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Nuthatches are small, short-tailed, sharp-billed songbirds widely recognized for their ability to hitch headfirst down tree trunks and upside-down along limbs. The family has representatives throughout the forests North America, Eurasia (including North Africa), and Indomalaya. Nuthatches are related to the Wallcreeper, treecreepers (Certhiidae), gnatcatchers, and wrens. In North America, we have, traditionally at least, [...]

There are few stories in ornithology I enjoy more than those of a Lazarus taxon, a species thought to be extinct being found alive and well in some hidden part of the world. There is a depressing finality about extinction, but knowing when for certain something is extinct is an imprecise science and on occasion we’ve gotten it spectacularly wrong. Jerdon’s [...]

And so it’s July, which for this North American birder means a couple of things: 1. southern Australia’s cool winter weather and wonderful birds sound mighty appealing right now and 2. I, like many of you, eagerly await the release of the AOU 52nd checklist supplement, even though these days, the contents are already pretty [...]

There I was (I’ve been reading Thurber) on board a boat off Baja California, reveling in cormorants (three species!), Brown Pelicans, and the northernmost Brown Booby breeding colony on this side of the Pacific. Which, naturally, got me to thinking about the newly erected order Suliformes, a development I mentioned in my December column, 2010′s [...]

Year-end lists! Woo! What follows is my attempt to highlight 10 significant changes in world bird taxonomy proposed or formalized in 2010. As you might imagine, a full list of changes from all the world’s authorities would number in the hundreds, so choosing 10 was a somewhat arbitrary exercise, but I hope you’ll find this [...]

Hi, folks! This is the first of what will be my monthly posts on bird taxonomy and systematics. But don’t worry, I’ll do my best to make them accessible and even fun. I first encountered 10,000 Birds back in 2004, well before the world had Twitter, Google Maps, or iPhones. (I guess we just sat [...]