Birds

the biggest baddie in the bird world here in Britain is almost certainly the seagull

I was standing on a small road in a Maine suburb, directing my camera at a garden next to the road. There, a bird was commuting between its foraging area, a staging post, and a nestbox, busy feeding its young. The friendly owner of the garden emerged from her veranda, asking about the name of the bird. Embarrassed, I pretended not to know. Would she have called the police if I had said “Tufted Titmouse“? I did not want to risk having to explain the history behind the bird’s name. Tit comes from an ancient Germanic word meaning something small, while “mose” was an old Germanic word for a small bird that later got turned into “mouse”. So, small bird is what titmouse means, nothing else. Confusingly, if etymology were to give any guidance, the plural then should be Titmouses. It is Titmice instead, thus pretending that the name indeed is derived from the word “mouse” with its irregular plural. (German readers familiar with the works of the German band Die Ärzte will point out that there is an early song by this band titled “Tittenmaus” – and the harmless explanations provided above certainly do not apply to this song title). Anyway, it is a rather cute-looking bird. And none other than the highly respected ornithological journal “Birds&Blooms” dedicates a whole webpage to showing 18 Totally Adorable Tufted Titmouse Bird Pictures. Others are much more sceptical: “It’s easy to see why some might describe the Tufted Titmouse as cute, but I prefer to keep my distance. It’s a feathered dinosaur, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, pugnacious and bent on two things: survival and reproduction.” The survival aspect manifests itself – among other things – in titmice eating more under particularly harsh winter conditions (source) … … and in changing its behavior on whether the eyes of predators are facing toward the bird or away from it (source 1, source 2, source 3). As for reproduction, one brief note already published in 1927 records how titmice pluck hair from a live woodchuck, presumably for nest building. Somehow, I find it fascinating that these old records are now easily accessible online. And cover bird observations without having to discuss R Square tests (or whatever) as well. And of course, the photos in this post – taken in Bath, Maine, in June 2026 – show the effort titmice make to bring up their chicks. Yes, this feathered dinosaur is also engaged in reproduction.

When One Museum Specimen Creates a Bird Species How one unusual rail became a taxonomic mystery MohanMonto Fact Jungle There is something slightly unsettling about a bird species known from just one specimen. Sharpe’s Rail is one of those birds. The specimen arrived at the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie in Leiden in 1865, obtained from the natural-history dealer G. A. Frank. Its original provenance was unknown. In 1893, Johann Büttikofer described it as a new species, Gallirallus sharpei, believing it came from South America. That was the beginning of a taxonomic mystery that lasted for more than a century. The bird was never seen again. A species with a very small population Today, it is easy to imagine a newly described bird as something discovered in a forest after a long expedition. Sharpe’s Rail was different. There was no known population behind the name—just a single museum skin. The specimen’s uncertain origin made matters worse. Before its description, Hermann Schlegel had thought it might be a juvenile Spotted Rail from South America. That early guess helped create confusion about where the specimen had actually come from. Later authors considered Sharpe’s Rail closely related to the Buff-banded Rail, a widespread species found across parts of the Pacific and Australasia. But the plumage of the mysterious specimen looked sufficiently different that it continued to be treated as a possible distinct species. Because no one ever found another Sharpe’s Rail, the idea of extinction eventually entered the story. It is a strange situation: a bird could be declared extinct even though nobody could be certain where it had originally lived. The clue was sitting in the feathers The specimen is strikingly dark. Its upperparts are brownish-black, with white spotting across parts of the body and wings. To earlier observers, the plumage looked natural rather than abnormal. That detail turned out to be important. In 2014, Julian Hume and Hein van Grouw revisited Sharpe’s Rail as part of their study of colour aberrations in extinct and endangered birds. They compared the specimen with a normally coloured Buff-banded Rail from the same museum collection. Their conclusion was surprising. The dark plumage was not good evidence that the bird belonged to a separate species. Instead, the authors identified the specimen as an example of category 3 melanism, a form of colour aberration in which the normal pattern or distribution of pigment is altered. The specimen had not necessarily been hiding a new species. It may simply have been an extraordinarily unusual-looking individual. Then the DNA entered the story Plumage alone might still have left room for debate. Genetic evidence provided another line of evidence. Hume and van Grouw reported that mitochondrial DNA from the specimen allowed it to be referred to Gallirallus philippensis, the Buff-banded Rail. That changes the story completely. The bird described in 1893 as Gallirallus sharpei was not an extinct species after all. The unique specimen represented an unusually coloured Buff-banded Rail. A species had effectively disappeared—not because the last bird had died, but because the scientific name had turned out to describe something that was already part of another species. The museum specimen had the last word What I find most interesting about Sharpe’s Rail is that the specimen never changed. The scientific interpretation did. The same skin that once looked like evidence of an unknown South American rail later became evidence of something much more familiar: an unusual colour form of Buff-banded Rail. That is one of the great strengths of natural-history collections. A specimen can sit quietly in a drawer for decades while scientific questions and techniques change around it. The person who collected the bird could not have known that future researchers would examine its plumage using a much more developed understanding of colour aberrations. Nor could nineteenth-century taxonomists have anticipated the genetic tools that would eventually be applied to old museum material. The specimen simply waited. A useful warning for bird taxonomy Sharpe’s Rail is a reminder that a species description based on a single unusual individual carries a special risk. Birds vary. Plumage can vary dramatically. And when a specimen has no reliable locality information and there are no additional individuals to compare with, the evidence can be surprisingly thin. That does not make the original description unreasonable. In 1893, Büttikofer was working with the information available to him. What changed was the evidence. The mystery also shows why old museum specimens should not be treated as scientific relics whose usefulness ended when they were placed in a collection. They can become more informative with time as new questions are asked and new methods become available. Sharpe’s Rail is therefore not really a story about an extinct bird. It is a story about a bird that was given a name, a specimen that preserved the evidence, and researchers who eventually asked whether the name still made sense. More than a century after the bird was described, the answer was no. The specimen remained. The species did not. Linked paper Hume, J. P. & van Grouw, H. 2014. Colour aberrations in extinct and endangered birds. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 134(3): 168–193. Further reading Hume, J. P. & van Grouw, H. (2014), Colour aberrations in extinct and endangered birds. Naturalis Biodiversity Center, specimen RMNH.AVES.87485. ITIS, Hypotaenidia philippensis — Buff-banded Rail. About the author Mohan is the founder of Monto Fact Jungle (https://montofactjungle.com/), an educational website covering natural history, science and general knowledge. He enjoys exploring unusual scientific stories, museum specimens and overlooked details from the natural world, and turning them into accessible stories for curious readers. Image: Sharpe’s Rail (Gallirallus sharpei), specimen RMNH.AVES.87485Credit: Huub Veldhuijzen van Zanten / Naturalis Biodiversity Center, via Wikimedia CommonsLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0Source: Wikimedia Commons  

There are birds you hear before you see, birds that announce themselves with a familiar call or a burst of movement. And then there is the Western Tanager (Piranga ludoviciana). A flash of yellow, black, and red that can seem to materialize among the pines and disappear just as quickly. In the mountains of Northern Arizona, Western Tanagers are a welcome sign of summer. They move through higher-elevation forests where ponderosa pines, mixed conifers, and open meadows provide food and shelter. For a photographer, they can also be wonderfully frustrating subjects: colorful, active, and rarely inclined to sit still for long. The male is especially striking. His body is bright yellow, his wings and back are marked with black, and his face is accented by a vivid red-orange forehead. Females and immature birds are more subdued, with yellow-green plumage that can make them considerably harder to spot against sunlit foliage. That camouflage is part of the fun. Rather than searching randomly through the trees, watch for movement in the canopy and listen for the bird’s distinctive calls. Western Tanagers often forage methodically through branches, picking insects from foliage and occasionally dropping to the ground for fruit. During migration and the breeding season, a quiet stretch of forest can suddenly become much more interesting when a tanager appears. And while these birds spend much of their time high in the treetops, don’t overlook the places where water meets the forest. Western Tanagers regularly visit streams, natural pools, springs, and birdbaths to drink and bathe. During migration and summer, riparian areas the green corridors along rivers and creeks, can be especially attractive because they provide both water and an abundance of insects. For a photographer, this can create a wonderful opportunity. Catching a Western Tanager down near the water, perhaps along Oak Creek, can be a lucky and beautiful moment. I personally think these may be some of the best opportunities to photograph these beauties, but having a long lens can be an advantage. Of course, getting close enough is another matter entirely. They are quick, wary, and perfectly capable of disappearing back into the trees before you can get the shot. Here’s a photography tip: avoid chasing the bird and watch the perch instead. Once you spot a Western Tanager, resist the temptation to follow every hop through the branches. Instead, observe where it repeatedly returns. Find a clean branch with a pleasing background, pre-focus or place your focus point there, and wait. This way not only produces calmer photographs; it also gives you a better chance of getting the bird in a natural pose without twigs tangling across its face. The same idea applies when you’re photographing near water. Rather than following the bird from tree to tree, watch the water’s edge and the nearby branches. If the tanager has visited a particular pool, creek bank, or perch before, it may return. Patience may turn a momentary encounter into a photograph worth keeping. Light matters, too. The Western Tanager’s yellow plumage can easily become overexposed in harsh afternoon sunlight. Early morning or late-day light brings out richer color and softer shadows. If the bird lands in a patch of bright sky, watch your exposure carefully—the camera may try to brighten the scene and wash out those brilliant yellows. A slightly darker exposure can preserve feather detail that is difficult to recover later. One of the neatest facts about Western Tanagers is that their red forehead isn’t simply a fixed splash of pigment. The red coloration comes from pigments called carotenoids, which the birds obtain from their diet. In other words, that fiery forehead is partly a reflection of what the bird eats. That seems fitting for a species that spends so much of its life moving through the forest canopy in search of insects and fruit. The Western Tanager is colorful without being conspicuous, common without always being easy to find, and fast enough to challenge even a patient photographer. Across their range, Western Tanagers are most closely associated with open conifer forests during the breeding season, but migration can take them far beyond the places where birders normally expect to find them. Scattered sightings have been recorded well outside their core range, a reminder that the boundaries on a range map don’t always express the full story. Here in Northern Arizona, that means keeping your eyes in the treetops—but keeping an eye on the water, too. Along Oak Creek and other riparian areas, a flash of gold may suddenly appear at the water’s edge before vanishing back into the pines. And if you happen to catch one there, camera in hand, consider yourself lucky. These are beautiful birds, but they rarely make the photographer’s job easy. Look for that distinct combination of gold, black, and red—and when the spark of color appears, be ready. It may be there for only a heartbeat.

Nature is full of inspiring lessons about perseverance, cooperation and resilience. Fortunately, with careful selection of photographs and captions, these lessons can be undermined.