Dear Tweeters Subscriber:

Several years ago the Burke became the official UW host for Tweeters. We
entered into this relationship hoping the collaboration would help build
bridges between the Burke's strengths in collections-based education and
research, and an interested, supportive, public constituency. Because the
press of other programs has kept the Ornithology staff of the Burke so busy
this is our first posting to this list.

Over the past 30 years Burke collections in Ornithology have become a
tremendously important resource for teaching and international research,
bring distinction to our region and to the University of Washington. One of
our important annual activities is a Fall mail appeal for contributions to
the general endowment supporting Ornithology at the Burke. Each year we use
this appeal to provide an annual synopsis of highlights of divisional
activities. This year Hal Opperman has very kindly suggested that we should
post a notice of this effort on Tweeters. We certainly do not wish to
burden anyone who is uninterested with a request for support, but we do wish
to let people know of this opportunity to help build permanent support for
Ornithology at the Burke. Thus we hope Tweeters subscribers who think they
might be interested will send us their name and address so that we can mail
them our Fall appeal.

The past year has been another banner year for Burke Ornithology, with a
record number of expeditions and continued vital participation by students
in divisional activities. We were able to continue our strong commitment to
research and expeditions in Russia after the fabulous news that Barbara Eddy
and Hugh Ferguson would step in to assure three more years of support for
this program, which Garrett Eddy founded and supported annually until his
death last year. We organized two expeditions to Russia last summer: Rob
Faucett and two UW undergraduates worked in Irkutsk, while Sharon Birks and
Ken Davis worked with Moscow State University Museum zoologists in
Primor?ye. These expeditions contributed extensive material to our Genetic
Resources Collection, which now holds the world?s only comprehensive
collection of avian tissues from the former Soviet Union. This collection
has provided the specimens for two PhD dissertations and for an ongoing
series of papers exploring genetic variation in Eurasian and Holarctic
birds. The species studied so far are showing some surprising evolutionary
histories and affinities. For example, we have a paper in press at the Auk
showing that the ?Yellow Wagtails? of Eurasia represent a complex of at
least three distinct species, and further, that two of these previously
unrecognized species are more closely related to other unrecognized species
of the Citrine Wagtail than they are to other ?Yellow Wagtails.? Similarly,
a study we have just completed on genetic variation in Winter Wrens
throughout the Holarctic reveals that they consist of a group of at least
six previously unrecognized species.

A number of additional activities this year were possible because of the
partial or full support they received from our Ornithology Endowment. These
included an expedition to Panama, a trip to the American Southwest to
conduct a preliminary survey of habitats used by passerine birds that
migrate for their fall molt, and participation by staff and students in two
conferences: the North American Ornithological Conference in New Orleans,
and the ?The Birds of Two Worlds? Conference at the Smithsonian, which
focused on the biology of temperate-tropical migrants of the Old and New
Worlds.

Burke students first discovered that western passerines move to the region
of the ?Mexican monsoon? for molting, and now so many western species have
been discovered to do this that the area may need conservation attention.
On our recent trip to this region, we found it hard to find concentrations
of the species known to molt there; however, our survey suggests that these
species primarily use lowland mesquite for molting. We seldom encountered
even single individuals of molt-migrant species in the pine-oak woodlands we
surveyed in mountains of Arizona or in the Sierra Madre of Sonora and
Chihuahua. In contrast, where rain had come to the hot lowlands, we
regularly encountered molt-migrant species in mesquite scrub. The most
dramatic result of our survey was discovering that huge concentrations of
Western and Cassin?s Kingbirds use this region for molting. Burke graduate
student Luke Butler is now busy combining our census results with data from
museum specimens in preparation for publishing this discovery. Thanks to
the Ornithology Endowment we hope to take a much larger contingent of Burke
staff and students to further examine the Southwest molt-migration system
next summer.

Endowment building has supported nearly all of these accomplishments, and we
are fortunate that Ornithology at the Burke is relatively healthy because we
began building endowments nearly 20 years ago. Nonetheless, enlarging our
endowed support is urgently needed because of the continual erosion of state
funding for the UW. If you would like to consider joining us in supporting
the Endowment for Ornithology, please send your name and address to Sharon
Birks birks at u.washington.edu, and we will send you an appeal to consider.
In this time of decreased funding for state institutions, we are
tremendously fortunate that Barbara Eddy and Hugh Ferguson have again
promised up to $40,000 total in dollar-for-dollar matches for contributions
to Burke divisional endowments this year.

Hope we hear from you,

Sievert Rohwer
Curator of Birds