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black-throated blue warblers in captivity
A female and male Black-throated Blue Warbler in captivity. Photo by Jessica Deakin.
Guest Posts

Getting to the Bottom of Male Black-Throated Blue Warblers’ Migratory Behavior

Many species of migrant songbirds have a reproductive strategy called protandry, where males arrive at stopovers and breeding sites earlier than females. Ornithologists believe that males do this because it increases their mating opportunities and reduces competition among males for high-quality nest sites. Although it’s a common phenomenon, the question of how males arrive earlier is still unanswered for most species.

Guest Posts

Are Homebody Warblers More Likely to Sing Together?

Scientists who want to study the evolution of behavior face a fundamental problem: unlike bones, behavior generally doesn’t fossilize. However, that doesn’t mean that extinct species’ behavior doesn’t leave any evidence. The behavior of living or “extant” species can give us clues about the behavior of their ancestors, and we can use the behavior of living species, the evolutionary relationships among species, and computational modelling to make inferences about extinct species’ behavior.

scrub-jay specimens
Devon DeRaad lines up Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jays (left) and Sumichrast’s Scrub-Jays (right) to compare back color between the forms. Photo by John McCormack.
Guest Posts

How Do Traits Change Across a Scrub-Jay Hybrid Zone?

Where should we draw the line between species? Biologists have debated this question for over 100 years. For much of that time, Ernst Mayr’s Biological Species Concept, which defines a species as a group of individuals that is reproductively isolated from other groups, has dominated the conversation. Recently, however, more and more evidence of hybridization between species has accumulated, especially in birds.

History

An Eye for Photography

In the summers of 1966 and 1967, I worked (Dream Job #2) for Bill Carrick at the Niska Waterfowl Research Station near Guelph, Ontario. Bill was an outstanding wildlife cinematographer …

History

Ornitholojests

Most of the ornithologists that I know have a great sense of humour. My old friend and mentor, James L. Baillie often took me birding when I was a teenager …

History

Contemplating the Tundra

CELEBRATING THE HISTORY OF WOMEN IN ORNITHOLOGY Until the 1970s, few women could have called themselves ‘professional’ ornithologists no matter how great their contribution to the study of birds. As …