** Reply to Rob Conway


>
> >Jack Bowling writes:
> >
> >Note that a car-killed Yellow-billed Cuckoo in Victoria July 5, 1989
> >provided the first BC record since 1927 (in Birds of BC). Perhaps
> >there has been a northward resurgence of this species in the past
> >decade?
> >
> >Rob Saecker responded:
> >
> >Or perhaps just more people interested enough in birds to stop and
> >look at roadkill?
> ==================================================================
>
> One must be very, very careful when using road killed birds as official
> recorded species. As a kid I used to regularly walk a stretch of
> California Highway 41, one of the main routes into Yosemite National
> Park, in the foothills of the Sierra. One of the characteristics of
> this road is that it is steep, and it is in country that has daily
> summertime temperatures over 100f. At every rest stop, where people
> would stop to cool off overheated motorhomes, you could find bird
> carcasses that had no business being there - cardinals, bobwhite, and
> once a painted bunting - that people had popped off of their grills.
> Road killed? Yes. Locally. Definately not. Cars can move a small
> package, like a dead bird, thousands of miles in 72-96 hours.
> Yellow-billed cuckoo in Victoria? Likely a local casualty, but unless
> the actual event was witnessed there's no way of telling that the bird
> wasn't splatted in Manitoba or Nebraska 3 or 4 days earlier and just
> picked Victoria as the place to drop off of its deadly host.

Point well-taken, Rob. However, I left out the part that the bird was
actually found alive but stunned on the road and died from its injuries
shortly thereafter. I am assuming that a cuckoo - unlike Imogene Coca -
cannot survive a National Lampoon Vacation strapped on the roof of a car...

- Jack

Jack Bowling
Prince George, BC
jbowling at direct.ca