed. Note: It is obvious that the name of Brewer's Sparrow must now be changed to Temperance Sparrow and as such, should be included on the proposed list for Standardization of Common Names II.

[NOTE, in 1920s, effects of Prohibition were very much on the minds of contributors] The Tail of a Bird's Eye (tune -- Casey Jones) Come all you ornery ornitho-ologists And to this tale of optic research list And learn all about every how and why And the inner workings of a cuckoo's eye Chorus: Casey Wood -- grab 'em by the pecten, Casey Wood -- shoot' em in the eye Case Wood -- lamp the little rascal All for Ornithopthalmoscopal-o-gy Did you ever meet a pecten in its native lair Or see a fundus infulabimacular? Or a fovea nasalis where it loves to dwell Between the dendrites of bi-polar cell? Casey Wood -- he'll tell you all about it Casey Wood -- he's the guy that's got the dope Casey Wood -- how did we go without it Till Casey came along with his ophthalmoscope? [reference to Wood, C. A. 1917. The fundus oculi of birds. Lakeside Press, Chicago, IL. Why is the Wood Ibis excluded from the Heron family? Since it is bald, it cannot be classified with Hair-on. The 2013 Auklet was brought to you by “ZoomEEEZ”, the preferred binoculars of aspiring ornithologists. (As Seen on TV)