In a recent Redpolling poll, voters overwhelmingly chose February as the worst month for birding (except for a few cheeky Floridians who lorded it over the rest of us). But is February really that bad? In Montana, after all, you can go find some wonderful winter residents such as Rough-legged Hawks, Northern Shrikes, and Snow Buntings. On the other hand, by February you’ve usually seen those already so where does that leave you?
February is a great month to catch up on bird-related reading. For my review on this and other excellent titles, Follow @sneedcollard on Instagram.
For me personally, February is a time to get a lot of actual WORK done such as writing birding articles, banging out new children’s books, writing letters to the editor and my senators about bird conservation, and reading bird books. That doesn’t mean, however, that I’m not curious about which birds are around—while remaining optimistic that I’ll find some surprises if I go out. On a morning dog walk recently, for example, a Northern Goshawk flew right over me and Lola! This last Sunday morning, Lola and I again headed out wondering if we might see any other surprises.
Just to prove that in birding you never know—even in February—a Northern Goshawk flew right over me and my dog Lola only a couple of weeks ago! It was the first I’d ever seen on my own.
We decided to do a loop I only rarely traverse anymore, through a private neighborhood that COULD be great bird habitat but has instead been landscaped with acres of lawn and over-pruned trees. Still, even before we got to that neighborhood, I noticed that our resident birds have shifted into courtship mode. On Valentine’s Day I heard the first two-note song of a chickadee for the year and also the first throaty warble of an advertising Northern Flicker. This morning, I heard both of those—plus an amazing number of Song Sparrows also advertising. I haven’t kept track of “first spring calls” before, but I wondered if they are on a trend toward “springing out” earlier and earlier every year?
After not hearing a Song Sparrow call for many weeks, I was gratified to hear four of them singing in different locations on our recent Sunday morning walk!
In the private neighborhood itself, we heard some distant wild turkeys, a Red Crossbill, and an unknown high-pitched cacophony. My hearing is so sucky anymore I couldn’t tell who was making this chattering, but whipped out Merlin’s Sound ID, which ID’ed them as Pine Siskins. But where were they? I walked forward a bit, turned around and there they were—more than forty of them in a tree! Okay, so it wasn’t a Northern Pygmy-Owl, but I was still happy. Lola and I had headed out expecting maybe 6 or 8 species and ended up with sixteen! Just goes to show you that, even in the February Blahs, birds are around and ready to teach us new things.
A flock of 40 Pine Siskins proved a delightful highlight of our unlikely February neighborhood walk.
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Since Braden returned to college, I haven’t been birding a whole lot. Instead, I’ve been working on a new children’s picture book about monotypic animals—animals without any close relatives. The book won’t be out for a couple of years, but I can’t wait that long to share some discoveries. But first, an explanation of monotypic: in a scientific sense (and what other sense could there be with such a word?), monotypic refers to an animal with no other members in its genus. According to Birds of the World, for example, the genus Turdus contains 83 different species—including the American Robin—but a monotypic species would have no other ‘roommates’ in its genus.
With 83 species in its genus Turdus, the American Robin is a species that is decidedly NOT monotypic!
For my book, though, I have been investigating animals that are monotypic not just to genus, but at least to their scientific family or order. In other words, these species are truly apart, without any even vaguely close relatives. I didn’t know how many of these loners I might find, but guess what? There are a lot more than I expected—including birds! You probably have heard of some of them including the Hammerkop, Shoebill, Egyptian Plover, Rail-babbler, and my favorite, the Secretarybird! All of these are only distantly related to any other kind of bird.
Not that they’ve never had relatives. I suspect most of them have. What happened to their close cousins? We will never know, but they undoubtedly succumbed to a panoply of climatic, geological, and biological catastrophes. Which makes these monotypic survivors all the more impressive, in that they somehow navigated the endless avalanche of disasters that have befallen the world! Learning about these animals, however, also made me ask myself, “In my own relatively brief birding career have I myself actually seen any monotypic-to-family birds?” Astonishingly, the answer is yes—and if you’re reading this, you probably have, too!
Number 1 on most of our lists has to be the Osprey. If you think about it, that makes sense. I mean, the Osprey is just one weird-looking bird of prey, but even more interesting, it split off from all other raptors very early on in raptor evolution. Can you guess its closest living relative? Yep. Africa’s Secretarybird—another very bizarre bird of prey!
The Osprey may be the most widespread and well-known monotypic-to-family bird on earth!
Many of you also may have seen the Limpkin—the sole species in the bird family Aramidae. Long before I ever became a birder, I enjoyed these gastropod- and bivalve-eaters while visiting Florida’s Wakulla Springs south of Tallahassee. More recently, I heard—but didn’t see—one down in Houston while working on My Accidental Big Year. If you are birding Arizona and New Mexico, you can nab yet another monotypic-to-family bird, the Olive Warbler, of the family Peucedramidae. For other birds that are monotypic to family, however, we must venture outside of U.S. borders—something Braden and I have been fortunate to do.
During our visit to the Sani Lodge in the Amazon in 2017, we picked up two monotypic species—in the same location! One was the iconic Hoatzin, a large turkey-like bird that is the sole resident of the family Opisthocomidae. Hoatzins like to show off, and if you watch almost any film or read any book about the Amazon you will undoubtedly see this bird since it often gathers near humans in large numbers. During our stay at Sani, I woke up to dogs barking one night and asked our hosts about it. They looked at me strangely. “We don’t have any dogs here.” We finally figured out that I’d been hearing Hoatzins!
It’s probably no surprise that the Hoatzin is monotypic to family. Looks like these probably don’t inspire a lot of copycats!
In between outings at Sani, Braden and I were also lucky enough to see a handsome bird silently stalking worms, crayfish, and frogs in shallow waters. What was it? A shy Sunbittern, sole species in the bird family Eurypygidae. These birds are quite cryptic (camouflaged), but apparently when they spread their wings they unleash a burst of spectacular color—something Braden and I unfortunately failed to witness. Still, we didn’t even know Sunbitterns existed before the trip and are happy to now have them firmly dwelling in our brain banks.
The secretive Sunbittern is another South American species that is monotypic to family—one we were lucky enough to encounter.
If you want to learn even more about monotypic-to-family birds, click here for a fun website. Some of the taxonomies have changed, but most are still accurate, and you’re sure to notice some surprises. Meanwhile, I am contemplating a quest to see every monotypic bird family on earth. If you would like to help me and Braden do this please send a nonrefundable check for, say, fifty thousand dollars, and we will begin post-haste! As always, thanks for reading and be sure to share this post with your birding buddies!
