A Look at the Tyrant Flycatchers of the West

Tyrant Flycatchers are a large and diverse family with hundreds of species, most of them being found in the Neotropics, particularly South America. Some 40 species of Tyrant Flycatchers have occurred in western North America for which 23 species are regular breeders and more than 15 are of rare, casual or accidental occurrence. One could easily spend a half year studying the intricacies of these species. Our talk will focus on getting started, so an introduction of sorts, with a focus on learning the identifying and behavioral traits that separate the various genera that have occurred in the West. In short, if you can't tell a pewee (genus Contopus) from an Empidonax, you have no business identifying the various species of the notoriously difficult group of Empidonax. We will also review the status and distribution of each of the species discussed, the "When" and the "Where," things that can be learned before going into the field, or to repeat a famous quote of Pasteur: "Chance favors the prepared mind."

Jon Dunn has lived much of his life in California. He has extensive knowledge of the identification and distribution of North American birds, has been published in a wide variety of journals and he has co-authored the sixth and seventh editions of National Geographic Society’s Field Guide to the Birds of North America. He is the co-writer and host of the two-video set "Large and Small Gulls of North America," and co-author (with Kimball Garrett) of "Birds of Southern California" as well as the "Peterson Field Guide to Warblers." Jon is a member of the Committee on Classification and Nomenclature of the American Ornithologists’ Society and has served some 30 years on the California Bird Records Committee. He has also been on the Board of Directors for Western Field Ornithologists for over a decade. In 2012, Jon was the recipient of the American Bird Association’s Roger Tory Peterson Award for Lifetime Achievement in promoting the cause of birding.

Lara Tseng is 17 years old and in her senior year of college through the Early Entrance Program at Cal State LA, where she is majoring in biology with a focus in ecology, evolution, and the environment. After college, she hopes to go to graduate school and pursue a career in ornithology. Lara is especially interested in studying a circumpolar breeding shorebird, the dunlin, and the complex variation seen across its many subspecies. Previously, she has publishedresearch on calcium consumption in western bluebirds. Currently, she is studying microstructural feather wear and color in yellow warblers under the advisement of Dr. Allison Shultz and Dr. Eric Wood. Lara is also an active member of various young birder groups and is a member of the student programs committee at Western Field Ornithologists. She is currently interning under Phil Unitt at the San Diego Natural History Museum, where she is preparing museum specimens and assisting with some of the many field surveys the museum is involved in.

This event is part of SFBBO's Birdy Hour Speaker Series. Learn more at https://www.sfbbo.org/birdy. Thank you to SFBBO donors for making this free event possible and to Karen Nguyen for editing the recording. If you'd like to donate to support our work, please go to https://www.sfbbo.org/give.

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