The latest sets (Rounds 9 & 10) of accepted records of the BCFO Bird Records Committee are now posted in BRC Public under the BRC drop-down menu above.
A full report of all the committee’s Round 9 and 10 deliberations will be published in an upcoming issue of BCFO’s journal, British Columbia Birds.
You will also find the BCFO Rare Bird Report Form and the Provincial Review List under the same drop-down menu. Submissions of rare bird sightings in British Columbia are invited and encouraged.
The following In press paper from British Columbia Birds is now available on the BCFO Member’s area of the web site:
Dawe, N.K. 2016. Cooperative breeding by the Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
The December edition of BC Birding welcomes our new editor, Clive Keen.
Following in the footsteps of our recently retired editor, June Ryder, you’ll find Clive has maintained the same high standards for our newsmagazine. Thank you, June for your tremendous service to BCFO. Congratulations Clive, on a great first edition.
Between the covers you’ll find a call for your listing reports, the announcement of next year’s Two-day Field Trips for Members, plus trip reports from visits to the Sooke Hawkwatch, a week in the Chilcotin, and some Costa Rica birding. The usual collection of fascinating articles on various avian topics ranging from summaries from the ornithological literature to observations at backyard feeders are there for your enjoyment under the Members tab above.
BCFO proudly presents yet another Featured Photographer, #12 in our series, and the very first who hails from an island in the Pacific. View the work of long-time BCFO member Bruce Whittington here, or navigate via the Features tab above.
The ‘Featured Photographer Series’ presents the work of BCFO members who photograph wild birds in BC.
Preparations for this season’s Christmas Bird Counts are underway. You’ll find the dates we know so far under the CBC’s tab above. We’ll update continually as we receive more details of the various counts.
In addition, Christmas Bird Counts for Kids is a growing activity around the province, and they are ready to go in many locations. We’ve given them their own tab under CBC’s.
CBC4Kids is a fun, family-friendly birdwatching event that promotes nature appreciation and environmental stewardship.
Celebrate birds with youth and their families while building bird identification skills and contributing to important Citizen Science for bird conservation!
Details of CBC4Kids locations are found here and by clicking the CBC4Kids logo above.
Some BCFO members may find this Open Access Review of interest. Here’s the summary:
Birds are one of the most recognizable and diverse groups of modern vertebrates. Over the past two decades, a wealth of new fossil discoveries and phylogenetic and macroevolutionary studies has transformed our understanding of how birds originated and became so successful. Birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs during the Jurassic (around 165–150 million years ago) and their classic small, lightweight, feathered, and winged body plan was pieced together gradually over tens of millions of years of evolution rather than in one burst of innovation. Early birds diversified throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous, becoming capable fliers with supercharged growth rates, but were decimated at the end-Cretaceous extinction alongside their close dinosaurian relatives. After the mass extinction, modern birds (members of the avian crown group) explosively diversified, culminating in more than 10,000 species distributed worldwide today.
A PDF of The Origin and Diversification of Birds can be found here: http://is.gd/FtPGWD