Winter 2018
Welcome to the Newsletter of The Auk: Ornithological Advances and The Condor: Ornithological Applications 
 
Reasons to publish in The Auk and The Condor .  
  • High JIF ranking in ornithology: for 2017, Condor is #1, Auk #4, and the 5-year average makes Auk is #2 and Condor #4
  • ALL ARTICLES OPEN ACCESS AFTER 6 MONTHS
  • Fast First Decision Time (average is 33 days)
  • Weekly Publication of permanent version of articles, 8-10 weeks after acceptance
  • Uniquely qualified copyeditors, figure editor, translators
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  • Low Open Access fee (can be done retroactively)
Mark E. Hauber
Auk Editor-in-Chief 
Philip C Stouffer
Condor Editor-in-Chief
Auk Impact Factor 2017 #4: 2.096
5-Year Impact Factor: #2
Total Citations 2015: #1 
Article Influence Score 2014: #1
CiteScore: 2016 #3; Eigenfactor: #2 
(among 24 ornithology journals)
Condor Impact Factor 2017 #1: 2.654
5-Year Impact Factor: #4
Total Citations 2015: #2
Article Influence Score 2014: #6
CiteScore: 2016 #7; Eigenfactor: #5  
(among 24 ornithology journals)

FEATURED ASSOCIATE EDITOR:        RICHARD BUCHHOLZ    
 
Condor Associate Editor Richard Buchholz talks about the recent paper he handled on Survival and habitat selection of Canada Geese during autumn and winter in metropolitan Chicago, USA. "The current abundance of Canada Geese in many cities of North America is at odds with my memories of an urban childhood. I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s near a salt-marsh in Queens, the eastern-most borough of New York City, when Black Ducks were not uncommon but Canada Geese were mostly seasonal passersby. By the early 2000s, however, Canada Geese were plentiful in every park and golf course year-round. On one winter holiday visit to my Yankee homeland I vividly remember my German father declaring with disgust, as we struggled to navigate a local soccer field slathered with goose feces, that the geese had become too "lazy" to migrate.  
     As Dorak et al. report in their study of Canada Geese use of urban habitats in the Chicago area in winter, however, these resilient birds appear to be making optimal use of the matrix of habitats, natural and anthropogenic, available to them. In the 1950s the ancestors of these sub-arctic breeders spent their winters in my adopted state of Mississippi but since then the population has progressively moved their winter homes farther north, ultimately resulting in birds that choose Windy City winters. Because the dry winter grass available as a foodstuff to the city geese is a poor source of calories for surviving frigid temperatures, their choice of winter habitat is something of an ornithological puzzle.
     The authors hypothesized that Chicago geese may be using the city as a sanctuary for resting, but needed to fly to the agricultural fields outside the city each day in order to fatten up. They were wrong. By analyzing the location data of several dozen individuals who had been tagged with transmitters that uploaded GPS coordinates to the cell phone network over two winters, the investigators discovered that most of their study subjects stayed in the urban habitat all winter. Yes, they spent most of their time in grassy areas, but surprisingly they also occupied "non-traditional" places such as industrial rooftops and rail yards.  
     A unique strength of the study is that the authors considered whether the geese changed their habitat preference in response to ambient conditions below the birds' lower critical temperature (i.e. the air temperature below which the geese must increase their metabolic rate to compensate for heat loss, or else become hypothermic). They found that the urban geese spent increasingly more time in these unexpected habitats, as well as in "deep-water" sites (water reclamation ponds and rivers), as the temperature plummeted. The 100% overwinter survival of urban geese in the study suggests that anthropogenic habitats provided thermal sanctuary from harsh winter conditions despite offering poor foraging prospects. In contrast, only half the geese that left the city for agricultural habitats survived until spring migration. Despite popular opinion that urban geese do not migrate, the majority of the Chicago geese in their study migrated away from the city in the spring. The authors conclude that Canada geese are assessing the fitness tradeoffs associated with both migratory distance and various overwintering locations, and behaving optimally in response to changing conditions. Sometimes what looks like "lazy" is actually pretty smart!
       
      AmericanOrnithologyPubs.org            AOSpubs@AmericanOrnithology.org
Special Collection on the Breeding Bird Survey
A Special Collection of nine Open Access papers on the North American Bird Breeding Survey from The Condor is available at 

25% Member Discount on Author Page charges 
All Auk and Condor papers with at least one author who is an AOS member get an AUTOMATIC discount of 25% on Author Page Charges. Members also get an automatic 25% discount on Open Access Fees.  
 
Editors' Picks (Open Access)

The Auk: Colombelli-Négrel and Smale 
Photo credit: D.  Colombelli-Négrel
recorded calls from four Little Penguin populations across a small area of South Australia and used playback experiments to test penguins' ability to distinguish calls by origin. Agonistic calls varied among the four populations, depending on small-scale habitat differences, but birds did not discriminate between calls originating from different colonies despite genetic differences.
Safety, Not Food, Entices Geese to Cities
 
The Condor: Wintering Canada Geese in Chicago tracked via radio transmitters by Hagy et al. preferred deep water and rivers over green space such as parks when temperatures dropped. For geese that remained within the metropolitan area, winter survival was 100%, but this dropped to 48% for those that emigrated out to forage in surrounding agricultural fields. Together, these results suggest that thermal sanctuary may be a higher priority for wintering geese than good foraging habitat.
 
Photo credit: D. Brandes
The Condor:
 Dennhardt et al. applied mark-recapture analysis to citizen scientist observations of Golden Eagles migrating along a mountain ridge in Pennsylvania and estimated that between 2,592 and 2,775 individual eagles were seen over a ten-year period, with approximately 1,300 eagles passing through in an average year. Because Golden Eagles are difficult to count on their breeding grounds, better methods for tracking their numbers during migration represent a significant advance.
Social Environment Matters for Duck Penis Size
 
The Auk:  Keeping captive Ruddy Ducks and Lesser Scaups in either pairs or groups during the breeding season over two years, Brennan et al. found that Lesser Scaup had longer penises on average when housed in groups with other males. For Ruddy Ducks, the effects were more complicated; many males failed to reach sexual maturity until the second year of the experiment, and when they did, the smaller Ruddy Duck males housed in groups grew their penises faster than males housed in pairs but grew out of sync with each other and stayed in reproductive condition for only short periods of time.
 
Photo credit: E. Williams
The Auk: Surveys and radio tracking by Williams and Boyle indicated that about 75% of male Grasshopper Sparrows changed territories at least once per season, establishing new territories as far as 1,200 m from their original location. This high mobility may benefit grassland birds by helping them locate isolated patches of high-quality habitat and colonize newly created or restored habitat, but could also challenge researchers' ability to accurately track survival over time.
Invasive Frogs Give Invasive Birds a Boost in Hawaii
 
The Condor: Working at fifteen sites on the island of Hawaii, Smith et al. found that native birds showed no response to the density or presence of invasive coqui frogs, but three non-native bird species were more abundant in plots with coqui. Non-native birds may be getting a boost directly by eating adult or juvenile coquis, or indirectly through the frogs' effects on nutrient cycling.
In This Issue
Most-Read Articles
Waterfowl Penis Plasticity in Response to Male Competition
Winter Survival & Habitat Selection of Urban Canada Geese
Applying Mark-Recapture Models to Migrant Golden Eagles
Patterns & Correlates of Within-Season Breeding Dispersal
Successful Translocation of Ridgway's Hawks

Recent Open Access
Island Invasion by Japanese Bush-Warblers

Occupancy Modeling to Monitor Peak Vocal Activity Dates

Geographic Variation in Marsh Wren Calls

Engineered Habitat No Match for Natural Sandbars for Plovers

New Species of Antbird from Peru

Mgmt Influences Reed Warbler Habitat Philopatry

Variation in Little Penguin Agonistic Calls

Demography of an Urban Cooper's Hawk Subpopulation

Breeding Site Conditions & Adult Shorebird Survival

Long-Term Changes in Pacific Flyway Migration Timing

Auk Most Cited 2016 Articles
Mesozoic Birds and Modern Reproduction

Condor Most Cited 2016 Articles
Avian Interactions with Renewable Energy Infrastructure

Population Estimates for Tidal Marsh Birds

Reproduction Success and Wind Energy Infrastructure

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AOS Annual Meeting 2018 will be in Tucson, Arizona, April 9-14     
Birds without Boundaries is the theme of the 136th Stated Meeting of the American Ornithological Society in Tucson, Arizona, April 9-14. Registration and hotel reservations are now open.