Version 1.7 of the IOC’s World Bird List is now available on line. This list includes the recommended English names of 10,354 bird species from around the world; also available for download at the same website is a very useful concordance of the IOC names with those used in the latest edition of Clements–terrifically helpful for world birders.

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, not the state bird of Texas–though it should be! Photo: Beth Russell.

September’s Hurricane Ike reshaped some of the best-known birding sites in Texas and Louisiana. We’re happy to report that Jon Dunn’s tour of the Upper Texas Coast will run in 2009 as scheduled, and that we’re hoping to have a revamped Texas Migration Week return in 2010. Meanwhile, Gavin Bieber’s Whooping Cranes will take place in January, and his Rio Grande Valley tour has been rescheduled to mesh with the April 2009 ABA Convention in Corpus Christi.

Ornithomedia reports the discovery of a “significant” colony of Ivory Gulls in Siberia’s Kara Sea. The birds were found on the Geiberg Islands, in the Vilkitski Strait between Severnaya Zemlya and the Taimyr Peninsula. There’s no word yet on how large this new colony is, but with a rapidly declining population estimated at only about 11,000 pairs, this charismatic species needs every bit of help it can get.

This adult Ivory Gull was a highlight of our 2007 tour to Newfoundland; we’ve also encountered the species at Gambell.  Photo: Bruce Mactavish.

After the latest flurry of birds at Gambell, Paul Lehman finds time to write:

The past several days at Gambell have been slow for landbirds. After the departure of the Siberian Accentor (a nice photo here), all we’ve had for notable passerines have been Red-throated Pipit and single “Sooty” Fox and Savannah Sparrows wandering across from the Alaskan mainland.

A tan Gyrfalcon has set up shop around town, and at one point we watched it harassing one of the Snowy Owls. A Gray-tailed Tattler appeared briefly, the first bird of this fall, and there have been a few more Sharp-tailed Sandpipers, too.

At the seawatch we’ve had a couple more Kittlitz’s Murrelets and Spectacled Eiders, along with small numbers each day of Yellow-billed Loon, Red-necked Grebe, Slaty-backed Gull, and Ancient Murrelets; but the really big news– big, as in tonnage–was the peak count a couple days ago of 700,000 Short-tailed Shearwaters, a continuous dense mass of birds that passed for many hours.

Other news comes in the form of construction now beginning on two 100- to 110-foot-tall wind turbines here in town. They will be located out in the gravel field north of the snowfences and school. The primary construction will take place next spring. This will certainly change the Gambell “skyline” in a big way, and it will remain to be seen what impact these turbines have on birds and bird movements around the village. The eastern tower will not be all that far from the circular boneyard.

We here in the WINGS office are still waiting for definitive word about some of our friends on the Texas coast. Once we know that everyone is all right, we’ll be able to start work on adjusting the itineraries for some of our tours whose routes and destinations have been affected by the storm.

At the moment, nothing that we know makes significant changes or cancellations necessary, but we’ll keep you up to date as we learn more about the damage inflicted on places like High Island and the Bolivar Peninsula.

With something close to 75 endemics and a bird list longer than that of any other country on earth, Colombia has long been every birder’s dream destination. For years, though, it was essentially off limits to most foreign travelers; that’s changed, and now, with careful planning and good local contacts, Colombia is once again “open” for birding.

Recurve-billed Bushbird, courtesy ProAves

Barry Walker has created a new WINGS tour that specifically targets the rarities and endemic specialties of the Colombian Andes. Scheduled for August 2009, this will be a rugged, even challenging tour to see places and birds that so many of us had, until recently, almost given up on ever experiencing. Barry’s deep-rooted familiarity with Colombia and its birds combine with the skill of our driver and the presence throughout the tour of a local Colombian travel coordinator to ensure that our time in the country is smooth and utterly bird-filled.

We’ll be staying at some of the reserves owned and patrolled by ProAves, a Colombian conservation NGO devoted to the preservation of Colombia’s endemic birds and their habitats. The accommodations at Mirador are very basic, but the other preserves we’ll be staying at feature comfortable lodging with private bathrooms. And all of them are satisfyingly birdy, often with specialties visible without even leaving the balconies!

The main tour is followed by an extension concentrating on two of Colombia’s finest endemics, the critically endangered Yellow-eared Parrot and the recently discovered Chestnut-capped Piha. Together, the tour and its extension run for some 21 days, just time enough to fall completely under the spell of some of the most enchanting birding, and the most enchanted places, in the world.

A Wandering-type Albatross was photographed off Oregon this past weekend. Though it may ultimately prove impossible to determine the precise identity of this bird–as many as four species may be involved in the complex–this is a definite “mega,” one of the most amazing records so far from a very good autumn in North America.

Senior Leader Paul Lehman writes from Gambell with the latest sightings–and some disturbing news:

After eight straight days of blowing northerlies, we finally had a calm day yesterday–and the dense fog rolled in! But we also all got to see a fairly cooperative SIBERIAN ACCENTOR in the far boneyard area. This species has proved to be annual in the fall, with 14 records since 1999. A trickle of Sharp-tailed Sandpipers and pipits also continued.

Yesterday, September 14, I also counted 127 Ancient Murrelets passing the point, blowing out of the water my previous one-day high count of 31 birds. These birds are all or almost all post-breeding dispersers from the Aleutians region far to the south; a few may now be breeding slightly farther north in the Pribilofs. Annual in very small numbers, one or two Red-necked Grebes are also around.

The news from the Aleutians is not good. It has been very slow out at Shemya the past two weeks, with nothing particularly good to report.

And the news from Adak is dire: the “town” has basically run out of money, energy, etc., and they are basically closing the place down. Whether this is a “long-term temporary” situation or  permanent I’m not sure. I had heard rumors of this a few days ago, and then there was a story to this effect in an Alaska newspaper today. In any case, if there’s not a turnaround, there may be no more bird tours to Adak.

Only a birder would complain about there being “no good storms”! Paul Lehman updates us from Gambell:

This year’s weather is the WORST I’ve had here in the more than ten years I’ve been coming to Gambell in fall: since my arrival on August 22, we’ve had no good storms and no appreciable wind from anywhere between the W and SE–the best here for Asian and North American landbird vagrants.

And so, despite depressingly steady 20-25+ mph N/NE winds for a bunch of days now, I’m quite happy with what we’ve seen so far this year given the lack of meteorological support. On Friday we had the fifth Dusky Warbler of the season, plus two brief Bramblings, the first of the season. From the Alaska mainland, A very wayward Red-breasted Nuthatch showed up Thursday from the Alaska mainland (we get one or two here about every other year), as well as another White-crowned Sparrow.

From the seawatch, Thursday’s Common Merganser of the North American race was the first ever in fall for Gambell and St. Lawrence Island. The first half of last week saw a large push of 32+ Ancient Murrelets, and another Kittlitz’s Murrelet appeared on September 10. Typically peaking in mid-September, Short-tailed Shearwaters have been seen in numbers of up to 500,000 per day, and we’ve recorded several more Yellow-billed Loons and Spectacled Eider.

Recent miscellanea have included a McKay’s-type Bunting on Thursday, the presumably last migrant Bluethroats, Arctic Warblers, and two White Wagtails still hanging on. There have also been several more Red-throated and japonicus American Pipits.

Birders visiting Nome since the end of August have turned up as many as three Northern Hawk Owls along the road to Safety Sound. An even better wanderer was the Gray Jay seen perched on a pole at the Nome River mouth (!) on September 8. And there have also been the “usual” one or two Arctic Loons in the usual area on Safety Sound, several Spectacled Eiders, Emperor Geese, Slaty-backed Gulls, and Yellow-billed Loons, plus a couple of Red-throated Pipits.

We were delighted to read about birding Asia in the WSJ this morning!

It’s thanks to all the leaders of our tours to Asia that interest in birding that most captivating of continents is at an all-time high–and growing. Recent additions to the WINGS and Sunbird catalogue include tours to Cambodia, Nepal, Vietnam, western India, the Tibetan Plateau, and Manchuria.

A Gray-chinned Minivet in Southeast China.