F.G. Stiles, in _Birds of Costa Rica_ states, "Many long distance
migrants pass half or more of the year in their winter homes and are rightly
regarded, not as northern birds that come south to escape winter's dearth, but
as tropical birds who go north to breed- many migratory passerines belong to
Neotropical families."
Most of the birds that fall under the heading "Neotropical Migrants" do
so, because of their evolutionary relationships to neotropical relatives and
the evolution of the practice of migration itself. Arguing over whether a
bird is truly Neotropical begs the real issue: Are these birds in trouble?
And, if they are, why?
There is some evidence that some of the problem occurs in the non-
breeding grounds for some species. There is even better evidence that most of
the problem is fragmentation of breeding grounds, which increases the
occurrence of predation and brood parasitism.

For a short-course of this problem, I recommend "Why American Songbirds
Are Vanishing" by John Terborgh in May 1992 _Scientific American_.

A very complete discussion can be found in _Ecology and Conservation of
Neotropical Migrant Landbirds_ Edited by J.M Hagan and D.W.
Johnston,1992,Smithsonian Institution Press.



>
>
>A friend and I have been debating this question for some time now, and
>seeing as it has been a while since there was a good debate on tweeters
>(the last was the Brewer's Sparrow/taxonomy one), I thought I'd send it
>along, see what we can come up with.
>
>Her position is that neotropical migrants exist in the West, mine is that
>they don't. It's really a question of how you define neotropical. I'm
>more familiar with the eastern species than the west, but it seems to me
>this whole neotropical business is mislabelled (spelling, Dennis?), and
>should be called trans-Gulf migrants, referring to the Gulf of Mexico.
>Now there are many people who share this belief and already refer to them
>as such, but it seems that in the west there are alot of people who want
>to jump on the bandwagon and SAVE THE NEOTROPS (besides, it's a great
>catch-phrase). Partners in Flight, for instance, continues to put all
>these prioritized lists of neotrops in trouble, and the status of
>neotrops by state, and can't help but think it's all a bunch of hooey.
>Not the PIF isn't doing good work, they seem to be making great strides
>in avian conservation, but I don't think there are any 'nice and neat'
>categories that migratory western birds fit into because they don't have
>any great ecological boundary to cross, like the Gulf of Mexico.
>
>Anyway, that's probably enough for now, but I'd like to hear the Tweeters
>opine on this one...
>
>Mike Smith
>University of Washington
>whimbrel at u.washington.edu
>
>

--
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Mike Patterson, Astoria, OR
mpatters at ednet1.osl.or.gov
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