What’s New in Ornithology?
Left: A Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) stretches its wings in the surf at Año Nuevo State Park. Right: A volunteer with the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory checks the primaries of a Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) mistnetted at the Coyote Creek Field Station (CCFS).
Photo credit: Maya Xu.
Last updated: 05/31/2026
A volunteer at CCFS holds up an Anna’s Hummingbird (Calypte anna).
Photo credit: Maya Xu.
Birds are some of the best-studied organisms in the world, but this means that every day, there’s a flood of papers that come out all over the world!
We’ve started this page as a way to filter through this literature for you, and to feature the publications of:
Researchers from the SOAR network
Research featuring new findings on California birds
Avian research that’s just incredible, regardless of geographic location!
Photo documentation of California and temperate North America’s first Dark-sided Flycatcher (Muscicapa sibirica) in Mountain View, California (above) and the hundreds of birders who flocked to see it from all over the country (right).
Photo credit: Michael Long (top), Chris Henry (right)
Featured paper of the month:
First Record of Dark-sided Flycatcher (Muscicapa sibirica) for Temperate North America: Intercontinental Vagrancy and Migratory Misorientation
SOAR member and lead author Marty Freeland, as well as SOAR PI and senior author Rodolfo Dirzo, and SOAR member Maya Xu, detail the occurrence of a Dark-sided Flycatcher(Muscicapa sibirica) in a parking lot at the Mountain View Google campus from September 17-19, 2025, establishing the first record of this species and genus for California and temperate North America. The bird was determined to be from the nominate subspecies, belonging to highly migratory populations that breed in northeast Asia. The authors evaluate potential mechanisms for the bird’s arrival, including reversal and mirror-image misorientation among other explanations within the little-studied field of avian vagrancy.
Research from the SOAR Network
Here, we have recent papers published by researchers affiliated with the SOAR Network. Click on the citation under each corresponding image if you’d like to read more!
New Research on California Birds
SOAR and our partners are just one of many initiatives in California that are finding out incredible new details about our state’s bird life. Click on each citation for the full text!
New Bird Research from Across the Globe!
Amazing ornithological research is published every day across the world. Click on the citation for each paper if you’d like to read the original paper!
