Craves, J.A., and N.M. Anich. 2023. Status and distribution of an introduced population of European Goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis) in the western Great Lakes region of North America. Neobiota 81:129-155. doi: 10.3897/neobiota.81.97736
This paper is open access, so you can read it online or download the PDF by clicking the title above. (The figures look better in the PDF.)
The backstory is on this page.
A little belatedly, I'm happy to report that this summer I was voted in as an Elective Member of the American Ornithological Society (created by a merger of the American Ornithologists' Union and Cooper Orinthological Society).
Elective Members are one of the special membership categories that recognize one's significant contributions to ornithology and to the AOS, and are nominated and voted on by three Fellows or Elective Members. There have been just over 600 Elective Members since this category was first created around 1964. I'm in some excellent company! It's gratifying to have my work acknowledged in this way by the world’s largest international ornithological society.
Update: This paper has been published! It's open access so you can read online or download the PDF; click on title below -
Craves, J.A., and N.M. Anich. 2023. Status and distribution of an introduced population of European Goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis) in the western Great Lakes region of North America. Neobiota 81:129-155. doi: 10.3897/neobiota.81.97736
At long last, the paper on the population of European Goldfinches in the western Great Lakes region is complete, and has been submitted to the journal NeoBiota. In the paper, my collaborator Nick Anich of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and I covered a brief history of the times and places where this species has been introduced around the world, and their distribution in North America over the past 20 years. Focusing on the western Great Lakes region, we describe where they are successfully nesting, where they may have come from (both countries of origin and domestic importers), and some additional information on nesting ecology, natural foods, potential impacts, and suggestions for future monitoring.
The manuscript still has to go through peer-review, but the preprint is available at the publisher's website. Here is the abstract:
Monitoring introduced species is important because of possible effects on native species and ecosystems. Here, we report on European Goldfinch observations from North America between 2001–2021, focusing on a population in the western Great Lakes region. We compiled over 7000 records of European Goldfinches from multiple sources for this time period. Over 3300 records were from the western Great Lakes region. We believe the primary founding event of this population to be release or escape from a cage bird importer in northern Illinois. European Goldfinches were initially reported widely in the region, but over time birds were most consistently reported between Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois. They have been breeding in this area continuously since 2003, are currently present in numbers that have established them as part of the local avifauna, and show evidence of a recent increase in numbers. More study is needed on this population of European Goldfinches, including their ecology, their potentially increasing range and population, and an evaluation of the potential for impacts on native ecosystems.
Craves J, Anich N (2022) Status and distribution of an introduced population of European Goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis) in the western Great Lakes region of North America. ARPHA Preprints. https://doi.org/10.3897/arphapreprints.e90813
We acknowledge the many people who contributed or reported observations of European Goldfinches over the years -- thank you!
Update: This paper has been published! It's open access so you can read online or download the PDF; click on title below -
Craves, J.A., and N.M. Anich. 2023. Status and distribution of an introduced population of European Goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis) in the western Great Lakes region of North America. Neobiota 81:129-155. doi: 10.3897/neobiota.81.97736
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European Goldfinches have now been nesting in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin for over 15 years. With the completion of the latest Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlas, it's time to summarize the distribution and breeding information on this species.
As of December 2021,
I am working on a paper that will briefly cover the history of this
species in North America with more detail of the status over the past 20
years; where this species is currently found and where it has nested
recently; a focus on the origins, spread, and distribution in the Great
Lakes states; breeding phenology and ecology in this region; and as much
as can be gleaned about the ecology and potential impacts of the
establishment of European Goldfinches in North America.
Nick
Anich, coordinator of the Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlas, and I are
collaborating on this part of the project. We've met with several other
researchers who are interested in looking at population genetics and
morphology of European Goldfinches across the continent.
Around 2001-2004, a number of other European bird species were reported from the western Great Lakes area (scroll down on this page for details). Of those, Great Tit (Parus major)
is still nesting in Wisconsin. I believe a couple of other species may
still be present and reproducing, but they are much more difficult to
quickly identify and a status update on them will have to be a future
project, although I still collect records.
The initial task with the goldfinch project is just to attempt to compile a database of sightings for the past 20 years or so and cull important information from this. This data is coming from multiple sources, including hundreds of sightings provided directly to me from people responding to posts on these pages and the former Rouge River Bird Observatory web site. I'm indebted to these people, because they provide the backbone of early sightings that were never reported elsewhere.
The majority of more recent records come from eBird, but because European Goldfinches are non-native and therefore not "countable"
on birders' lists, they have not been adequately reported. This has
been further compounded by differential treatment of non-native species
in each state. We are working with all reports that have been
submitted to eBird (including those not showing in the public maps and
output), but believe there is a substantial amount of data that,
unfortunately, is lost to history. The eBird data we do have is
challenging to work with -- for example, of the 6300+ eBird records we
have, many are duplicates of the same bird, sometimes the same day or
multiple days at one location (which may be recorded in different ways
by different observers).
I am no longer actively collecting data. However, if you have any sightings in North America from 1999-2021 that have not been entered into eBird, please do so. Even if they do not appear in the public output, we will see them when we access the eBird database, or they will be available to future researchers. If you have further questions or information, or information on other European bird species (list below) you can contact me via the form near the bottom of the right sidebar -->
You can read a great deal of background on the European Birds in the Midwest page. I've included this post at the beginning of that page as many people land there first, so scroll down a bit for the earlier information.
Other posts on Net Results about European Goldfinches:
European Goldfinch: Established in the U.S.? -- Jan 2009
European Goldfinch update -- nesting in Illinois, Jun 2009
More European Goldfinches -- nesting in Wisconsin, Jul 2009
Update on European Goldfinches -- Apr 2012
There are several different levels or lists of species whose populations warrant some sort of monitoring and/or protections. These include federal and state endangered, threatened ("T&E") and special concern lists; and the species of greatest conservation need generated by the US state-level Wildlife Action Plans. I've served on the Michigan T&E technical committees for insects and birds (as co-chair or chair of birds) since 2014.
More recently, an effort has been underway to compile lists of Regional Species of Greatest Conservation Need (RSGCN) to more accurately reflect species' ranges and harness the management power and shared priorities of multiple organizations across regional landscapes. These lists start with all the species listed on each of the states' Wildlife Action Plans, determine which have populations that are primarily within the Midwest region, and then utilize expert opinion regarding concern levels, threats, and other factors. Two of these lists have been completed: the 15-state Southeast Region and the 13-state Northeast Region.
Over the past year, I participated on two taxa teams (birds and Odonata) for the 13-state Midwest
Regional Species of Greatest Conservation Need coordinated by the Midwest Landscape Initiative of the Midwest Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (MAFWA). There were 21 experts on the bird taxa team; I represented Michigan along with Mike Monfils of the Michigan Natural Features Inventory.
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| 13 states in MAFWA region |
Data on Canadian provinces were considered although as this is a US-based initiative, representatives from Canada were not involved in the committees. Note that there is also some overlap in US states in the various regions, and some species included on the Watchlist were designated as deferred to a region that had more responsibility for the population.
Twenty-five Michigan bird species are on the list of Midwest RSGCN:
These are (not so great) screen shots from the data table which can be viewed here. The table contains all the data on all taxa from all states. There is the ability to sort and filter, similar to spreadsheets like Excel. To just see Michigan's birds, go to Filter and choose Where Taxa is Birds and add the condition Where MI_Occurs is Yes. You'll see many other ways to filter and sort the list. There are a lot of columns, some of which indicate the various criteria used to make determinations.
The project has a website, where you can view highlights and download the full report with appendices.
If you are interested in the Odonata (dragonflies) list, see this post at Urban Dragon Hunters.
Birder Robert (Bobby) Irwin found a Neotropic Cormorant (just assigned to a new genus, and now Nannopterum brasilianum) off Humbug Island at the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge on 28 June 2021. The eBird checklist with photos is here. As of 19 September 2021, it was still being seen, at least sporadically.
This identification is not an easy call. I happened to have visited the Refuge the previous day, one of the first times I have returned after spending years doing bird and insect surveys for the USFWS prior to the Refuge opening to the public. Various habitat modifications have resulted in a nesting colony of Double-crested Cormorants just north of the new fishing pier, with nearly 30 nests that I could see. Most of the young have fledged, so there were dozens of cormorants in the trees, flying around, and in the water, all in various plumages. Neotropic Cormorants are smaller than Double-cresteds, have longer tails, and different plumage on the face, but these differences are not always obvious, especially when the birds are moving around or distant. Kudos to Bobby for picking this one out.
As you can see from the range map, this bird is well out of range. However, they are known to wander a lot, and there are a number of Michigan records, mostly from the past few years. In fact, there is a pair nesting at Lake St. Clair Metropark in Macomb County right now!
I have maintained a comprehensive Wayne County checklist, including historical records, for many years. By my accounting, this makes species #352 for the county, of which 9 are extirpated/extinct, hypothetical, or not "countable."
Varied Thrush (Ixoreus naevius) is one of my favorite birds. Not just lovely to look at, but also listen to, if you happen to be within the breeding range of the species which is centered more or less in the Pacific Northwest. There are four records of Varied Thrush in Wayne County, two of which are from Dearborn. I'll start there, of course.
Dearborn's first Varied Thrush was a one-day wonder, a female along the edge of the Edsel Ford High School campus found by Jim Fowler, Jr. on 16 April 2004. It was only seen by a handful of us because as I recall it was late afternoon when it was found and we couldn't relocate it the next day. It's possible it was present before or after in the adjacent residential yards or just across Rotunda in the little woodlot on Ford engineering property.
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| Varied Thrush: 1st Dearborn record, 3rd Wayne Co. record, 16 April 2004. Photo by Darrin O'Brien. |
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| Varied Thrush: 2nd Dearborn record, 4th Wayne Co. record, 16 February 2021. Photo by Mike O'Leary. |
There are two previous Wayne County records for Varied Thrush. The first was a bird present from 9 to 31 March 1971 in Rouge Park near the old Nature Center (once at the southwest corner of W. Chicago and Outer Drive). This was found by Detroit birding legend Ernie Carhart (1911-1997), whose lived nearby and whose favorite birding spot was Rouge Park. All Wayne County, and especially Detroit, birders owe much to Ernie; here is a little write-up and photo of Ernie by Karl Overman (another pretty legendary guy).
And finally, a Varied Thrush was at the home of Rosann Kovalcik and her (then) husband Martin Blagdurn in Grosse Pointe Woods from 3 to 15 December 2000. My (then future) husband Darrin O'Brien and I were among the many people who sat in Rosann and Martin's bedroom looking out the window, waiting for this bird to show up at the feeders. We missed it on our visit, but we did get our picture in the paper because it got some good press coverage.
Although their home range is far, far away from Michigan, Varied Thrushes tend to wander a great deal and I'm a little surprised there are not more Wayne County records. This is one of the roughly 60 species in the county of which there are 5 or fewer records.
That's out of 344 county species I have documented over the past 30 years or so (including historical records). I am not sure I have the energy to publish a fully annotated checklist with citations to county birds, but I might -- if there is interest -- do one on the rarer species one of these days.
Dearborn has an interesting winter roost of Black-crowned Night-herons (Nycticorax nycticorax) at a pond near the Rouge River inside the Ford Rouge Plant complex (scroll down in this post for a map and description). Access to this site is restricted, but Mike O'Leary as a former Dearborn police officer and current Ford employee has been able to periodically survey birds, and consequently the night-herons get counted at least once a year on January 1, the day of the local Christmas Bird Count. They were first recorded on the count in the 1980s, and then were nearly annual beginning in 2003. Peak numbers occurred around 2006-2009, when over 30 were found each year. Numbers have averaged much lower in recent years, often around a dozen. They can be very hard to see tucked into the Phragmites and other vegetation, not moving because as their name indicates, they are not really active during the day.
On 23 December 2020, Mike was scounting for the upcoming count when he tallied 8 night-herons at the ugly pond. It wasn't until he was looking over his photographs that he noticed one preening (or sleeping) bird was standing on one leg, and the other leg sported a color marker! When he sent me the photo, I immediately knew this wasn't a new marker, because the letters should have been dark black on a bright yellow band (example here).
The invisible leg would be the one with the standard USFWS metal band with its identifying 9-digit number. However, there is a way to report just a color marker at the federal Bird Banding Lab website, which Mike did immediately.
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| Black-crowned Night-heron in Dearborn, MI. Inset shows color marker. |
Mike received a prompt response that the bird had originally been banded as an adult of unknown sex on 29 May 2014 under the banding permit of colonial waterbird expert Dr. Francie Cuthbert at the Detroit Zoo in Royal Oak, MI.
The Zoo has had a colony of nesting Black-crowned Night-herons since around 1997, when the first juveniles were found there by Doris Applebaum; this was the first documented breeding of this species in Oakland County. At least 6 nests were found the following year. In recent years the Zoo has had as many as 50 pairs. This is one of the significant colonies in the Great Lakes and I believe the largest inland colony in Michigan (see a map of colonies on page 12 of this Audubon Great Lakes waterbird report). These birds have been banded and/or color-marked for a number of years.
Once again, Mike comes through with a great, interesting bird find in Dearborn!
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Applebaum, D. 1998. Oakland County nesting of Black-crowned Night-Herons. Michigan Birds and Natural History 5(1):12.
Applebaum, D. 1999. Follow-up on Black-crowned Night-Herons at the Detroit Zoo. Michigan Birds and Natural History 6(1):20-21.
Many years ago, a group of Dearborn birders and RRBO banders submitted lists of the five bird species they thought might be the next to land on the Dearborn bird checklist*. I don't even need to dig it out to know that American White Pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) was not on that list.
On the evening of 16 October 2020, Mike O'Leary happened to be outside when 12 pelicans flew south over his yard. The Dearborn checklist now is now 266 species (which includes two extirpated and two hypothetical species).
Perhaps if we were compiling that list today, one of us might have thought to add pelican. This species has undergone a remarkable expansion in the Great Lakes over the past decade or so. Take a look at these two maps from eBird, showing reports from southern Michigan. The first map has all the sightings from 1900-2000 and the second just the past 20 years (with the caveat that eBird only launched in 2002, although many historical sightings have been added).
The expansion of breeding populations is well-documented in the two best small society journals in this region: the Passenger Pigeon, the journal of the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology (2014 article here); and Ontario Birds, the journal of the Ontario Field Ornithologists (2019 article here, and summarized in this article).
Keep looking up!
~
*As a reminder, you can download the most recent (2019) annotated
Dearborn checklist for $5. Applicable for most species for all of
southeast Michigan, it gives residency status, relative abundance, and
dates of occurrence for over 260 species. You can read the details about
how the data were collected and what is presented in this blog post.
You can go to the download page here.
You will find the 2019 version as well as the 2007 version, which
contains maps, some photos and illustrations, and other material. A
description for each is available by clicking on the titles; there is
also an option to purchase both for a discounted price.
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| Yellow-crowned Night-Heron at UM-Dearborn 17 Jun 2017. Photo by Mike O'Leary, used with permission. |
On May 15, 1999 at approximately 12:30PM I observed a falcon shaped bird soaring and with intermittent flapping as it proceeded to climb starting at approximately 200 feet when first seen. The first thing I noticed on this bird was the extremely light underparts with the secondaries lighter than the primaries and dark wrist marks and the tail length which set this bird apart from a gull. The falcon shaped wings left no doubt that this was not a buteo. Size of this bird was about that of a broad-winged hawk but appeared wider from wing tip to wing tip. No distinguishing marks on underside of tail, appeared pure white. Wings just slightly uplifted while soaring and banking. After observing for approximately 5 minutes I dropped my glasses to see how high the bird had climbed. By this time it was a mere dot in the sky, having moved up and north. Prior to this I had noticed the bird banking and alternately flapping in a nighthawk like flight as if feeding on the wing. In my recollection of white-tailed kites from seeing them in CA I don’t recall seeing this form of feeding. Wingbeats were buoyant yet strong and coming high up as a nighthawk. Viewing was optimal as the sun shown through the wings.There are no records in Michigan for White-tailed Kite. Since the mid-1990s there have been increasing numbers of sightings in the eastern U.S., but the majority of the northernmost reports have been in the past 5 or so years and many are west of Michigan. This is a distinctive bird and a good description, but the single-observer report at a time when not many of these birds were noted in the region has prompted me to consider it hypothetical.
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| White-tailed Kite in California. Photo by Lee Jaffe under a Creative Commons license. |
At 8 AM this morning, my wife and I observed a different sort of sparrow for about 5 minutes off and on at our feeder. The feeder is about 7 feet from our kitchen window so we had lots of good hard looks at it. There is no doubt in our mind that it is a a Eurasian Tree Sparrow after consulting Petersons Field Guide ( page 263), Golden Field Guide Birds of North America (page 279) and Audubon Master Guide to Birding Book 3 (page 351). The bird had a black patch on the ear covert as well as around the eye, a small black chin patch (smaller than the regular house sparrow), rich brown crown, faint white ring around the collar, was slimmer than the house sparrow and immediately left the feeder whenever the regular sparrows came in. It was more fidgity than the other sparrows--quite nervous.
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| Eurasian Tree Sparrow in Europe. From a photo by Jan Rose, used under a Creative Commons license. |
Prior to the 1970s or so, a report of a Eurasian Tree Sparrow would be highly suspect. It is not native to North America, as the name indicates, but since 1870 a population has been established near St. Louis, MO. Twenty birds were imported from Germany and released there, and for decades did not expand much from this area. By the 1940s, the colonization extended only about 80 miles from their original point of establishment, mostly in a north and northwest direction. A more rapid expansion began in the 1960s, with birds showing up in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. In the 1990s, multiple reports came from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, Iowa, and Ontario.
Good data on early records of introduced species can be difficult to dig up because these species are dismissed as "uncountable" by birders, and it's the birding community that usually documents these occurances. At some point, reports begin to get archived, and Michigan's first "official" record of Eurasian Tree Sparrow occurred in Cass Co. in 2005. Since then, there have been around 30 or more Michigan reports, including those of multiple birds.
The flurry of reports from Michigan beginning in 2005 and mostly in the Upper Peninsula coincides with a surge of reports of other European birds in this region. Between 2004-2006, Common Chaffinch, Eurasian Siskin, and European Greenfinch were all reported from the U.P. These birds were likely the result of releases from the same source that founded the population of European Goldfinches in the Chicago area. The same importer thought to be responsible for these birds also imported and sold Eurasian Tree Sparrows. From what I've been able to ascertain, the releases began sometime after 2000, likely around 2002. Thus, I would not be surprised if Michigan records after 2002 or so were derived at least in part from the Chicago-area releases. Earlier records (if there are any others besides the Dearborn bird) in Michigan and elsewhere would be attributable to expansion of the core Illinois/Missouri population. (You can read much more about European birds in the Midwest on my page regarding this research here.)
Back to Dearborn. Living in an urban area, the observers of the Dearborn bird were, of course, extremely familiar with the House Sparrows that were ubiquitous at their feeders. In another rare bird report they completed, they noted the bird at the feeder was so close to their kitchen window that they couldn't use binoculars, so it was seen well. Their description seems wholly adequate, including their observations (also shared with me from subsequent sightings) that the Eurasian Tree Sparrow seemed skittish around House Sparrows -- a number of researchers have indicated that Eurasian Tree Sparrows do not compete well and are subordinate to House Sparrows. These facts, coupled with the expansion into the Upper Midwest in the 1990s, leads me to conclude that this is a reasonable, valid record for Dearborn. (The description was not considered credible, however, by the state record keepers.)
A lot of interesting work has been done comparing the North American population of Eurasian Tree Sparrows with the German ancestral birds. Here are just a few papers on the history of the North American birds as well as their evolution and differentiation:
Barlow, J.C. 1973. Status of the North American population of.the European tree sparrow. Ornithol Monogr 14:10–23.
Barlow, J.C., and A.L. Lang. 1997. Cultural evolution in the Eurasian Tree Sparrow: Divergence between introduced and ancestral populations. The Condor: 99: 413-423.
Burnett, J.L., Roberts, C.P., C.R. Allen, M.B. Brown, and M.P. Moulton. 2017. Range expansion by Passer montanus in North America. Biol Invasions (2017) 19: 5-9.
Graham, J., C. Harnevich, N. Young, G. Newman, and G. Stohlgren. 2011. How will climate change affect the potential distribution of Eurasian tree sparrows Passer montanus in North America? Curr Zool 57:648–654.
St. Louis, V. L. and J. C. Barlow. 1988. Genetic differentiation among ancestral and introduced populations of the Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus). Evolution 42:266-276.
St. Louis, V. L. and J. C. Barlow. 1991. Morphometric analyses of introduced and ancestral populations of the Eurasian Tree Sparrow. Wilson Bull. 103:1-12.
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| Survey forms including Bewick's Wren submitted by Alice Miller. |
Bewick's Wren - probableThis report did not get published in the spring 1948 bird survey. However, although this form was dated for summer 1948 (see top portion of photo above), all the records on the pages were from spring 1948. She notes she had been travelling, so perhaps she missed the spring deadline. Normally, significant reports that were omitted were mentioned in the following survey when published, but the summer 1948 survey itself was not published on schedule, and appeared in condensed form along with the fall 1948 survey.
1st observation 4-11 Naked eye - on bare ground directly under living room window - brown - slender - positive white eye stripe (over) - whitish underparts - long tail - out of range
2nd observation - in spirea bush - extemely quick nervous movements up down in and about - out of range
3rd ob. atop low stone wall back of lot - same as 1st plus definite and prominent side to side tail movement. But never saw white in tail to make it positive - I had just returned previous week from Tennessee whre I saw Carolina's for positive study - This was not a Carolina and it's back was plain and not striped so it couldn't have been a marsh wren
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| Bachman's Sparrow in North Carolina. Photo used under a Creative Commons Public Domain license. |
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| European Goldfinches in Kenosha, WI, April 2016 Photo by Darrin O'Brien |
I have posted an updated page on European Goldfinches and other non-native cage birds in the western Great Lakes. I am still collecting follow-up data while the Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlas is in its final year of surveys; southeast Wisconsin and northeast Illinois are the "epicenters" of the breeding population of European Goldfinches. I'm working on a summary paper -- read all about the history, identification, and how to submit reports here.
