a letter to the UC Davis wildlife genetics lab

Below is a letter I sent yesterday to Drs. Ernest and Hull of the UC Davis wildlife genetics lab at the veterinary school. These two have collaborated with the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory to publish some of the weakest science I have ever read. The worst science is not false science, but science with small remnants of intriguing elements of value intermingled with a lot of chaff. That is how I would characterize three recent publications from this lab, two on redtail hawks and one on redshoulders. I will be commenting in more detail soon...

Stan Moore



To Drs. Ernest and Hull --


Hello -- I have been reading recent publications from your lab, all of them with Joshua Hull as lead author. I have been more than disappointed with several that I have read, but I have not read all of them. I find at least three of them to be appalling in the sense that they grossly exaggerate their own scientific and conservation value and generally rely on poor field methodologies with a profound lack of appropriate rigor in sampling. The conclusions and the assertions in the text are usually hollow and sometimes unrelated to any level of demonstrated data gathering or analysis. I had to literally laugh out loud at the profound revelation that California red-shouldered hawks are genetically different than eastern red-shouldered hawks and that "management as separate conservation units may be warranted". Really! Is someone going to start managing these birds anywhere? Some of the papers present interesting data that could be shared as brief research notes, but the papers I am reading are full of meaningless prose and exceedingly self-serving to the authors and not to science or to conservation of the raptors that I love and which I personally study intensely in northern California, not just in migration, but in the totality of their local lives. I see a waste of public funding in a time of economic crisis. I see misleading characterizations of real-world conservation relevance of your published work. I would not necessarily call it scientific fraud, but it approaches a nexxus between incompetence and fraud and the fact that this work is being published is a horrible indictment of peer review in today's scientific world. I understand why several prominent ecologists have stated publicly and privately that peer review is broken in a profound way. It is especially sad to see labs like yours cranking out bad work and training new scientists to replicate the bad work using poorly reviewed and edited publications to demonstrate precedents. I will be commenting on this publicly and privately within the raptor and conservation communities. Stan Moore San Geronimo, CA

This Blog Facilitates Identification of Origin of Wing-tagged Bald Eagle

Dear all --

Yesterday I received a telephone call from a lady I did not know. She reported the sighting of a bald eagle on the Russian River near Forestville, CA by a friend of hers the same day. The eagle was wearing a blue wing tag with the number 19 inscribed. The caller said that her friend did not know how or to whom to report the sighting, so she helped her friend by going to her computer and doing a Google search using terms like "Sonoma County, Bald Eagle". That search led to my blog because I had posted a message on the recolonization of bald eagles to the North Bay earlier.

I instructed the lady to have her friend call the Bird Banding Lab to report the sighting. Meanwhile, I put a posting on the ornithology listserver asking if anyone there had knowledge of wing tagging of bald eagles that might end up on the Russian River in California. I heard from Dr. Peter Sharpe of the Institute for Wildlife Studies and learned that the bird seen on the Russian River had been removed as a chick from a nest in Alaska in 2003 and hacked on Santa Cruz Island off the coast of California. Dr. Sharpe said that the radio transmitter originally attached to this bird was no longer functioning, but similar birds had been tracked to southern Oregon and Northern California.

Several years ago, another female bald eagle from Dr. Sharpe's release program, also taken as a nestling from an Alaska nest, paired up with a male bald eagle at Del Valle Reservoir in Alameda County and producing young. That bird may still be there, as far as I know.

Blue A-19 was hatched in 2003 and so should be about old enough to pair up and breed. It may be too late for this year, but if the bird stays in the area, it would be fun to contemplate nesting bald eagles in the Russian River area in 2010.

It is a reminder that bald eagles are increasing in the area. And a tagged bird, including a color marked bird can be reported to the Bird Banding Lab. I will provide the contact on a separate posting in the near future.


Stan Moore
Fairfax Raptor Research
P.O. Box 341
San Geronimo, CA 94963
hawkman11@hotmail.com
707.479.9863

thoughts on albinism in birds; particularly redtail hawks

The photo attached to this posting shows a white gyrfalcon on the left and a white redtail hawk on the right.

Note the talons of the hawk. The photo was sent to me by Henry Kendall of Chesterfield, Missouri who was caring for the birds at the time the photo was taken, in the 1960's if I recall correctly. I believe the falcon was the mascot at the time for the U.S. Air Force Academy and the hawk (named "Whitey") was part of Henry Kendall's breeding project in which he hoped to produce white redtail hawks for falconers. Kendall is the first falconer to breed a prairie falcon in captivity in the early 1960's, which was before the first successful breeding of peregrine falcons in captivity in the U.S. and helped demonstrate that medium to large falcons could be produced in a captive breeding program.

I know of at least one person who would look at the photo of "Whitey", the redtail hawk on the right and say Whitey was not an albino hawk or albinistic, because the bird had normal, dark eyes and thus was not missing the normal pigment in the eyes. Thus, such a bird was just a hawk with some extra white in it, but not albino nor albinistic, any more than a woman can be partially pregnant.

Of course, such a thought process depends on a particular, simplistic definition of albinism that limits albinism to birds with no pigment at all, including feathers, skin or eyes and does not account for birds with lesser degrees of albinism. I consider such self-limiting definitions to be scientifically flawed and unnecessarily confusing because they do not describe the fullness of relevant reality, but impose artificial limitations not present in reality.

A better definition of albinism is used by Paul Johnsgard in "Hawks, Eagles and Falcons of North America". His succinct definition is as follows: "Albinism: Absence (locally or overall) of melanins or other pigments in individuals that normally are more highly pigmented."

Terres, in "The Audubon Society's Encyclopedia of North American Birds" describes albinism as:

"an albino has white feathers instead of the usual colors of its species and the white feathers may cover the bird wholly or in part, as there are various degrees of albinism. Some birds such as swans, geese, herons, egrets, gulls and others that are normally white are not albinos." (I would add that the same is true of horses and other animals with all or partial white in their normal coloration).

Terres goes on to describe the four degrees of albinism as follows:

"Total Albinism: the rarest form, in which the bird has a complete absence of melanin from the eyes, skin and feathers.

Incomplete Albinism: Pigment is completely absent from either eyes, skin or feathers, but not all three.

Imperfect Albinism: Pigment formation is partially inhibited (reduced) in eyes, skin or feathers, but pigment is not totally inhibited in any

Partial Albinism: The commonest form: ... within local parts of the body may involve certain feathers only; it is often symmetrical and each side of the bird may show white feathers in the same pattern.

Clearly, "Whitey" was an incomplete albino redtail hawk. That is the best available precise scientific terminology for that bird. The eyes were normal but the feathers and the talons were white. I have photos of similar redtails white normal talons and normal eyes, but all white feathers. I have photos of partially white redtail hawks with normal talons and eyes, and these would be scientifically called "partial albino" redtail hawks, not "hawks with some white feathers".

Interestinly, I happened to look in Ron Austing's very important book "The World of the Redtailed Hawk and found photos of a hawk he and his friends captured in Ohio in 1960 which is shown on page 27 of that book. The photo is black and white. It shows an adult redtail white white feathers and white talons and a white eye with yellowish tinge. The text describes the color of the feathers as white, though the photo appears to me to show some degree of pigmentation. In the absence of better information, I would tend to describe that bird as an "imperfect albino" hawk, or with dilute plumage. The eyes were not pink, but whitish and the bird was described as having excellent vision, which should not be typical of a total or pure albino redtail hawk.

I personally trapped and banded an imperfect albino (or leucistic) redtail hawk in my study area and its eyes were paler than normal, but not pink and the bird showed diluted pigmentation throughout its plumage.

In summary, to limit the definition of albinism to its purest and rarest form is to limit understanding of what albinism is and how it is expressed in birds. This information on the four degrees of albinism has been published in ornithological textbooks for five or more decades and has always been readily available. Why some authors continue to provide only a superficial and abbreviated definition of albinism, making it synonymous only with pure or total albinism is beyond me. Clearly, partial albinism is the most common form of albinism in birds and the other forms are well-documented. I have seen photos and descriptions of pure or total albino owls in the literature, but hardly so of hawks. Ron Austing mentions an albinistic red-shouldered hawk discovered by Dr. Heinz Meng in New York that had pale blue irises and which lived less than three years in captivity. Such a bird may not have survived to adulthood in the wild. Several sources reveal that albinism in hawks is not expressed in the plumage until adulthood.

Henry Kendall told me and others that he had documented over 550 case histories of albinism in redtail hawks. I am unaware that he ever documented any case of pure or total albinism, including pink eyes. Clearly, those hundreds of birds were either incomplete, imperfect, or partial albinos, according to the most precise definitions available. The most common form of albinism in birds, including redtail hawks is partial albinism, which is a term that has been used in ornithology for decades and is highly appropriate, accurate, specific and scientific.

Stan Moore

California raptors and palm trees

While palm trees may be "exotic" for California raptors, the birds seem to find utilitarian uses for them, including roosts, hunting perches and nesting substrates. Note: You may click on the images to enlarge them.

a new poem -- "Please Dear Lord"

Please Dear Lord (by Stan Moore)

Lordy Lordy this I pray
Show me favor on That Day
When you judge me for my deeds
And assign me to your needs
I have not led a perfect life
I’ve made mistakes and caused some strife
The negatives have been quite minor
Compared to efforts that were finer
And many times I’ve sacrificed
For greater good in others’ lives
I’ve loved your creatures great and small
You know my heart – I’ve loved them all
But one stands out and rules my heart
And I pray that I can play its part
When I return to life again
When you recycle life and limb
Please Lordy listen to my request
Let me be who I love best
Please bring me back I care not how
I want to be a long-eared owl

another partial albino redtail hawk in my area

I do not have a photo of this bird yet, but I have found a second partial albino redtail hawk in my study area. It is almost a "carbon copy" of the first. Both birds are adult males and both have typical ventral plumage, but their scapulars show white while in flight. The first is near the Clover Stornetta Dairy on Old Napa Road and the new bird is on Live Oak Lane in Petaluma. The leucistic redtail is still alive and well in West Petaluma. It is a male also.


Stan Moore