WORLDTWITCH - Finding Rare Birds Around the World

WorldTwitch is back after more than 3 years without updates. The last version of the home page (June 2008) has been archived here. Corrections and additions will be forthcoming in due course.

January 2012 News

Steve N.G. Howell. Petrels, Albatrosses & Storm-Petrels of North America - A Photographic Guide. Princeton University Press 2012. xxiii + 483 pages, 975 photos and figures, 66 maps. US | Kindle | UK | FR | DE | CA | JP

This is the finest identification guide to pelagic birds published to date. For the first time, everything you need to prepare for tubenose ID on both east and west coast pelagic trips is accessible in one volume. It's also an authoritative and well-written text on tubenose biology. The book is extremely well-organized to help the user zero in on critical marks. Thus, for example, the section on Pacific gadfly petrels is introduced by five pages of photos and accompanying text showing and comparing the 10 species most likely to be encountered. Following are subsections on each species with comparative photos, including species not yet recorded but which may occur. For Cook's Petrel, there five pages of photos, with comparative shots of De Filippi's Petrel, Black-winged Petrel, and Pycroft's Petrel. Without question, a 2012 WorldTwitch Best Bird Book award winner.

In case you missed it, the report of the Jamaica Petrel Pelagic Expedition (November-December 2009) by Hadoram Shirihai, Maria San Román, Vincent Bretagnolle and David Wege is posted on the BirdLife website (pdf).

Here's another great article for pelagic birders: First observations at sea of Vanuatu Petrel Pterodroma (cervivcalis) occulta by Hadoram Shirihai & Vincent Bretagnolle, Bull.B.O.C. 2010 130(2):132-140 (pdf).

Jon L. Dunn & Jonathan Alderdorfer. Petrels, National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Sixth Edition. November 2011. 576 pages. Greatly expanded and improved, the National Geographic guide is once again the most essential field guide to North American birds. It's now the world's second best field guide, trailing the spectacular second edition of the Collins Bird Guide (new large format version). (The identical US edition is Birds of Europe). US | UK | FR | DE | CA | JP

Until reading the illustrated addedum on accidentals, I hadn't realized that the type specimen of Worthen's Sparrow was collected at Silver City, New Mexico in 1884, from a population subsequently extirpated. In view of this bird's occurrence with Mexican Prairie Dogs at the "Tanque de emergencía" stakeout in Coahuila, Mexico, I wonder if poisoning of prairie dogs may have contributed to its disappearance from the U.S. and most of its Mexican range.

Kenn Kaufman. Field Guide to Advanced Birding. (North America). Houghton Mifflin, 2011. 448 pages. Like Kenn's earlier book, Advanced Birding, which it does NOT replace, his new "field guide" covers numerous field problems birders in North America will encounter. It's an essential book for almost everybody who watches birds here, especially visitors from abroad who lack experience with North American birds. US | UK | FR | DE | CA | JP

Scroll down on this Surfbirds page to see a fine photo of a mist-netted Gray-breasted Crake Laterallus exilis from Veracruz, Mexico taken by Manuel Grosselet. This small rail can be heard in many places throughout the Neotropical lowlands, including around oxbow lakes in Amazonia. It readily approaches in response to playback but usually is impossible to see in its dense marsh habitat.

Coming Soon - New Editions:

Allen Jeyarajasingam & Alan Pearson. A Field Guide to the Birds of Peninsular Malaysia & Singapore. Oxford University Press. Second edition, May 2012. Details. 641 pages, 74 color plates. US | UK | FR | DE | CA | JP

Richard Grimmett, Carol Inskipp & Tim Inskipp. Birds of the Indian Subcontinent. Christopher Helm & Princeton University Press. Second edition, January 2012. Details. 528 pages, 226 color plates. US | UK | FR | DE | CA | JP