ABA Big Year 2016 (2 Viewers)

[timsg80]

Will Greenland be considered as well? Or is that in ABA area already?

It's not already, and personally I cannot see why it would be as it is part of Denmark, whereas with Hawaii being a state of the US that makes a lot more sense. It might be cool to add other US territories, e.g. Puerto Rico/Guam/American Samoa etc. but I guess that is probably best kept as another list.

 

[temmie]

It's not already, and personally I cannot see why it would be as it is part of Denmark, whereas with Hawaii being a state of the US that makes a lot more sense. It might be cool to add other US territories, e.g. Puerto Rico/Guam/American Samoa etc. but I guess that is probably best kept as another list.

Why would you base the inclusion (or exclusion) of Hawaii and Greenland on political land borders rather than on geographic and biogeographic features?
It seems to me that Hawaii has far less in common with regards to birds with the USA than Greenland. Even Iceland or Cuba would be a better contenders to the ABA than Hawaii, at a first glance.

 

[dantheman]

Does it not run along the lines that all French Territories around the globe are actually part of France, hence a French list can contain all manner of tropical and subtropical species? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Departments_of_France

Whereas the UK doesn't even include the Isle of Man or The Channel Islands ... geographically very close.


Awkward ...

 

[Nutcracker]

If one was using strictly biogeographic boundaries, maybe the western Aleutians would get thrown off the ABA list

 

[McMadd]

...Whereas the UK doesn't even include the Isle of Man...geographically very close.
Awkward ...

We prefer it that way...

 

[Mysticete]

Some of these points are brought up and discussed in the below article.

http://www.aba.org/proxy/Birding_16-4_09-f2-Rutt-Hawaii.pdf

As far as biogeography goes, I would actually support inclusion of Bermuda and Greenland as well. But neither place has a strong advocacy as Hawaii does (Neither region got anywhere near a majority of votes need in the nonbinding referendum. And Hawaii does share more biogeographic similarity with North America than most of the polynesian islands. I think the monarch flycatchers and maybe the Millerbird are the only native birds with ancestry from that region. The Honeycreepers are East Asian and everything else is derived from North American stock

 

[Farnboro John]

It's not already, and personally I cannot see why it would be as it is part of Denmark, whereas with Hawaii being a state of the US that makes a lot more sense. It might be cool to add other US territories, e.g. Puerto Rico/Guam/American Samoa etc. but I guess that is probably best kept as another list.

Er... is Canada in the ABA area? Not part of the USA last I heard, any more than Denmark - pretty much next to Greenland though. :t:

John

 

[Vague Bird News]

Canadia has officially been part of the US since 1982.

 

[timsg80]

Er... is Canada in the ABA area? Not part of the USA last I heard, any more than Denmark - pretty much next to Greenland though. :t:

John

Haha I am very well aware it's not in the US! But politically it's part of North America unlike Greenland and Denmark. But then again, so is Central America and the Caribbean. Rather like defining the boundaries of the Western Palearctic, it can get a little complicated! But I like the idea of it being solely all US and Canadian states, to me it gives it a greater meaning, including areas due to them being similar biogeographically I think detracts from the excitement of travelling to far flung areas of Alaska and southern Arizona to pick up species right on the edge of their distribution. I've always found that one of the most interesting aspects of the ABA big year is the attempt to pick up predominantly Eurasian and Central American species right on the edge of their range and only just technically within the bounds of the US/Canada. One could certainly argue that the biogeography of the west Aleutians is more similar to that of Eurasia than that of North America, but I think everyone would agree that ABA big years would be a lot more dull without them being included!

 

[lewis20126]

I think North America (Alaska, Canada, Lower 48) is pretty well constituted as a 'listing region', based on bio-geographic grounds. The main anomalies lie in the far west Aleutians (see above) and along the Mexican border. The key anomaly in the latter is around those Mountains in southern Arizona which have a great deal more in common with the Sierras south of the border. I wonder if there is a paper on line which has tried to define the bio-geographic boundaries in this area (a bit like the work on the southern boundary of the WP).

cheers, alan

 

[Mysticete]

There was a paper that tested traditional biogeographic regions globally (it was posted in the taxonomy forum a few years back). I do recall that the paper suggested Hawaii should be included within the Nearctic, but IIRC the paper also suggested that the the arctic regions of NA and Eurasian all constitute their own biogeographic province when only looking at birds (which does kind of make sense)

Speaking of "Birds that occur in Hawaii", the recent Hurricane in Mexico blew and incredible array of pelagics birds to Mexico, many of which are first state records and would be amazing editions to any year list if all the contenders weren't stuck up on Gambell. So far, species recorded included Wedge-tailed Shearwater (the Hawaiian breeding form), Juan Fernandez Petrel, and a possible Townsend's Storm-Petrel.

 

[Captain_of_Crunch]

The main reason I asked re Greenland was that is not currently covered by either the ABA area or the WP. I am sure there must be endless discussions amongst Greenlandian birders about whether they would rather be in the WP or ABA areas

 

[jurek]

Probably all McDonald's bars worldwide should be ABA area.

Seriously, the original reason was that many endangered endemics of Hawaii cannot survive any disturbance by birders.

I wonder whether birders have improved, and Hawaiian fauna can be helped by more interest of American birders? It was pretty strange to have several species possibly extinct with the real status unconfirmed.

 

[lewis20126]

Seriously, the original reason was that many endangered endemics of Hawaii cannot survive any disturbance by birders.

any evidence for this claim?

cheers, a

 

[Larry Sweetland]

I should imagine that adding Hawaii would be an interesting pain in the A for an ABA big year. Aren't several of the native species very hard to see, requiring unpredictable amounts of time to locate, and you'll mostly end up with a list as long as your arm of ludicrous intros from other continents.

 

[Mysticete]

Probably all McDonald's bars worldwide should be ABA area.

Seriously, the original reason was that many endangered endemics of Hawaii cannot survive any disturbance by birders.

I wonder whether birders have improved, and Hawaiian fauna can be helped by more interest of American birders? It was pretty strange to have several species possibly extinct with the real status unconfirmed.

Nope

The history for how the boundaries of the ABA area originally came to be are pretty well known. At the initial founding ABA=AOU, which at the time included the current ABA area plus Baja California (and I think the Bahamas). A year later, the area was formulated as being basically the continental USA + Canada, and the reasoning used was basically that the listing in this region was reasonable from a money viewpoint, with Hawaii being excluded based on being too expensive.

A handful of folks made the decision, which even early on was contested by Pratt, and it stuck. The irony of this decision is that birding Hawaii at this point is probably way cheaper than the annual pilgrimages some birders take to Gambell and St Paul every year to maintain a high list.

 

[Mysticete]

I should imagine that adding Hawaii would be an interesting pain in the A for an ABA big year. Aren't several of the native species very hard to see, requiring unpredictable amounts of time to locate, and you'll mostly end up with a list as long as your arm of ludicrous intros from other continents.

Currently you could probably make a clean sweep of the islands in 3 weeks. After all you only need the Big Island, Maui, Oahu, and Kauai (Midway would be nice but access has been at least temporarily suspended). I'd just go in Mid summer, which are usually super slow from a vagrant standpoint, or November/Early December, when ticks stateside should slow to a crawl.

 

[Dave Ball]

Fairly random thought, but does Hawaii ever pick up any Asiatic vagrants (cf. the Azores), or is it just too far out in the middle of the Pacific? I know it's quite well to the U.S. side of the dateline, so probably too far east, but is the coverage good enough to know?

 

[Mysticete]

Fairly random thought, but does Hawaii ever pick up any Asiatic vagrants (cf. the Azores), or is it just too far out in the middle of the Pacific? I know it's quite well to the U.S. side of the dateline, so probably too far east, but is the coverage good enough to know?

A few...the only AOU records for Little Tern, Great Crested Tern, Black Kite, and Chinese Sparrowhawk come from Hawaii. There is also a wide range of East Asian ducks and shorebirds that have showed up, and a very few songbirds (Eye-browed Thrush off the top of my head)

 

[Jeff Hopkins]

In addition to vagrants there are quite a few established exotics. Java sparrow, kalij pheasant, and saffron finch are just a few that spring to mind.