eWestern Birds

Contents

MAIN ARTICLES

Breeding Status of the Gray Vireo on the Baja California Peninsula
Lori Hargrove, Philip Unitt, Gerardo Marrón, Tonatiuh Gaona-Melo, and Gorgonio Ruiz-Campos

Tricolored Blackbirds’ Reliance on Insects from Dairies
David M. Goodward and Rudy A. Diaz

Patch Area Cannot Predict Species Richness of Grassland Birds in Colorado’s Front Range
Brian G. Tavernia

First Record of the Small-billed Elaenia (Elaenia parvirostris) for Western North America
Nolan M. Clements and James R. Tietz

A Method for Distinguishing Flight Calls of Several Western Birds
Cedar Mathers-Winn, Debbie Leick, and Kate Stone

Extensive Prealternate Molts in Peruvian Kelp Gulls
Peter Adriaens, Amar Ayyash, and Mars Muusse

NOTES

An Eccentric Preformative Molt with Incomplete Replacement of Primary Coverts in a Dark-eyed Junco
D. Julian Tattoni

Front cover photo by © Iris Kilpatrick of Clarksville, Tennessee: Solitary Sandpiper (Tringa solitaria), Tijuana River valley, San Diego County, California, 26 December 2014 (an unusual winter record). The calls of the Solitary and Spotted (Actitis macularius) sandpipers are similar, but in this issue Cedar Mathers-Winn, Debbie Leick, and Kate Stone identify criteria helping distinguish them.

Back cover photo by © Amar Ayyash of Orlando Park, Illinois: one-year-old Kelp Gull (Larus dominicanus), Lima, Peru, 1 November 2018. Scattered occurrences in North America are raising awareness of this Southern Hemisphere species. And identifying gulls requires understanding of their molts, which Peter Adriaens, Amar Ayyash, and Mars Muusse address in this issue. They found that many Kelp Gulls advance through their plumages faster than is typical of four-year-gulls. In this photo, the lack of a red gonydeal spot, the heavily streaked neck, and barred uppertail coverts indicate the bird was one year old, but its juvenile flight feathers were completely replaced in a first prealternate molt.