HBW Alive Newsletter

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Nº14, August 2015

Bird Sightings versus Checks

My Birding is a safe, easy to use system for recording your bird sightings. You can organize it by creating Birdlists and grouping them into Trips, with the possibility of adding comments to each sighting. In recent months a lot of improvements have been made to My Birding; users can now specify the subspecies of each sighting and choose how First Sightings are calculated, new territories have been exposed to filters… and these are just a few of the new features. Now you can import your sightings to My Birding from BirdBase, and soon this will be possible with other bird recording systems. With My Birding all bird sightings are related to a place, and so to a country, and soon it will be possible to produce maps of your sightings, see statistics of the countries you have visited and much more. Only Supporting members have access to My Birding.

You can also check the species you have seen. This can be done from several places; from each species page (the check button is just below the species name), from each family page (click on the species table to see all the species of the family and check the species you want) or from each country page (on the species list the check is near each species name). Checking one species just means that you have seen that species, but you cannot specify when and where you saw it, the number of birds or the subspecies. Both Basic and Supporting members can check species.

My Birding is improving very fast and the advantages of this bird recording system are multiplying as each week goes by, so we want to remind all Basic members how easy it is to upgrade a subscription from Basic Member to Supporting Member from your account page at any time. We encourage you to do so, as we are sure that you will enjoy having My Birding as your bird sighting recording system!

Arnau Bonan
Editor, HBW Alive

News on Birds

Ornithological News

An experimental study of food location by the Oriental Honey-buzzard (Pernis ptilorhynchus) in captivity has found that the birds can choose between food sources using olfaction alone. The olfactory receptor gene repertoire size in this honey-buzzard’s genome has been found to be almost five times as large as that of three other raptor species, suggesting that olfaction is of far greater ecological importance to this species than to some other raptors.

Other highlighted news:

A new study suggests that the currently endangered Hawaiian Duck (Anas wyvilliana) is descended from a hybridization event between the Mallard (A. platyrhynchos) and Laysan Duck (A. laysanensis) that occurred around the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary.
A recent study of the polymorphic Chestnut-bellied Monarch (Monarcha castaneiventris) in the Solomon Islands has found that all-black birds, which are indeed more aggressive in territory defence, are more frequent on small islands than chestnut-bellied individuals.

First Country Reports

White-eyed Buzzard (Butastur teesa), one photographed on 30th August 2012 at Bantimurung Balusaraung National Park, South Sulawesi, is the first record for Indonesia as well as for the Greater Sundas and Wallacea, and the whole Southern Hemisphere.
Report photo by Pak Kama Jaya Saghir.

Other interesting First Country Reports include Black-faced Spoonbill (Platalea minor) in Peleliu Island, Palau, Blue-capped Rock-thrush (Monticola cinclorhynchus) in Bangladesh, Streak-throated Swallow (Petrochelidon fluvicola) in China, and Senegal Thick-knee (Burhinus senegalensis) in Israel.

Read more News on Birds | First Country Reports

IBC's Video of the Month

Harpy Eagle

(Harpia harpyja)

A Harpy Eagle (Harpia harpyja) feeding on the ground.
Recorded in Parauapebas, Pará State, Brazil.
© Priscila Fernandez

Watch last month's top-rated videos

IBC's Photo of the Month

Short-tailed Frogmouth

(Batrachostomus poliolophus)

An adult Short-tailed Frogmouth (Batrachostomus poliolophus) with its chick.
Taken in Sumatra (Indonesia), on 1 July 2015.
© James Eaton

See last month's top-rated photos

IBC's Sound Recording of the Month

Scaly-breasted Wren-Babbler

(Pnoepyga albiventer)

A Scaly-breasted Wren-Babbler (Pnoepyga albiventer) singing.
Recorded in Mount Victoria (Nat Ma Taung), Chin State, Myanmar, on 17 November 2013.
© Niels Poul Dreyer

News on HBW Alive

New Species from the Checklist Updated

Over the last month we finished the updating process for all of the “new species” (resulting from splits) from the families Charadriidae (Plovers), Turnicidae (Buttonquails) and Alcidae (Auks).
This August we will continue this process on Scolopacidae (Sandpipers, Snipes, Phalaropes) and Laridae (Gulls, Terns, Skimmers).

View the list of the most recently updated new species from the Checklist.

Species with Multimedia Links

Currently more than 275 of the “new species” (resulting from splits) have multimedia links incorporated in their species accounts. See what we mean, for example, in the accounts of Chatham Pigeon (Hemiphaga chathamensis), Snares Snipe (Coenocorypha huegeli), Eastern Piping Hornbill (Bycanistes sharpii) or White-throated Kingfisher (Halcyon gularis).

We have added links to the accounts of the 24 Vanellus species. Explore them!

Here are some highlights of species with recently incorporated links: Purple-bearded Bee-eater (Meropogon forsteni), Long-tailed Manakin (Chiroxiphia linearis), Rufous-gorgeted Flycatcher (Ficedula strophiata), Lowland Peltops (Peltops blainvillii) and Cape Siskin (Pseudochloroptila totta).

See more updated species

HBW Alive Features

Family accounts

The HBW series is the first work ever to illustrate and deal in detail with all living species of birds. For each family there is a text organized in different sections that cover the main biological aspects of birds; Systematics, Morphological Aspects, Habitat, General Habits, Voice, Food and Feeding, Breeding, Movements, Relationship with Man, and Status and Conservation.

All this information is available in HBW Alive! In the Header Menu click on Families.

You are taken to a page showing the Advanced Search box and some random families to explore. In the Advanced Search box you can select one or more Orders, and all the families included in them will be shown.

You can also search for a particular family, typing its English or Scientific name, and even filter the families by minimum or maximum size…

When you select one particular family, you will be taken to the family account, with access to all its sections, as if you were reading the HBW family account!

Just click on the section that you are interested in to display the text below.
This way it is very easy to find reliable information about biological aspects of the particular family you wish to explore.

Selecting Species table will display a list of all the species of the family, and clicking on a common name will take you to the species account of that particular species.

In the Families plates of the Header Menu you can make your own plate by selecting the families you want. Explore them…

Around 17.000 multimedia links have been added to complement the Family texts; so just explore and enjoy your favourite families!

Get the Most Out of My Birding

One of the most interesting functionalities of My Birding is the possibility of grouping your Birdlists in Trips. For each trip, you will get the following: number of species seen, number of First Sightings, number of sightings and much more!

What’s new?

By clicking on the First Sightings link you will be taken to the Sightings Display page, where all the First Sightings of that trip are shown.

At the bottom of the trip totals box, there are two new options to display the data of your trip sightings. You can now clicking on “View sightings list of this trip” and “See the species list of this trip”.

Finally, there's a new block under the statistics box that shows the number of your sightings with species out of range.

There are two cases for which you can have a sighting with a species out of range:

If you imported your data from BirdBase and some of your sightings have a species for which we do not have distribution in the territory to the corresponding Birdlist.

If you manually added a species that is not included on the distribution list of a given Birdlist.

In case you have some species out of range, the number will appear in the block of statistics with a link to automatically scroll down to the detailed list. Each element of this list can be clicked to be edited.

New Publications

Field Guide to the Birds of Machu Picchu
and the Cusco Region, Peru
Includes a Bird Finding Guide to the Area
By Barry Walker

This updated and completely rewritten version of Barry Walker’s field guide is light and pocket-sized, but fully covers the habitat, behaviour, localizations and occurrence of the region’s almost 500 species, even including a detailed guide to the best birding sites and an annotated checklist.

26.00€ .BUY NOW

Aves da Cristalino Lodge: An Amazon Sanctuary
By Bradley Davies, Illustrated by Edson Endrigo

This book offers the public excellent bird photographs by renowned photographer Edson Endrigo, and other photographers and resident guides who contributed to this publication. The text is by Bradley Davies, connoisseur of the birds of this region, who for over 10 years has been engrossed in the woods and trails of Cristalino Lodge, a pioneering project embedded in the midst of the Amazon rainforest with the theme of sustainable tourism.

85.00€ .BUY NOW

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