Exciting news regarding Colorado's coolest bird!
Jason Beason
I thought some of you may be interested in this new information about Colorado Black Swifts. In 2009, Kim Potter (U.S. Forest Service), Carolyn Gunn (Independent Researcher and Colorado Parks and Wildlife), and I attached light-level geolocators to four Black Swifts in Colorado. One year later, we were lucky enough to recapture three of them and successfully download data which Rob Sparks (Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory) used to create maps showing where the swifts had gone for the winter and the migration path back to Colorado in the spring. Just three weeks ago, the Brazilian Committee on Ornithological Registers added Black Swift to the official Brazilian bird list based on information from this research. The Black Swift along with Madeiran Petrel and Desertas Petrel have been added to the “secondary list” for Brazil as there is no documentary evidence (i.e., skin, photo, video, sound recording) to confirm presence. These two petrel species were also followed to Brazil using tracking devices. So, the subtitle of the article in the Colorado Field Ornithologist journal last year "How to discover a new bird species for Brazil without leaving Colorado" has been vindicated!
Jason Beason
Special Monitoring Projects Coordinator
Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory